Games of the Abstract: D (1995)

 

Developer: Warp

Publisher: Panasonic / Acclaim

One Player

Sega Saturn / 3DO Interactive Multiplayer/ Sony Playstation / MS-DOS

 

D is another horror game of the past whose age is visible, though released the same year as Phantasmagoria (1995), in the world of cutting edge polygonal games and the genres which managed to struggle on at this time, I will argue D's legacy is importance and has a structure, if not already used by a modern game, which could be evolved further into the modern day.

D's legacy is as tied to Warp, its developer, and their founder Kenji Eno, coming to video games in the nineteen eighties and become a true one-off. As we will get to, the legacy of Warp is not as well preserved as it should be except, which is sad as, even out of morbid curiosity let alone the innovations Warp had, the story of Kenji Eno is that of both an auteur and an absolute miscreant who would have been fascinating to talk to in the flesh, let alone an entire independent developer team who worked on games like this. He was certainly a shit stirrer at times, the legacy of D even marking the future trajectory of Warp as, as a result of Sony not realising D was a huge hit on multiple consoles and under printing the Playsation One release, they undersold it. Kenji Eno's own testament talks of how Sony had only manufactured around 28,000 units despite there being 100,000 pre-orders from retailers confirmed which understandably annoyed him¹. Eno was not pleased and thus, at a Sony show where he was allowed to be a guest speaker, he presented that their next game would be for Sega, switching the Sony Playstation logo for the Sega Saturn one in a middle finger salute. Warp once included a condom for Short Warp (1996)¹, a mini-game collection made for the 3DO, but Warp also created Real Sound: Kaze no Regret (1997), a Japanese only Saturn game (later published for the Sega Dreamcast) designed for blind players. Alongside the deal Eno made to donate a thousand games along with Saturns to blind people with Sega¹, to make the game exclusive for the console, this is still ahead of its time. Even in the 2020s games are slowly starting to adapt to disabilities for players, one of the only of games similar to this I am aware of being A Blind Legend (2015), a fantasy game about a knight which is a hack n slash game entirely built not on sight but by binaural 3D sounds, together making a fascinating pair of experiments as much as virtuous in their goals.

D itself, which obviously has the issue of being able to search on it online unless you include its year of release and/or either Warp or Kenji Eno's name, was not Warp's first project. We must thank Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts and arguably another man ahead of his time as, when he decided to bring forth the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer console, a machine whose preservation in catalogue only really exists in emulation and its fan base, his console despite being a failure of the fifth generation was ahead of its time in so much. No region lock for games, no censorship for games even if it led to Vivid Interactive full motion video softcore, and because of its unique model of creation, the hardware being more expensive but the games not, the licenses for developers to be able to create software was cheaper. With a market in Japan and even South Korea, Warp and Kenji Eno were able to exist due to this cheaper gateway, and sadly again with the lack of official preservation, the games they made before D (only one getting a Western release) sound fascinating. Around the time D was made there was Trip'd (1995), a bizarre puzzle game which got the Western release, and Oyaji Hunter Mahjong (1995), which sounds the most compelling as a story of a male superhero who fights older men who perv young women through games of mahjong, with the additional surprise of having animated cut scenes directed by Ichiro Itano, a legendary animator for the likes of the Macross anime franchise if also a notorious figure when he does helm the anime director's seat.

D was a push for the company. A three dimensional FMV game, the Saturn version I played for this review requiring two discs, the restrictions in fully animated scenes noticed in how it streamlines the game down into an interactive movie with puzzles. The technology at this time was to the point that games which went further and used live action video would struggle further, to which Phantasmagoria, as already mentioned, was a point n click game which took seven discs when it was first released (eight for the Saturn port exclusive to Japan). D in context was really idiosyncratic and an inspired challenge, especially as Warp embraced the restrictions as part of the gameplay. You only have a maximum of two hours to beat the game, or its game over without a proper ending, and you cannot pause either, which is a unique concept still to have had. It also streamlines the point and click genre by way of first person, as Myst (1993), in which whilst it could struggle for replay value for some in the current day, it nonetheless jettisons aspects of these games I myself have struggled with. The filler you can find in point and click games are mostly gone and any time I lost in my first attempt, by time out, came from wandering the limited directions you can go and not figuring out the few mechanics there, something I learnt from in terms of mistakes for attempts after.

