LSD: Dream Emulator

[Guest ansgaria]

I'd imagine some of you lads might find this enjoyable.

 

I stumbled into an article about this Japanese-only game for the first Playstation console called LSD: Dream Emulator released in 1998. The title just sounded interesting so I looked it up on Youtube and found this user, azuritereaction, doing a play-through of it in about 10 parts.

 

The game is graphically a horrible mess (even for that time I'd say) but that just makes it that more disturbing. The game is apparently based off some journal the developers had which described some LSD trips or something like that.

 

Here's some Wikipedia wisdom

Gameplay

 

In this game, the player simply navigates a dream world. There is no action, nor is there any clear goal. The idea is simply to walk around and enjoy things in a dream environment. There are many bizarre environments in this world, and one way to travel through them is by foot. However, if the player bumps into walls or other objects in the game, they will be transported to another environment instantaneously through a system called "linking". Bumping into people, animals, or special objects usually results in a stranger dream.

 

Each dream can last up to 10 minutes, after which the player will 'wake up', when the screen turns black and the player is sent back to the game's initial menu. However, if the player falls off a cliff in the dream, then the player may wake up immediately. There is a graph that appears at the end of each dream that keeps track of the player's state of mind; the states are Upper, Downer, Static and Dynamic, as referring to the environments and the general feel of the dream the player just went through. Past states may have effects on later dreams.

 

While the player walks through an environment, the surroundings may suddenly change. For example, eyes may suddenly appear on the walls and stare at the player. Even if the player visits the same place twice, it may look quite different - sometimes, the textures of walls will change to subtly different versions or new items will appear for the player to encounter. One may also encounter strange creatures while roaming around, including a celestial nymph flying through the air, a wild horse running through the prairie, or a huge man filling up an entire room.

 

The game is set in a first-person environment. The player may use the LEFT and RIGHT directional buttons to look and change direction, the UP and DOWN buttons to initiate or reverse movement and the shoulder buttons to strafe left or right. The player may also hold the X button while moving to run, the SQUARE button to look down and the TRIANGLE button to look up.

 

The number of "days" are kept track of. As the player progresses, the pattern on walls and the form of the player may transmute. Occasionally the player may come across a man in a gray coat and hat, commonly referred to as the "Grey Man" or the "Shadow Man". He walks in one direction only. Getting too close to him will make the screen flash, the man disappear, and removing the ability to recall the dream in a Flashback.

 

After roughly 20 days of gameplay, a new option will appear in the main menu, called "Flashback". This mode lasts for only around 3 to 5 minutes versus the main game's 10. Flashback's purpose is to revisit locales and characters from past dreams. Due to the heavily random nature of the game, Flashback mode is often the only way to see an area with the same textures twice. Taking the same steps in Flashback as in the normal dream it is redoing will allow one to completely do over that dream.

Audio

 

There are over 500 patterns of background music in the game. These are called patterns, not tunes, because they all share the same musical score, but are played in different tones.

 

Some of the music was made by Ken Ishii, a Japanese techno DJ and producer who also made a track for the game Rez.

 

The music sure is fucked up, but at times it actually sounds quite interesting.

 

You can watch Part 1 here, and at the end of each part, there' s a link to the next.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62IR-bs4hNo

 

The guy commenting uploaded part 1 to about 7 back in October last year and up from there were uploaded in June this year. In the first batch of parts he really seems to freak out quite a bit due to tiredness, really entertaining.

[doorjamb]

 

that said, games like this make me wish somebody would break away from the trend of striving for realism in gaming and use the new machines' huge graphical capabilities to make a massively surreal experience. I can't remember the last game released in the same spirit of this one (i.e. to represent an experience completely separate from this reality).

to be clear, I don't mean 'trippy' characters and 'eerie' settings, but interactive environments filled with unfamiliar shapes, colors, sounds, and movements, perhaps semi-randomly generated, completely free of some or all of the laws of physics.

 

anyway, [/tangent], back to bitmapped electric sheep dreams...

[sneaksta303]

i've almost downloaded this over 9000 times. dunno why I haven't yet.

[azatoth]

 

that said, games like this make me wish somebody would break away from the trend of striving for realism in gaming and use the new machines' huge graphical capabilities to make a massively surreal experience. I can't remember the last game released in the same spirit of this one (i.e. to represent an experience completely separate from this reality).

to be clear, I don't mean 'trippy' characters and 'eerie' settings, but interactive environments filled with unfamiliar shapes, colors, sounds, and movements, perhaps semi-randomly generated, completely free of some or all of the laws of physics.

