Late last night I decided I wanted to stream.

I had gotten my MiSTer set up to run PS1 games and resolved the issue where I wasn’t able to use my Ninja V to record gameplay footage.

With Doshin still heavily on the mind, I had the urge to dive in to Aquanaut’s Holiday. Kazutoshi Iida’s first game for the Playstation.

Holding the original PS1 controller in my hands again for the first time in maybe 20 years felt somewhat nostalgic.

I expected it to be a slow and somewhat boring affair. I expected I would appreciate what it was going for. I expected I would tire of it pretty quickly, but still enjoy facets of it. I thought it’d be an okay experience but not something I would naturally think about much beyond some initial impressions. That’s what seems to be the running theme in videos I’ve seen that cover this game.

So you can imagine my surprise when I started to find myself completely locked-in while exploring the depths.

You start the game piloting a submarine called the HOLIDAY. Your ultimate “goal” is to aid in the construction of a new reef, but the ocean right in front of you is begging to be explored.

There’s not much at first. Just different shades of blue.

Some schools of fish.

A larger independent fish or two.

I even spotted a whale in the distance pretty early on, though I didn’t manage to get very close.

But the more you explore – the deeper you go – the larger and stranger the fish become.

It’s a little exciting seeing new species pop up in front of you.

And then, somewhat early on in my playthrough, just casually ‘nauting about, a somewhat unsettling tone started to play that I could hear faintly.

The game gives you the tools to make four unique aquatic audio tones with your ship. One mapped to each of the four shoulder buttons on the controller.

I had been playing with them a bit, and while these tones sounded somewhat similar, they weren’t coming from me.

The noises grew louder.

From the darkness, a large structure began to appear.

A pyramid. Submerged.

One at first. Then several more.

Large Nautilus surrounding them, and me and my ship.

Feelings of mystery, curiosity, and the uncanny.

The game in that moment.

I mean, what the hell?

That set the tone for the rest of the stream and the rest of the evening.

The stream only ended up being around three hours. But in that short window of time I got such a unique experience. It produced a lot of thoughts and feelings while playing. It was engrossing. It had more than just me captivated. The chat became a team of fellow explorers. We all wanted to see what else might be out there.

Over the course of the evening I stumbled across many a strange sight and many species of fish. We saw an odd UFO-like structure. We witnessed what appeared to be an ancient Roman aqueduct. We probed a strange cyclone-like rock formation with an interesting relief carved into the top face that seemed to be something between an amphibian and an alien. We found a haunting human-like face emerging from the sea floor. We saw the white while in a forest of spires that jutted out from the bottom of a trench. Spotted some giant deep-sea prehistoric fish lurking in the deep.

Exiting out to the main menu, you’re able to see the map of where you’ve been. It was absolutely massive in scale.

Going to bed last night, I imagine myself sleeping onboard the vessel.

With the morning sun, thoughts of Doshin returned. Where in the final act, all the monuments you guided the construction of sank beneath the ocean as the various tribes completed construction of the Tower of Babel.

Is Doshin the Giant a prequel to Aquanaut’s Holiday?

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Thanks for reading. Link to the VOD here.