Meaning and Non-Meaning in Trouble Shooter

a Post-Mortem

When the final history of the twenty-first century is written, it is likely that Trouble Shooter will be recognized as one of this decade's seminal intellectual and cultural events. It is rare indeed that a single creative work exhibits so many gleaming facets of meaning. It is a game, yes, only a game, but so too are the myriad Prisoner's dilemmae that constitute life in the modern world. Although this monograph is subtitled a "post-mortem", let it be said that, unlike Brutus, I come to praise Trouble Shooter, not to bury it.

The ostensible antagonists of the story are archetypal "space invaders". These quasi-familiar video game faces are like pixelated visitors from some primal ur-Nintendo. These beings, like van Leeuenhoek's "wee beasties", flit and swim about in apparent ease and comfort. Yet in Trouble Shooter these creatures have, like Ferdinand's father, undergone a sea change. For who is the invader - the pastel creatures with blinking eyes, or the fleet of white (note racial symbolism!) ships that comes to destroy them with phasers and shotguns?

Much has been made of the game's overt metaphor for American hegemony, such as the golden bullets (signifying economic domination masquerading as democratic liberation). The presence of a Space Pope suggests a second interpretation, that of radical Christianity - for just as Christ rose from the dead after three days, the player's ship receives an allotment of exactly three lives.

However, this is work of subtler undertones, not blatant pedagogy. It is best understood as a neo-Daoist work, a celebration of being and nothingness that owes more to the work of Lao-Tsu (who is, being mythical himself, the perfect sensei of samsara). Consider the Freudian black hole into which recsued creatures are hurled (or "chucked", to use the game's nomenclature - a sly reference to the poetic woodchuck and his hypothetical lumber-hurling abilities). Here, through symantic jiu-jutsu, non-being is transformed into a return to the womb. Existence is cyclic, like the Star Snakes (metaphors for Ouroboros, un-made by consuming their own tails). Like the ambiguous resolution of the in-game music's chord progressions, this fact may provide some comfort - or provoke further quesitons.

My upcoming book, Practicum of the Space Vatican, attempts a fuller exploration of this and the questions raised by contemporary Trouble Shooter enquiry. Why do the star snakes look like Strong Bad? Why the ice cream truck? Yet here, as in all great endeavours, there are no final answers. Like a Russian doll filled with progressively tinier treasures, this "game" is a mystical work filled with further, more profound and rarefied mysteries. If you look deeply into it, then it - like Nietsche's Abyss - will look deeply back into you.