Setting The Stage: Edutainment Memories

Doug 0:29

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for another episode of the Uncannery. My name is Doug.

Ron 0:34

I am Ron.

Don 0:37

And I'm Don. Today. We have a substitute Ron here today. I didn't think I was going first. Skin suit Ron. Absolutely.

Ron 0:48

AI particle version of him.

Doug 0:51

That's going to be trying to do it. See what we can get away with. It's getting wild. It's getting wild. And today is a day that I'd like to get wild. Would you gentlemen like to get wild? Absolutely. There's no other reason I show up. Thank you for not even hesitating. Don? No, I prefer mild. Okay. Medium spice episode coming your way. Split the difference. Let's get mild. It just doesn't work. Don. It just doesn't work. Um I'd like to start by bringing us back to a time I don't know. I guess it could still be present in your life, but for me it was definitely childhood. I would like to talk about did you ever have an experience with either maybe a board game, a card game, an interactive experience that was supposed to be equally as much fun as it was supposed to be educational. Maybe I could give you some examples. Like maybe you had a board game that you pulled cards that had facts about history that you would read. Or a video game that you're a character jumping around, and every platform you jump to has a different math problem that you needed to complete. Or you had to chase down a super villain spy that was stealing things. A Mexican woman. I know that she was Latin American. It could be, it could be.

Ron 3:16

I think it depends who you're playing.

Don 3:19

If you're playing your wife, my wife, you're learning. Yeah, you're playing Doug. You're teaching.

Doug 3:28

It is sad that I am an English educator, and probably the board game that I'm worst at is Scrabble. Absolutely. I'm really bad at Scrabble. I just do not get creative with the letters that are in front of me. Anytime I get like boggle bananagrams, any of those types of games, I'm just like, well, there's the and and yeah. I exactly. I panic.

Ron 3:53

I panic at having to create words as quickly as possible. I try to create like adjective forms of ver of words that don't exist. Um but I was just trying to think Tivel is a really good Scrabble word.

Speaker 03 4:07

Hell yeah.

Ron 4:08

Um I was trying to think of like what kind of edutainment games people would play in adulthood.

What Makes Learning Games Work

Doug 4:13

Yeah, I mean it's interesting because I'm thinking of Wordle specifically, and it's just five-letter combinations over and over again. And I think there'd be a lot of people that would argue, no, it's not really doing it. And I think what's tough is if we're going the video game route, I'm thinking of it felt that the game was almost secondary to the learning. Like you Mario, you're able to quickly jump across platforms and dexterity was of the most importance. But then if you play Math Blasters, which is a game in which like there's a lot of platforming sections, knowing the answer to the math problem was gonna get you there every time.

Ron 4:52

But Math Blasters was a good one because the game part was fun. So fun where you got to shoot the trash and space. Yeah. And it was like, yes, I will answer math to do that. Because if it if it's if there is no fun component, it falls apart and the kid no longer does it, right? Right. But I agree. I think that the focus is on the entertainment or the lesson or the skill rather than is the game itself engaging. Except for Oregon Trail.

Don 5:18

I don't understand your I don't understand your point. Oh uh can you make it can you make it again for us, Doug?

Ron 5:28

What was the point?

Don 5:30

Well, here's what I'm confused, because I what I heard you say was that the game is secondary, the education is first. But it sounds like what you're saying is that the game has to be fun and engaging, or else the learning doesn't happen, which I think inverts that yeah.

Ron 5:43

No, I agree. I think when it's really good, the last thing you said is correct. But I think that a lot of times the makers of these games didn't know how to make a good game, but they they like wanted to make something educational. It's uh it's kind of like a uh like a stop smoking ad, you know, where it's like we really want kids to stop smoking, and then but they don't actually make a good ad. It doesn't work.

Don 6:05

And the reason that they don't is because they're always created and scripted by adults who don't understand the the kids' culture or what the kids are are facing in terms of peer pressure and all that, and so it it comes across as uh you know, the librarian put together the anti-smoking ad. The same thing is going on I that was always my impression of these games because there were really cool games that were fun that were not educational, and then like here you can do math and kill robots or whatever, like yeah, and it was it was like the weakest version of like your school mom who like sat down and tried to invent a game and it was But Doom is right there, can't I just do that? Exactly, yeah, and you can run Doom on a pregnancy test, apparently. Yeah, yeah, sure can.

Doug 6:51

Sure can. Yeah, it is interesting because yeah, that that game element needs to be there, and I I suppose that's why I struggle with this is like where does the line go? So, do we all have Oregon Trail in common? Have we all played Oregon Trail? I definitely played Oregon Trail, yeah. Don, you spent took some spins. Oh yeah.

Don 7:12

I played Oregon Trail in social settings class. Wow. Okay.

Doug 7:17

Guessing the Apple II is that where we're at, or is this Apple II uh E? Okay, Apple II E.

Don 7:23

What did the E stand for? Accelerated? It doesn't matter. It just was it was it was edutainment. Yeah, I think it was something about education, but I don't think it actually ever was announced. It's kind of like an iPod, never like what's the I stand for? Nobody ever knows. I just wanted it to be the radical spelling of accelerated with an E. That's it.

Oregon Trail And Choice-Making

Ron 7:42

That's why you don't play Scramble now. The radical spelling with an X. That's it. Yeah, that's also very exciting. Yeah, definitely. So we we had uh we never played it as a lesson, but it was like there was a dusty old Apple II or something in the back of the classroom, and if we were good, we got to play it in third grade for like five minutes or something. What was what was uh what was the educational part of Oregon Trail? Was it just like an RPG where it's like putting you in the mindset of a pioneer? But there was no like math questions or like you had to answer a trivia question to proceed, right?

