Editorials
My Strange Fondness For a Disastrous Game: Remembering ‘Spawn: The Eternal’
I’ve been thinking a lot about Spawn recently. Ever since leaks suggested he would be added as a DLC character to Mortal Kombat 11, I’ve been taking trips down the memory lane. After he was finally confirmed, these trips have only grown in frequency.
It’s not that I’m remembering the old movie that I first watched at the tender age of five, or his appearance in SoulCalibur II, nor his PS2 game Spawn: Armageddon that I barely played. The one thing about Spawn that I remember, with fondness, confusion and anger, is Spawn: The Eternal for the PS1, also known as one of the worst games ever made.
Chances are you probably don’t know the game I’m talking about. Spawn: The Eternal was released in December of 1997 for the original PlayStation and was even developed by Sony Computer Entertainment themselves. It was a different era, clearly, as these kinds of licensed games were more common than they are now and the developer names attached to them were more well-known.
If you do know what I’m talking about, however, then you probably know that not even Sony’s name could save this game. The thing is, not a lot of people talk about Spawn: The Eternal, and when they do it isn’t in the most joyful tone. While I didn’t realize it myself when I first played it, since I didn’t have anyone to talk about it, is that this game received nothing but negative comments, with some even comparing it to the infamous E.T. videogame that almost killed the industry.
Those comparisons are a bit exaggerated, but the game is very bad indeed. It’s hard to find any written opinions about it on the internet since in those days magazines were the norm, but if you try to look for any kind of video of the game you will immediately realize what I’m talking about. The game looks ugly even by early 3D standards, the animations are slow and painful to watch, plus there’s barely any music or dialogue, and the plot is almost nonexistent.
At the time, I didn’t really notice any of this. I was a kid, completely floored by what was one of his first 3D games. I had watched the movie before, though I didn’t remember much of it given my age. All I knew was that, for me, Spawn was cool. He had a cool look, he fought cool monsters. Of course I was going to play his video game on my relatively new PlayStation.
The Scariest Video Game Fighters
Still, my first impressions weren’t exactly the most positive. While I couldn’t exactly judge the game based on its looks, the controls were indeed bad and noticeable even for someone without a lot of experience in 3D games. The exploration segments of the game had you controlling Spawn with tank controls trying to navigate environments that were very poorly designed for the kind of movement they expected out of you. Even at the time, I could tell that a game with those kinds of poor controls shouldn’t have platforming sections like this one did.
The thing I remember the most, and the one aspect of the game that I never fully understood, was the combat. While the levels were mostly empty and devoid of anything interesting, you could see enemies roaming around, and whenever you got close to them the game switched to what essentially was a 2D fighting game with some limited lateral movement. This was, single handedly, the most confusing aspect of the game for me because it’s an entire pillar of the experience that the game never even tries to explain.
In combat, you could switch from cape form to chain form in order to have access to different moves. You could also use different power-ups that you picked up during exploration, like buffs or projectile attacks. You could even rip off an enemy’s arm and use it as a weapon against them. On paper, this sounds interesting, but in practice I never could do any of this, not even by accident. There is not a single screen in the entire game that teaches you how the combat works, let alone the controls for it. You are just thrown into it and have to figure it out by yourself. Or at least I was.
It is undeniable that the game itself didn’t even attempt to explain its own systems to the player, but I was running with a different kind of disadvantage too: I didn’t have the manual. Here’s where I admit that, as a kid, I didn’t have any idea what piracy was and in a country like Argentina, where getting original copies of video games was (and still is somewhat considered as) a luxury, PS1 manuals were as nonexistent as Spawn’s platforming capabilities.
It wasn’t until only a week or so ago that I stumbled upon the manual for this game on the internet and learned all these aspects about the combat that I never knew about. All of a sudden, I realized that the reason why I never could pull any of those moves off was because the motions were a giant mess for a game that came out years after fighting games established themselves. How would I think about throwing a fireball in Spawn by inputting back, back, down, down and X after having played actual fighting games like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat?
The manual also shed light on another of the game’s many question marks: the story. The amount of voiced scenes that offered any kind of context for the story can probably be counted on one hand, and maybe you will still have a few fingers left to count. However, as Latino kid growing up in a Latin American country, I didn’t speak English at the time and as such I had no idea what was going on in the game. I could infer some things, but nothing too concrete.
Turns out that the manual at the very least attempts to explain what is up with the narrative. In between absolutely embarrassing lines like calling Spawn a “green-blooded American”, the manual informs you that Malebolgia, the demon of hell that brought Spawn back to life, is sending you through time to train in order to lead his army. I’m not familiar with Spawn to know if this is a plot point from any of the comics, but the game does such a poor job at telling this story that even if is an original plotline, no one should ever try to experience this story through Spawn: The Eternal (maybe Mortal Kombat 11 will do a better job there?).
I never finished the game at the time. Honestly, how could I? Without understanding how it played, there was no real way for me to go through all of those fights against enemies that could counteract my very basic strategies with cheap projectiles and such. When my PlayStation finally died, I was left with a disc that I had no use for so I did the only logical thing left to do: I picked up a wooden stick, threw the disc in the air and hit it as it came down, shattering it in many pieces. I was a kid; I thought it was a good idea. My parents didn’t, but that’s beside the point.
Only a few years later, when I got into emulators, I thought about revisiting Spawn: The Eternal. This time, things were different. The game was still the same poorly design brawler with terrible controls that I didn’t know how to play, but I had a different kind of advantage this time around. With the help of save states, I could go through those terrible combat encounters without essentially nothing to lose. After a few hours (because turns out that the game isn’t as long when you don’t have to retry constantly), I could finally beat it and close an incomplete chapter of my life.
There’s no denying that Spawn: The Eternal is a terrible mess, with its reputation as one of the worst games ever being more than earned. But even so, I still remember my time with it somewhat fondly. After all, it was the game that taught me I could smash a disc to pieces with just one swift strike. That has to amount to something, I guess.
Now, with Spawn about to make his debut in the Mortal Kombat universe, I can’t help but be a little excited. Sure, I might not be a Spawn fan and my relationship with him is more than a little complicated, but at the very least I am looking forward to seeing him in a game I enjoy. It’s not that he deserves a second chance, since his time has already passed and the 90’s are far behind us, but having him in a video game again, especially a very good fighting game, should be fun. Maybe then I’ll remember him for something other than the terrible Spawn: The Eternal.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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