Seaman for Dreamcast Review

The Gameplay

There is no story in Seaman. Basically you’re presented with only three things: an aquarium, an egg, and some food. You nurture the egg by controlling the temperature and cleanliness of the tank (via the D-pad) where eventually, the egg will hatch. Through some weird evolution procedure, some little octopus thing comes by and eats them all, but is soon eaten from the inside by one surviving Sea-baby-guy-thing.

So you talk to the baby, with the included microphone that hooks to your controller and you teach him how to speak. He’ll become a Sea-boy-thingie and ask questions about you and you can ask questions about him. Finally, he’ll become a Seaman (there’s the title!) and you and him have to coexist within and around your Dreamcast. He’ll tell you how to grow food, how to take care of him, and how to make him happy…unless you kill him. And ultimately your goal is to get Seaman to develop to the best Seaman he can be.

Now here’s the creepy part. When I first played the game, I thought the way he learned words was cool, but when I had a child and saw how he progressed into learning speech, it brought me to the days of Seaman. The learning arc was essentially the same! My son learned to mimic noises, then patterns of speech, and then finally sounded out words. My son learned exactly how Seaman was programmed to learn and it was creepy.

Knowledge and Emotion

Seaman is imparted with millions of years of knowledge, from baseball to dating to astrology. Seaman gets cranky when you don’t feed him, moody when you don’t talk to him for periods of time, and will give you the full-blown silent treatment if he’s mad at you. Just like a human, he was sometimes delightful to be around and other times you wanted to bang on the aquarium glass until his eardrums exploded.

After a while, Seaman will evolve and want to walk on land. After that he’ll birth some weird Frogmen creatures that will also talk to you. Here it gets a little interesting because these guys intellectually converse with you. You think something’s wrong with you because you’re answering and asking questions back. One time, my wife walked in on me and Seaman talking about the future of Europe. Don’t ask, because neither did she.

Thompson’s Two Cents

I’ll skip talk about the graphics because they’re pretty basic for what you need them for. Seaman does take a good time investment, around 30 minutes or so a day for a healthy Seaman, but what you get is a somewhat satisfying game that will either impress you or give you the jeebies or it could do both.