Don 8:15

There was choices though. Yeah. Do you take which trail do you take? Do you take the trail with the the shortcut? And so it was it was partly about learning the logic of making decisions and the risks of uh you know that you might make it across the river, you might not make it across the river.

Doug 8:31

Yeah. I remember being able to make choices about pacing. So the version that I played was not the Apple II. Um, I think that I played one that was built into Windows and they'd updated graphics, and so some of this might be things that they added on later, but these were like choices that I was really into. You got to choose your pace, like how fast or how much you wanted to push your oxen. So it'd be like, Do you want a strenuous pace? Do you want this to be fairly to use Don's word mild in its approach? Uh Don would have gone that route. Um, but there was rewards if you kind of risked it, but then things would happen, like your wagon wheel would break, and then what do you do if you're broken down and did you get extra supplies? Did you have enough food and should you go hunting buffalo or yeah, economics um of you buy this much to make it to the next point? Um, and so that one I uh that one is interesting because I almost look at it as a fully fledged game that I think even if you didn't get for example, I think you could pull somebody in who barely understands you know what's going on with a computer and maybe doesn't understand the period, and they would have a lot of fun playing it because the game element is there to kind of simulate the experience so much that it seems like the teacher's job would be to put in here's why you were experiencing this. That one feels so game, yeah, and it's at its core, instead of kind of putting it in your face of you know, like this is why you're playing this. The pioneers did this too.

Ron 9:56

Yeah, luckily you're not dead. Ken Burns doesn't show up and like read a letter every 30 minutes.

Don 10:02

Yeah, plus you know, sustaining Manifest Destiny and Westward expansion and the glories of of the uh America taking over the plains.

Doug 10:11

Yeah, and it's it that's the thing, is it's like I'm I'm not trying to say that it needs to have that boring element, but so often it did, like the ones that were bad, because I would often that would be the case. Is I think early on my parents saw that I was interested in video games. My dad played them a lot more, so my mom would come home with ones that were like, and there's this one that teaches you about and I'd play it for a very short period of time and then go back to ones that were more stimulating to me in a different way.

Ron 10:37

For my youngest siblings, I remember that we had some sort of like fake iPad where it was like preloaded with like edutainment games for toddlers, and that never held their attention. It was also like super dull. It was like here's a caterpillar, what color is he? And you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah, absolutely. We played humongous games. Do you remember Humongous as a developer? They did Cutt Putt and Freddy Fish and blah blah blah. They were more point-and-click like mystery games, and I think in the vein of Oregon Trail, it was more about decision making and detail of you know, maintaining and combining details to draw you to the right conclusion, more than like a literal here's how photosynthesis works or something, you know. Yeah.

Don 11:20

I had one. Um it was when I got my first Macintosh, so late 80s, and it was um it was how to do abdominal surgery. It was yeah, yeah, and it was uh, and I remember it because it was black and white. Like so I had the Mac I I never had one of the black and white Macs. When the Macs first came out, they were monochrome. So I got my first Mac was a color one, but the game was monochrome. Okay, and uh and yeah, you had to like cut open like and it was intended to be anatomical training, literally for for surgeons, or and uh like no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did you wind up with that? Someone just might an aunt gave it to you? No, my parents bought it for me, yeah. We're trying to promote the idea that I was gonna be a doctor, so uh here's this thing. And uh Don, cut people open. We like you'd and you'd have to like you know, clamp bleeders and cauterize them, and like like all the right steps in surgery, but I I really don't feel like I would confidently cut Doug open right now, even though I successfully played the game several times. That's good.

Ron 12:26

That falls into the category of like flight simulators, where it's another like is it really a game? I had kids like my friends when I was growing up loved these games and I'd watch them. I was like, what are you doing? This is not a game. You're taxiing at the Dallas airport, like this is not fun. But now actually for the taxi is like a half an hour. Yeah, absolutely. But it is supposedly giving you a skill, or sometimes right.

Don 12:51

But then but is that gameplay? Like you're right, like that because they because real pilots use that, right? And like if there's a crash or something, they'll they'll run that simulation with other pilots to see if the decision making process was done correctly or the best that it could have been or whatever. But that doesn't sound very fun to me. That sounds like functional, right?

Ron 13:09

Yeah, agreed.

Don 13:10

But not math blaster, no, no, or uh how much more fun would it be to fly a plane, though, if in order to take off, you had to get the math problem right? Yep, that's right. I mean, you kind of do, I suppose.

Doug 13:22

Fuel ratios. Well, altitude. Yeah, how big is the tallest building? I think that's good enough.

Then Kyoto Funded A Game

Don 13:29

Dodge the mountain, dodge the mountain. What's four times nine? What's four times nine?

Doug 13:35

I got my pilot's license the second I knew I could do math under pressure. That's right. I just can't spell. One of the uh the most embarrassing moments I had as a kid is I remember the end of Oregon Trail for me was we we kind of played it together as a family, and when you died, like if you didn't make it to the end of the game, it would give you a gravestone and you could put your name on it. Yeah, and so me being the fourth grader that I was at the time, I decided to name the entire family Butthole instead of everything else. So I went through a playthrough, uh that like again, and I didn't know that this was a feature. And then one of this new family that I'm taking across, you get to that gravestone and it's there, and it says, Here lies butthole. And I just remember being terrified that my mom, because like she would play the game with my sister, and I was like, My mom's gonna see that I named this family butthole and be disappointed in me. And so I uninstalled the game, re-reinstalled it, and still, still that green stone. The cookie was there, the butthole cookie is there, and I didn't have the computer skills to get rid of it, so I just completely hid the disc, like got rid of the game. I was so mortified. We robbed your entire family. So ridiculous. Even Joy exactly, just to just to make sure that they didn't find me out at the age of nine. So pathetic. You would think, but I guess I was just terrified of what people would think of me.

Ron 15:07

Our brains weren't all there.

Doug 15:08

Nope, not even slightly.

