Landscapes, video games, and the reconfiguration of the past: a study of The Mask of

the Sun (1982)

Graduate Student Conference “Roots on Routes: Environment, Identity, and Space”
Graduate Student Committee of Comparative Literature & Hispanic Studies Programs in
collaboration with the Migration and Ethnic Relations Collaborative Graduate Specialization
Abstract: Video games are an increasingly popular and successful medium of entertainment. Since the
release of video games set in the past and in different parts of the world in the 1980s, video games have
allowed us to examine their innovative cultural representations and their unique relationship between
players and virtual environments. Among all the cultures represented in the 1980s, the Aztec culture is a
remarkable case, due to the colonial discourse that underlies many of the games. Likewise, it is also
because of the relevance that the landscape has in the reconstruction of the history and culture of
American civilizations.

To analyze how video games have represented Aztec culture and the function of landscape and player
agency in the reconfiguration of history, I examine the first Aztec-themed game, the text-based adventure
The Mask of the Sun (1982). The analysis is composed of three main points. The first is about the role of
the video game medium itself and the game genre in portraying Aztec culture under a colonial discourse.
The second is about the agency of the player and its relationship to landscape. Finally, on the importance
of the representation of the landscape of an ancient civilization of the Americas in reconfiguring the past
and our perception of it. To present my arguments about the game and its relationship to culture and
landscape, I make use of the formal qualitative method of gameplay, as well as Penix-Tadsen's cultural
ludology.
 Slide 1: Title

Hi everyone, my name is Javier Ponce, and I’m in the Hispanic Studies PhD program

here at Western. Today I am going to talk about landscapes, video games and the

reconfiguration of the past: an analysis of the video game The mask of the Sun.

Slide 2: Table of contents

Outline: Before analyzing the game, I will introduce the paper, including my objectives,

thesis, and methodology. Then, I will explain some basic notions of what a game is. I

will go over the story and mechanics of the game, with special emphasis on the

landscape and characters. Further on, I will analyze the game from a decolonial point of

view, making use mainly of concepts of Stuart Hall, Phillip Penix-Tadsen, Alenda

Chang, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Matterlart.

Slide 3: _Introduction_

Let's start with the introduction. Here we have a screenshot of the beginning of the

game. We will have the opportunity to see more as the presentation progresses.

Slide 4: Introduction

Introduction: The relevance of video games in the configuration of the collective

imaginary has grown in recent decades along with their popularity and financial success.

There has also been an increase in the number of video games set in the past and in

different parts of the world. However, the amount of attention Aztec culture received

from adventure games in the 1980s is notable. These representations of Aztec culture,

including its history, iconography, and landscapes, were often inaccurate or absent. One

might even wonder what made them Aztec in the first place, the reasoning behind their

portrayal, and how these representations affect how we understand the history of these

places.
 Justification: In this paper, I decided to examine The Mask of the Sun because it

is the first of many adventure games released in the early 1980s in North America with

Aztec themes and landscapes.

Objective: My objective is to study the role of The Mask of the Sun and similar

games in the production of a colonial gaze and the reconfiguration of historical

consciousness.

Thesis: In this paper, I argue that the representation of Aztec culture and

landscapes in the text-based adventure game The Mask of the Sun is configured not only

by the medium of the game and the adventure genre, but also shaped by a colonial

discourse. This is shown through different methods such as exoticization and

fetishization, which depict Aztec culture, history, and landscapes as hollow and without

a past, so it becomes easier for the colonizer to extract resources and treasures.

Methodology: The analysis of this essay is conducted by an analytical game

playing, informed by either my own gameplay or through observation of other players'

gameplays. To carry out this analysis I also make use of Penix-Tadsen's (2016) "cultural

ludology", a qualitative and interdisciplinary method that focuses on how culture and

discourse impacts gameplay, and what meanings are produced by the video game

(Penix-Tadsen 1). The methodology includes the analysis of text and visuals that

construct the story, the rules of the game, and the game mechanics. In addition, I include

the manual and the game box in my analysis, as both are crucial to understanding the

context and story of the game (Fernández-Vara 35).

