The Elusive Creator of the Most Terrifying Video Games | Hacker News Reader

The Elusive Creator of the Most Terrifying Video Games

motherboard.vice.com

34 pointsjonbaer10 comments

No offense to those who might be fans of Sato's games, but is it just me or did those games just come off as just plain weird and not at all terrifying?

I agree. Why does everybody call this game terrifying? I remember playing it on Playstation 2 (??) and thinking it was interesting and experimental - but way certainly not that creepy.

I think communites like Reddit tend to mythologize these kind of things into greater significance. So as soon as I read the bombastic headline I knew it would be LSD. No surprise, Shane Smith/Vice have built an empire on hyperbole. Vice News is has awesome scope though ...

I fear I may never get a better chance to mention Garage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwYYFjGtedw

http://lostmedia.wikia.com/wiki/Garage:_Bad_Dream_Adventure_...

Really glad you did! Thanks--what an interesting find.

More weird than terrifying tbh.

I miss that oddity in video-games. Take for instance Space Station Silicon Valley for N64, you don't see games like these anymore.

The indie scene saves the day when it comes for creativity in video-games, but there aren't really odd games like before (AFAIK).

You haven't seen the work of thecatamites, have you?

http://harmonyzone.org

Search on Rock Paper Shotgun for reviews. Or just dig in. If there's anyone else out there consistently cranking out this much weirdness in game form, I'm not aware of them.

Also Frog Fractions, which is... certainly surprising, anyway. Read nothing about it if you haven't played it already. Just GO.

http://twinbeard.com/frog-fractions

My GOTY for the year for 2012. I'm not kidding. It's so meta though that I'm not sure it's quite what you mean by weird.

Lots of games in the "weird twist on X" category. Horse Master, Hatoful Boyfriend, Hotline Miami... huh, that's lots of words starting with H. Tons of others. Lots of games messing with classic concepts/mechanics in new ways.

http://noncanon.com/HorseMaster.html

http://clione.halfmoon.jp/hatoful-boyfriend/english.html

http://www.hotlinemiami.com

Hammerfight's weird in the way you mean, I think. Steam link because the official site is really bad. So's the game, really, though the art and concept carry it for quite a while.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/41100/

Blendo Games' Thirty Flights of Loving, Atom Zombie Smasher, and Gravity Bone are all this sort of weird. I can't speak for their other games only because I haven't played them, but they're likely weird too.

http://blendogames.com

There are more. Free stuff tends to be the weirdest. Poke around in Rock Paper Shotgun's archives for articles about free games and you'll find weirdness in abundance. Lots of weird-for-the-sake-of-weird but plenty of weird-due-to-experimentation-and-childlike-fancy too.

Its amazing how little we recognize that people value personal privacy and space. If you do something worth recognition expect to have every unrelated facet of your life poured over to the extent that it's available. I feel bad for anyone under 25 right now as they've been using services with only the thinnest veneer of privacy since they were teens. Should make politics a lot more interesting as there will be very few people that can pretend to have the squeaky clean profiles of current politician.

Nobody is squeaky clean. Therein lies the problem.

On a devils advocate note. Maybe the erosion of privacy will lead to more informed voters and honest politicians. For this I don't hold much hope though.

Watching the video, I was strongly reminded of the work of Chris Marker, a film-maker worth coming to know if you don't already. Marker loved Japan and the affection was reciprocated by many artists, including Akira Kurosawa. The possible path from Marker to LSD: Dream Emulator is more than I can clearly map here, but here are some points along the way:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/15/thrilling-prophe...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7_Hp33euEQ

http://artforum.com/film/id=47823

I'm definitely a fan of the LSD game for Playstation, but Sato is getting a little more credit for supposedly establishing a genre than he deserves.

Check out the game "Cosmology of Kyoto".

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