Ron 15:10

That's why we had the games.

Doug 15:12

Better play these games, exactly. Yeah, it's interesting now. Yeah, so to launch us into this, I think that we're in a different time now. I I remember specifically a section of Target, like you could go to, like they would have modern games, and there'd be a whole section that's dedicated to those types of games. I remember going. Nancy Drew games were kind of like this, right? And the like the puzzle games. Yeah, it was a big part of um you know the kind of CD-rom edutainment boom, uh, which I I don't think really exists in the same way anymore. I think that like there's probably a lot of streaming in Flash games that that probably phone apps, right? Yeah, and phone apps, yeah. Um Angry Birds, is Angry Birds edutainment? That's a good question. I I have played that, I don't think so. I think it's just a physics. Well, yeah.

Ron 16:01

But like at some point you can kind of say almost every game is teaching you something, right? Of course. But is it teaching you, I guess, something applicable outside of the game?

Don 16:10

That's the most frustrating thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, you because you work with I happen, I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but I work with young people who will tell me from time to time, I just can't learn that thing. Yeah, but then you put them in a first-person shooter and they know exactly when the bad guy's popping out behind which box, and like, come on. Yeah, you absolutely can't. How can you memorize that?

Doug 16:29

Right. Exactly. Well, um, generally, the ones that we've described, with the exception of me tarnishing the Oregon Trail with the word butthole, um, yeah, they're they're very much equipped and prepped for children um to be able to learn these things. But what if I told you that there's quite the outlier that existed in 1994 in the United States? Would you believe me? No, there are no outliers in the United States.

Don 16:55

Everything in the United States is perfectly pre-planned. Yes, I concur.

First Look: Cosmology Of Kyoto

Doug 17:00

Thank you. Have a great day, everyone. Glad you joined the podcast. So I do have one for you that is uh gonna shake things up. Um, once upon a time, the Kyoto City Board of Education in Japan decided to fund their own edutainment game. They specifically were discussing with um departments of history and education, um, and they were looking to create an edutainment product, and the product that they settled on um became a game called The Cosmology of Kyoto. Um it was released in Japan in '93, came to the States um in '94, and then I think Mac 95. Like it's it's kind of rolled out slowly. Um, it isn't the most played game by any means, but um, this is something that I came across through just looking at I don't know how I got onto the topic of educational games. I just went there and I stumbled upon this gold mine. Um, but this educational video game um centers around again cosmology being this idea of origin and birth. Um but it also did an incredible job of documenting this period um from a historical point of view. Um I'd like to take a very different approach as we go into this. I was wondering if I could show the two of you some images from this game, and I was hoping that you could describe them for our audience. Would you mind doing that?

Ron 18:34

I like that. I like pictures more than words.

Doug 18:36

So you probably don't like podcasting too much, but that's all right. Why isn't this a movie yet? That's a good point. That's a good point. Uh, which one of you would like to go first? Not it.

Ron 18:46

Oh, there, yeah. Give me the first one, baby. I've never heard of this game. This is a real game.

Doug 18:51

So this is a little bit pixelated, forgive me for this, but this is the first image I'm gonna show you. Tell us, tell our audience a little bit about it.

Ron 18:57

All right, cool. We're looking at a uh landscape picture of what looks like a medieval Japanese village, uh, you know, like shacks, lean twos. Uh, if you weren't telling me this was from Japan, I would think Bethlehem, that's the vibe I'm getting. A couple of people walking around in robes, the sky is uh like black nearest the horizon, and it's fading into an evening blue at top, and then beautiful the other key character colors are brown and brown. Anything about it out of the ordinary, it looks peaceful, it looks like uh you know we're I'm taking a ride back into back in time. Okay.

Don 19:36

Uh Don, will you take this next one here? Sure. Thank you. All right, so we have a uh a purple background that gradients from dark to light, uh dark at the bottom, light at the top, with an elderly, looks like Japanese man again wearing a robe that seems to be a little bit open at the neck. Um he um he seems to be um uh giving a uh a wise saying. There's a there's a a a subtitle under it of him saying happiness to all beings who live or will live. Okay.

Doug 20:11

Sounds educational. Maybe it's trying to teach you a little bit about the peace that you can have in Buddhism. I don't know. Um wonderful.

Ron 20:19

I like this. This is kind of like uh I guess this is like Oregon Trail's the same, right? It's like American history.

Don 20:24

I don't feel like I know what I'm supposed to be learning. Yeah, I don't know what I'm learning, I don't know why I'm learning it. That's a great question. I don't know how I'm learning it.

Ron 20:34

You're starting to sound like some of those young people.

Doug 20:38

They all talk that way. Um, let's keep going here. Um, let me hit you with this one, Ron. What do you see here?

Ron 20:46

This is quite different.

Speaker 03 20:48

What do you mean?

Ron 20:49

This is a a picture Gollum from the 2002 film The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers. Uh and he's gray, sallow skinned with an like very emaciated rib cage, and he's got a very frightening rictus. He's staring at us. He's gnawing his own wrist. He's gnawing his left wrist, his right wrist has already been bitten off. There's exposed bloody flesh and a bone sticking out of his uh arm, his forearm, and then also his thighs look like they've been he's eating himself. His man is eating himself.

Doug 21:26

Very good, and I'll I'll at least hit you with a preview right there, Don. Let's go to the next image. Uh Don, will you take this one? Sure. Okay.

