Multibowl

2016. Bennett Foddy (b. 1978, Melbourne, Australia. Lives in New York) and AP Thomson (b. 1989, Istanbul, Turkey. Lives in Brooklyn, NY).

Multibowl is a collection of fast-paced mini games sourced and sampled from more than 300 video games that were published between 1976 and 2000. Two competing players are dropped into the middle of one of these games and given very little time (usually 30 seconds or less) to accomplish a goal before progressing to the next mini game. Often these goals align with the source’s original play (e.g. knockout your opponent or beat them to the finish line), but frequently they bend towards the counterintuitive and even subversive.

These rapid context shifts task players with quickly understanding the controls, mechanics, and rules of each mini game, making the chaotic scramble for comprehension the core aesthetic of Multibowl. All the while, Multibowl offers a surprisingly effective way to explore some of the winding alleyways of video game history, a journey made possible by the free and open source Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) on which Multibowl is built.