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Symbiotic SNES

This project is part of an ongoing series that explores the possibilities afforded by subverting the electronics of SNES gaming consoles. Symbiotic SNES explores what happens when two people play a single player game together. Custom electronics intercepts controller messages from two SNES controllers and applies binary logic to the data ensuring that only buttons presses that occur on both of the controllers at the same time are sent to the SNES console. The result is a cooperative gaming experience that requires two people to actively communicate about their upcoming actions to each other in order to be successful.

Symbiotic SNES units will soon be available for purchase for those who are interested, feel free to contact me to get onto the preorder list =).

Deceptive Interaction Design

Usually when creating interactive installation art, one of the fundamental tenets is to facilitate scenarios that are reactive to the interactee’s actions. If a guest pulls a lever, pushes a button or somehow interacts with the installation, it is traditionally desirable the visitor understands how their actions affect the installation or why they have no effect. In the book Windows and Mirrors, Bolter and Gromala referred to this quality in interaction design as “transparency” while Gillian Smith called it “reassuring feedback”. [3] No matter the term preferred, both texts introduce this trait as a desirable attribute when designing an interaction scenario. This section, however, seeks to explore deception through opaque interaction design by releasing the design process from concerns over providing transparency to the user. Deceptive art, art that intends to deceive its primary audience, is relatively uncommon in the art world and usually takes the form of optical illusions, or visual trickery [55]. This scarcity motivated the creation of two installations, demonstrated in this section, which deceive their participants using divergent tactics. Symbiotic SNES supplies a familiar interface, a SNES controller, that behaves in unexpected ways while 6 * 9 = 42 presents a seemingly innocent visual sandbox to visitors while obscuring its true motives from the implicated party.

Video showing the project hardware and firmware proof-of-concept for the Symbiotic SNES project.

Artistic Motivations

Symbiotic SNES (SSNES) is an interactive installation in which two visitors are able to cooperatively play the video game Super Mario World, on a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), in a novel manner. Two unmodified SNES controllers are connected to the SSNES device which is then plugged into an unmodified SNES console. When participants play the familiar video game the subversive nature of the SSNES reveals itself. The SSNES device forces the two players to jointly control a single character by intercepting controller messages from the controllers and only allowing button presses that occur on both controllers, at the same time, to pass to the console. This approach to multiplayer gaming is in contrast to the typical cooperative gaming experience where players either take turns playing the same character, or everyone controls their own separate avatar. The SSNES system hopes to grant its players the experience of playing one of their favorite childhood games in a new way that makes them fall in love with the game all over again.

The deceptive effect is most pronounced when the user is familiar with both the game and how to play the game. The installation could have easily been realized on any 16-bit era, or earlier, video game console. The SNES’s cultural familiarity and popularity is unmatched by the Sega Genesis, Neo Geo or TurboGrafx-16 or any other console from its era [56]–[58]. But besides being the most popular video game console of the 16-bit era, the SNES has one of the most iconic controllers of all time which is still easy to understand for those who have never used one before [57][58]. Unlike, for instance, the SEGA Genesis controller which was designed with a single row of three buttons on the right side, the SNES controller’s four front buttons in two rows of two is still the conventional button configuration on the right side of modern controllers such as the Dualshock-4, Steam, and X-Box One. The final argument for choosing the SNES console to host the Symbiotic system resides in the adamant SNES fan base which is still producing brand new titles for the console almost thirty years after its release [59]. SEGA is no longer a company that builds video game consoles and their absence from the current industry has dwindled the fan base which now pales in comparison to the throngs of fans for retro Nintendo video games.

Because the SSNES’s deception is dependent on the user’s firm expectations for how their controller will behave, it is important SSNES uses an iconic SNES game with an adamant fan base. There have been dozens of highly successful games released for the SNES that would have worked but none as effectively as Super Mario World. Super Mario World, released in 1990 and selling over 20 million copies worldwide, was a pack-in launch title for the SNES that was sold along with brand new consoles to millions of people worldwide. For these consumers, Super Mario World is the first game they ever played on the SNES and often holds a vivid place in their memory of that gaming era. Super Mario World was engendered by a superstar team, directed by Takashi Tezuka and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, features simple intuitive controls, is fun to play, and continues to be on lists of the greatest games of all time [60]. This combination of familiarity, fame, and simplicity works perfectly for SSNES, which is most effective when someone is a fan of the game.

Video of Gameplay

References and Further Reading

[3] Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala, Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency. 2003.

[56] C. Gaylord, “Super Mario Bros. has sold how many copies?,” Christian Science Monitor, 14- Sep-2010.

[57] “Super Nintendo Entertainment System,” Wikipedia. 12-Apr-2017.

[58] J. Ryan, Super Mario: how Nintendo conquered America. New York: Portfolio Penguin, 2011.

[59] “Consoles that won’t die: The SNES in 2013,” VentureBeat, 03-May-2013. .

[60] “Game Informer’s Top 200 Games of All Time,” Giant Bomb. [Online]. Available: https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/dantebk/lists/game-informers-top-200-games-ofall-time/32009/. [Accessed: 04-Jun-2017].