Comments on: LSD: Dream Machine

LSD: Dream Machine

mccarty.tim — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:17:51 -0800

In 1998, a Playstation game called LSD: Dream Emulator was released in Japan. The game had no goals except for wandering around and exploring a dream world from the first person perspective.

Environments were psychedelic, with strange, low-polygon creatures and objects wandering around. Touching one of them changed the dream. The game's content was based off of the dream journal from one of the developers, which was later published as a book entitled "Lovely Sweet Dream." The game creates a surreal environment, that can be boring, funny, surprising, or terrifying, much like a real dream. Here's a Let's Play documenting an experience playing the game. Review with screenshots. A tumblr of playthroughs.

By: griphus

griphus — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:20:53 -0800

God dammit. I have this giant list in the back of my mind of stuff that would make for awesome FPPs and I never get around to it because here is a video of a pug playing soccer. By which I mean, of course: this is awesome, thank you.

By: Egg Shen

Egg Shen — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:29:12 -0800

Promoting drug use! Won't someone please think of the children?

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:36:02 -0800

Egg Shen: "Promoting drug use! Won't someone please think of the children?" I do. They taste better when I am frying.

By: stormpooper

stormpooper — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:36:36 -0800

Someone should remake this with 2012 graphics. Very Myst-like concept.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:37:48 -0800

My biggest regret about this post is that the game was released commercially for the PSX (therefore abandonware now), and thus hard to play legally. It's $350 on Ebay for a real copy. If it were free/available someplace like GOG, I'd post a link. Googling for remakes aren't really turning up much, just a bunch of projects that look really abandoned.

By: AugieAugustus

AugieAugustus — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:38:07 -0800

Why, that looks just like everywhere I have ever been in Second Life.

By: item

item — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:43:40 -0800

I knew his popularity's dropped off a bit lately, but I didn't realize Seth Rogen was doing video game walkthroughs on Youtube. Also, the last music I would want to listen to while on LSD would be that smooth-jazz saxophone muck in the title sequence.

By: griphus

griphus — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:44:55 -0800

If you don't want to get an ISO, it is out on Japanese PSN, for what its worth.

By: item

item — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:49:01 -0800

It actually looks quite a bit like Minecraft, doesn't it?

By: Nomyte

Nomyte — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:01:52 -0800

We all remember Yume Nikki/Dream Diary, right?

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:13:24 -0800

It's $350 on Ebay for a real copy. That's crazy. Maybe it's gone up from my day but you can buy a tab of acid for, like, five bucks.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:34:37 -0800

How can this not be by Jim Woodring?

By: 0bvious

0bvious — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:43:10 -0800

Reminds me of this long forgotten C64 / Amiga gem: Weird Dreams

By: Nelson

Nelson — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:48:21 -0800

I love all the games that have stoner variants, like Rez' Endless Mode. Just cruise along, nothing can hurt you, no pressure. Really drives in the amazing hypnogogic design. For some reason the Japanese games all seem more willing to embrace psychedelia; not just Rez, but also Child of Eden, Lumines, ... Fun games.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:50:57 -0800

Well, it was the late '90s. I remember spending...a not-insubstantial amount of time...in front of one of those screensavers that synched to music one night. IT BLEW MY MIND.

By: subdee

subdee — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:59:58 -0800

We all remember Yume Nikki/Dream Diary, right? We all wish we could forget Yume Nikki/Dream Diary, right?

By: subdee

subdee — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:02:02 -0800

Joking, but Yume Nikki is one of the most disturbing games ever made.

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:15:56 -0800

I am, as always, grateful for Japanese design and culture. I was lamenting a recent (western) dreamscape-type game featured on RPS whereby you wander a landscape of phantasmagoric imagery... and shoot things. Hey, there's something startling and surreal! Shoot it. Shoot it with your gun.

By: honestcoyote

honestcoyote — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:45:51 -0800

Hey, there's something startling and surreal! Shoot it. Shoot it with your gun. Have you tried Proteus? No shooting at all. Just pure exploration. And I'd agree with you. It's a little disappointing how many games come up with an amazing environment and then center your gameplay around killing.

By: ThatFuzzyBastard

ThatFuzzyBastard — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:10:09 -0800

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:14:53 -0800

Nelson: I'm told that part of why Japan is more receptive to psychedelic gaming is because there's a thriving cultural expectation that people get together with their friends and play an hour or two of video games before going to the clubs, and again after. So there's a much bigger market for video games that put you in a nightclub head space. For the longest time (though no longer), mushrooms were still legal in Japan when they were illegal in North America. In addition to Proteus, there's also TRIP apparently.

By: jcfletcher

jcfletcher — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:16:10 -0800

For some reason the Japanese games all seem more willing to embrace psychedelia; not just Rez, but also Child of Eden, Lumines, ... Fun games. "Japan" isn't the most important commonality to those games. They're all the work of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who also created Space Channel 5 while at Sega (and the less psychedelic Sega Rally series). And yeah, they're all super fun! Also, I fully intend to download LSD from the Japanese PlayStation Store whenever I have time. I've been signing in and staring at the listing for a couple of weeks.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:30:11 -0800

> I love all the games that have stoner variants, like Rez' Endless Mode. Somebody should build a Dock Ellis mode into a baseball game.

By: Pyrogenesis

Pyrogenesis — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:24:37 -0800

here is a video of a pug playing soccer WHERE IS THE VIDEO?!?!? YOU FORGOT TO POST THE LINK!!!!1!

By: msalt

msalt — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:11:14 -0800

Best of all, you can play for less than 8 hours at a time.

By: msalt

msalt — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:12:25 -0800

Exploration -- I think that Myst, Minecraft and World of Warcraft all succeed in part because you can do a lot of exploring in non-fighty mode. It's an under-used potential in games.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:59:44 -0800

Somebody should build a Dock Ellis mode into a baseball game. It'd be simpler to just do it this way.

By: ersatz

ersatz — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:18:10 -0800

WHERE IS THE VIDEO?!?!? YOU FORGOT TO POST THE LINK!!!!1! MeFi delivers.

By: BiggerJ

BiggerJ — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:26:31 -0800

Why do I have the feeling that this game would have been released in the West if it hadn't been named after an illicit drug?

By: subbes

subbes — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 18:13:39 -0800

This was the first LSD video I watched, and I watched it after a set of Amnesia playthroughs when it fit the mood quite well.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:11:41 -0800

'Go Ask Alice': Televised brown acid from 1973