Today the Algorithm(TM) blessed me with this video about creepy old CGI:

And I thought, this old mixture of liminality, along with an uncanny valley effect, has almost became an entire niche genre of horror. I've known about the creepy aspect of liminal spaces for awhile. There are some good subreddits dedicated to liminal spaces. If you take a look at a variety of liminal spaces, you'll notice that a good amount of them do not actually take place in the real world, but in the digital. These sets of spaces evoke not just a feeling of the uncanny valley, but of nostalgia as well.

Early technology has been creating these uncanny and liminal spaces in the virtual world for long time; at first because of the technology available, or lack thereof, but eventually to purposefully evoke this feeling of being lost in a space which you don't fully understand. I've seen a bit of this horror on Newgrounds, in Randy Learns Science.

Without spoiling anything, the game puts you in an early internet space, in which you're playing what looks to be a children's game, but it becomes quickly apparent that something isn't what it seems.

As was mentioned in the video embedded above, early CGI animation evoked this sense of the uncanny valley. Some animators probably weren't going for that feeling. However, some of the early animations are so creepy and ominous, you have to wonder if the animators used the lack of technology at the time to their advantage, purposefully leaning into the inhuman and threatening worlds they could create, such as in The Little Death:

You can look not only at the sum of the product, but of specific aspects of it as well that could lead you to believe the animators played into the horror aspect on purpose. I mean, look at the title.

There are larger games which play in this retro-internet horror setting as well. Hypnospace Outlaw takes place in an early internet space, where you play as a type of "internet police", tasked with surfing an early internet that feels threatening and mysterious.

I feel like part of what makes the horror work, is the sense of nostalgic anxiety it invokes. It reminds me of when I was a child and was given access to the internet. My parents probably didn't know what an unwise that was. The first OS I remember was either Windows 95 or 98, and surfing an early internet without the full comprehension of what I was doing did create a sense of unease. Hell, I mean, even Newgrounds played a part in it. Stumbling across Newgrounds at an early age on an early OS, and accidentally clicking on a horror point-and-click like Exmortis:

To a young me at the age of <10, this made the internet an uncertain place where I couldn't be sure if where I was going was going to be a safe space for someone my age. I'm probably not the only one with this experience, and that's probably why those old CGI films and early internet spaces evoke that feeling of horror.

So tell me your thoughts and experiences with this kind of horror. Does anyone else here share the early childhood experience with me? Share any media you might have that evokes this sense of unease. What would you call it? Anything related to the topic belongs here!

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson

1886

I picked up a nice hardcover copy of this from a thrift shop. It was cheap and I appreciate the implications of owning an old classic, so I picked it up. It is a short story, just shy of 100 pages. I was vaguely aware of the premise of the story. Funnily, I think I was first introduced to the characters by an old Hannah Barbara Scooby Doo episode.

SPOILERS

The story follows Mr. Utterson, a lawyer in 19th century Victorian era England. Him and his cousin are walking down the street when they come across a run down, dingy house. His cousin tells him a story about how once he was walking down the street, when he saw a man run over a little girl as they crossed paths. This man turned out to be Mr. Hyde. The cousin grabbed this guy up and blackmailed him for $100 for the girl and her family, lest he ruin the guys reputation (it was Victorian England I guess). Hyde pays up with a check written by a Dr. Jekyll (this is strange).

Mr. Utterson, being a lawyer, has a copy of Dr. Jekyll's will, in which he states that if he dies, then everyone he owns goes to Hyde. More strange, however, is that he states that if he goes missing for a period of more than three months, that Mr. Hyde is to take his place in life.

Mr. Utterson finds this very strange, and confronts Dr. Jekyll about it, but is told that it is nothing to worry about.

Time goes on, and eventually Mr. Hyde gets in to an argument with a man on the street, and then beats the man to death. The police search for Mr. Hyde, but he is nowhere to be found. Mr. Utterson goes back to Jekyll to try to warn him against his associations with Mr. Hyde, and Jekyll assures him that he will no longer have anything to do with Mr. Hyde.

