games – Philbert’s Phables

This My Machine Life blog arc explores how computer games and gaming has shaped my creative vision and perception of the world in general, from an early time in my life until now.

Myst (1993)

Myst is one of the most famous computer games of the 1990s, and of all time. It was the best-selling computer game ever until The Sims took that title away in 2003. Through the powers of a magical book, the player is transported to an island with a lot of interesting architecture and other contraptions but no people, and has to solve puzzles to find out more about the world and find a way out. The puzzles are involved and require a lot of experimentation and poking around to solve, such as raising a sunken ship or mapping certain patterns of constellations in a planetarium/observatory. Upon completion of the puzzles on the island, the player is transported to subsequent worlds (with more puzzles) and uncovers the story of a rivalry between siblings that takes place via magical book writing.

The game is very immersive with its imagery and sound effects, and definitely pushed the boundaries of what a puzzle game could be at the time. When you immerse yourself in these virtual worlds, you/your brain can truly believe that you are in a different dimension. Your perception of time is altered as your brain creates a representation of a virtual world within your own mind. It’s also a testament to the idea that a book can truly transport you to another world.

Years later and without warning I had a vision of the Myst island as a microcosm for human civilization: The observatory represented the scientific endeavor, the library represented all accumulated human knowledge, the clocktower simply the passage of time for civilization, the gears industry and the redwood forest/furnace represented natural resources, and so on. Of note was the ship that allowed for exploration of the “sea,” or the boundaries of existence as known to humanity.

But most importantly to me at the time was the rocket/spaceship at the edge of the island that eventually transported players/travelers to other worlds, not by flying, but by some of futuristic transportation. Teleportation, transmutation, whatever it was called, either the player’s atoms are rearranged and transported to another world, or they are simply injected into another virtual world-within-a-world, which is exactly what Myst is all about in the first place.

To me, the spaceship represents what the human mind can imagine about other worlds, both external and internal, that have yet to become reality.

Out of this World/Another World (1991)

Speaking of other worlds, I remember watching the intro of this game and playing the first few minutes with my father multiple times, since we couldn’t get past the early part of the game where the player is eaten by an alien lion after escaping some alien snakes. This lion bit is actually considered one of the most frustrating sequences in computer game history, so it’s not that embarrassing, but the intro was truly something special.

A sports car-driving scientist (?) goes into a secure facility to run some tests on what appears to be a particle accelerator. A storm starts to form and lightning hits the machine just at the right time to transport the scientist into another dimension and/or another planet. Eventually the scientist survives to find an entire alien civilization and escapes home, but I never got that far.

Again, these games were made using pretty primitive graphics, but were designed in a way that immersed the player in a new world. Just the opening sequence itself is worthy of a science-fiction film of its own, let alone the entire story and game.

Darkseed (1992)

Ah, this is where my dad may have not demonstrated the best judgment in playing this game with me.

The player is a successful ad exec and writer who recently purchased an old mansion. The first night he sleeps there, he has a dream that aliens have injected something into his brain and wakes up with a massive headache. He later explores the mansion to find that A) there is a parallel “Dark World” that can enter the human world through the mansion, B) it’s populated by malicious aliens, and C) if he doesn’t destroy the “Darkseed” in his brain (which is real), it will hatch and destroy all humanity – and kill him, obviously.

Ok, we never played that much of this game, either, since it’s also considered one of the most difficult and frightening ones of its era. And, after seeing a baby delivered by the mailman turn into a grotesque alien, I think I had enough of it too. But the cool part about this game is that it was designed by H. R. Giger, who is the same Swiss painter who designed the aliens and sets in the movie Alien. Can you see the resemblance of the artwork? So, I was exposed to some pretty high-level sci-fi stuff even back then.

So there you have it, the games I played when I was in preschool and kindergarten have left a lasting impression on me and made me believe in the power of entering deeper (virtual) worlds. Next time on My Machine Life: Into the Myst, it’s going to be all about combat flight and war simulators from the 1990’s, as the Early Period continues!

