This Week In Retro: Another World (1991) (Patreon)

November 1991: "Leh-tsoo-bah!"

by Diamond Feit

Are you familiar with the Japanese word "isekai"? It's a popular genre of fiction wherein the hero leaves the familiar world that we live in and ends up someplace else. It's not just a "fish out of water" scenario because that can be any story where a character is out of their element. In an isekai narrative, there must be a sense that wherever the protagonist has gone, it is not the same reality that they know.

The word isekai breaks down into two parts: sekai (世界) means "world" and the i (異) prefix means "strange" or "different." Long before modern Japanese speakers coined the portmanteau gaijin to describe people from other countries, they used the word ijin as the descriptor for people outside Japan. It fell out of favor because of the implication that ijin are fundamentally different than Japanese people, as if they belong to another species. Indeed, iseijin (異星人) means "extra-terrestrial." I certainly have my share of unique qualities compared to native Japanese people, but coming from another planet isn't one of them.

While there are scores of isekai stories in fiction today, I want to point out that 30 years ago, a French man working largely on his own created such a game for the Amiga and Atari ST personal computers. This game, which took him two years to complete, tells the story of a scientist named Lester Chaykin who accidentally transports himself to a strange alien planet—a literal isekai—where he must struggle to survive. It would subsequently be ported to other PCs and consoles alike and would serve as a landmark title in the genre. He called it Another World, but in North America, it was retitled Out of this World.

(Funnily enough, in Japan it became Outer World, the least isekai-like name of the three available titles)

Another World is a platform action game, but it stands apart from its peers for many reasons. While the game is strictly a two-dimensional experience, its graphics are not pixel-based but polygon-based, a look very much ahead of its time for 1991. When combined with rotoscoped animation, the all-polygon aesthetic seamlessly blends cinematic cutscenes with the gameplay. Another World also uses no HUD, no inventory, and no menus, adding to the sense of immersion. It's quite likely that most players, when they first start the game, are unaware of the moment the opening movie ends and control begins, leading them to allow Lester to drown in the pool where he touches down on the alien planet.

Even though Lester can run and jump, he's no Mario. Another World is instead what I'd call a "dramatic puzzle platformer," a hybrid of action and adventure games. The camera never scrolls, so each screen is a miniature stage unto itself. Some screens are empty, featuring nothing but a passageway or a staircase, but most require Lester to accomplish a specific task or avoid a hazard. Backtracking is common and the order in which he engages in activities is crucial, as Lester is fragile and nearly any slip-up is fatal.

Take the game's first few moments. Upon escaping the pool, Lester can either go to the left or right. The left runs into a dead-end with a cliff and a hanging vine. The right leads to small leeches crawling on the ground. The leeches can be avoided or kicked, but if they touch Lester, he dies. Head far enough to the right, and a beast jumps out and chases Lester back to the left. Only by running all the way to the cliff and leaping on to the vine will save him. Should the player go left first and disturb the vine before going right, the beast will catch and kill Lester.

Another World is an unforgiving game, but it's not "difficult" in any meaningful way. The game uses a number of invisible checkpoints, so while there are plenty of ways Lester can fail (including a few that lack any warning), players rarely lose much progress so there's little reason to feel frustrated. The term "trial and error" is seldom applied positively to video games, as players want to anticipate danger and solve problems without failing repeatedly. Yet Another World uses failure as a means of instruction, so a better term for its particular flow might be "fuck around and find out."

It is when that flow is disrupted that Another World can become irritating to experience. The critical path to advance the story is not always clear, so it is possible to sequence break and end up in a location without the means to solve a problem. Yet the game's checkpointing is strict, refusing to save progress until important tasks are complete, so players can get themselves stuck in a long loop of busywork, running down the same hallway over and over because they took a wrong turn.

Another World began its journey on home computers but made its way to every console at the time, where its graphics and pacing stood out as unlike anything else on a cartridge. I first saw it on the Super Nintendo and I'm confident I made audible gasps during the opening cutscene. The way it grabbed me and led me down a path into the unknown, all while challenging me to keep poor Lester in one piece; I had never seen a video game that engrossing before in my life. Combined with its groundbreaking use of polygons, I felt like I was seeing the future.

While Another World didn't quite turn out to be the harbinger of what all video games would be, it left a deep impression on many players. Hideo Kojima cited it as one of "five games that made an impact" on his life. Fumito Ueda (allegedly) said Another World "inspired him to make Ico." When an interviewer asked Suda 51 to name the "best video game character," he picked Lester and praised the experience of becoming him to go on an adventure. Silent Hill and Siren creator Keiichiro Toyama described the beginning of Another World as "[the] moment that I first began to consider the potential games had for stirring an emotion like fear in the player."

Revisiting Another World for this column, I'm surprised by how much of the game I could recall beat by beat. It was never my "favorite" game—in fact, I never even finished it—but it feels like I committed just about every scene that I did play to memory. The graphics aren't as astonishing in 2021, and its premise has certainly become commonplace, but I think its immersive qualities and its indie spirit still shine strong.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.