Life goes on normally for awhile, but then Dr. Jekyll stops going outside, and confines himself to an office in his lab. Eventually Dr. Jekyll's butler gets freaked out and goes and gets Mr. Utterson for help. The butler claims that he thinks that Mr. Hyde killed Dr. Jekyll and is hiding in his locked office. They go to break down the door to his office, and find that Mr. Hyde is laying on the floor dead, by his own hand.

In Dr. Jekyll's office, they find a letter from Dr. Jekyll outlining what had happened.

Essentially, Dr. Jekyll had formulated a drug that allowed him to turn in to an evil alter ego, Mr. Hyde. This Mr. Hyde was in no way bound to the morality of the straight laced man that was Dr. Jekyll, and this was freeing for him. Eventually, in his Mr. Hyde form, he had killed a man in the street in a fit of rage. Jekyll thought this to be a good excuse for him to forever rid himself of his Hyde persona, and for a time, he stopped using the drugs.

Unfortunately, he started turning in to Mr. Hyde without the drug, and found himself having to use the drug to instead become Dr. Jekyll. He started to run out of this substance, and couldn't get his hands on more, so he locked himself in his office to avoid being seen. After all, he was at this point a murderer. That leads to the current moment and the end of the story.

END SPOILERS

I thought the book was good, and respectful of my time. A little shallow, but I imagine in the less desensitized world of the 19th century that perhaps the story had some more weight to it. Either way, I enjoyed it. The book that I got also contains some of his other short stories, like The Body Snatchers, so I'm going to read through some of those tomorrow probably. The book is worth a read if you can get it cheaply.

Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster is a high quality polished and upgraded version of the original Final Fantasy that came out for the NES. The game has been ported over to PC with new graphics, sound, and quality of life enhancements. You can pick it up on Steam for the semi-reasonable price of $10.

I picked this game up for two reasons:

1. I had never owned a Final Fantasy game before
2. I have a soft spot for retro games

I figured it looks good, and is selling for a decent price, so I would give the original Final Fantasy a try.

Being the first game in what would come to be a long and ongoing series, the plot is fairly simple and heavily inspired by Western fantasy. You play as four "Warriors of Light", who have arrived to fulfill a prophecy that you would come to save a land shrouded in darkness. You go from town to town, and are given fairly simple quests to either fetch and item, or kill an enemy. Now I will talk about a couple different aspects of the game.

Gameplay: The game is a turn-based RPG. The way it works is pretty intuitive. One quality of life enhancement that was added was the ability to auto-run through battles, which really helps to get you through some of the grind of random encounters. The way it works is the animations are sped up, and your characters continually repeat their last action. Another part I liked about the game is that for a turn-based RPG, there was little to no grind. As long as I went out of my way to get the extra treasure in dungeons, I just about never found myself having to grind random encounters. The encounters from getting the treasure was enough that I could pretty continually progress.

There is also a new addition of a map of whatever area you're in. You can choose not to use this if you wish. It shows you the locations of treasure and generally where to go. This can get rid of some of the challenge as some of the dungeons are built like mazes, so this would have been a bit more difficult in the original NES version.

I did have to look up a guide. The game didn't always give me the most clear direction, and there were a few times where I found myself wandering around the map because I didn't spot a location. I won't really fault the game for this, however. I mean, the game came out in the 80's.

Other than that, fairly simple, enjoyable, and intuitive turn-based gameplay.

Sound: Sound was good. The original OST was completely redone, so rather than the retro sound that the NES would have, you get beautiful orchestral renditions of the OST. Good stuff.

Graphics: The graphics have been completely redone. Some people complained and said things like "The PSP graphics were better!". But the PSP graphics had a completely different art style. The style here was supposed to capture the true intent of the graphics of the NES. So what you see, is supposed to be like things SHOULD'VE looked back then, but the capability just wasn't there.

However, people did have one good complaint. The font in the vanilla game doesn't fit the aesthetic, and just generally sucks. However, there are simple mods that replace the font with something better.

Overall: I'll give the game a 8/10. I'd recommend it if you're in to the type of game that it is. The price is decent and you're getting a high quality remaster. Maybe I'll pick up the FFVI remaster sometime.

P.S. if you're looking for something free on NG that has a similar style and gameplay to this, I'll link you to a good old RPG down below. Have fun!