Waterworld

French intellectual journeyman Roland Barthes identified the essential element of photography as "punctum." Punctum refers to the object or image that jumps out at the viewer within a photograph. It is sharp, and it stabs and wounds; it is a personally touching detail in an image that establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it. Punctum transcends the "studium" of the photograph—that is, the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretations of its contents. Punctum does not have to be limited to photography and images, as it can apply within or between any composition (or series of compositions) in an oeuvre, whether it be literary or musical or dramatic. Nor does punctum have to be complicated. Punctum means, in Latin, the "point," and that is just what it is: the point of the piece that is, ideally, so profound in its connotations that it conveys something far beyond the limitations of words or gestures or even musical notes, something that almost doesn't need to be (or can't be) explained. By no means does punctum have to be triumphal or "good"; indeed, punctum is often about tragedy and pathos (in the latter context, the film The Room comes to mind).

We can search to find punctum in video games, too. As a visual medium, video games could and should be replete with punctum. Indeed, individual games often thrive on account of unique artistic styles. Moreover, video games can in some sense be said to have transcended words, at least insofar as they are often poorly written. Punctum may be there in abundance, should we take a concerted look for it.

Your correspondent has looked and has found Waterworld for Virtual Boy. The game, based on the 1995 dystopian Kevin Costner film of the same name, was released for multiple platforms, but it is the Virtual Boy version that brims with punctum like no other. The movie Waterworld was a would-be blockbuster about a future in which the polar ice-caps have melted, covering the globe in water. It cost an exorbitant amount to make, but was at best unconvincing throughout its bloated 2.5 hour entirety. Consider: the world, in this particular future, was covered in water, but everything was utterly filthy. In the hindsight 2020 affords us, Waterworld looks prescient now, what with the gaining effects of global warming, but it didn't resonate with audiences in 1995, and failed miserably at the box office. The tie-in video game turned out as bad or even worse than the movie for all platforms upon which it appeared, as it amounted to little more than a shooter of the Gladius type that is set, of course, in water. That being said, the Virtual Boy version is a truly special, nigh transcendent kind of awful. 

Nintendo released the Virtual Boy in 1995 as its "32-Bit" system, though it was markedly unlike any handheld or console system released to that point. Supported by two pronged legs, the system was a headset meant to sit upon a desktop, with the expectation that the player would hunch up their neck and shoulders to look down into the twin lenses. The graphics were red monochrome, meaning that every game was effectively rendered in red and black. Extended periods of play, on account of the neck-scrunching and constant exposure to rubicund graphics they involved, could make for a curious breed of vertigo—an enduring hallmark of the Virtual Boy experience. In view of these health concerns, not to mention a slew of critically-lambasted games, Virtual Boy was a colossal commercial failure. It is still widely considered one of Nintendo's greatest mistakes.

Waterworld for Virtual Boy, then, is truly remarkable among terrible video games. It throws all the flaws of the other versions into stark relief, highlighting especially the slow controls, haphazard collision detection, and repetitive adversaries. There are no backgrounds apart from the sunset. Save for the occasional atoll, the water is an uninterrupted sea of black, the red monochrome stripping Waterworld of the one remotely redeeming feature it might have had—the majestic blue of its aquamarine setting. 

So with Waterworld for Virtual Boy, we are left with one of the worst video games ever made, based on one of the worst mainstream movies ever made, on what may very well be the worst video game system ever made. It encapsulates failure across multiple mediums and domains. No more need be said; perhaps too much has been said already. The phrase "Waterworld for Virtual Boy" and, of course, the game itself, stand in tandem as signifiers for "ill-conceived beyond imagination." This latter clause reads like redundant studium, in fact, beyond the immediate, outcropping signification of the game itself. I submit, simply, that Waterworld for Virtual Boy is pure punctum.

***

Ergo, your correspondent has found the ultimate punctum, the ultimate bad game. And now, in the vertigo that comes after having stared into its rubicund, red-monochrome void, it is time for him to put down the controller, and, with that, to drop the third person "your correspondent" schtick. We've travelled three years together, and we've made it from Chrono Trigger to Waterworld for Virtual Boy. Now I must turn my sights toward the ultimate "must-find", that illusive trio of unity, purpose, and meaning in a world increasingly willing to accept that all of what surrounds us might just be a simulation. And right now, on account of a virus, the simulation is getting really rough. It's all hands on deck, which means any hand that can be pried off a controller can potentially be a helping hand. Staring into a CONTINUE screen with the digit diminishing ever closer to zero, I sign off. But this is not GAME OVER...

