Hauntological videogames

[George White]

Having played We Happy Few on Steam, a game that I think tries to be haunto in a kind of mod/Prisoner-esque way but is ultimately colourful, what videogames would we consider truly hauntological?

[Shaxberd]

Early 3D console games evoke the same queasy memories in me that hauntological TV does in children of the 80s.

Mario 64 embodies this par excellence. Right from the intro screen, where Mario's head is just hanging in space, it's just a bit... off. It's very much trying to be jolly and bright but compared to other Mario games it feels like quite a lonely, grimy world. Crisp sprites are replaced by awkward polygons, lush pixel backgrounds by platforms hanging in an endless void. Bowser looks on and laughs when you die. Add on the awkward camera and having to learn a lot more controls than the simple two-button system of the side-scrollers, and it's a game that feels like being trapped in a bad dream.

[garbed_attic]

Hypnospace Outlaw, which I would highly recommend - far less flippant and memey than it first appears with a terrific soundtrack.

[Deskbound Cunt]

Early 80s nightmare fuel.

[copa]

Makes me think of Spectrum games that were set in mundane British 80s worlds.
Things like Grange Hill, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and How To Be a Complete Bastard.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Anything played on my dad's old Amstrad PCW (which would probably have been my first experience with gaming at home), with the green phosphor VDU that probably burnt itself into the eyeballs of anyone watching. Something very utilitarian and cold war-ish about that kind of tech, could just imagine being down in an operations bunker trying to distract yourself with a last game of Tetris  while waiting for the bombs to drop.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Pony Island
Inscryption
Retro Game Challenge
Warioware
Dusk
Hotline Miami

[dontpaintyourteeth]

animal, vegetable, or mineral?

[Jim_MacLaine]

The sound of space invaders.

and Battlezone

[Magnum Valentino]

Early 3D console games evoke the same queasy memories in me that hauntological TV does in children of the 80s.

Mario 64 embodies this par excellence. Right from the intro screen, where Mario's head is just hanging in space, it's just a bit... off. It's very much trying to be jolly and bright but compared to other Mario games it feels like quite a lonely, grimy world. Crisp sprites are replaced by awkward polygons, lush pixel backgrounds by platforms hanging in an endless void. Bowser looks on and laughs when you die. Add on the awkward camera and having to learn a lot more controls than the simple two-button system of the side-scrollers, and it's a game that feels like being trapped in a bad dream.

Ah man that's so beautifully put. I've always said that my ideal of anxiety was being required to play Mario 64 in upstairs rented accomodation in the town where I went to university. That game makes me feel so lonely.

[madhair60]

what does hauntological mean

[H-O-W-L]

Hypnospace Outlaw, which I would highly recommend - far less flippant and memey than it first appears with a terrific soundtrack.

+1 for Hypnospace.

MGS1 for me for sure.

[Lemming]

what does hauntological mean

Something like nostalgia, but the kind that makes you feel sick and like the future hasn't gone as you wished it had, in a way that makes the past look retrospectively creepy and desolate.

The ultimate example is that BBC video ident that people were talking about in another thread, the one that makes you feel like your soul has just finished completely rotting away.

Mario 64 embodies this par excellence. Right from the intro screen, where Mario's head is just hanging in space, it's just a bit... off. It's very much trying to be jolly and bright but compared to other Mario games it feels like quite a lonely, grimy world. Crisp sprites are replaced by awkward polygons, lush pixel backgrounds by platforms hanging in an endless void. Bowser looks on and laughs when you die. Add on the awkward camera and having to learn a lot more controls than the simple two-button system of the side-scrollers, and it's a game that feels like being trapped in a bad dream.

Mario 64 really puts me off as well, something about how the saccharine cheeriness is entirely sincere on part of the developers but feels harrowingly hollow and false.

Early 3D definitely feels weird in a way that 2D doesn't, a lot of games with VGA graphics still look great and fresh but early PS1 shit feels infused with despair.

