1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF FEBRUARY 11 | IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE!

A Video Game Time Capsule

Cover Story: What would aliens assume about humanity from holding a controller?

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liens have been picking up our radio waves for years. The further away from Earth they are, the older the songs they're listening to. This was illustrated nicely in the opening scene of the 1997 film Contact--as the camera pulls away from Earth, traveling the length of the galaxy, recordings from earlier and earlier in human history play out. The soundtrack goes from Spice Girls to A Flock of Seagulls to, at Venus, Nixon's "I'm not a crook" speech. Rag time jazz and old-timey radio ads fizzle out to nothing by the time we reach the Eagle Nebula.

Director Robert Zemeckis may have taken some artistic liberties with that scene, but it nevertheless raises an interesting question: how would extraterrestrials interpret our culture? The Voyager space ships that were launched in 1977 each carry a Golden Record that contains sounds and images meant to convey the fabric of our world to alien life forms in the distant future. A message from then-president Jimmy Carter reads:

"This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."

Unfortunately, scientist and Golden Record committee head Carl Sagan apparently couldn't figure out how to fit Pong on the vinyl, and no video games were included on the Voyagers. Just imagine: millions of years in the future, intelligent beings from another galaxy are studying our long-dead culture, and they have no idea what Portal is. It's nothing less than a tragedy.

Here's my proposal: we launch another spacecraft, and we jam this one full of video games. We'll use the Smithsonian's "The Art of Video Games" exhibit as our guide. With games ranging from Pac-Man to Heavy Rain, we send this tin can of a time capsule hurtling through the cold and lonely depths of space on the count of ten. It would drift, aimlessly, for hundreds--thousands--maybe millions of years. But with a little luck, in another place and another time, another species would come across our games and boot up Donkey Kong for the first time in eons. Here's what I think they would assume about us.

We're all invincible (or we've just got great health care)

It's impossible for us to even begin to attempt to fathom what life forms from a distant part of space might be like. But chances are they won't be immortal.

Imagine their surprise, then, when they fall from the back of that derailed train over the cliff edge at the beginning of Uncharted 2, only to see Nathan Drake seconds later right back where he was before. Try to picture their astonishment when, experiencing the city of Rapture through our eyes in BioShock (how strange it must be for them to get inside our heads like that), they experience death and rebirth in a nearby Vita-Chamber. And that game was set in 1959--our incredible re-spawn technology must be even more advanced by the year 2013!

Pitfall is the earliest game here that featured an avatar that resembled a person. Assuming these extraterrestrials associate those green and pink pixels with the image of a human, they'll likely be shocked when Harry drops from the trees back to the ground after falling prey to a crocodile, cobra or pit.

Unfortunately, this will probably also crush our chances of ever encountering these beings (assuming humanity is still around at this distant point in the future), since any space-faring civilization worth its moon salt will likely stay the hell away from the immortal race of humans.

Besides, we've got magic

Considering all the incredible technology we clearly have, the aliens will be surprised they hadn't heard of us sooner.

If the invincibility isn't enough to deter aliens from knocking on humanity's door, then our impressive magic powers certainly will be. Spells are an important part of most RPGs, but I doubt Peter Molyneux ever considered the impact they could have on our intergalactic relations when he was devising Fable's Ghost Sword spell. Hell, we've got magical ocarinas that control time, and necromancers who can raise the dead in Diablo 2. No alien would want to face that.

And when it's not magic, it's our incredibly advanced technology that might as well be magic. The Mass Relays in Mass Effect 2 we've discovered throughout space allow us to zip around at speeds these life forms have never dreamed of. Our Aperture Science Handheld Portal Devices defy the laws of physics themselves. Considering all the incredible technology we clearly have, the aliens will be surprised they hadn't heard of us sooner. Joke's on them, I guess.

We've got awesome talking pets

Pikmin 2 is the story of a tiny alien who enslaves a species of plant-like mammals to do his bidding, fight his battles and carry his laundry all over Earth. What advanced life forms wouldn't be jealous of that? Hell, sometimes we ride around on dragons just for the fun of it, like in the Panzer Dragoon series.

Aliens will also think that most, if not all, species on earth can talk (and, in the case of Star Fox, fly spaceships). Earthworms fire ray guns in Earthworm Jim, a hedgehog defies a scientist in Sonic Adventure, and a giant turtle wreaks havoc on a tribe of mushroom people and their oddly helpless human princess in Super Mario 64. Actually, given this perspective, they might not even be sure who the dominant species on Earth really is.

And even though it's not in the exhibit, we'd probably sneak in a Pokémon game (how the hell was this left out?), confirming to future generations of aliens that we really do take joy in capturing living creatures and making them fight for our amusement.

All of our females have enormous breasts

Assuming our modern video games are capable of accurately conveying to alien life forms the nature of sex, they might notice something strange about human females. Assuming these beings even have genders (who knows? Maybe they reproduce asexually).

From Heavy Rain's Madison Paige to Lara Croft, female humans in video games are almost universally depicted as attractive, large-breasted, and twenty-something years old, whether they're the stereotypical damsels or the protagonists themselves. Blame it on whatever you like, but the fact is an extraterrestrial species would likely be flummoxed by this trend.

Then again, they'd likely also notice that most video game heroes are strapping white males: Sam Fisher, Nathan Drake, Link, Mario, Solid Snake, the dude in BioShock (does he have a name?)--the list goes on. Aliens would get little sense of the diversity of humanity, unless they happen to find one of those Voyager Golden Records, too, in which case they'll just wonder what the hell is wrong with game developers for pretty much only making white, male protagonists.

Points are the ultimate human currency

The irony is that they wouldn't be far from the truth...

Art imitates life, right? Surely any space-faring race would have also developed art, however unrecognizable it might be to us puny humans, and they'd have their own version of that simple adage. Put to practice, it must mean one thing: points are the most valuable currency known to man.

Everything we do, from saving the world to stomping turtles, is ultimately done for points. Everyone's points are kept track of with extensive systems of numbered lists, and those among us with the highest points must be revered and exalted as leaders or even gods. The accruing of points is the ultimate human pursuit. It's why we get up in the morning, and why we play video games in the first place. The irony is that they wouldn't be far from the truth--just replace points with money, and they'd be spot-on.

Of course, in reality, like the radio waves that get lost amid the background noise of space, our video game time capsule would probably just float alone and undiscovered for millions of years before finally getting swallowed by a black hole somewhere in a distant galaxy.

But if aliens did find it, they might get years of enjoyment out of our favorite art form. We'd all be long dead, of course, but at least video games would continue making someone happy.

Mike Rougeau

Mike Rougeau is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles. In the event of an alien invasion, he would likely be the first to bend knee to our slimy new overlords.