Wednesday, April 1, 2020

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.

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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...