[madhair60]

but it doesn't make me feel like that. it makes me feel like The Wrong Trousers is about to come on. i don't understand

however i am a kind man, and good to all, so i will just let those who do understand get on with it.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i think the most literal example in videogames would be the 90s fad for pseudo AI in games like Galapogos

and Sentient

these sorts of games were marketed and somewhat hyped on the basis that they were the first wave of a technology that was just on the horizon, that learning and adaptive intelligence would be a key part of early 00s entertainment and arts. it wasn't, not in the way predicted. but now we have AI in a radically different form to what these games were predicting, to point that retrospectively its almost impossible to link "AI" as presented in these games and AI as an actually existing technology. the context in which they made sense has vanished, and they weren't particularly successful despite briefly being a regular feature in gaming media and online discussions.

[David Pielingtonburygrot]

Early 3D console games evoke the same queasy memories in me that hauntological TV does in children of the 80s.

Mario 64 embodies this par excellence. Right from the intro screen, where Mario's head is just hanging in space, it's just a bit... off. It's very much trying to be jolly and bright but compared to other Mario games it feels like quite a lonely, grimy world. Crisp sprites are replaced by awkward polygons, lush pixel backgrounds by platforms hanging in an endless void. Bowser looks on and laughs when you die. Add on the awkward camera and having to learn a lot more controls than the simple two-button system of the side-scrollers, and it's a game that feels like being trapped in a bad dream.

Is that how it felt to you at the time, or is that in retrospect? For me and most of my mates, playing Mario 64 is '97 was pure magic and joy. Most of the stuff you mention was due to techincal limitations that are only highlighted by contrast with modern CPU power making everything from 30 years ago look sparse, eerie and generally shit in contrast.

Maybe that's what "hauntological" is though? I've no idea.

[David Pielingtonburygrot]

Is that how it felt to you at the time, or is that in retrospect? For me and most of my mates, playing Mario 64 is '97 was pure magic and joy. Most of the stuff you mention was due to techincal limitations that are only highlighted in comparison with modern CPU power making everything from 30 years ago look sparse, eerie and generally shit in contrast.

Maybe that's what "hauntological" is though? I've no idea.

[David Pielingtonburygrot]

Fucking incompetent twat, quote my own post and now can't even work out how to delete it

[Ron Maels Moustache]

but it doesn't make me feel like that. it makes me feel like The Wrong Trousers is about to come on. i don't understand

however i am a kind man, and good to all, so i will just let those who do understand get on with it.

The simplest way to describe it is things from the past that induce a reaction in the viewer that is simultaneously nostalgic and unsettling. Old Crimestoppers bulletins are a good example.

I think the hauntological part is the dissonance in your brain that comes from the fact that although the events being depicted are frightening and bad, there is something about the presentation/production values that feels comfortingly familiar.

(Apropos of nothing I always thought that "handshake" graphic that comes up at the end resembled someone doing a shadow-puppet of a cat.)

[Memorex MP3]

DS adventure type games like Hotel Dusk had it at launch and it has only gotten stronger since.
The DS as a whole has more potential to feel hauntological than PS1/N64 to me. the pre smartphone touch screen interfaces, there myriad of gimmicks, the way it very awkwardly sits between generations of tech feeling more advanced than n64/ps1 at times and others much behind one or the other.


Need For Speed: Most Wanted on the PlayStation Vita occupies an extremely awkward position of being extremely technologically impressive for 2012 but now quite dated yet still feeling somewhat modern. Everything about it all multiplied when you go onto its still active servers that usually seem to have one other person on them.

[McDead]

Any Ocean game for ZX Spectrum (but especially Robocop, Total Recall or Navy Seals) played on a black and white television in the absolute dead of night.

