Games of the Abstract: Screaming Mad George's ParanoiaScape (1998)

 

Developer: Mathilda

Publisher: Jorudan Co.

One Player

Sony PlayStation

 

The Origin of Life.

A new life was established in this surrear world just now.

I feel conscious that, wishing to cover "Games of the Abstract", I have not always kept to that. In mind that, wishing to cover more obscure titles, I have touched obscurer games others would consider "abstract", today I can wholeheartedly say that Paranoiascape, an art game crossed with pinball crossed with body horror, is not conventional in the slightest. It is an incredibly short game, but it is entirely esoteric. If the rights could be bought from its creator, the name above the title, or Jorudan Co., who only published this game, and a form could be preserved, then this could be unleashed into the world and someone would appreciate it as the "anti-realist" nightmare. I would be a happier man though there would be raised eyebrows considering the content of said game.

Screaming Mad George once had the normal name of Joji Tani, a figure allowing this review to cross the worlds of cult cinema with cult videogames. Joji Tani, born in 2956 in Osaka, Japan, would take on the name "George", than "Screaming Mad", migrating to the United States and leaving a mark as a practical effects designer for cult film fans. Such fans reading this may know of him as a practical effects artist for not only films like Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and Predator (1987), but also a certain series of horror films, including ones from producer/director Brian Yuzna. George's work when you see it is unforgettable, be it a woman turning into a cockroach in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), to Society (1989) and its infamous "shunting" sequence. Or there is the time, in his one co-directed film, adapting Yoshiki Takaya's manga The Guyver into a 1991 film, where Mark Hamill turns into a slug.

He has, as well as been a lead singer to a band called The Mad, worked with Nine Inch Nails for the infamous Closer music video, and designed the original marks for Iowa's own sons Slipknot. He work is incredible, gross practical effect prosthetics which embrace their artificiality through his "antirealism" stance, of not depicting real violence, but fantastical surreal body horror. Circumstances lead to Paranoiascape the game to exist, on the original Playstation, a console which was so popular it got a lot of material made for it, and Joji Tani did not compromise his artistry either here.

Paranoascape's premise does have a plot, though it does not appear in the game. In Makai, the demon world, a suitable replacement for the Demon King is required, the Makai government deciding that testing Makai citizens is the wisest direction for a candidate. Two skeleton brothers from the country are chosen, having done well so far until, at the start of this game, they are left with a final test in the Paranoiascape, possessing an ancient flipper bat artefact from the Makai to help them fling Brain Balls, the pinballs of this game, on to succeeding as the new Demon Kings by navigating this world. To those without this context, which comes from the manual, you still have a one-off, something as a pinball game alien to the genre, to videogames still one of the most unique to exist.

Truthfully, before this review becomes a gushing praise of this obscurity, it is an interesting take on the pinball genre which needed ironing out as a game. Your camera is placed behind the dinky winged skeleton brothers, a pinball flipper substitute each, having to fire flaming Brain Balls to clear through the targets and barriers. You have the ability to move ahead as well as left and right, required to progress in some levels. The mechanics if this game ever got a spiritual successor would need to fine-tune the struggles you have with this, namely that you are having to get used to moving forwards and play pinball, but not only is there an option for infinitive Brain Balls, but that after the initial few levels where I struggled with these mechanics, this game progresses beyond this concern. Even with the curious fact you also have a life bar that you need to protect, there are power-ups to replenish the bar, and getting hurt is not something easy to do unless you wander willingly into hazards, especially as there is no time limit in levels.

Paranoiascape, as a pinball game, also confounds the player from the get-go even without this idiosyncratic structure; that it flips the rules of how it plays from Level 2, of four stages, undercuts the pinball genre, but even before then, on Level 1, you see how the game looks and already have to content with its style. Paranoiascape the world is a hellish nightmare-scape, one of the most distinct of the original Playstation console, and arguably still, as playing regular pinball if having to move towards the exit played out in a corridor of mouths screaming on the floor, with ears on the walls, and the sky a roof of thousands of eyes starng at you. The second level, a boss fight to already undercut the genre, has giant hypodermic needles to dodge, giant scissor blades coming out of the ground to avoid, whilst another level is, continuing with an ideas over multiple sections of Paranoiascape partly taking place inside a giant body, having to go through the intestines and guts.

The cumbersome nature of the mechanics are reduced as the world takes over, the options for infinite Brain Balls clearly causing one to consider, alongside options for a set limit, that Paranoiascape was always meant to be experienced and the challenge was for afterwards. Especially as whilst it tallies a score each level on, it never is brought up by the finale, showing that was not the prerogative. The game, as pinball, is too abstract, especially as within the first three levels you have expectations subverted, a boss on the second level immediately, the third with your Brain Ball stolen by flying fish, having to clear them off. Hitting enemies back at them flying towards you, that level also has you avoiding giant Monty Python feet from the sky and giant hands coming out the ground on a permanent forward momentum.

Conventions will never stay consistent, even if the middle stages sticks to a hybrid of pinball with levels to move through, with bosses battles in-between, the balls used to pass gates, literally knocking them down, or clearing enemies closer to a Breakout game. The world and the enemies are incredibly unique and disturbing, with references to George's work in cinema eventually appearing, like a face for an arse from Society, or human headed insects. From the bowels of an unknown entity to a Cthulian city, you have a lot of environments to go through, the latter where Screaming Mad George himself, as a giant head beaming like God in a halo of colour, even makes a cameo, either letting you continue or try again to pass a level's puzzle of hitting the right photo of a person's face from a selection. Paranoiascape is an experience in the truest sense, and factoring into this too, the original PSX game also a soundtrack CD for its own score, is the music from Screaming Mad George himself with Psychosis. It has many of the traits of that decade, of nineties industrial rock, but with its punk overtones and dark ambient passages, it is a soundtrack itself, alongside being perfect, in dire need of a re-release in itself, let alone the game it came with.

Even in mind to its clumsy controls, you can adapt quickly as I did to its logic, hitting swarming masses of human cockroaches with the movement allowing aim, or hitting back projectiles at a translucent blue giant spider boss. The esoteric and weirder elements are compelling and, by the finale, it manages to get even weirder. An abrupt puzzle, actually simple but catching you off-guard, is the least expected thing at that point, the second to last level suddenly changing to an image matching one, but the last level completely undercuts the game it was even meant to be. You play a mechanised wheelchair bond doll being whom, avoiding zombies lurching along, have to find a Queen and King, in the right coffins in a small area, and get them into a bed in a brief 3D walking simulator with enemies to avoid. The Queen and King form into a hermaphrodite winged being, and the game ends.

What does it mean? You get a full motion video cut scene with a shot of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, of surreal imagery, before returning to the main menu. Clearly, Screaming Mad George was more concerned with mood than meaning. Even with some instructions in Japanese, the game can be figured out eventually mind play and Paranoiascape, if you know what to do, can last up to thirty minutes. It is, truly, something special. Most would flee the other way from it, but for those like myself, it is incredible and in dire need of preservation. Mathilda disappeared after developing it after as their only game, as if they could not top it in quality. Screaming Mad George continues to this day. Publisher Jorudan Co., Ltd. tried to top this weirdness with Sukeban Shachou Rena (2009), a Wii mini-game collection in which a human player must appease the CEO of Cat Queen, Inc. Named Reno, who is a cat, selling only 100 copies at launch week and becoming the worse selling Wii game for the console. In a sense, after Paranoiascape, that is the closest you can top this in being unique in background and content¹.

 

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1) Giant Bomb's Sukeban Shachou Rena page, for those like myself curious about this oddity.