Slide 5: What is a video game?

For a game to be a game, limits must be established. A game needs rules that regulate

the behavior and the way it is played. Likewise, it is “played out” within certain limits of

time and place, the insides of the game known as the “magic circle” by Johan Huizinga.

Slide 6: The Mask of the Sun

We will now continue with the description and observations of the game.

Slide 7: Game overview

The Mask of the Sun is an adventure game developed by Ultrasoft, Inc., a Slovakian

computer game developer, and published in North America by Brøderbund software

Inc., an American video game maker. The game was written by Alan B. Clark, Larry

Franks, Christopher P. Anson, and Margaret Anson. It was first released on the Apple II

console in 1982, and then on Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 home computers in 1984.

The player controls Mac Steele, an Indiana Jones-type archeologist, adventurer,

and treasure hunter in his search for the Mask of the Sun in Mexico City. Although

getting the mask would bring him fame and wealth, his ulterior motive to find the mask

is to break a curse that could cost him his life.

The game is text-based, so the player must enter commands for the character

to interact with its environment and move around the game world. The commands that

can be executed are limited to sentences that include a verb and an object, such as

"LOOK PILLS", "EXAMINE ROOM" or "GO SOUTH". If there is an unknown word,

no object or no verb, the computer responds with "I don't understand ["WORD"]".

Slide 8: Game context

To understand how The Mask of the Sun came out as it is, we need to contextualize its

time. The first commercial games appeared in the early 1970s, but it was not until 1975

with the game Colossal Cave Adventure, that the adventure genre was born.

At the end of the 1970s, came out the second generation of consoles, or 8-bit era.

At the same time, arcades led by Japanese companies Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and Taito

went through their golden age. However, the video game industry ended up falling as

soon as it rose, leading to the crash of 1983. The crash was due to "the saturation of the

market and the eager releases of poorly made licensed games for the Atari 2600" (Picard

294). This also meant a great opening for companies in the USA and Europe to compete

in the video game market. With the passage of time and the rise of the West in the video

game market, the vision also changed. The game worlds evolved from being text-based

to one-contained screens to interactive three-dimensional environments. And with space,

also came the representation of landscape and culture.

Slide 9: Landscape

Let’s start with the landscape. At the beginning of the game, Mac Steele receives a map

that shows the locations of the Aztec ruins of Central Mexico, supposedly from the

journal of Cortez' second expedition. The map locates rather simply the temple of the

Snake, the pyramid of Tikal, the Pyramid of the Sun and the roads to get there. The

game describes these ruins as "unexplored" and "deep within the jungle". It is also said

to be "a world totally alien from everything you know”. While these places are real, the

game insists on depicting them as ruins and empty of people. Inside the temples and

pyramids there are no archeological discoveries, but treasures, secret passages, and

dangers. To get through them, the player must get through dozens of hallways and

solve puzzles of varied difficulty.

Slide 10: Characters

In addition to Mac Steele and Francisco Roboff, two rival and foreign tomb raiders, we

have Professor De Perez and his assistant Raoul, who help the protagonist in his search

for the mask. Also, throughout the game we will meet a suspicious man wearing a

poncho and a hat, a victim of the curse of the pyramid, the bandits who assist Roboff,

and an old lady who turns out to be a djinn.

Considering the size of the map, the game world feels rather empty of people.

There are virtually no characters who are not involved in some way in the quest for the

mask. Archeologists dress in formal attire, while the other Mexican characters wear big

sombreros and ponchos.

Slide 11: Analysis

Onto the analysis. First with the landscape.

Slide 12: Environment and characters

The Mask of the Sun's environments feel vague, generic, and empty, relying on the

feeling of motion to awe the player. The Aztec landscapes are there to geographically

contextualize a generic narrative arc of the adventure game. As Dorfman and Armand

state in their groundbreaking How to read Donald Duck, an analysis on capitalist

ideology on Disney comics from the 1960s but with a pertinent and translatable critique

to different media such as games, "This is Mexico recognizable by its commonplace

exotic identity labels, not the real Mexico with all its problems" (48). The real historical

sites in Mexico, full of visitors, culture, and heritage are stripped from all life, and gets

relegated to an empty background.