I will not damn the game's limitations, as this was a game which did not try to hide its restrictions, the two hour play time as a maximum as much to work around the task rendering this game's animation fully for Warp as an small company. If that seems short for a game which would have been sold for £39.99² in the United Kingdom for the Sega Saturn, this was a curious era of games that experimented with the formats they came with, and new technology, and managed to be huge hits despite restrictions in terms of their content or scale. Phantasmagoria was one such example, becoming a hit in 1995, and previously Myst, as also has been mentioned, was a game built by Rand and Robyn Miller on HyperCard, a Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers software which was for organisation, even for organising cooking recipes³, but became a cultural juggernaut, one which for the PC had the advantage of being a way to sell CD player technology with.

Thankfully, some radical games are still being made today, even with the advantage of huger budgets than Kenji Eno could have ever imagined, but there was a fascinating period here in the mid-nineties where early pioneers managed to have successes even with aesthetics and content which would have been considered "dated" decades later. At this time, D would have pushed a Sega Saturn let alone a PC, where there is one route you need to get to, but you must face the puzzles in the way of Laura, the "virtual actress" who would star as different characters in an unofficial trilogy, with Enemy Zero (1996) for the Saturn, and D2 (1999) for the Sega Dreamcast.

The story can be argued to be the weakest point of the fame, though it has charm for me, especially in mind that it was not even fleshed out with cut scenes, the main thrust of the game, and its title, involving the legacy of Dracula on Laura's family not involved until after the game play itself was already being fleshed out^1b. Abruptly, at the Los Angeles National Hospital, its director Dr. Richter Harris has gone on a shooting spree. Managing to get through the police barrier is his daughter Laura, who upon entering is taken into another realm in a gothic manor, a mental prison where Laura will have to complete the puzzles to reach her father, able to project himself to her and warning her of the dire consequences of trying to reach him. To get to this plot's conclusion, with one of two endings, you will need to figure out those puzzles, part of the game logic that there will be doors which require swords to open them but all able to be figured out without drawing any long bows. The puzzles for the most part are simple, and in hindsight to the limitations of the game, this has less of the irritance I struggle with from point and click games. There is no object to examine for no reason, unless it is one of the few designed for a scare like a room full of spikes with a dead body within it. This means you have to figure the game out from a series of spots and sights which all have to be interacted with to continue, only with how the question. If you, as I did, lose because you wasted time trying to find everything, or working around that you have single paths to get around the rooms, the game is short as an experience you can replay and fix your mistakes.

The controls are very simple, be it on a Saturn controller or keyboard, where you need only one up button to go forwards, left and right to turn around, one button to interact, and one button for the inventory, which alongside the items you collect has a pocket watch to show you how much time you have, and a pocket mirror which provides hints three times before it breaks. The puzzles are not obscure, barring one where if you have no knowledge of astrological signs, you will have to learn them or hope pure luck is one your side. Again, it has its weird logic, the first puzzle of the game involving having to get around a spike wall trap, by placing a piece of paper into a bowl of water for a right combination, to get a needed tool to disarm the trap, but the game is helped by the lack of pointless tangents, not forcing you to wander aimlessly.

At three points, you could argue the game has some frustrating moments, but they could be so much worse. First is one around a safe, where surrounding a cool image, of a chained up corpse whose hand is sealed through a wall into the safe the other side, you have the issue of timing the number combination wheel to get the right combination, but it has a logic and you can figure out the timing mechanism through sound. The second is probably the most likely the frustrate as, when you get to the second disc, switching mid game in an older copy, the main location is a revolving chamber where you need to activate a switch to get to the locations for the next puzzles, including dead ends, which could be a huge time waster. It seems not as random for me, and if you help yourself in being able to get through the first disc quickly or well, you have more time to go with. It is this section where replays come to mind, as you now have to figure out, in multiple locations, where everything goes rather than just rooms you can wander between with ease. The third, eating through time for me at one point, is a prototype of quick time events involving a suit of armour, but I suspect this got me, far from a cruel inclusion of pushing the buttons in a simple series, for pressing them more than required. Only because of this mistake was I forced into a Myth of Sisyphus situation involving falling into a pit over and over, as the armour threatened a sword at me every time I climbed back up.

There are other puzzles which are inspired, and structurally, nothing is amiss for me for the game. Even its aesthetic, which has aged into obsolescence, still looks unique, eeriness to the entire production in its stilted form. The atmosphere is found for a horror game, including in terms of the music when it does appear, both from the Moscow Festival Orchestra, and by Kenji Eno himself. It pulled me in as an interactive experience, even as its premise has a cheesy vampire related plot. That barring one aspect connected to another of Kenji Eno's notorious stories, where when you find any of the four beetles in the game, the closest to a bonus goal to collect them, they cause flashbacks for Laura of a traumatising memory she had forgotten. [Major Spoiler] Namely, that she killed her mother as a child and cannibalised her body. [Spoilers End] The flashbacks, though they have aged, have an unnerving quality in their lack of realism now, especially as aesthetic touches, like rapid cuts including of the word "D" in red, have a menace to them still. It is far less gory than games that were already made at the time, nor a title released a year later like Harvester (1996), but notoriously, Eno with the original 3DO version delayed submitting the master until the last moment, for when it is to be printed into CD form, submitting a censored version but bringing to the United States, on the plane, the original uncensored version^1c. He was not reprimanded at all, and in terms of any plot here, his action, and how all the other versions for other formats kept this back-story, it proves the most compelling aspect of a b-movie plot for the additional macabre nature of it.

