the most forceful and fascinating aesthetic statement Fantavision makes is setting its play in some kind of false, alternate, quasi-1950s dimension. when you boot up the game, you’re greeted by smiling, white faces, straight out of a “classic” commercial or magazine illustration. playing the game, these actors will continue to interrupt the experience as their own instead of something meant for the player, and it seems to suggest that their retrofuturism is our nostalgic gateway into videogame-flavored technopositivism. I think this is truly a headfuck because it’s taken as-is, without commentary. it’s taken as-is so I feel compelled to try to make sense of it.
first let’s get the obvious out of the way… it’s pretty safe to dismiss Fantavision as at least most likely lacking any kind of foresight or insight when presenting these aesthetics. I think there’s grounds to argue that the game presents some actual occidentalism, meaning the smiling white faces are taken to be some kind of symbol that, first, is meant to have uncontroversial appeal for the USA market to coincide with the PS2, and, second, to present an uncontroversial desire or mirror for people outside of the USA market. all that matters is that the actors seem to be happy.
accepting the game at face value like that is pretty boring, so let’s problematize those assumptions.
in the year 2000, a kind of neo-retrofuturism was still in vogue. I want to specifically point at the demoscene renders that modulate a playthrough of Fantavision as trying to, at least to the best of their ability, represent some forward motion into a science-fiction, futuristic “there” that we, hopefully, soon will attain. we didn’t attain it, so in retrospect Fantavision seems coiled around these two rings of positivism, the staged happiness of the future-looking past bunching up against and antiquated vision of techno-progress. that uneasy (retrospective) paradox, coupled with different flourishes of superflat-type art quirks in the UX and how the FMVs are presented, starts to make the aesthetic of Fantavision feel like a parody or pastiche of these desires… they are literally too corny and saccharine to be convincing, the shallowness almost registering as type of hyperpop condemnation.
and the thing is Fantavision really is operating on the level of parody, if you’ll follow me along the trailing end of my conspiracy. Fantavision evokes one certain canonized game at very strong visual, if not mechanical level: Missile Command. Missile Command is a game that’s either inert or terrifying depending on when you play it and how much you play it. Missile Command is something of a successful, very immediate, ripped-from-the headlines kind of exploitation material. its effectiveness as predatory agitprop is maybe a litmus of how seriously one can take bloops and bleeps.
Fantavision is the Chex Quest of Missile Command. well, it’s way more sophisticated than Chex Quest, but that’s the drift. the goal in Fantavision is not to stave off the destruction of the world, but to put on a fireworks performance to the best of ones ability for the enjoyment of the spectator(s). the ephemeral aspect of playing is very obviously not lost through this artistic metaphor. and while the game isn’t wholly non-competitive, its mechanics conjure a purely expressive, social, sharing kind of competition, absent of the enticements of power and violence.
instead of firing surface-to-air missiles that are bounded by some physical logic, the player controls a possessive taser that can move between undetonated fireworks. the abstract arcade puzzle aspects—three of a color must be possessed in order to detonate anything, although many objects count as all colors and allow different colors to be chained together—force, rather than merely encourage, an active sense of selfhood through stressful, millisecond-timed, yet ultimately trivial decision making. that is the starkest contrast from Missile Command, which requires complete intuitive sublimation into a machine, forcing a cyborgian, predictive playstyle, where your thoughts are completely exhausted, even unintelligible, as they ineffectively model what the computer will do next.
can it be a coincidence that Fantavision’s non-abstract, human faces, date their existence right in the conservative peak of the cold war? it doesn’t feel like it is one. and it closes out the potential of an easy interpretation. Fantavision puts these contrasts next to each other, inviting their comparison, suggesting this type of inspiring, non-violent, incredibly twee gameplay conceit somehow pairs perfectly with the invocation of reproductive, repressive, normative western conservatism.
