Game Enjambment: What Killed the Underwater Games Console?

Game Enjambment is a reoccurring poetry series on games and gaming. 

There’s five reasons why this innovation never took off —

1.

I submerged myself in the bathtub
and thought
I don’t want to play video games here.

2.

Because games consoles don’t work underwater – Swim England (2017)

 

3.

A message from S.C.U.G.A president, Oma Keeling:

“We were developing an idea that only took off because of how it sounded,

It sounded like market expansion.

Self-Contained. Underwater. Gaming. Apparatus.

S.C.U.G.A

The project is dead now.

In truth

It only lived because I’d wanted to drown my PlayStation 3

For no reason other than stress and grief,

Intrusive catapult

Trap-your-sibling’s-head-in-a-car-door-type stuff.

Anyway,

We played Popcorn from Tetris to some whales,

They hated it.”

 

4.

It was raining so I went for a walk…

 

Saw a man carrying a big branch into his house

Very bushy and green

No explanation given

Or needed.

 

Since we grow underwater

In wombs

And learn through play

It only makes sense that you’d

Play Xbox on a submarine

To chill from war crimes.

 

A kid talks to their toy push bike

Telling it to wait for mummy and daddy

But it keeps on rolling

“Let’s do your coat up properly, chick.”

 

A vicar in white robes

Is talking to a congregation member with an umbrella

From their raised doorstep pulpit

Speaking with English vicar intonation

Mask hanging low about the chin.

 

I whip myself in the eye

With my mask

Before I enter the shop

 

Must get home before the pie I bought melts

And to put the Irn-Bru in the fridge

So that it’s cold and good.

 

A heart-shaped puddle has formed in a pothole

My back is cool and wet

The ground smells like moss

My mouth is dry

The stones are alive and

I shaved with a dull razor so my chin is sore.

 

Imagine playing games in a tub full of shaving cream

And stubble

How would you stop the hair sticking all over?

 

I gulp down the rest of the pint glass of water by the bed

It’s stale, but after a walk

It’s good.

 

5.

Younger and more exciting prospects

Yield success

In the underwater gaming industry!

BRINGING A NINTENDO SWITCH UNDERWATER! – BloomFilms (2017)

Read the rest of the Game Enjambment series.