Reviews View More
For many, the term FMV springs to mind exaggeration and oddity. Sprouting into popularity in the 90's with CD technology, the medium opened up new doorways in the games market to connect with the film industry. Actors, filmmakers, and producers could all invest in a new medium by recycling assets from their projects while the games industry could profit off of celebrity cultural capital injecting into the industry en masse. ["Repurposing", as Ted Hoff coined it (page 69)](https://books.google.com/books?id=wgsEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA69&vq=Johnny%20Mnemonic%3A%20The%20Interactive%20Action%20Movie%20%243%20million&pg=PA69#v=snippet&q=Johnny%20Mnemonic:%20The%20Interactive%20Action%20Movie%20$3%20million&f=false). However, many of these creatives found that translating production into video-based interactive games was an awkward process and the infamous performances from the era remain impressionable to this day.
Rarely though, do we speak of the games of the era that found something deeply beautiful in the form. I don't mean to say that the majorly known FMV games aren't beautiful; rather, that throughout the 90's there was a style of New Age FMV that tapped into a specific beauty of presenting images through the utopian ideals of the era's technology that needs to be recognized specifically aside from FMV at large.
I'm talking about CD-I Tetris. I'm talking about the Angel Paradise series. I'm talking about Aqua World: Umi Monogatari.
Aqua World: Umi Monogatari is a game about experiencing fish. You look at fish, you read about fish, you watch fish swim. That's pretty much the entire game, there's no walking around, no mechanics, you click a button and just watch fish. It's an absolutely breathtaking experience.
Part of the game's enjoyment is similar to that of watching a nature documentary. You get to see creatures moving around their ecosystem and doing their thing. What sets Aqua World: Umi Monogatari apart from nature documentary though is that it doesn't have any film of real fish, all of them are CGI videos of fish rendered in CDROM video. Their animations are repetitive, stiff, and float around in empty blue skyboxes which the camera occasionally teases as a real world space with reflections above. The models are lowpoly and just slightly cartoonish in the lack of details in which they are rendered. At times, they simply hover in space, motionless. And yet, this is where the beauty of the game lies.
Turning on Electric Blue mode, which is a rad name for your fish viewing game mode by the way, the player can choose from a variety of bouncing bubbles that determine a viewing order of fish videos. Upon playing, these CGI fish wander around on screen, each species with a different song to represent their personality. A haunting distorted synth wobbles as the Cresthead Flounder creeps on the ocean floor. A playful little tune sings as the Spotfin Frogfish wanders around curiously. If you have ever stopped in a moment of a videogame to look at the way the virtual ecosystem presents beauty to you then you have experienced a similar bliss as this one.
Aqua World is a game for enjoying the bliss of the videogame image. It is a game for finding peace that resides in the videogame image. It's in this embrace of bliss in the videogame image that I consider it to be "New Age FMV".
There aren't many interactions asked of the player in Aqua World: Umi Monogatari outside of this mode. On the menu there are two other options outside of Electric Blue; Data Fish, and Mermaid. Each of these modes essentially give the player different ways to experience the various species that the game presents. Data Fish presents encyclopedia entries, photographs, and 3D model inspections on the fish. Mermaid lets the player fill an aquarium with the game's included species and swim around to look at them.
It's easy to imagine Aqua World: Umi Monogatari gaining the reputation of being a "non-game" for the lack of deep mechanics for the player to engage in. However, I would argue that to play a videogame is to simply make an emotional connection with an intermix of hardware and software technologies. That can mean that simply moving your fish sprite around a virtual aquarium for the joy of seeing and hearing the ecosystem presented. It can mean reading through the encyclopedia entries of fish and seeing all the little photos and models included. It can mean choosing a selection of fish species clips to view on repeat and fall asleep to.
And what more could we ask for in videogames, than to find something which resonates with ourselves so deeply?
Rarely though, do we speak of the games of the era that found something deeply beautiful in the form. I don't mean to say that the majorly known FMV games aren't beautiful; rather, that throughout the 90's there was a style of New Age FMV that tapped into a specific beauty of presenting images through the utopian ideals of the era's technology that needs to be recognized specifically aside from FMV at large.
I'm talking about CD-I Tetris. I'm talking about the Angel Paradise series. I'm talking about Aqua World: Umi Monogatari.
Aqua World: Umi Monogatari is a game about experiencing fish. You look at fish, you read about fish, you watch fish swim. That's pretty much the entire game, there's no walking around, no mechanics, you click a button and just watch fish. It's an absolutely breathtaking experience.
Part of the game's enjoyment is similar to that of watching a nature documentary. You get to see creatures moving around their ecosystem and doing their thing. What sets Aqua World: Umi Monogatari apart from nature documentary though is that it doesn't have any film of real fish, all of them are CGI videos of fish rendered in CDROM video. Their animations are repetitive, stiff, and float around in empty blue skyboxes which the camera occasionally teases as a real world space with reflections above. The models are lowpoly and just slightly cartoonish in the lack of details in which they are rendered. At times, they simply hover in space, motionless. And yet, this is where the beauty of the game lies.
Turning on Electric Blue mode, which is a rad name for your fish viewing game mode by the way, the player can choose from a variety of bouncing bubbles that determine a viewing order of fish videos. Upon playing, these CGI fish wander around on screen, each species with a different song to represent their personality. A haunting distorted synth wobbles as the Cresthead Flounder creeps on the ocean floor. A playful little tune sings as the Spotfin Frogfish wanders around curiously. If you have ever stopped in a moment of a videogame to look at the way the virtual ecosystem presents beauty to you then you have experienced a similar bliss as this one.
Aqua World is a game for enjoying the bliss of the videogame image. It is a game for finding peace that resides in the videogame image. It's in this embrace of bliss in the videogame image that I consider it to be "New Age FMV".
There aren't many interactions asked of the player in Aqua World: Umi Monogatari outside of this mode. On the menu there are two other options outside of Electric Blue; Data Fish, and Mermaid. Each of these modes essentially give the player different ways to experience the various species that the game presents. Data Fish presents encyclopedia entries, photographs, and 3D model inspections on the fish. Mermaid lets the player fill an aquarium with the game's included species and swim around to look at them.
It's easy to imagine Aqua World: Umi Monogatari gaining the reputation of being a "non-game" for the lack of deep mechanics for the player to engage in. However, I would argue that to play a videogame is to simply make an emotional connection with an intermix of hardware and software technologies. That can mean that simply moving your fish sprite around a virtual aquarium for the joy of seeing and hearing the ecosystem presented. It can mean reading through the encyclopedia entries of fish and seeing all the little photos and models included. It can mean choosing a selection of fish species clips to view on repeat and fall asleep to.
And what more could we ask for in videogames, than to find something which resonates with ourselves so deeply?