Punctuate a moving picture? I'm no painter and don't dance in mirrors. But here I could watch a mysterious transformation of my movements taking place on the other side of the room, my own participation in the animated interface unfolding in an extraordinary spectacle of lights, colors, and sounds. Improvised painting, organized doodling, with somebody doodling against you to make sure you keep doing it. —David Sudnow, Pilgrim in the Microworld
first let’s get the obvious out of the way… it’s pretty safe to dismiss Fantavision as at least most likely lacking any kind of foresight or insight when presenting these aesthetics. I think there’s grounds to argue that the game presents some actual occidentalism, meaning the smiling white faces are taken to be some kind of symbol that, first, is meant to have uncontroversial appeal for the USA market to coincide with the PS2, and, second, to present an uncontroversial desire or mirror for people outside of the USA market. all that matters is that the actors seem to be happy.
accepting the game at face value like that is pretty boring, so let’s problematize those assumptions.
in the year 2000, a kind of neo-retrofuturism was still in vogue. I want to specifically point at the demoscene renders that modulate a playthrough of Fantavision as trying to, at least to the best of their ability, represent some forward motion into a science-fiction, futuristic “there” that we, hopefully, soon will attain. we didn’t attain it, so in retrospect Fantavision seems coiled around these two rings of positivism, the staged happiness of the future-looking past bunching up against and antiquated vision of techno-progress. that uneasy (retrospective) paradox, coupled with different flourishes of superflat-type art quirks in the UX and how the FMVs are presented, starts to make the aesthetic of Fantavision feel like a parody or pastiche of these desires… they are literally too corny and saccharine to be convincing, the shallowness almost registering as type of hyperpop condemnation.
and the thing is Fantavision really is operating on the level of parody, if you’ll follow me along the trailing end of my conspiracy. Fantavision evokes one certain canonized game at very strong visual, if not mechanical level: Missile Command. Missile Command is a game that’s either inert or terrifying depending on when you play it and how much you play it. Missile Command is something of a successful, very immediate, ripped-from-the headlines kind of exploitation material. its effectiveness as predatory agitprop is maybe a litmus of how seriously one can take bloops and bleeps.
Fantavision is the Chex Quest of Missile Command. well, it’s way more sophisticated than Chex Quest, but that’s the drift. the goal in Fantavision is not to stave off the destruction of the world, but to put on a fireworks performance to the best of ones ability for the enjoyment of the spectator(s). the ephemeral aspect of playing is very obviously not lost through this artistic metaphor. and while the game isn’t wholly non-competitive, its mechanics conjure a purely expressive, social, sharing kind of competition, absent of the enticements of power and violence.
instead of firing surface-to-air missiles that are bounded by some physical logic, the player controls a possessive taser that can move between undetonated fireworks. the abstract arcade puzzle aspects—three of a color must be possessed in order to detonate anything, although many objects count as all colors and allow different colors to be chained together—force, rather than merely encourage, an active sense of selfhood through stressful, millisecond-timed, yet ultimately trivial decision making. that is the starkest contrast from Missile Command, which requires complete intuitive sublimation into a machine, forcing a cyborgian, predictive playstyle, where your thoughts are completely exhausted, even unintelligible, as they ineffectively model what the computer will do next.
can it be a coincidence that Fantavision’s non-abstract, human faces, date their existence right in the conservative peak of the cold war? it doesn’t feel like it is one. and it closes out the potential of an easy interpretation. Fantavision puts these contrasts next to each other, inviting their comparison, suggesting this type of inspiring, non-violent, incredibly twee gameplay conceit somehow pairs perfectly with the invocation of reproductive, repressive, normative western conservatism.
Punctuate a moving picture? I'm no painter and don't dance in mirrors. But here I could watch a mysterious transformation of my movements taking place on the other side of the room, my own participation in the animated interface unfolding in an extraordinary spectacle of lights, colors, and sounds. Improvised painting, organized doodling, with somebody doodling against you to make sure you keep doing it. —David Sudnow, Pilgrim in the Microworld