[PlanktonSideburns]

what does hauntological mean

Spooky but you have an arts degree

Basically all inclusive vs interrailing

If Peter Kay read Mark Fisher

[pigamus]

Spooky by design or spooky by accident, and spooky by accident is the most interesting

I had a Vectrex and some of the wireframe starkness of it was quite unsettling

[George White]

DS adventure type games like Hotel Dusk had it at launch and it has only gotten stronger since.
The DS as a whole has more potential to feel hauntological than PS1/N64 to me. the pre smartphone touch screen interfaces, there myriad of gimmicks, the way it very awkwardly sits between generations of tech feeling more advanced than n64/ps1 at times and others much behind one or the other.

 

Another Code- Two Memories, especially. Even the plot's like a 70s ITV serial.

[Zetetic]

Paradise Killer, if we're not restricting "hauntological" to mean "reminds codgers of the 1970s", maybe. Depends what you think vaporwave etc. speaks to, I suppose.

[George White]

Something like nostalgia, but the kind that makes you feel sick and like the future hasn't gone as you wished it had, in a way that makes the past look retrospectively creepy and desolate.

The ultimate example is that BBC video ident that people were talking about in another thread, the one that makes you feel like your soul has just finished completely rotting away.
Mario 64 really puts me off as well, something about how the saccharine cheeriness is entirely sincere on part of the developers but feels harrowingly hollow and false.

Early 3D definitely feels weird in a way that 2D doesn't, a lot of games with VGA graphics still look great and fresh but early PS1 shit feels infused with despair.

The DS version of Mario 64 I must say gives me hauntological vibes, having played it as a child and mildly freaked out. Esp. the bits you were never quite sure were a glitch.

[Shaxberd]

Is that how it felt to you at the time, or is that in retrospect? For me and most of my mates, playing Mario 64 is '97 was pure magic and joy. Most of the stuff you mention was due to techincal limitations that are only highlighted by contrast with modern CPU power making everything from 30 years ago look sparse, eerie and generally shit in contrast.

Maybe that's what "hauntological" is though? I've no idea.

Good question, and I think it's a little of both.

Part of a lot of hauntological material is innocent things being unsettling in retrospect - the flutter and wow on a tape recording of a children's song, Jimmy Savile telling you to clunk click every trip - and I agree that some of this stuff only looks bad in hindsight.

However, although I didn't actually play Mario 64 as a kid, I did genuinely get the heebie jeebies from console games. In my memory, the end boss fight of Starfox 64 where Andross' face falls off was absolutely terrifying, although I've watched it again as an adult and it wasn't half as nasty as I recalled. PC games to some extent too, I didn't like how when they went full screen they took me out of the 'safe' world of the computer and into something else.

Probably some of it was just me being cackhanded and not good at navigating 3D compared to 2D games, but it really put me off for a long time. When I picked up gaming again in the 2010s I was pleasantly surprised to find how much camera and control systems (and probably my own ability to figure out what to do) had improved since the days when I would inevitably get stuck in a corner running into the wall.

[The Mollusk]

Playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater with the music turned off. Just you alone with your thoughts in a huge empty warehouse or school complex or whatever. The gritty sound of your deck endlessly rolling and grinding about. Emptiness. Warehouse is especially bleak as it's got the cold dripping pipe noise constantly in the background as well.

Also this ungodly realm:

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Another console related thing, not a game specifically but the PS2 bios start-up was uniquely alien and odd.

I always find the distant wind/waves ambience puts me in a very strange headspace, simultaneously soothing and unsettling. Judging by the comments a lot of others felt the same way. It's like you're staring out at an endless dark sea devoid of all life, just rolling on and on forever in a void.

[Shaxberd]

To go a bit further back in time, the other recent thread about games set in the UK reminded me of the shit Eastenders game for the ZX Spectrum, in which you are stranded in an abandoned Walford doing pointless busy work:

Do some laundry! Order fruit over the telephone! Soothe a giant baby! Why? There is no why. Nobody will be coming to help you.