A slag term as we all know, for something evokative of a "acid" trip or bizarre hallucination. With general implications of the surreal and hopefully sometimes nostalgic. Or rather a mixture of the nostalgic and unreal in a way that is unsettling. I generally think that counts as "trippy", the alien and disorienting outside, though I do think that the familiar mixed with it adds to the unsettling and disorienting feel of some things. Not necessarily to the point of scary, but they can be. There are "good trips" and "bad trips" after all.
And those sort of things are definitely evoked in video games. But the question is, just like my question about women in video games and non-violent video games, what are these bizarre, and particulary "trippy" video games?
I would say the Mother series. Or Earthbound most particularly. Why? Because it's a particularly bizarre, oddly enough from a Japanese individual, darkened satirical twist on the awful, romanticized sexist 50s suburban American life. You often, often see this romantic image of the 50s suburban family mocked in modern media for how silly and empty it was. The Stepford wive, and everything. Including in many American cartoons to the point of being purposely over the top, plastic, and bizarre. And Earthbound, strangely enough, does pretty much the same thing. It's a real piece of ironic Americana all right. And I know people like to say "Japan is weird" because of particular cruel game shows and things that sometimes exist. But the adoration of particularly the particularly bizarre campy American things certainly seems like a more American pasttime than a Japanese one. It is, after all, most natural for us to be the ones satirizing our own post-colonial, modern, corporate-consumer culture and how bizarre and myopic some things about it can be. And yet Earthbound is as campy and bizarre as it gets.
You have an all American Leave It To Beaver stereotype kid, with a baseball bad, yo-yo, and baseball cap, with a cute girl, a nerdy kid, and a boy from a land of American Orientalism put into one, a stereotypical image of the Orient common through American eyes, coming ironically through Japanese eyes. Going up against campy, exploitation-film esque, campy aliens. And not only that, between all of the stuff that makes you laugh at how silly it is, it takes itself seriously enough for the players to take it serious. From the song Ness must learn, to all of the spiritual New Age hodge podge, to the psychedelic battle backgrounds and general hippie culture(Itoi is a huge fan of Counterculture era music), and it's place together with weird modernity right out of a 70s comedy, Earthbound makes for a very, very trippy experience.
I spent too much time describing Earthbound, so I'll quickly mention and describe the others in comparison.
Yume Nikki is a popular free indie game that delves pretty strongly into the surreal mind of a quite depressed little shut-in girl. And aside from being meant for horror, the real horror is in the absurdity. It is a very trippy game. So much so that part of the scariness is that you're always expecting something bad to happen even though it never does. Also surprising for a Japanese game, it's heavily influenced by South American culture.
Then, there's of course games like Eversion. Like Yume Nikki, it's meant to be scary. But a lot of scariness is just in how bizarre the game is.
Another one I think is Yoshi's Island. Most Mario games have suspiciously Psychedelic themes, but Yoshi's Island seems to take the cake. Bizarre, strangely nostalgic theme just for the sake of it, over the top caves and places, and who can forget "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy"?
All right, well I've made enough text of my own. Time for you to mention your picks.
Edit: Darned 404 errors!
Edit: Come on, go through stupid thread! This is why you also copy and paste before you make a post on the internet.
And those sort of things are definitely evoked in video games. But the question is, just like my question about women in video games and non-violent video games, what are these bizarre, and particulary "trippy" video games?
I would say the Mother series. Or Earthbound most particularly. Why? Because it's a particularly bizarre, oddly enough from a Japanese individual, darkened satirical twist on the awful, romanticized sexist 50s suburban American life. You often, often see this romantic image of the 50s suburban family mocked in modern media for how silly and empty it was. The Stepford wive, and everything. Including in many American cartoons to the point of being purposely over the top, plastic, and bizarre. And Earthbound, strangely enough, does pretty much the same thing. It's a real piece of ironic Americana all right. And I know people like to say "Japan is weird" because of particular cruel game shows and things that sometimes exist. But the adoration of particularly the particularly bizarre campy American things certainly seems like a more American pasttime than a Japanese one. It is, after all, most natural for us to be the ones satirizing our own post-colonial, modern, corporate-consumer culture and how bizarre and myopic some things about it can be. And yet Earthbound is as campy and bizarre as it gets.
You have an all American Leave It To Beaver stereotype kid, with a baseball bad, yo-yo, and baseball cap, with a cute girl, a nerdy kid, and a boy from a land of American Orientalism put into one, a stereotypical image of the Orient common through American eyes, coming ironically through Japanese eyes. Going up against campy, exploitation-film esque, campy aliens. And not only that, between all of the stuff that makes you laugh at how silly it is, it takes itself seriously enough for the players to take it serious. From the song Ness must learn, to all of the spiritual New Age hodge podge, to the psychedelic battle backgrounds and general hippie culture(Itoi is a huge fan of Counterculture era music), and it's place together with weird modernity right out of a 70s comedy, Earthbound makes for a very, very trippy experience.
I spent too much time describing Earthbound, so I'll quickly mention and describe the others in comparison.
Yume Nikki is a popular free indie game that delves pretty strongly into the surreal mind of a quite depressed little shut-in girl. And aside from being meant for horror, the real horror is in the absurdity. It is a very trippy game. So much so that part of the scariness is that you're always expecting something bad to happen even though it never does. Also surprising for a Japanese game, it's heavily influenced by South American culture.
Then, there's of course games like Eversion. Like Yume Nikki, it's meant to be scary. But a lot of scariness is just in how bizarre the game is.
Another one I think is Yoshi's Island. Most Mario games have suspiciously Psychedelic themes, but Yoshi's Island seems to take the cake. Bizarre, strangely nostalgic theme just for the sake of it, over the top caves and places, and who can forget "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy"?
All right, well I've made enough text of my own. Time for you to mention your picks.
Edit: Darned 404 errors!
Edit: Come on, go through stupid thread! This is why you also copy and paste before you make a post on the internet.
