LSD For PS1 Boggles Minds, Innit?
The IC messageboard insurgents at SelectButton (more specifically, Mechanori!) have made a fascinating post on obscure Japanese PlayStation 1 game 'LSD', "...a recreation of dreams written down in a staff member's dream journal."
It's explained: "There is no goal in LSD. You can walk in four directions, you can look behind you with the L1 or R1 buttons, you can strafe with the L2 and R2 buttons, and you can look up with the triangle button. There's no "jump" or "use" button; you're purely an observer in the world of LSD." Niftily abstract.
And how does it look? "The game is composed of large, linked rooms or stages. Some are fairly coherent (a green field, a boat dock, a city of old Japanese architecture). Some are pretty absurd (a park of miniature buildings, a wasteland of bizarre architecture and bright colors). Sometimes they're littered with animals and moving clouds. Other times, they're completely still."
[There's a good Wikipedia page devoted to the game, but little other info about it online - this is the kind of title that screams out for Long Tail-style resurrection via PlayStation 3 or PSP E-Distribution, even if only a few thousand people would grab it. I just don't think Sony has it in mind to get this comprehensive just yet, though, especially not with import titles.]
Comments
I'd rather see wordimagesoundplay show up as DLC on the PS3 store, if only because it's incredibly rare and still pretty much impossible to emulate, but probably not so large that it couldn't fit into a downloadable game. At least we can get a decent approximation of this title using epsxe. Though in general I'd like to see more experimental, avant-garde, yet relatively accessible games like this exposed in a more mass-market setting. I think this sort of thing has more appeal to mainstream audiences than anyone is willing to admit.
At least the stoner set, anyway. Which is an important demographic!
Speaking of similarly dream/drug-inspired games, there's always the (consistently overlooked) la la land series (which I unfortunately do not have a link for, since they aren't hosted anywhere and there isn't really any dedicated website for them). The games are hard to describe. Basically they are short, 5-10 minute long 2D games made using the freeware game creation software Gamemaker, which are based on the creator's dreams. They're surreal, goofy, and terrifying, sometimes all at once, and are worth checking out if you can ever track them down.
In fact, I have heard word on that a street that a certain PDF-only magazine on the bleeding edge of gamer culture is going to release a podcast devoted to the series in the coming weeks, as well as hosting mirror files for the games so people can actually play them. You didn't hear that from me, though.
Posted by: Toups | March 26, 2007 12:40 AM