 

anyway, [/tangent], back to bitmapped electric sheep dreams...

 

I agree. A game like this LSD one would look awesome on a modern machine. I haven't played it but there was this game called Void, which looked and sounded quite trippy. It might have been mentioned on here at some point too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Od0S_fZwY

[Guest Coalbucket PI]

 

The guy commenting uploaded part 1 to about 7 back in October last year and up from there were uploaded in June this year. In the first batch of parts he really seems to freak out quite a bit due to tiredness, really entertaining.

the commentary is really funny, I don't know how he can still be shocked when weird stuff happens if he's played the game so much. I wouldn't have the patience for this shit, it seems like one of those trips where everything is just frustrating and you want it to stop.

[Guest hahathhat]

i thought devil's tuning fork had the right idea

 

[six]

i thought devil's tuning fork had the right idea

 

 

Holy shit, that's amazing looking.

[superstix]

I'd imagine some of you lads might find this enjoyable.

 

I stumbled into an article about this Japanese-only game for the first Playstation console called LSD: Dream Emulator released in 1998. The title just sounded interesting so I looked it up on Youtube and found this user, azuritereaction, doing a play-through of it in about 10 parts.

 

The game is graphically a horrible mess (even for that time I'd say) but that just makes it that more disturbing. The game is apparently based off some journal the developers had which described some LSD trips or something like that.

 

Here's some Wikipedia wisdom

Gameplay

 

In this game, the player simply navigates a dream world. There is no action, nor is there any clear goal. The idea is simply to walk around and enjoy things in a dream environment. There are many bizarre environments in this world, and one way to travel through them is by foot. However, if the player bumps into walls or other objects in the game, they will be transported to another environment instantaneously through a system called "linking". Bumping into people, animals, or special objects usually results in a stranger dream.

 

Each dream can last up to 10 minutes, after which the player will 'wake up', when the screen turns black and the player is sent back to the game's initial menu. However, if the player falls off a cliff in the dream, then the player may wake up immediately. There is a graph that appears at the end of each dream that keeps track of the player's state of mind; the states are Upper, Downer, Static and Dynamic, as referring to the environments and the general feel of the dream the player just went through. Past states may have effects on later dreams.

 

While the player walks through an environment, the surroundings may suddenly change. For example, eyes may suddenly appear on the walls and stare at the player. Even if the player visits the same place twice, it may look quite different - sometimes, the textures of walls will change to subtly different versions or new items will appear for the player to encounter. One may also encounter strange creatures while roaming around, including a celestial nymph flying through the air, a wild horse running through the prairie, or a huge man filling up an entire room.

 

The game is set in a first-person environment. The player may use the LEFT and RIGHT directional buttons to look and change direction, the UP and DOWN buttons to initiate or reverse movement and the shoulder buttons to strafe left or right. The player may also hold the X button while moving to run, the SQUARE button to look down and the TRIANGLE button to look up.

 

The number of "days" are kept track of. As the player progresses, the pattern on walls and the form of the player may transmute. Occasionally the player may come across a man in a gray coat and hat, commonly referred to as the "Grey Man" or the "Shadow Man". He walks in one direction only. Getting too close to him will make the screen flash, the man disappear, and removing the ability to recall the dream in a Flashback.

 

After roughly 20 days of gameplay, a new option will appear in the main menu, called "Flashback". This mode lasts for only around 3 to 5 minutes versus the main game's 10. Flashback's purpose is to revisit locales and characters from past dreams. Due to the heavily random nature of the game, Flashback mode is often the only way to see an area with the same textures twice. Taking the same steps in Flashback as in the normal dream it is redoing will allow one to completely do over that dream.

Audio

 

There are over 500 patterns of background music in the game. These are called patterns, not tunes, because they all share the same musical score, but are played in different tones.

 

Some of the music was made by Ken Ishii, a Japanese techno DJ and producer who also made a track for the game Rez.

 

The music sure is fucked up, but at times it actually sounds quite interesting.

 

You can watch Part 1 here, and at the end of each part, there' s a link to the next.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62IR-bs4hNo

 

The guy commenting uploaded part 1 to about 7 back in October last year and up from there were uploaded in June this year. In the first batch of parts he really seems to freak out quite a bit due to tiredness, really entertaining.

