When I was younger, I was terrified of the ocean. Going to the beach and watching the waves crash against my feet, feeling the tide pull against my calves as my toes sunk into the sand, and watching the little fish dart about in the water below both terrified and enthralled me. It wasn’t so much the fear of being attacked while in the ocean that got to me but rather that I was walking into someone else's home. I was an unexpected guest. Getting into the water was the tricky bit, the biting cold was another major hurdle for me, but the point where I struggled the most was when I could no longer see the ground beneath my feet. A sickening dread rose up in my chest as I realised that something, anything, could be directly below me and I could do nothing about it. I didn’t feel this way swimming in an enclosed space, like a swimming pool, but whenever murky, impenetrable water was involved, I grew anxious. Growing up in Australia only encouraged my fear of the deep blue as our local collection of marine life, despite the irregularity one could encounter them, are almost all dangerous. Don’t even get me started on dams. I was paralysed simply seeing the murky brown colouration of their water, and the tickling sensation on one’s feet when a yabby brushed underneath them might as well have been a Great White for all I cared.
As sappy, highly emotional beings, we’re reasonably inclined towards taking our fears and joys with us into our various hobbies and day to day activities, so it was only natural that my fears of the Deep Blue travelled with me into video games. For this reason, the earliest games of my childhood are remembered more so in how they presented water in a three dimensional space than anything else, as they were always the most vivid sections of the game for me. A reoccurring element reveals itself when I evaluated just why I found them unpleasant and that is the use of “The Big Drop”. Designers weren’t simply content with constructing a gentle slope that gradually dipped lower and lower as you swam across the water, like a beach. No, they seemed to revel in turning that gentle slope into a gaping ravine at the drop of the hat and previously shallow pools of water would transform into giant, 180 degrees, tumbling cliffside. Imagine a tall glass blown up to an unfathomable size, and then imagine being asked to swim to the very bottom of it, and then you’ll have an idea of what I found so uncomfortable. My first encounter with the murky depths in video games though had nothing to do with “The Big Drop”.
Clanker’s Cavern in Banjo-Kazooie was terrifying for a lot of reasons but chief among them was Clanker itself: a giant, mechanical shark tied down by lock and key in a pool of dirty water. Visually, Clanker has an awful lot of things going for it that can easily make someone feel queasy. It’s described in game as a living garbage compacter and its appearance initially fits that description. Draped in rusty metal sheets and creaking bolts, with big goggly eyes and metal teeth, Clanker is an imposing creature the very first moment you encounter it. Then you notice the mysterious open wounds on the sides of his body, a familiar red colour, and you’re not altogether sure if he’s entirely mechanical.
Once you’re inside of him (I couldn’t do this for weeks) your suspicions are all but confirmed. Clanker is, despite what it is stated otherwise, definitely organic and the presence of irradiated, mutated crabs sharing the shark’s living space leads to unwanted conclusions my childhood never wanted to think about. I thought sharks were big enough as is and the suggestion that Clanker could of mutated in the polluted water was enough to make me skip the level entirely until the very end.
“The Big Drop” first revealed its ugly self when I played Super Mario 64. Jolly Roger Bay is anything but jolly and that giant eel gave me nightmares as a child. Here, the quintessential level designer’s trick of teasing the player with shallow waters before plunging them into dizzying depths is in full force. The player can see the drop too, the sharp curve of the cliffside just before the shallows lead into the main body of water. And then, of course, the eel. The eel lies in wait at the very bottom of the course inside his little hidey-hole and needs to be coaxed out in order to get into the caverns behind him. The creature’s elongated body twists and writhes about in the water, circling above the sunken ship at the bottom of the lake, guarding something.
You can’t feel the slimy skin of the creature but its very presence and movement around the bottom of the lake adds an increased awareness of your surroundings. The eel is much better at moving through the water than the tiny plumber you’re controlling and it’s certainly big enough to swallow Mario whole. It was never capable of eating Mario, of course, but my imagination worked its best to ensure me it could. All the while you’re exploring The Bay, there’s a never ending series of bubbly, floaty chords playing in the background that manage to sound endlessly comforting and terrifying all at the same time. When it works, it reminds you of being in an aquarium watching schools of fish effortlessly swim above you through thick glass. When it doesn't work, you feel like you’re at the bottom of the ocean and your body is being crushed by the compression.
If Jolly Roger Bay was the introduction to “The Big Drop”, Dire Dire Docks is the concept at its logical, raging extreme. Whereas Jolly Roger Bay at least had the comfort of solid land to retreat to if your nerves betrayed you, Dire Dire Docks has no such thing. The tall glass level design returns but this time you’re dropped straight into the water at the beginning of the stage and the only way to get anywhere is to dive straight down. More sea creatures were tossed into the mix, a shark and an oversized sting ray, and a small whirlpool awaits you at the bottom. There’s a submarine somewhere too but I was a bit too concerned about the animals in the water and the tall, unclimbable walls to really notice. Here, we are inching towards my perfect panic attack in which there are not only horrible creatures in a pool of water around me but also no discernible way of getting out of the water, meaning that I would inevitably be stuck swimming around, hopelessly looking for a solution, until I was weak from exhaustion and then drown… and then a thing would eat me. Or I’d be sucked into the whirlpool.
