The title of this blog series could be misleading, so just to clear things up before people start getting ideas this is NOT about the titles I hope for, like a non-import Radiant Silvergun or a decent Terminator game, nor is it about female video game characters with jiggle animations. These blogs are about the games I have played over the years which have left a distinct unconscious effect, complete with my totally unprofessional attempts at deciphering their meanings. They can be puzzle games or strategy games, but regardless of genre these games really took a hold of me. Think of it as a Freudian/Jungian view of gaming without the needless and wannabe psychobabble.

Tetris

The first time we played Tetris I’m sure that many of us would dream about falling blocks and line-clearing on the first night. I am also sure that this would happen more than once: perhaps lasting a whole week. Fairly normal I would imagine. What wasn’t normal and became downright disturbing was when I began having dreadful nightmares involving me somehow being ‘in the game’ in a very non-intended way: running around helplessly on the bottom of the screen, inside a big three-dimensional space and the blocks are falling far too quickly and I cannot clear them in time. It was really frightening and I would wake up covered in cliched sweat. It was like the ‘falling’ dream only the blocks were falling on me.

Dream Analysis Theories

I feel stressed in real life. This is usually a sound theory, but what does a 10 year old kid who just got an original Game Boy have to stress about?

Dislike of the Music. Hmm the music was okay and not very scary at all, but I preferred Type 2 over the default tune.

Dislike of onion-shaped buildings. Remember those? I found those Siberian towers quite scary at the time, but not enough to have nightmares over.

Dislike of interlocking shapes. That’s more like it. The pieces in Tetris I dislike the most are the zig-zag letter S looking one and its mirror-image brother. I can’t explain why but I really don’t like that shape. I was okay with the T-shaped one, the L-shaped one is not too shabby either, loved the square one and adored the long piece. Turns out they didn’t like me back.

Command & Conquer

My copy of the original C&C was on the Saturn, and I would get stuck on a GDI level where you first encounter the NOD flame tank. This darned snail-looking thing would wipe out my crew unfairly quickly and I had attempted the level so many frustrating times that I just gave up. Thus, the dreams began. At first they involved re-enactments of my failings, and then they would get nicer with my conquering of the enemy only for me to wake up and find that nothing had changed. Eventually though, the flame tank would infiltrate my normal dreams and chase me around while I was busy, I dunno, flying around a forest or picking up supermodels, and morph these lovely imaginings into full-blown nightmares. ‘Hello Cindy Crawford, why of course I would like to take you out on a da…ARGHHH!!!’ SWOOSH BURN SIZZLE. Eventually thanks to the help/strategies of a school friend who was good at these RTS games I finished the level (albeit by exploiting poor AI by building a wall around my units so that the enemy wasn’t smart enough to destroy it, and then me) and the nightmares stopped – at the cost of never being able to play the next levels properly because of the aforementioned tactical cheats.

Dream Analysis Theories

A fear of fire. No, being a teenage boy susceptible to bouts of pyromania, fire was fun and I would quite often burn twigs in the backyard with a bucket of water next to me in case it got out of hand. I came prepared for possible shortcomings in my teenage behavioural menaces.

Dislike of the pressures of micromanagement. I was okay with multitasking and getting my units to follow my orders, even if they couldn’t quite run away quickly enough from the engulfing flames of hell. Even using a control pad instead of a mouse was pretty easy after a little while.

Dislike of failure. This is probably true. No one likes to fail in what they do, whether it be work-related or socially linked. The flame tank sure was hurting my pride and I couldn’t hack it…so I started battling it in the unconscious whilst performing my repertoire of suave moves in the company of beautiful ladies.

Championship/Football Manager

This game is a real danger to society, or at least the members of society who enjoy following football (or ‘soccer’, as it shouldn’t be called). Anyway for those unfamiliar the game is mostly stats-based so any third persons viewing you from a distance would think that there isn’t that much action to speak of, certainly not enough to warrant the groans of disappointment and screams of joy – all natural reactions in CM/FM, especially as the earlier versions only had primitive text commentaries on a match’s progress. ‘Bergkamp passes forward’…’But the move comes to nothing’ etc. But golly this game was addictive – you had to trade players, come up with new and useful tactics for different opposition, and basically just make your team the best there is.

My interest in the series really took off when playing with a mate online via our dial-up modem connections such that I was even offered a bribe to sell one of my key players (30 million pounds in-game and 20 dollars in real life – I declined it. Had it gone up to $50 I would have thought about it). Dream-wise, this game would disturb me through the night by constantly allowing the opposition to score against me in the last minute, or, failing that, giving my players unfair red cards (things which would often happen during real life play too). The modern game has a 2D overview of the match action and this has led to dreams of frightening swarms of dots engulfing the penalty area…it was only a matter of time before we let in a goal. And it really was ‘we’ – your team was your livelihood and everyone was in this together. While this was nightmarish in ways only football fans can relate to, there were also pleasant dreams such as landing Zinedine Zidane on a free transfer, finding a truly world-class 16 year-old player who could be developed, and me accepting that bribe. The only way to beat it? Select Uninstall from the Start Menu.

Dream Analysis Theories

Taking sport too seriously. The only explanation, and no real surprises there. Every fanatical sports fan is bound to have the occasional unconscious adventure about their favourite team, and these management games took it to a more scary and noticeable level through its perfect capturing of the game as well as its gratuitous use of stats.