Horizon Chase Turbo

A good racing video game is a mystical experience. A bad racing game is a brutally accurate simulation of operating a motor vehicle. Horizon Chase Turbo is certainly not the latter, and, at its best, it often does feel like the former.

Realistic HCT is not. It is unapologetically video-gamey, drawing heavily from earlier racing templates, calling to mind Cruis’n USA for N64, or even Outrun for Genesis. The 8- and 16-bit influences are particularly strong. In this spirit, the graphics are adorably jejune, the designers giving us an abundance of bright, treacly, primary colors on cartoonish cars that cough out polygonal exhaust clouds while conical trees go whizzing by. Some of the rural racetracks in Chile look like unexplored planets in No Man's Sky. Some of the tracks in Japan are classically Orientalist. Some of the best courses are aglio e olio—just the track and cars in the black of night. Turn up the lovely soundtrack—dreamy techno infused with 8-bit melodies—and the experience is blissful.


HCT's eschewal of realism is most helpful with respect to controls. Handling can kill a racing game: get too real with the steering, and your car is all over the course. With HCT, you barely have to take your foot off the gas as you enter a turn, and rarely if ever will you be compelled to brake. This allows for pure concentration on the velocity—indeed, the speed is very vivid in HCT. Open up on a straightaway, and pretty soon it’s just you and the track. Let your nitro boosts fly, and all at once you and the track are one, as are your hands and the controller. You will ask yourself: "Is it my car that's moving? Or is it the track?" And unlike previous 8-bit racing offerings, that blending won't be a negative. Rather, it will be a positive affirmation of the numinous transcendence that HCT offers to the player, however fleetingly.

Needless to say, it's easy to play a game like this. To some, HCT might sound too easy. Admittedly, HCT is fairly simple, in that it's little challenge to finish third right off the bat. However, starting out, it's difficult to win or finish second. You'll need to earn some upgrades for your cars before you can win consistently. Car choice happens race-by-race in HCT, and for this reason, the game is not entirely devoid of strategy. Faced with such a vast variety of tracks, the car you choose has serious bearing on how you finish.

In sum, HCT is not realistic, but it is so fun to play that it’s almost unreal. Just how good is it? It’s better than Cruis’n USA. It outguns Outrun. In fact, your correspondent would be so bold as to say Horizon Chase Turbo is Pro Race Driver good.

Cruis'n USA

You probably expect your correspondent to tell you how Cruis'n USA has aged terribly. In truth, it has aged like fine wine. It's still fun and accessible, with a palpable sense of speed and precarity. You play on the edge of your seat as you encounter the constant head-on traffic. There are lots of crashes, but also lots of lead changes. Some of these derelict drivers come out of nowhere, swerving all over the road—apparently, in the vision of Cruis'n USA, the American highways are replete with drunks. From the west coast to the eastern seaboard, Cruis'n USA is a nice virtual road-trip through the United States, chock full of landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Redwoods, and finally Washington DC. Some levels are charmingly detailed, as is the case in the cornfields of Iowa, where buzzing bugs incessantly hit your windshield. With other levels, some serious liberties have been taken: to wit, the "Grand Canyon" level ends, after a minute and a half of racing, at Mount Rushmore. Creative license aside, Cruis'n USA is a ludic love-letter to American geography. It's also an excursion into an abiding American hetero male fantasy, as Cruis'n USA is all about the women from start to finish.

Indeed, the only thing that perhaps hasn't aged so well about Cruis'n USA is the pixelated bikini girl who’s there to wave the starting flag with dutiful enthusiasm at the outset of every race. Your correspondent refers not just to the in-game pixilation or the sag of this woman’s various appealing parts that has undoubtedly taken place in the twenty-plus years since the game's release. Rather, socioculturally speaking, your correspondent is pointing towards the distinctively male desire—the male gazing—that unmistakably drove the game's designers to digitize her scantily-clad figure and include it in the game in the first place. The gazer-cum-player-cum-driver is undeniably presumed to be a heteronormative, American male.