Graphic Imagery And Cultural Shock

Don 21:37

Um, a dark bat uh uh black background with a uh a red demon face in the top right corner with uh windswept hair. Very very, very quaffed, very uh very David Copperfield 1980s um hair there with uh two he's got uh an underbite with uh two fangs sticking uh up towards his nostrils. Um and in his right hand he is um gripping like a basketball, but it's uh not a basketball. It's uh this appears to be a bald human head. And in his left hand, he's uh he's got a pair of pliers. Um his right thumb, the the thumb that is uh gripping the head, has uh has looped into the upper eyelid of the uh of the head and is holding the eyeball open while the pliers are uh are uh uh just in front of the eyeball, menacingly close. Um a needle nose plier or like a these are more needle nose than any pliers I've seen. Yeah, they actually are they they the tips actually look like needles. Um the uh the the head that is being palmed uh is mostly white and gray and does not seem to be enjoying the experience. Listen.

Ron 22:58

The head is conscience.

Don 22:59

Uh yeah, uh yeah, it's a it's a it seems to be a person, but I can only see the head.

Doug 23:04

So yeah, yeah. Listeners, I do want to apologize for the graphic content in this episode as we continue to proceed forward. And I just want to reassure you the truth. You chose this for real content. I'm having a really good time, but I do want to say that my laughter is only in that I get to trick these men into looking at these things. Uh and here's pretty like very beautiful descriptions.

Ron 23:26

They're fairly detailed images. This is not like original Oregon Trail pixels.

Don 23:31

No, and especially, I mean, if you're telling me this is a 1990s video game, like the the uh the graphics cards back then were not super great. So this is they're I mean, these are clear illustrations, they don't look like photographs. Um, and but um but yes, I would say highly detailed.

Ron 23:46

So uh you'll have to refresh me, but was this a period in Japanese history in which demons were predominant upon the land?

Don 23:56

1990s was was rife with demons, especially it was right after the 80s Satanic allegory game.

Doug 24:05

This we're back, absolutely. Uh Ron, you can take this next one here.

Ron 24:11

Okay, this is we're back in the village.

Doug 24:14

Um why does Ron get all the village ones? I I wasn't intentionally doing that.

Ron 24:18

He doesn't think I can handle the demon ones. There's a corpse of a woman with her eyes wide open, staring out at the viewer as she's lying on the ground. She's got uh bloody purple viscera viewing from her abdomen, while a white dog whose muzzle is clearly covered in said viscera stares wide-eyed at us like he's shocked, like, oh no, you caught me eating this woman. And then there's another dog on the on the right hand side of the screen, and he's like our POV character. Like he's he's where the rifle in a first-person shooter would be in his head, and he's snarling at this white dog. I think they're about to fight over this woman's corpse. Beautiful. It's also nighttime.

Doug 25:03

Yeah, as it's as it's there. Don, we're gonna be moving on to the uh let's give you village. Let's give you so concerned. This is um this seems to be in someone's abode, but uh it's so you'll describe it this one.

Don 25:20

So I think I think we should do our next episode at a at an art gallery because I think we can just do a whole podcast describing images to people. Let's go to the Thomas Kincaid gallery. Paint. Alright, I'm not quite sure what I am looking at. It's the hard ground. So the background seems to be um uh a room of some kind. It seems to be uh dark in the distance, but there are columns that appear to be wooden uh supporting a structure uh that might be supporting the roof, but the roof is also dark, so it's hard to tell if it's just the uh the columns with um connecting uh uh timbers over them, or if it's actually the roof. In the foreground, uh it appears to be a face, so I'm assuming that that's much closer to the uh the camera, uh, with uh maybe a woman with long black hair uh facing to the left. Uh her nose uh is elongated and droopy. So you got like a witch. Um I I think it probably would, but but not like conventional western style witch, but I would say that there's there's something uh in uncanny in uncanny valley about this uh this particular image. Um there's a tooth hanging out. It's either a tooth or part of a fish hook. I don't know. Yeah. Um the nose is red. I don't know if that like maybe like it looks like it's been been injured red, but uh could be you know that's that's also associated with um alcohol use. Yeah, I was gonna say the bro the broken blood vessels, potentially, yeah. Yeah, and and beardy kind of. I don't know if that's beard or shadow on the chin, but the but the face still does appear to me to be female, but it's hard to tell.

Ron 27:01

So really good description, Ron, that's what they were. Yeah, that's uh it's almost like one of those optical illusions where if you look at it in a different angle, suddenly it becomes a beautiful woman or something.

Don 27:11

Yeah, kinda because it because it at certain angles like it, you can not see the face, and it and all you see are the weird appendage shapes.

Doug 27:18

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely say that. Uh we got two more. We got two more here. Um who likes red? Who likes blue? I think that those are a big red guy. Always been big red. Okay, let's start with you.

Ron 27:30

Tell me what you're seeing right here. Okay, this is another. We're in we're in hell or something. There's this something background is totally black. There's tongs of red fire leaping up from the from the floor, and there's a man in what I guess I can only describe as a sort of supine arched belly, you know, like he's that like a downward dog, I guess, but his his both of his hands are on the floor and his knees are on the floor, and he's staring at us, and he's got like a very zomb, a zomboid face where his mouth is open in an O of agony, and his entire he's naked, and his flesh is entirely covered in red boils, like he's being barbecued in hell, and he's looking at me and he's saying, like, you did this.

Doug 28:18

He does he does seem to have that expression a bit. And then last but not least, Don, you'll take this last one here. Tell me what you're looking at.

How The Game Actually Plays

Don 28:26

All right. Um I'm looking at uh what so the style reminds me of modern art from the early 20th century. Yes, yes. Um uh red background, uh again, gradient, so uh brighter red at the top to black at the bottom is like a horizon. Um there are several figures in the scene. There's one primary figure in the middle that uh is a blue uh humanoid shape um that has a a giant uh uh uh hole in their skull, and uh and that appears to be empty, but the uh the the person I guess is holding a brain in their hand. So I'm assuming that it's the brain they took out of that hole. Yeah, um, and they uh they they look kind of sad about having that brain in their hand, a little bit distraught about that. Um in the background, they're um the there's other humanoid shapes, but they seem to be uh engorged, they have uh giant bellies and like such that uh they can't even walk. Their bellies are so large. Yeah, it looks like so yeah.

