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PlayStation Basement #61 - LSD

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on October 26th, 2019.


Hello, and welcome again to the PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of an obscure or odd game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!


This is the last full week of October, so I have another horror-ish game for this eerie month. Today, it’s LSD: Dream Emulator by Asmik Ace. The game was published in Japan on October 22nd, 1998, a day before my 9th birthday. Earlier this week, I turned 30, and LSD: Dream Emulator turned 21. The game was made from an idea by Osamu Sato and based on a dream diary kept for over 10 years by Hiroko Nishikawa. Essentially the game is about exploring Nishikawa’s linking, sapient dreams (or at least dreams similar to Nishikawa’s). Along with the previously reviewed Ore no Ryouri, LSD is one of the games that made me want to get a way to play Japanese PlayStation games. It wasn’t cheap, but I’m glad I got it.


The cover art for LSD: Dream Emulator is surreal. It shows various alien faces on a background that resembles blueprints or a digital screen. There are also some color bars and the title. The cover really makes me think of a digital world, and that’s essentially what this is.




Graphically, LSD is basic but effective. The graphics are made up of simple polygons in order to create dreamlike worlds of fantasy. While playing, you can see all sorts of things that you might see in life, the sensuous dream or other worlds. There are natural landscapes, sometimes oddly colored, with trees and rivers. There are feudal Japanese towns with inhabitants that may border on the unusual. I’ve seen nighttime modern cities with bloodstains and stalking shadows, toy towns with clockwork creatures, temples to unknown deities, the insides of a beast, and other places that don’t resemble anything you might find except within a dream. Some dreams play out as FMVs of factories churning smoke, circuit boards opening up, sumo wrestlers clashing, or other odd videos. LSD really takes you to otherworldly places.




The sounds of LSD match the visuals quite well. The soundtrack was composed by Osamu Sato of experimental electronic dance musick, weird Katamari-ish vocal loops, and ambient textural pieces. Some tracks are extremely dissonant and abrasive. The sound effects tend towards quirky chirps, blips, plops, voices, and standard stuff like footsteps. The footsteps are a bit loud and almost disruptive. The rest is good, though. It sounds excellent with a surround setup. Some copies of the game included a soundtrack CD with them too, and it has recently been released on vinyl and on Bandcamp by Ship to Shore PhonoCo. Check out the sounds.




The actual gameplay of LSD is kind of divisive. It’s essentially a “walking simulator”, years before anyone used this dismissive term. In LSD: Dream Emulator you walk through dream worlds. If you touch an object in one world, you teleport into another. Touching an object can also end the dream, showing a results screen that displays which dreams have been experienced. For dreams that are FMVs, all you can do is watch them. The controls for the actual exploration are very basic; you can move, look up and down, and run. There’s no jumping, attacking, parkour, gliding, horse-riding, shooting lasers, or eating. You just move, see, and experience the surreal worlds of the lunatic savage dream.




LSD: Dream Emulator is quite an experience. It’s one that I recommend. As of this moment, you can find the game in various places beyond a PlayStation format disc, including the Japanese PSN store. If you have not yet seen the sights of LSD: Dream Emulator, I encourage you to do so soon.

LSD: Dream Emulator receives a Good.



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