And all the way through each and every race, the player is accompanied by an unseen female who is along for the ride. She serves as your backseat driver, your guide, and your cheerleader. She tells you to "check it out" as you pass whatever landmark you're at, adding comments like "Wow, the Grand Canyon!" Her wonderment is tireless. When you pass another driver, she tells you to "take it!" She "oohs" and "awws" constantly. In fact, one of the recurrent background songs is a techno mix overlaid with rapid-fire samples of this woman’s "oohs" and "awws"—the whole thing is obtusely sexual. Apparently, this woman fulfills the fantasy of touring the USA by sports-car with an enthusiastic female in the backseat.

Finally, at the finish line, you are greeted by more pixelated cutouts of bikini girls, all of them with arms flailing in celebration. There's also a dude with long hair, jean shorts, and no shirt who’s credited as "Beefcake Boy" and played by one Sal Divita (who also did mo-cap for Mortal Kombat). If you win the race, the image of a thick-thighed girl in a mini-skirt and t-shirt combo rises up onto the screen and then she shimmies on a short loop with a trophy held out for your gazing requirements. She’s played by Anutza Herling, better known by her nom-de-porn, Shyla Foxx. This is what awaits you at the summit of your all-American automotive quest.

The American Dream presents itself

Cruis'n USA, then, is above all about a fundamentally American goal of being constantly accompanied and encouraged by fawning women. But it is more than that, and this is where the Beefcake Boy's inclusion is absolutely crucial. It's not just about the women. Rather, it's about enthusiastic bikini girls and porn starlets in the majority, and whooping, shirtless bros in the minority—this is the optimal proportion in the American calculus of fame. This is the American dream: impressing women and simpletons—one sector has intercourse with you, the other pays money to consume the licensed products wrought from whatever overvalued skill you possess. These are the people you are vying to impress in the USA. Being a winner is about exhilarating the easily pleased, satisfying people who don't wear shirts or pants. This, dear reader, is America at its fullest.

Harlem Globetrotters: World Tour

The Harlem Globetrotters are world famous for their hardcourt exhibitions—gymnastic spectacles and capering antics that are so carnivalesque and "worked" that they are to professional basketball what professional wrestling is to amateur Greco-Roman grappling. For over a century, the Globetrotters have barnstormed mid-sized towns (mostly mid-western) to promulgate their hardwood hijinks, beating up on enhancement talent teams ("jobbers" in pro wrestling lingo) like the New Jersey Reds, the New York Nationals, and the infamous Washington Generals.

Inevitably, an institution so enduring would receive its own video game, and the Globetrotters have been around long enough to have attained that milestone twice over. The first virtual foray into sports-entertainment basketball was a five-on-five affair for the NES, released in 1990. While solid enough graphically, the game was fairly light on theatrics and heavy on the hardnosed simulation elements. In fact, it was so hard, it was not uncommon to lose by 50 points to the CPU—and that was when playing as the Globetrotters against the Generals on the easiest difficulty. 

Thankfully, the Globetrotters got the game they deserved 16 years later. This was Harlem Globetrotters World Tour for the Gameboy Advance. The game features a two-on-two, arcadey format very much inspired by the NBA Jam and NBA Hangtime style. This feels truer to the Globetrotters' unique sports-entertainment experience. And, also in fidelity with the Globetrotter's MO, when using the titular titans in World Tour mode or exhibition, the human player can absolutely destroy computer opponents like the LA Lashers, London Lords, and Shanghai Spirits (the Generals are, sadly, absent from this game). A one-sided game is fun at first, but by the fourth quarter it starts to feel a bit sadistic. Elsewhere on this blog, your correspondent has often championed the overly easy game, given that such offerings alienate no one; that said, with World Tour, things are a little too simple. If you're looking for real challenge, try challenging the Globetrotters with one of the jobber teams. With some divine intervention, you might do what hasn't been done since January 5, 1971—that fateful night in Martin, Tennessee when the Generals beat the Globetrotters.

If there is to be a third Globetrotters' game, the developers might not necessarily have to make the competition fiercer. Rather, they might focus on the Globetrotters' wrestling-esque approach and take a page from squared-circle simulations. The best of all wrestling games, Fire Pro Wrestling World, does not measure a player's success in wins and losses, which are somewhat immaterial in the world of wrestling. Rather, Fire Pro judges matches based on their quality—that is, the story they tell, and the high spots they hit—all of it digested in a "match rating" awarded at the end of a match. Perhaps a future Globetrotters game could leave victory for the Harlem side as a foregone conclusion, as it most always is, and focus instead on ability to pull off a sufficient numbers of behind-the-back shots, hot-dog dunks, and ladder-aided layups. That would better encapsulate the timeless Globetrotter experience.