Ron 29:34

What we call them, are they brain eaters?

Don 29:36

I don't uh there's only the one, and I don't see any eating of the brain. I just see like, hey, I don't think this should be in my hands. Right.

Doug 29:43

He's very remorseful. We're gonna say that there's a lot of fear there. It seems to me. You know, there's definitely a lot of fear.

Don 29:50

Um so what I've just shown. So this is what happens if you don't do the multiplication problems right in this educational game.

Doug 29:57

Two plus two equals hell. Exactly. That is that's that's right. So the images that I showed you are from this game, The Cosmology of Kyoto. I think actually I think the title is just Cosmology of Kyoto. Um and I I think the first question I would ask is considering what we just described, and I think we would agree that most edutainment kind of marketed towards kids. Is that correct?

Ron 30:23

Yeah.

Doug 30:23

For the most part, they mean making too much. Yeah, it's not too much of a jump. Um would you give that to kids based on the images that you saw?

Ron 30:34

It looks wildly inappropriate. It seems like a horror game.

Don 30:41

Yeah.

unknown 30:41

Yeah.

Ron 30:42

It seems like a Hellraiser type thing.

Don 30:44

Kids bounce back. They they they bend. It's fine.

Ron 30:47

I'm mostly with you. I think there's nothing wrong with exposing kids to horror. I think it's actually probably very good and cool. But um, I don't know. I've also never been a parent. Yeah. And I'm trying to think uh what would the world seem like in 1994 when I get and I'd probably say no. Um I'd probably give them doom. I think doom is less gruesome than what we just saw.

Doug 31:09

And you can yeah, you're attacking those things. You're getting rid of the demons in that game, so it's a different story.

Ron 31:15

These demons look like they presuming the the kind of it seems like there's a continuity of the of the male figure in that game. Is it safe to say he's the protagonist of the game or in some way the player character?

Doug 31:27

Yeah, we're gonna get into it in a moment here, but yeah, I think that many of these are people that like, especially from the more disturbing images that you saw, people that have been pulled into hell, and a lot of times it's your character. I think the one you described as the boils all over him, that's that's your character being pulled into hell.

Ron 31:45

He doesn't look like he has power over these creatures.

Doug 31:47

Nope, not even slightly. Um, the last image that I think we can all freely discuss um is this is the box art of the game, and I think it does hint that this is gonna be a little bit more wild. Um, with uh there's there is a picture of one of the demons, but I would say like so much more tame than the images that I showed you. Uh yeah, it's kind of this point.

Ron 32:11

Sort of like a like a Ghibli character. Like I I would see this guy in uh spirited away.

Karma, Death, And Reincarnation

Don 32:16

So the the box art image has a the building at the top. I recognize the columns from the uh image that I was describing. Uh and then a red stripe across the basically the middle, maybe it's a little above the middle. It says cosmology of Kyoto, a visual mindscape of old Japan. And the bottom part is black with two human uh two figures. On the right hand side, there's a more human figure, appears to be a female, and I again I kind of recognize that face as it looks like the nose lady. The nose lady, but her nose is covered up with a with a hand. I don't know if her nose is really that big and she's just disguised, or if it becomes that big in the game, like well, you have to bit by the game to find out. That's right. And on the left hand side, there's a blue, uh, it looks like demon face. So uh so that's what we're that's what we're describing here. And I don't know, like I can see the game, I can see that matching the game because there's there, you know, there was the happy, you know, normal human experience that you were describing in the first couple of images, and then of course the the hell uh the hell images we've been describing. So it seems to be like it's a it's a choice.

Ron 33:22

But even even the initial quote unquote happy human experience was very bleak. It was uh like all the figures were distant. We saw none of their expressions, none of them were smiling or having a gay old time. Yeah. Um, and the sky was black. Yeah, yeah, a lot of black in this.

Doug 33:41

I think it was characteristic of the time. Like if you go back to a lot of the skies were black. The skies were black in the 90s. It was it was part of the gameplay. Oh, you mean the 90s, not the historical QA. I think it was a choice because of uh render distance in games. Oh, yeah. A lot of times it would. It's one of the coolest. I think it's something that like people now almost fetishize in making newer games if they go with the retro style, is that kind of endless black that's just beyond the screen. Right. Um, that's there. Um the I want to hear more about gameplay because I've got another theory about that, so we that we can come back to that. Sure. So Kyoto City Board of Education commissions this game. So that's that's that's where we start. The game is structured around you are a nameless uh player, you can design your character. It's not a very complicated design. It's basically like what shape would you like to be, and you know, like weight-wise, and then you kind of um start. There is no clear goal in this game. You literally start in the middle of a field, there's a corpse, and there's a mirror in front of you, there's a corpse, you take the things off of that, and you're on your merry way. You just gain items from that and then start to move. There is a bar to the left-hand side of the screen that goes up and down, although it doesn't seem to have clear indication of what it is. Later on, you find out this is a karma bar based on your actions that you take in the game. And uh again, there is no clear goal. It's a caramel bar. Uh yeah, I wish it was caramel, as they say. Well, some do. Uh Karma. Three Musketeers boy. Yeah. This uh putting good or bad energy into the world and in your decision making um that can affect the conditions of your life and afterlife. Um but what's interesting is the encounters that you have um in the game as you explore this high-end area uh era Kyoto are completely um up to you. It's completely open world in in the way that you explore. So there's only a few conditions to actually in quotes end the game. Um, but there's everyone's route can essentially be different. You're given a map, um, and you can kind of continue in.

Ron 35:57

Are we like talking to characters? Are we walking up with people, being like, what's up with Kyoto? And they're like, I'm a fishmonger, and that kind of stuff.

