Review: New Sega Title Seaman
Sept. 20 -- Think your roommate is cranky? Try Seaman.
Seaman is a Sega Dreamcast title developed by Vivarium and released last month that features horrible-looking, yet strangely compelling, fishmen creatures. You, the gamer, must help these creatures evolve by visiting them each day, giving them food and heat, and, well, a certain amount of affection.
Remember the Tamagotchi, Bandai’s virtual reality pet that exploded onto the American toy scene in 1997? Cross a Tamagotchi with a Furby — the animatronic pet that “learns” how to speak English — and you’d get something a lot like Seaman. You talk to it; it talks to you. You and the creature get to know each other, perhaps too well at times.
A microphone included with the game helps facilitate communication between you and the fish-thing on the other side of the screen, where the Seamen swim around in an aquarium-type setting.
If it sounds strange, it is. But the game — if you can call it that — is also the best-selling title, according to Sega, in the short history of the Sega Dreamcast in the platform’s home country, Japan.
Getting Personal
It’s programmed with more than 10,000 responses, according to Sega. But that’s not necessarily obvious from playing the game. Many times, Seaman will reply to a simple question with a stock phrase that may or may not be an appropriate answer.
But it’s when Seaman asks the questions that it really gets interesting.
Seaman wants to know all about its handler and asks all sorts of questions — some very personal. Seaman will even offer advice, or, if the speaker sounds glum, it will ask what’s wrong.
The creature stores that information somewhere in its AI archives, and pulls it out every now and then to surprise you. Other times, a particularly surly Seaman will declare “I’m not talking to you.”
All attempts at communication are met with a childish “MMMMMmmm.”
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