Alenda Chang points out that game environments like The Mask of the Sun "tend

to lean heavily on clichéd landscapes, abandoning any attempts at regional specificity

[...]. Such environments give players the disorienting and somewhat anaesthetizing sense
that this could be anywhere or nowhere at all." (59) There is a counterargument, as

Penix-Tadsen contends, that simplification is somewhat inevitable in games –even more

so in the 1980s– but it is not necessarily a shortcoming (181). After all, the game world

is a million times younger and smaller than the real world. Here, we are at the key

juncture: the distinction between the needs of the medium and genre and the

implications of the discourse. We know the landscape is limited by the technology of the

time, but colonial discourse also plays its part. Inside this empty landscape we fall into

two main reductionisms: that historic sites are full of lethal dangers, and historical

artifacts are there only to be looted.

Finally, it's important to note how the historical sites are built by the Sun god and

therefore fetishized from their creators. The historical sites are also abandoned, in ruins,

and therefore the colonized subjects are deprived of their history, and of seeing

themselves as products of it. What produces and reinforces the colonial discourse in this

case is that the Aztec landscapes and culture represent extractable resources, they are

objects that the colonizer can appropriate and that by doing so, and not someone with

worse intentions, they are doing what is best for the colonized subject.

As for the characters, there are virtually none who are not involved in some way

in the search for the mask. Most Mexican characters are stereotypes and have no

dialogue, except for Raoul, who acts as servant of Steele. Then we have Roboff, who’s

purpose as a villain is "to legitimatize the right of the other to appropriate the treasure"

(Dorfman & Armand 66). Of course, Steele is just as bad as Roboff, stealing resources

and naively leading Raoul to his death. But because the natives are forced to choose the

lesser of two evils, Mac Steele can gain the sympathy of the player. Also, the lack of

women in the game just pushes further the narrative that the world of adventure and

discovery “belongs” to men.

 Slide 13: Player's agency

The player adopts the point of view of a foreign character, who sees everything and

everyone from his colonial gaze. On the one hand, player interaction is limited by the

aspects of the game. For example, we cannot make Mac Steele return the lost treasures,

nor express gratitude towards local characters. On the other hand, the language that the

game does understand is always subject to attitudes of possessing or attacking. In the

game, all Steele can do is stretch his legs, take things (steal them), kick, examine the

room, walk, and shoot. The only times the player can do good are rewarded, and all their

faults are forgiven. The role of the player is not to stop to see the beautiful landscapes,

question, or even challenge his role in the game, but to examine and loot everything at

sight, raid tombs, taking advantage of the people and resources of the colonized land,

and leave everything in worse condition than it was in before.

Slide 14-15: Conclusions

We have seen how games have settled for historical themes because of their endless

possibilities and what-ifs. Their influence has collective reach, so analyzing how they

began can point to how things have changed, for better or worse.

IN CONCLUSION, even if games are obliged to simplify the complex

relationships and mechanics of the world, games are not free of discourse. Text-based

adventure games like The Mask of the Sun are classical Aztec-themed games that recall

another time where media was craving for stories that could entertain the Western public

while also pushing a narrative of imperialism and colonialism. The game appears at the

right time and place to inaugurate a series of games with the same theme such as Aztec,

Aztec Adventure, Aztec Challenge, The Gold of the Aztecs, Montezuma's Revenge, and

more. In The Mask of the Sun, and many games that came after, the real historical sites

in Mexico, full of visitors, culture, and heritage are stripped from all life, and get
relegated to an empty background, full of gold and treasures, and open to being

conquered by anyone who dares to play the games. The only language the player can

speak is that of violence and theft. There is no doing otherwise, as the text command

will not be understood. The player is conditioned to take part in the colonial discourse to

win the game.

Slide 16-18: Gameography, Bibliography, Image Credits

Slide 19: Thank you!