Lovely Sweet Dream

by Hiroko Nishikawa

This is a diary of ten years' worth of dreams. From this dream diary, the game "LSD" was born. Now, following its birth, from these dream fragments and the collaboration of 80 artistic units, this book was born. A dream world apart from the game "LSD"; this is "LOVELY SWEET DREAM."

198 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1998

Reviews

[P.E. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dream Monologue Log

Soundtrack: Dire Dire Docks revisited


Hiroko Nishikawa was a game designer at Asmik Ace Entertainment at the time of LSD: Dream Emulator's development. The detailed, vivid descriptions of her dreams served as inspiration for Osamu Sato for LSD: Dream Emulator.

I was genuinely excited to pore over this collection of dreams.

Spanning from April 1987 to December 1996 the dreams in this diary are said to have provided the main inspiration for Osamu Sato's game(?) L.S.D. Dream Emulator, that one-of-a-kind curios.

I have found no such thing in this work. Some of the dreams are curious enough, but I wouldn't recommend it, as it is nothing out of the ordinary, really. There are few dream diaries to be found on the market, possibly, but that doesn't make Lovely Sweet Dream a particularly captivating work of literature.

'Monday, December 3, 1996

I'm dreaming of piecing together parts of bridges and roads to edit on my own the path I'm going to take.'

[Danni Fuentes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super cool dream diary. The presentation is where it shines. There are over 40 different artists interpreting the author's dreams - it's so interesting to see reoccurring themes illustrated so differently. If you don't speak Japanese you miss out on a few dreams, but it isn't enough to ruin the book.

[BonGard · Rating 5 out of 5]

من کتاب رو به شکل صوتی از کانال دانجن چیل گوش دادم
و قبلن هم آرت‌ورکش رو دیده بودم. متاسفانه من بازی ال اس دی رو خیلی کم فعلن بازی کردم اما جالب که این متن الهام‌بخشش بود. واقعن نگه داشتن دفتری که خاب‌ها درونش نوشته شده باشن ممکنه روزی کارآمد بشه

[a pair of m. c. escher reading glasses]

Monday, December 3, 1996
I'm dreaming of piecing together parts of bridges and roads to edit on my own the path I'm going to take.

[La Nurisca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gustaría tener este libro en mi casa, creo que la forma correcta de leerlo es escogiendo sueños al azar para saborearlos durante veinte minutos, y no yo aquí con un pdf roñoso. Qué bien me cae todo el equipo que está detrás de este proyecto artístico; me ha convencido: me declaro enamorada de la capacidad que tiene el subconsciente para alterar la cotidianeidad (así que, sí, se ve que LSD es un nombre apropiadísimo), pero también del ojo de la vigilia, que es capaz de disfrutarlo. Además, pocas cosas serán más majas que las ilustraciones japonesas de los años 90. Me quedo con muchísimas ganas de saber qué ponía en lo que no está traducido y los pequeños juegos que se me han escapado por la barrera del idioma, que el japonés es especialmente cruel para esto.

[Kahleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

The dream diary that inspired the existence of the cult classic dreamscape navigation game known as "LSD: Dream Emulator" for the PS1.

Despite Osamu's detachment towards such a limiting categorisation, I believe LSD: Dream Emulator holds many mechanics one can still readily assign to a game which does not negate its present standing as an art form.

I believe neither of these to be mutually exclusive simply because they defy traditional conventions found in the medium itself.

This dream diary seen here, as charted by Hiroko, was the very blueprint Osamu built atop of. The extent of the insight he gleaned is open to speculation, however, I may still venture a guess having read it through a lens that accounted for the end result of the game.

The presentation of Hiroko's dreams and her voice in general is highly passive. She remarks on events as gruesome and appalling in the same light as she would the mere changing of the weather.

As such, the very heights of absurdity sit next to the outright mundane and through little discrimination when it comes to what catches her eye, all these elements come together to hold equal merit.

Her voice is both all-encompassing and unintrusive.

Furthermore, she is most frequently an observer and not the main catalyst of the circumstances that befall her in a majority of these entries.

I believe Osamu derived some core concepts from LSD not from the very structure of the journal itself, but rather from her demeanor.

There is no conventional reward for charting your dreams. You self-assign your own goals and motivations. Hiroko was not journaling to glean a deeper truth, she simply did it because it was fun and she liked looking back at them.

This lack of interpretation is what I believe led Osamu to see a different kind of "player character" in Hiroko. One who explores and ventures through mystic realms without a purpose but was fulfilled simply by having created her own incentive for doing so.

The ripples of this led to us having LSD today which in an ironic sense means Hiroko was at the forefront of creating something beyond the scope of her journal through her own observations without even knowing it.

While I personally struggled to find many thematically relevant motifs carried over from her dreams into the imagery found in the game, I still believe this book to be a faithful companion piece to compliment the mindset of the game from a game design perspective.

Most dreams have been translated to English, but there's a good 15-20 pages of untranslated dreams.