But all of these are merely pleasantries on the path towards Super Mario 64’s truly horrifying underwater stage. The Secret Aquarium is a box shaped room filled with water and no way to get in or out of it. Windows line the sides of the walls and show a lovely blue sky, so even if Mario was capable of escaping this aquatic hell, he would simply meet an equally horrible death by fall. Out of the frying pan and into the fryer, as they say. Within this space, the little version of me struggled with facing the biggest fear of aquatic exploration: drowning. The plentiful coins around Mario easily cover your air supply needs but the physical sensation of actually controlling a figure in a boxed-in pool of water was difficult to handle. I shouldn’t even have to mention Mario’s horrifying drowning animation to hammer home the traumatising nature of The Secret Aquarium.
Outside of Mario and friends, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time also worked its hardest to convince me that the sea was a terrible place that no one should swim in. Lord Jabu-Jabu was a horrible challenge to overcome when I was younger and was borne from a very different fear buried deep inside my bones. This fear, let’s call it “The Gollum Effect”, first sprung into my mind during my teacher’s reading of The Hobbit in class. The specific line in the book, which escapes me now, created an image of a fish swimming up stream into hidden waterways and getting stuck there, growing larger and changing its shape as it aged. Playing OoT, I couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t anywhere Jabu-Jabu could have come from, no river or creek to swim up from, and that he was more than likely placed in this small pool of water a long time ago by the Zoras and had grown to an unnaturally large size. “The Big Drop” plays a minor role in this specific instance too as Jabu-Jabu is suspended in a very deep, small lake.
Establishing that I find everything around and about Jabu-Jabu creepy hopefully illustrates my emotional mindset when I first went inside the beast. I freaked out. For some reason, even after two dungeons of design reinforcement, I thought that Jabu-Jabu’s Belly operated differently to other dungeons. I couldn’t simply turn around and exit the area; Jabu-Jabu’s teeth were in the way and teeth bite down on things. Similarly the very first door into the dungeon, in my mind, couldn’t simply be opened with the press of the A button. In my panic, I attacked the pinkish doorway and cringed as blue blood burst forth from my assault and a loud wail echoed throughout the room, a painful cry. I was inside the mouth of a living, breathing whale and I hated every moment of it. My dad finished the dungeon for me.
A year later, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask tackled the widest held fear that grips our minds whenever we swim in the ocean, lake, or river - the unseen attacker lying in wait. Deep inside The Great Bay Temple lies Gyorg, the guardian of the dungeon, and one of the most difficult boss fights in the game. Link is placed on a small island surrounded by water as the great fish below swims and darts about, periodically leaping out of the water to snatch and bite at us, the unwanted guest. When you finally land a successful hit on the monster, it goes limp, stunned, and sinks to the bottom of the pool. Try as you might, the beast is just out of reach of Zora Link’s detachable boomerang fins and, if you don’t act quickly, it’ll soon awake and start its attack in earnest once more. You already know the solution in this situation, unfortunately. You’ve just been trying to avoid the inevitable by cycling through Link’s collection of various doodads. Nothing, try as you might, can replace the Zora’s ability to sink to the bottom of the water and karate chop Gyorg in the face. But then you’re not quick enough, the fish awakens, and suddenly you’re swimming away as fast as you can, desperately trying to leap out of the water back onto the safe island lest Gyorg eat you. Three hearts is an awfully large amount to pay for such a simple mistake.
The last, and most memorable, instance of facing my fears in video games was in Tomb Raider 2. After Lara does her usual adventuring through various ancient tombs and constructs, she’s plunged to the bottom of the sea to look for a mysterious sunken ship. Far below the surface there is very little light, despite what the speckled sun beams might suggest, and Lara’s immediate surroundings are drenched in darkness. A bread crumb trail of broken equipment on the seafloor catches your eye and you direct Lara towards it, ever aware of your dwindling oxygen bar as you swim along. Then, a shape materialises from the inky blackness. It’s a fucking shark and now you’re panicking. You keep swimming, keenly aware of the jagged teeth behind you and slip inside of a wrecked ship. The walls close in on you, the previously open space becomes narrow and claustrophobic, and the crashed ship is labyrinth-like in its destruction. The ever present worry of the shark behind you does nothing to still your nerves as you hurriedly navigate through the sunken maze. In this one tiny, focused moment, almost all of my fears about the ocean were captured and instilled - the murky deep water, the unknown attacker, and the sensation of being at the very bottom of the earth, with all the crushing compression that it implies.
Even if I felt that the video games I loved exploring were conspiring against my play time as a child, I can’t help but think that through playing them I learned to be not so terrified of the sea. Nowadays, I have an unhealthy obsession with the ocean including the unusual and fascinating creatures at the bottom of it. I actively seek out video games that have underwater sections in them and relish the opportunity to explore them. I enjoy the more limited controls of my protagonist and the keen sense of exploration and adventure that the sea abundantly provides. When people ask me what video games have ever helped me with in my personal life, I always mention that I wouldn’t be able to swim without them. In a country where warm weather is (usually) just around the bend and beaches are easily accessible, I can’t help but think that’s valuable.
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