Doug 36:04

Absolutely. So you you get um right after you corpse, grab some items, head on your way, you go to that building that you saw on the cover of the box. There's a samurai that's waiting outside. You can talk to him. You start dialogue options. There's actually a few options that you can type text, and it's incredibly archaic. It's yes, no responses. And I think the manual even has like you can put these phrases in and it will respond. Um, but as you're talking to the samurai, demon emerges behind him. He uses his sword, kills the demon, and bestows that sword on you. Hell yeah. You go on your way.

Ron 36:41

That's an opening.

Doug 36:41

It's quite an opening. Yeah. Um, immediately going past the uh gates of that building, you go into a market, which is the first image that you saw and described her on. Um, you have some interactions with people, and then from there, um one of the things that's interesting is the non-player playable characters, the interactions are just fairly shocking or unsettling. There are some nice ones, like I showed you one Don, where it's him talking about peace being upon you. But um, a lot of the interactions, especially with the initial um people in the market, like for example, there's one woman who's trying to sell you some food, and she actually throws up into the food and then says, It's good, try some. It's so weird. Like, it just doesn't make any sense.

Ron 37:28

I'm hearing this is a game with a lot of character. More character than a carmen San Diego.

Doug 37:33

It really does. I mean, don't go after Carmen that art, but yeah, it does seem to have quite a lot of character. Um, types of NPCs that you can interact with are commoners, nobles, priests, demons, criminals, different mythic beings along the ways. What's an NPC for our oh uh non-playable character? Uh sorry, yeah, I should have immediately after saying non-playable characters.

Don 37:55

It's because it's in your youth from everyone.

Ron 37:59

All the listeners have been keeping a journal of notes for each of these episodes.

Buddhism, History, And Design Questions

Doug 38:02

That's true. Yeah, absolutely. And my skills at Scrapple. Um so yeah, the gameplay essentially centers around that. The thing that's interesting is there's an encyclopedia in the game that anything that you interact with, there's kind of highlightable text, and there's an entire database of just everything that was going on in the era. Um, so if you go and approach a fishmonger, there's an entire section that's about fish, and it talks to you about like in that specific region, the fish that you would be eating would be this. They would have to travel a long way. So salted fish would be the most common. Um, this freshwater fish were also common because they could catch them from these areas. So, like the level of detail is clearly educational and it helps you in a lot of your interactions, but the tone is so uh, I guess, unsettling in the way that it's approached. Um, and I think it's a lot of this because it seems to have these kind of dreamlike, you know, um settings that you guys uh described. Um it has these muted colors. There's uh we didn't get to hear any of it. There's not much music in the game. Like if you watch a playthrough of it, there's not much music um except in in a few interactions, but it kind of just has an eerie, like single tone that moves through everything, and a lot of it is uh fairly static in in its approach. Um but the interesting thing is is you can die in this game. You it is possible to die. Um, and what you what you're seeing is they really uh paid attention to detail at the different levels of Buddhist hell that you could uh inhabit or heaven as well. It can go well for you if you're a great guy. Um, but in a lot of ways, um it's yeah, it's interesting. So the the options that you have is there's a heavenly area for heavenly beings, um, a level for humans, ashuras who are kind of uh demigod, heroic figures that fight. You can be reincarnated as an animal, and there's an option that uh you go, um, at least from the gameplay I saw the same market that you go into. There's a lot of people that are begging at the at the start who ask you for money, but if you go back as an animal, they shoe you away, which I thought was really interesting. Like that's actually very cool to me. Um there is a section for hungry ghosts. I didn't do it. That's that's for the uh extended uh podcast. But then uh underneath all of that, you have the option of the eight levels of hell that you can descend into. I do have a list of them. Would you like to hear? Yeah, absolutely. There is the hell of constant revival, in which you are consistently tortured in your state uh to where you are executed. So, like basically skin being removed from you at a very slow pace.

Ron 40:53

Um, people uh this is like a Prometheus thing with the vulture and the liver.

Doug 40:58

Very much so. Uh, and the second that you die, you're brought right back just to be tortured again. The hell of black change is in which demons have the ability to light um uh whips on fire and cause scar marks that eternally damn you uh and the pain never ceases, the hell of mass misery in which people are swimming in excrement, the hell of whaling, which self-described um is uh unbelievable torture to your ears. Maybe some of those noise marines in 40k would know something about that. But how about the hell of greater whaling? Just in case, just in case the initial let's do that again turn it up to 11. Uh in a in a very similar thematic uh concept, then there's searing hell, which I think is where a man with boils came from. But he maybe came from the greater searing hell level, and then lastly, interminable hell. Whoa! You don't get out of that one, it seems. So the other ones you can. Yeah. They're temporary. The what you guys were seeing is the game shows you you being tortured before you are reincarnated. So you go immediately back into the game after watching these terrible scenes of what's happened to you, um, and you are spawned back at your corpse. So wherever you were at on in the map, you go immediately back to your corpse. Uh, you're able to take the items off of it, and you can continue your explanator exploration.

Don 42:22

Which is which follows the Buddhist belief system, right? So sure does. And and so the so temporary punishments means that you would be punished before reincarnation, but then at that at that greatest level of hell, then you don't get to you don't get to, you just get continual um torture. And there's actually another eight levels of hell below really because there's the cold hells as well. Uh so there's so very daunting. Um yeah, it is. Um, but the the they're not super fun either, right? They're there's still uh you get blisters from cold and and your flesh cracks from cold, and at the bottom of the cold ones, like you're it's so cold that you disintegrate into the house.

Doug 43:04

Um so they just got maybe they didn't have enough storage on the CD ROM to put the cold.

90s Context: Myst, Tech, And Tone

Ron 43:09

The DLC came out.

