in video games because even natural human existence cannot be reduced to simple objectives. For inspiration, Sato pulled ideas from a dream diary written by Hiroko Nishikawa, a game designer at Asmik Ace Entertainment, who had been writing in the diary for about a decade. As Sato is also a musician, he composed the game's soundtrack using samples to create around 500 musical patterns. He felt this approach more closely resembled the chaos of a dream state in contrast to full drawn-out melodies. He was particularly influenced from music coming out of England's Warp record label. Initially he was going to include more pentatonic scales and melodies to give the game an Asian flair, but he came to realize this was not necessary after seeing the international success of Japanese producers like Ken Ishii, who was later featured on a remix soundtrack featuring some of the game's music. The title "LSD" is a reference to the drug of the same name, lysergic acid diethylamide, in a bid to attract the hippie and psychedelic subcultures. The acronym was not given any single interpretation in the game. Instead, there were many interpretations in the game such as "in Life, the Sensuous Dream" and "in Limbo, the Silent Dream". Sato felt this represented the chaos and confusion of dreams. Release The game was released in Japan on October 22, 1998. Sato had hoped for an American release as with Eastern Mind, but he had no further say in localization. LSD sold few copies and now is rare to find on secondary markets, selling for high prices when it becomes listed for sale. It was re-released on the Japanese PlayStation Store on August 11, 2010. LSD was released as a standalone game and in a limited edition set which came with a bonus CD titled "Lucy in the Sky with Dynamites" and a book called "Lovely Sweet Dream". The CD contains about an hour of acid techno music and the book is composed of excerpts from Nishikawa's dream diary. The book has English translations of many dreams and illustrations provided by a wide variety of artists. Sato was adamant about releasing a special soundtrack, so a double-disc soundtrack compilation titled LSD and Remixes was issued alongside the game. It features remixes by Ken Ishii, Jimi Tenor, µ-Ziq, and Morgan Geist, among others. Reception LSD: Dream Emulator quickly fell into obscurity after release due to