For me personally, D is of its time, but in context, it is an exceptional piece in terms of what it could achieve. That and this both has an attitude to a puzzle video game superior to others I have seen, where I have found myself with point and click games where I am stuck in circles with puzzles which make no sense, or the potential of "dead man walking" scenarios where you prevent yourself from progressing on and have to start again. Neither does this require you to have to complete everything in order, as it is possible, if you know the answers from before, to skip segments without breaking the game. It is a game template whose form should be replicated, as far as the limit of time to complete it, and in its simplicity. The phenomenon in the 2010s of the "escape room"⁴, real life but also virtual equivalents, in which for the live productions a group of people pay to escape a room which has puzzles that need to be figured out, is what should be the video game equivalent of D's legacy, and it is noticeable that, as with Myst being about having to manoeuvre alien equipment and props in the environment themselves as the puzzles, they present an inspired pair for puzzle games of the decades after. Even a modern day blockbuster in the horror genre like Resident Evil Village (2021), whilst having dynamics like monsters to avoid at the same time, has puzzle sections as much as it is a first person shooter, which causes one to speculate how these earlier games paved the way of the likes of this future hit.  

Warp after this, with the game a huge success, continued the unofficial "Laura" trilogy with Enemy Zero and D2. Tragically, after this Warp did not really make a great deal, and with multiple name changes and one WiiWare game, You, Me, and the Cubes (2009) under the developer name From Yellow to Orange Inc., Kenji Eno also died tragically young at forty three in 2013. The bitterest aspect is that the company's legacy is not preserved, with the exception of D, which has the advantage, as having a PC conversion, of being acquired and resurrected by Nightdive Studios in 2016⁵. Whilst a huge hit in the day, this like a few of these titles from this fascinating transitionary period, of FMV crazes and things like a CD drive for PCs as new things, D is likely to be seen as an aged curiosity for many. For me, coming to this, D in its achievements is perfect.

 

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1) Japan's Wayward Son, an interview with Kenji Eno, written by Shane Bettenhausen and James Mielke for 1up.com, published originally on August 7th 2008. [Preserved by Archive.com on December 8th 2012.]

1b) Also taken from Japan's Wayward Son, the interview with Kenji Eno, but the paragraph in the interview is worth quoting:

1UP: When you were first starting and you didn't have a storyline, did you know that the guy at the end was Dracula? Did you know that even when there was no storyline? 

KE [Kenji Eno]: Right in the beginning, it was just a plain adventure game, and I didn't know that I would make the twist ending about Dracula.

 

1c) Also taken from the Japan's Wayward Son interview:

1UP: D was the game that made Warp famous. Were you trying to push the boundaries and preconceptions of game storylines with its cannibalism theme?

KE [Kenji Eno]: There's a crazy story behind this. When I was first making D, it had no story. The game was already almost completed, so to put a story in the game, I had to insert it as flashbacks. While I was doing that, I wanted to do some kind of a trick. Back in those days, you weren't allowed to make any violent games -- like, stabbing people inside the game was taboo -- so you weren't allowed to do that. D has cannibalism, which was a total taboo back in the day!

But I wanted to put this in the game, so what I did was I didn't show anyone else in the company those scenes; I was hiding them until the very end. You submit the master, and they check the master and approve the master and put a sticker on it, and this gets sent to the U.S. to get printed. There was a penalty you had to pay if you're late in submitting the master, but you'd also have to deliver it by hand. So, knowing this, I submitted it late on purpose. I submitted a clean one and got it approved. Then I had to bring it to America. So on the plane, I switched the discs and submitted it to 3DO, and it got manufactured like that.

2) Computer & Video Games magazine, "March 1996" (UK; 1996-02-09), page 30

3) The Retronauts podcast and Episode 126: A deep dive into HyperCard and Myst is worth listening for this connection.

4) The unbelievably lucrative business of escape rooms, written by Sally French and Jessica Marmor Shaw, published for MarketWatch on July 21st 2015.

5) Cult 3DO horror D makes its way to PC, written by Tom Sykes for PC Gamer and published on June 5th 2016.