Don 43:11

Um when we're ready to talk about what is going on, like I have I wonder. So put a pin in that because I want to like I guess go back to that too. I'm just keeping a list. No, absolutely.

Doug 43:23

I think I think we're pretty close because the thing that is so interesting to me about this game is I do think that it's very educational in that in an organ trail way, you're not just put in click history. Here's a great encyclopedia. And then again, like the encyclopedia is amazing, that's in it, but it puts you through an incredibly disturbing simulation of almost like a religious teaching as well. Of like if you're really bad, you're gonna be that guy with the boils, your brain's in your hands now. No, mommy, not the boil man. Exactly, and also this time in Kyoto that's incredibly um brutal as well. Like the Hind period is often looked at as this brutal era of Japan. So I which is not the 1990s, right? That is correct.

Ron 44:08

Yeah, we're looking at late 700s into the 1100s. Is it also like a particularly religious uh or uh period? Is this like I I mean Buddhism arrives in Japan? I d I know very little about the history of Buddhism, I'm afraid.

Doug 44:23

I think even before that, there's a very complicated back and forth, at least from the I I haven't done enough research pre-podcast, but I know that there's a big back and forth between Chinese Buddhism and then how Japan adapts that. So I don't quite know um how it goes because then you have Shinto Buddhism, and like that's a very much a product of what's happening in Japan, and so it's it's fairly complicated.

Ron 44:47

Um But I just I'm just asking, is the religious content of this game reflective of the period the game is trying to teach you about, or is it more reflective of like modern 1990s Buddhist uh world outlook? I would wonder that.

Doug 45:04

That's something I don't know. I the I fairly simple to say, I don't know because I'd want to say, especially looking at the art style, there is a doom thing. Like there's definitely something there of like really graphic images done in like the highest color.

Ron 45:19

Yeah, it was like uh real it was really trying to spook you out, right? Like it's not just sort of like in uh implied sorrow or misery, right? It's really like it wants you to feel it, right?

Don 45:30

Yeah. And I would think that the the especially the the emphasis on the Buddhist beliefs, that's gonna be the that's gonna be the the 10th century belief. In the 1990s, Japan was the rising sun of technology, it was not a uh like a religious mecca of belief, it was um secularizing technoculture.

Ron 45:53

So is that is that is the game in commentary with that though, right? Is it like a holdout of some sort of religious dogmatic someone like we need to go back, you know what I mean? Like something like that.

Don 46:04

Well, I think I I I suspect because the meter is a karma meter, right? So um, so if you ignore your karma, then the punishments get worse when you die, right? So um that would be the that would be part of the lesson, right? Yes is that that your your actions in the the upper world, whatever this is called in in uh that belief system, um, are going to affect your the consequences that you face later. So that would be uh that would be a lesson that would be true regardless of the the religious system that you're yeah.

Doug 46:39

Well, and I think that that is what is so interesting about it to me is um anybody who takes a spin, like put this into your if you want to take a look at this, like uh YouTube any of this in order to go through. It's also a game that you can get. It is it's a considered abandoned wear. So if you get a DOS box uh emulator, it is completely legal that you can play through this entire game um through your browser or through DOS boxes, it's called. Um, but it's interesting to me because I it feels very one of a kind. Not that I'm the edutainment expert, but again, we all have these common experiences with Oregon Trail and Carmen San Diego and these things that math blasters that we instantly recall. And this is so different on so many levels.

Ron 47:23

Um, those games have like bright colors. I remember like yellow featuring in almost all of them. Um very cartoonish. The music is very kind of like beep, you know, like kind of cheery, funky. And from what you're telling me, this was a very monotonous kind of droning soundtrack, right? Like just sort of chasing was this big? Like, was this popular anywhere? I've never heard of this, but it's a little bit, you know, beyond my, you know, it's a little bit before I would have been playing games.

Is It Good Edutainment Or Horror?

Doug 47:55

I can tell you, and one of the weirdest uh facts about it that I found is that famous, especially in the 90s, uh film critic Roger Evert, he was notoriously hateful towards video games, thinking that they had missed the point of like what film had made so great, like putting people inside of an interactive world that's so much more simplified than the nuances of acting in film and the world that it can be portrayed through cinema. He was obsessed with this video. Like he just thought this was the highest level of achievement. He just said, Was he getting divorced at the time? What was going on? Or he's a sadist or a masochist, I guess, right? Like he just endures the pain. Uh, maybe he had some karmic beliefs that we didn't know. But yeah, he adored it. Um, so yeah, I don't have sales figures necessarily, but it is interesting that it's also state sponsored. Like this is what they came up with. Because I think of any uh educational meeting that's a government sponsorship and just thinking of the image of the guy eating his body off of himself, which all of these uh I showed you still images, but these animated are incredibly graphic um in their depictions. So it's it's a wild one. This is a wild. I'm sorry, it didn't end up being mild, Don. This is wild to say wild for sure.

Don 49:14

I I'm wondering if what you are perceiving as as wild or possibly inappropriate for children, like is there there has to be a cultural element here, right? Big time, big time, and especially in the 1990s, like like the internet is just starting. So it the world is is bigger than than it is now. So the the games in the 1990s in in Western cultures like ours, America, right? Like it's about controlling your world, even Oregon Trail. Yes, right, you're presented with decisions in order to control your own outcome. Right. It sounds like you don't get that, like there's some karmic choices, right? But even if you make the right karmic choices, like you can still wind up in hell. Correct. So the message is different from you can control your world, which is the very capitalist western right uh overachiever, and much more like the the world, the world can control you, right? It's it's not up to you what happens to you, you just have to endure.

Doug 50:25

And so, yeah, the values that are kind of instated, I mean, they would be shocking to me. I mean, to be fair, I mean, this is where we had to get into there. I mean, one of the images that I saw from hell is a giant being poker or a giant poker being shoved through the rectum of one of the people and coming out of the mouth on the other side. And I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm being too judgmental.

