Down the toilet
Posted on October 28, 2003 @ 09:23 in Research
Yesterday I was playing Wallace and Gromit in Project Zoo and at some point I let Gromit open a door marked with a toilet symbol. A little cut scene was started, just showing the toilet door and a series of rather toiletery sounds came from the speakers. When the door opened again and Gromit appeared, he looked very relieved and wiped his brow. Admittedly, not the strongest point of the game, but the totally unexpected event made me grin anyway.
And this morning I find a link on BoingBoing pointing to a Russian site that indexes toilets as found in video games. Kind of reminded me of the conversations I've had about the occurence of toilets in movies. Movie characters never use the toilet unless it's in the plot and it somehow makes dramatic sense for them to be in that space. Video games are different in that respect, in that they offer the character a supposedly complete world to explore. Rarely, however, are toilets quite as functional as the one Gromit visited. They are there as set pieces, to give the impression of completeness of the virtual world, because you'd expect to find them in a particular building or location. I can see a whole field of study opening here: the ethnography of virtual toilets.
Comments and Trackbacks
An index of toilets in videogames. It's in Russian, but non-Russian-speakers can scroll down to a nice list of game titles, neatly linked to screenshots of their toilets. Few of which actually virtually work, but at least you can look...
Trackback from jill/txt on October 28, 2003 @ 11:41
Dear God, why bother... seriously...: a comprehensive listing (and screenshots of) toilets in computer games! (via jill via Frank)...
Trackback from Anders Jacobsen's sideblog on October 28, 2003 @ 13:19
Ah wonderful... Talk toilet and instantly get two trackbacks ;^)
Well-documented virtual toilets like the ones in Leisure Suit Larry and Duke Nukem 3D are here, but a shame they omitted the classic ZX Spectrum/C64/MSX game Jet Set Willy - our friend the loo is an innocent-looking but lethal obstacle in JSW1, and the main bit in a rather filthy end scene in JSW2 (protagonist Willy is flushed down it when he has gathered all items and makes his way for bed, all in a cut scene).
Anyway, why do I wax lyrical over an 8-bit loo? I do not care to analyse...
Posted by Arjan on October 28, 2003 @ 16:24
I remember Jet Set Willy! I'm afraid I just don't remember the loo... in either installment. Could be that I never progressed that far into the game though. I think I pathologically never finished a game. Afraid of finishing something I've started, me?!?! Nah...
Posted by Frank on October 28, 2003 @ 17:39
For a quick blast of nostalgia, I'm going to provide two links to maps pages of both JSW1 and JSW2. I don't know if it's bad blog etiquette to stuff someone else's blog with URL suggestions, but please tell me if that's the case, so I won't do it again.
Which begs the question, *is* there a generally-agreed-upon set of rules re. contributions/comments to blogs? Now that I think of it, I tend to treat blog as forums, albeit inspired/moderated by one person. And there are indeed forums set up like this (a prime example being http://www.morrissey-solo.com/ which is something of a news blog on our yodelling pop star with lots of forum-like discussion threads to each item).
Anyway, the relevant URLs are http://freespace.virgin.net/james.ducker/jetset_w/ (JSW1) and http://www.jdawiseman.com/papers/games/jsw2/jsw2-index.html (JSW2).
Posted by Arjan on October 29, 2003 @ 10:29
OMG! That's almost too much for my poor weak heart...
Is it just me or are games more finishable nowadays?
Posted by Frank on October 29, 2003 @ 11:18
Well, one final link to top it off, then...
http://retrospec.sgn.net/ - RetroSpec, a brilliant site devoted to PC remakes of classic games. JSW is in there, too, and a magnificent remake it is.(Caveat: I don't know if it will run smoothly on NT-based Windows systems. I believe it was designed for DOS-kernel Windows.)Games are as difficult as they have always been IMHO. What I *do* miss is the fun of changing the leader programme, POKEing the memory to see if anything happend (most of the times all that would happen was your Willy would turn purple :^O but if you were lucky, monsters would disappear or you would become invincible). A *lot* more fun than blaggin a games mag and keying in IDKFA or IDDQD.
Posted by Arjan on October 29, 2003 @ 11:38
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