Among the earliest computer games I remember playing are games for which I was able to find the names of, and games whose names I simply have no idea about. I may have started with point-and-click games geared towards children, but I distinctly remember playing more adult-oriented games with my father as well. At any rate, here are some to start:

Arthur’s Birthday Party (1994), Little Critter: Grandma and Me (1992), Harry and the Haunted House (1994)

Arthur’s Birthday Party, Little Critter: Just Grandma and Me, Harry and the Haunted House were all from the Living Books series. These point-and-click games involved a page-by-page story where you could click on different parts of the page to play small animations before continuing. For example, the brass (?) American bald eagle on the top of a flagstaff would spread its wings and do a little dance to the beginning of the American anthem when you clicked on it, an apple would fall from the tree and/or produce a worm when you clicked on it, a horn would sound, and so on. They were pretty creative with the animations and you would often find something new to click on on a replay.

Just Grandma and Me was a particularly poignant game for me, since I saw even at an early age the storyline from sun-up to sundown as a parable for life and death. Basically, Little Critter and his grandma go to the beach. But where was the rest of the family: Grandpa, parents, siblings? I know that would undermine the storyline of the whole game, but it was concerning. Everyone looked way too happy.

All I remember from Harry and the Haunted House was that the kids hit a baseball into this creaky old house and somehow think that trespassing there to find the ball is a good idea. They eventually find the owner to be a pleasant person, but along the way there was one page with a painting of an old sailor, who starts singing the chorus to the song “Drunken Sailor” when you clicked on it. That made an impression on me.

That’s the sailor

Paintbox Pals: Peter Pan (1993) and Around the World in 80 days (1994).

Next up is Paintbox Pals: Peter Pan and Around the World in 80 Days. You would also follow the storylines of those classic tales that changed depending on your choices in the game, and in these games you have to solve puzzles and challenges using one of your anthropomorphic paintbox pals, a pencil, a paintbrush, an eraser, and something else. For example, Peter Pan might have to cross a river or stream, so you would use the pencil to link together a bridge, or there might be fire in the woods that you would put out with the eraser. The eraser was easiest since you would just click on something and it goes away; you didn’t have to actually draw anything. There were usually more than a couple solutions to each puzzle and outcomes to the story by picking a different Paintbox Pal each time.

The most memorable parts of Around the World in 80 Days were the Egyptian mummy and Hollywood Alien puzzles, which were both kind of frightening to me. Apparently there was also a Jungle Book version of Paintbox Pals which I never played.

Zoo Keeper (1994)

Beyond an encyclopedia of animals with collectible “fun facts” pages that I really enjoyed reading growing up, and visiting zoos in general, Zoo Keeper was probably the other game that stimulated my interest in wildlife and nature. In the game, some animals have had their habitats ruined and you have to fix that and put the culprits behind bars (ironically). Lots of animal facts and animations.

Various others

There were a number of games that I simply don’t remember the names for and only remember bits and pieces of. There was a game where you had to solve a puzzle (might have been early math) to gradually open doors featuring cubist paintings, one of which was Picasso’s Three Musicians. There was a game where you could place “stickers” of medieval or pirate characters onto backgrounds to create your own scenes. There was a game where you could grow fantastical vegetables and flowers in gardens and sell them in a market; I particularly remember trimming hedgerows into whimsical shapes and growing sunflowers with babies’ faces in them. And there was a game that I remember you could also create your own scenes with floating shapes set to music, of which one of their samples was of floating, rotating dancers from Matisse’s Dance set to exotic vocalizations.

Equally honorable mentions include Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and Swampgas, a game where you flew around the US to different states and cities in alien spacecraft. Both expanded my geographical knowledge of the US and the world.

Oh, and Ski Free, a classic.

These early games were geared towards children, but in the next MML post, I will describe my early exposure to games that were decidedly not made for children, and how that impacted me. At any rate, any game that allowed for autonomy of choice in storylines and creating scenes and arranging shapes or stickers on a palette to create new worlds was highly instrumental to my development.

Tag: games

Into the Myst III – Deeper Worlds

Into the Myst II – Beginnings