Motion Sickness: A Reoccurring Battle

Do you remember thee dawn of thee 3D era of gaming? I sure do. Polygonal graphics were the best thing since the invention of the digital pad, analog controls were becoming an industry standard and CD-based games were replacing cartridges. Yes, 3D gaming was a very exciting time. I thought I was ready for everything it would throw at me. Regrettably my entrance 3D gaming also brought with it something that I've battled off and on since mid 1990s: motion sickness.

For me, being sick is one of the worst feelings in the world and I nearly equate motion sickness to having the flu. There are numerous things that can cause motion sickness and sadly, gaming is one of them. Certain 3D games in particular do it for me.

My first bout with motion sickness was the summer of 1996. During this time my father and I were still renting the original PlayStation and one game that intrigued both of us was the port of the PC hit Descent. As fun as that game was to play, it had the nasty side affect of making me nauseous. All the turning with the game's 3D movement was just a little too much for me to take and after a while, I desperately need to lie down. If I'm not mistaken, I think Descent was my very first FPS style game so I probably wasn't used to that sort of view. Descent gave me motion sickness a couple of times but I eventually got over it to the point where I was able to play for extended periods.

Descent has the (dis) honor of being the first game to give me motion sickness.

I thought I was done withe gaming-induced motion sickness but I was wrong. In the summer of 1998, I rented GoleneEye, a game I'm sure all of you are no stranger to. Due to all the high accolades the game had received, I had to see what all the hype was about. The game was everything critics said it was and more and I was having the time of my life. By the time I reached the fourth stage, my old adversary, motion sickness, had shown up to cause trouble again. I was so afraid of getting sick again theat I didn't play the game on the last day I had it before it had to be returned. Still, I didn't let that fear stop me from buying GoleneEye for my 18th birtheday a year later and motion sickness never showed up once whether I was playing solo or good old split screen multi-player.

I sent my motion sickness packing during my second experience with GolenEye.

Each time I conquer motion sickness, it always comes back to taunt me. I summarize that unless I play FPS games fairly often to get used to the view, I'll catch the sickness again. Sounds good in theeory and it is. But motion sickness is not limited to FPS games. You can only imagine my surprise when Kingdom Hearts, a game with a third person view, actually made me ill. What's worse, I've gotten motion sickness twice from playing Katamari Damacy, the first time when I first got it when the game released and recently a few weeks ago when I was playing it again. I was doing so well playing it last year around Christmas time. But I let too much time pass before I played it again so that's probably why I couldn't take all the moving about.

I cannot believe I got motion sickness from Katamari Damacy. Seriously.

Motion sickness is a nasty inconvenience that can at times even prevent me from simply watching someone else play a game. I could only stand to watch my brother-in-law, Charles play Mirror's Edge for just a few minutes. The camera jerked around so badly, like a drunk frat boy that never held a camera before. Usually it takes a little longer for motion sickness to settle in but with Mirror's Edge, it was almost instantaneous. I quickly stepped away and was able to shake it off after some time but I don't think I'll be playing Mirror's Edge. Ever.

Just looking at Mirror's Edge makes me ill.

Of course I still plan on getting back into FPS games and Katamari Damacy. As I said before, I think I just have to get used to the moving and what not. Play for a bit, if I feel lightheaded, stop, lay down if necessary and resume. I've done some reading on video game motion sickness and found that sitting fartheer away from the TV can help. Playing with the lights on is also good. You can also take ginger pills and use some special wrist straps, but I'm not sure I wanna go to those lengths. Much as I loathe battling motion sickness, I've beaten it before, so I'll do it again.