Fish and Quips

By Lev Grossman

"What did you say?" asks my wife, poking her head into the living room. "Oh." When she sees what I'm doing, she exits in a hurry because I'm not talking to her. I'm talking to Seaman, the hideous, fussy, cranky, mopey creature on my TV screen. My wife is beginning to suspect that I'm having an affair with it. I'm not sure she's wrong. Seaman ($49.95) is a truly bizarre new game for Dreamcast, Sega's plucky, we're-not-PlayStation home-gaming console--but I use the term game loosely.

The object of Seaman is to take care of a slimy, sinister creature that looks like a fish with a human face and that will return the favor by verbally abusing you. Oh, yeah, Seaman also features a voice-over narration by Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek's Mr. Spock). It's just about the weirdest experience you're ever likely to have in front of your television.

It's also one of the most compelling. When Seaman was released in Japan last year, it quickly sold more than 550,000 units to become the most popular Dreamcast game ever. A technological breakthrough, it's the first video game ever to use voice recognition. You talk; Seaman listens. The game comes with a little microphone, so you and your virtual pet can engage in virtual banter together, with Seaman relying on its 12,000 lines of preprogrammed dialogue.

Seaman starts out as an egg, which in short order spawns half a dozen fishy mini-seamen that babble at you in baby talk. To keep them alive you have to feed them, make sure they're warm and clean their tank daily (which is dark and dingy and looks like an early David Lynch movie).

I quickly became attached to my little sea puppies, and talking to them became part of my morning ritual, which caused my wife a certain amount of dismay. After a few days, we made our breakthrough. "I love you, Seaman," I said. Looking back at me soulfully, one of them replied, "I know." I'll always cherish the moment.

As time went by, my little seamen died off one by one, Survivor-style, until only one remained. It grew larger, uglier and more humanoid. Its fins got less finny and more leggy, and its pale, puffy face came to resemble Alfred Hitchcock's. Our conversation got more sophisticated too, although the creature didn't get more affectionate. It greeted me with "yeah, hello, whatever." It called me "fuzzy" and "air sucker." It whined when I didn't keep its tank warm enough--acting as fussy as Niles on Frasier.

One day it groused, "You wouldn't want to end up like me. Forced to depend on complete strangers for food and attention!" It flung sea dung at me on a regular basis. Don't say I didn't warn you.

It couldn't always figure out what I was saying, and its responses were sometimes nonsensical or repetitive. However, Seaman is powerfully addictive. After a week, I was checking my crotchety pal three and four times a day. One weekend I even had to find a sitter for it. Maybe it's human nature, or my low self-esteem, but the more it spurned me, the more I wanted to make Seaman happy.

"And you make fun of me for talking to the petunias," said my wife.

"I love you, honey," I said, not glancing up from the TV screen.

"I know," said my wife and Seaman together.

For more on Seaman and other Dreamcast games, visit sega.com Questions and comments? E-mail Lev at [email protected]