Don 50:47

Maybe that is also an absolute Well we used to do that in Western Europe, like with real people in front of us. Used to, Don.

Doug 50:54

Sure. Used to.

Don 50:55

That's exactly.

Ron 50:56

I think in 1984.

Don 50:58

But it's a historically accurate.

Doug 51:00

It's you're you're not wrong.

Ron 51:01

You're not wrong. But right next to Carmen San Diego. I am with you, Don, where I think there is a there's a contrast between just sort of like how at least in yeah, America, how like puritanical our treatment of children is and the things we really want to try and block them away from. Whereas like even like Studio Ghibli films have that eerie, kind of frightening quality to them, and those are all kind of billed as children's films. Uh films at the you know, at the same time, right? They've got weird tentacles coming out of bellies and stuff like that, you know. Like Yeah, that's absolutely true.

Doug 51:35

And I mean, and that's I think what is so fun about it is to stumble across something like this that I think I'm fairly confident, like for an American audience is gonna be far more shocking. I I will go back to imagining that my mother comes home with like uh I don't know, like a bundle of games, and she's like, I got this one, this one, and I this one looked really interesting. I love Japan. Would you like to try it? And just imagining her horror in the first levels of hell that you're going into, I think it would have been one of the ones that's banned from the house immediately. But you're right. I mean, it's just it is a huge cultural difference in that way.

Ron 52:13

I bet a kid would love it though. Oh, yeah, because it would feel honest, right? This game's really trying to tell me something, it's telling me that there's multiple hills.

Doug 52:24

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I would definitely be like, Yeah, you guys want to see something really messed up.

Ron 52:30

This is how you're showing to your buddies, and then they're complaining about to their parents, and then you're not allowed to hang out with them for a week.

Doug 52:36

That's exactly right, but you're definitely cool, yeah. That's right.

Don 52:41

When did when did this come out?

Doug 52:43

Uh 1993, Japan, 94 America.

Final Reflections & Afterlife Jokes

Don 52:47

So that's the same time as Mist. Yes, yes. So that's that's what what I was thinking when you were talking, Ron, about how everything is black in the distance, right? And and there's like a limited radius so that you can see, like Mist did that as well, right? And you couldn't see what the next puzzle place was going to be until you'd solved uh the previous one or got the right thing out of the book, or right. And so, so the and MIST does that, right? Because it's partly an exploration as well as a puzzle solving. And it sounds like in this one, it's mostly about exploration, right? So you're yes, you're you need to find the fish monger so that way you can learn about medieval fish or whatever it is that you said we're learning. Yeah. Um, and then you also learn that you can go to hell and get your intestines eaten by dogs or other fun things.

Doug 53:36

Yeah, mist had it that you could be trapped in a book forever if you made the wrong decision. So that is true. But then you just rebooted and you could go right back. Absolutely.

Don 53:45

It's like reincarnation.

Doug 53:46

That was the American version. Mist was the steroidized. Spoiler, if you haven't played Mist yet, by the way, thanks, Dragon. Yeah, I know. I know that's it. So successful in its goals, great edutainment. Everybody should have had it. What a mistake. Yeah, I feel like I missed out. I wish I'd played this.

Ron 54:03

Well, you can. That's the good thing. You just go to it. I got too much stuff to do. But uh, when I was a kid and I had all the time in the world, I would have loved it.

Doug 54:11

I know. I think we all would have. Yeah, it's definitely. I don't want to speak for Don. Maybe you would have hated it, but I don't know. I think I would have been bored. Yeah, just the point and click wasn't enough for you.

Don 54:21

Yeah, like I feel like I would want to like I would turn it on and then like walk away until I died and then come back and just watch the torture videos. Like that would be interesting. But like the the exploring part, I think, would be mind-numbing.

Doug 54:33

Oh man, that was the fun part for me. Even in Mist, like, that's a perfect example. I loved seeing what was beyond the next. Uh there's something about an open world that always did that for me.

Don 54:42

Um, where it's but these are the first games, like Mist, I think, is the first game that experimented with that open world. Like, it's non-linear, you don't have to solve them in order. Like, yeah, there's a linear component to it because you got to solve like I remember there's like that fuzzy video thing that you have to fix in the book, but like you could solve the puzzles out of order in different orders, and it sounds like this is the like there's not a sequential series of encounters in this one either. So it's yeah, the very early experimentations with that, and yeah. Yeah, hmm, that's it.

Ron 55:14

We owe a lot to cosmology of Kyoto, it seems like absolutely.

Doug 55:18

We uh I don't know, I'm definitely a fan. I think I am gonna take it for a spin. Did you play it? Yeah, I mean it we did maybe five to ten minutes of playing around with it, and then I watched um a few YouTubers go through it, and uh yeah, I was fascinated after that. But I kind of want the experience because it seems like even in watching them, like I don't think that those are gonna be the same you know, choices that I would necessarily make. And it seems to be really interesting. So I yeah, it's it's up my alley.

Don 55:46

And this was a a CD-rom game. It was, yeah. So it would have been the kind of thing where like you make a choice and then like and then like finally the the uh decision would load.

Doug 55:59

And if you've made too many choices too fast, your computer goes it just starts to really sound like it's taken off. Exactly. Yeah. Well, gentlemen, I I wish all of you the best levels of the afterlife. And uh I really appreciate you participating because if you hadn't, it probably would have been interminable hell for both of us.

Ron 56:20

If we have to go to hell, I hope we all wind up in the same one.

Doug 56:24

Well, there's a few that I wouldn't want, it'd be too shameful for me. Don't look at me as this happens. Ron, you can hang out in case. Yeah, I'll take the cold ones too. I'm an AC guy myself. Yeah. Anyway, until next time. Thanks. Thank you, Doug.