Video Games and Nightmares (VG Dreams in General)

[scarper]

A few years ago, a friend of mine recommended Space Station Silicone Valley, for the N64. Having no idea what it was, I decided to look at some gameplay footage and see what its all about.

In a surprising discovery, I recognized the characters and environments to exactly match up with my recurring childhood nightmares (stopped having at around age 7.) It would always have me being stuck on that green, space island with the weird animals. They wouldn't ever do anything harmful, they just scared the piss out of me at the time.

Funny thing is, I don't remember ever playing that game. There was never an N64 in my house until I was 13. Maybe a friend had it. Or maybe the game was made by aliens.

Have video games caused you guys similar experiences?

[cookie monster]

I have had the resident evil nightmare where the chaisaw guy was chasing me. It was terrible no matter how fast i ran he was right there and all i had was a butter knife. I had enough cold meds in my system to knock out a horse. It seems like when ever i am really sick i dream crazy stuff.

[scarper]

I have had the resident evil nightmare where the chaisaw guy was chasing me. It was terrible no matter how fast i ran he was right there and all i had was a butter knife. I had enough cold meds in my system to knock out a horse. It seems like when ever i am really sick i dream crazy stuff.

I sleepwalk when I'm sick. The worst one was when I slept-walked off the living room couch, up the stairs, into the bathroom, out of my clothes, into the shower, turned the shower on (right temperature and everything) and then woke up inside the shower. Most confusing moment of my entire life.

That chainsaw dream sounds awful. Although I totally would've tired to stab at him with the butter knife. Maybe jam the chainsaw. Or fly.

[BoringSupreez]

I have had the resident evil nightmare where the chaisaw guy was chasing me. It was terrible no matter how fast i ran he was right there and all i had was a butter knife. I had enough cold meds in my system to knock out a horse. It seems like when ever i am really sick i dream crazy stuff.

I sleepwalk when I'm sick. The worst one was when I slept-walked off the living room couch, up the stairs, into the bathroom, out of my clothes, into the shower, turned the shower on (right temperature and everything) and then woke up inside the shower. Most confusing moment of my entire life.

That's pretty insane. I've slept-walked myself, but it was much less dramatic. I only got out of bed and went to lie down on the couch downstairs, and I even remember the dream that led me to do it. I dreamt I was strating up my PS2, and I got some error message. The mist on the PS2 menu screen was there, but instead of being blue it was red. I was terrified for some reason, and ran downstairs. The dream ended after that, and I woke up on the couch in the morning.

[scarper]

That's pretty insane. I've slept-walked myself, but it was much less dramatic. I only got out of bed and went to lie down on the couch downstairs, and I even remember the dream that led me to do it. I dreamt I was strating up my PS2, and I got some error message. The mist on the PS2 menu screen was there, but instead of being blue it was red. I was terrified for some reason, and ran downstairs. The dream ended after that, and I woke up on the couch in the morning.

Red mist of death. XD

I've dreamt myself playing numerous amounts of top-down shooters that don't exist. They were always really good, with complicated bullet patterns and giant robots.

[Forlorn Drifter]

I once played my Xbox 360 real late into the night. I had this odd dream about me riding on horses with John Marston from RED DEAD REDEMPTION. We fought zombies with the guns from Gears of War, and there was an extremely large gummy bear...

Extreme amounts of junk food late at night mixed with the dirty carpet in my sisters house led to this oddness.

Yeesh.

[Key-Glyph]

I actually have tons of dreams in which I somehow understand that I am playing the role of a character in a video game, except that I'm still my own self and I'm still in a physically real environment. It's as if I've either been sucked into a game, a la Flynn in TRON, or I've walked into a gigantic scripted scene that I can somewhat predict but yet influence with my own genuine reactions, a la Truman in The Truman Show. I often get visions of what's coming next, or know what I'm "supposed" to say/do and what exactly will occur afterward (e.g., "aha, the torches in this room are only here so I will light them and get those doors to open").

What's happening is probably that I get within a hair's breadth of lucid dreaming, but since I am never aware that I'm in a dream, I don't actively control much beyond my own actions. What I mean is, I understand that I'm in a game scenario that can be controlled to a certain extent -- but since I always truly believe the scenario is actually happening, I believe my interaction with it is occurring "in the real world," so-to-speak.

The only example I can think of at the moment is a dream involved my navigating through a deserted but zombie-laden urban environment in the midwest. I was aware that 1) I had volunteered to "play" this event and that it was staged despite seeming 100% real, that 2) there were established starting and ending points to my involvement (that I was entering a "stage" or "episode" to be completed), and 3) that there were predictable rules and tropes that could be exploited within the scenario (for instance, zombies remaining inactive until I came within a certain distance, or zombies being totally unable to walk up stairs for no logical reason). This particular dream began with my understanding that the stage had already started, and I remember thinking, "This is making me uncomfortable, but now that it's begun I'm not allowed to quit until I finish; I wish I'd never initiated this."

[loganm187]

Majoras Mask..that moon and all the weird town fold were harassing me to no end. Creeeepy.

[Dylan]

There was a long stretch of time for me in which my dreams frequently involved Team Fortress 2. I honestly have no idea why. I definitely like the game and have played it a lot, but its appearances in my dreams were disproportionate to its presence in my day to day life. Additionally, I've played other games for longer periods of time and never dreamed about them once. I almost never dream about video games, so TF2 appearing so frequently was really an anomaly. Very often this would take the form of the dream suddenly shifting to a TF2-like situation out of nowhere, like I'd be in my house doing something and suddenly I'd walk around the corner and there'd be an engineer building a dispenser or something. The other way this would manifest was that suddenly I'd start behaving like a specific class, by doing something like zooming around and double jumping like a Scout or trying to inconspicuously get behind people like a Spy.

[noiseredux]

last night I had a dream that newegg was selling PS2 HRAP's for $20 brand new.