 

 

lol I just watched 1-4... he's always saying stuff like, "I'm just waiting for some giant man in a cloak to pop up and eat me" or "waiting for something to jump out at me and scare me to death"... but it never happens! He freaks out for nothing. Maybe if I was actually playing the game I'd be more nervous, but his gameplay seems to be sadly uneventful despite his OMGOMG reaction to everything.

 

ALSO: "I listen to a lot of really like... dance music when it comes to electronic stuff, but this just sounds disturbing." hahaha and it's not even that bad, it just sounds like a sped up Autechre track or something.

[Friendly Foil]

the music is really idm. They should remake that game.

[Guest Echo]

The best way to play this game is to just chill out at 2am and run the game in a full window on a psx emulator.

 

the music is really idm. They should remake that game.

 

Yeah, so IDM that u-ziq did a remix on the soundtrack release!

[superstix]

The best way to play this game is to just chill out at 2am and run the game in a full window on a psx emulator.

 

the music is really idm. They should remake that game.

 

Yeah, so IDM that u-ziq did a remix on the soundtrack release!

 

Cool, didn't know there was a soundtrack release. Worth having?

[Friendly Foil]

wow. That's awesome!

[beariksson]

dddd

[Ragnar]

some Japanese person did a homebrew game called Yume Nikki (Dream Diary) which was really obviously inspired by this game but mixed with a lot of random graphic styles from different games. It's also pretty unplayable but watching it on youtube is pretty entertaining. There is a part where you have to flip a light switch on and off and it eventually will do something but it could happen on the first try or the 5000th try basically you have to just keep doing it to advance. It's pretty clearly meant to be a disturbing game

 

also Tail of the Sun for Playstation isn't as weird as this but it's a very unstructured sort of game where you just wander around weird playstation game world

 

I want somebody to go along with the premise of one of those old Playstation tech demos and make a real game out of it. Even among the PS2 demos was like some INTERACTIVE BATHTUB let's make a game that is entirely this but even more bathtub interaction and just confuse everyone

[Guest ansgaria]

The best way to play this game is to just chill out at 2am and run the game in a full window on a psx emulator.

 

the music is really idm. They should remake that game.

 

Yeah, so IDM that u-ziq did a remix on the soundtrack release!

 

This just made it that much more awesome. The remix disc apparently only followed along the deluxe edition of the game, which is supposed to be rare as shit. So that might just be the most rare u-ziq remix ever.

[Ragnar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnCq5jvuqzo&feature=related

[Guest ansgaria]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnCq5jvuqzo&feature=related

 

I swear. I couldn't only stand a few seconds. It freaked me the fuck out.

[Soloman Tump]

this looks fascinating. Anyone had good experience with a suitable PSone emulator? I want to have a go!

[mcbpete]

this looks fascinating. Anyone had good experience with a suitable PSone emulator? I want to have a go!

The game works fine on epsxe so go for that one. The thread has reminded me to go back to it again, I haven't played it for months - I think I got up to about day 25 or something....

[superstix]

Somehow the videos in this thread led me to getting stuck in a YouTube rabbit hole watching people's salvia trips for about 2 hours.

 

That Devil's Tuning Fork game looks creepy/amazing.

[Ego]

This looks awesome! There's some "game" on PSN that tries to be psychedelic but it's just weird crap. I can imagine this being a total mindfuck while reasonably stoned.

[data]

i just watched all 11 videos of this game, and even though im sure this guy exaggerates a bit, towards the end i got freaked out just watching him play the game, the end of the 10'th video was fucking disturbing.

 

i so wanna play this game.

[TwiddleBot]

I agree. A game like this LSD one would look awesome on a modern machine. I haven't played it but there was this game called Void, which looked and sounded quite trippy. It might have been mentioned on here at some point too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Od0S_fZwY

 

I got it when it went on sale for really cheap and it was worth every penny. The void is the first game I've played in a coon's age that gave me a genuine emotional reaction beyond the base... it's quite dreamlike at times. Really nice music too (all like tuned percussion and ambience), and considering how ambitious it is, surprisingly playable. It's a bit heady and dark and if you're in the wrong headspace it can be a bit much. It also scared the beejeezus living shit out of one of my religious friends

 

Haven't played it in a while now but it's something I'll definitely pull out now and then, also great to show to friends who have never considered the possibility of games being an art form.. watch their jaws drop.

 

Devil's Tuning Fork looks wicked, checking that out now.

[Braintree]

i thought devil's tuning fork had the right idea

 

 

That is an awesome idea!

[Ragnar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMwDplGAI70

 

here's Yume Nikki