Are you sure you want this?

Today I found a copy of Clock Tower: The First Fear, the Wonderswan version, at the local toy shop in the mall. It was priced 300 yen, marked down from 4900 yen (a total of about $2.50, down from $40). When I took it to the counter, the woman behind the register looked at me incredulously.

“Are you sure you want this,” she asked. “It’s for Wonderswan.” She ran her finger under the Wonderswan logo to emphasize the decrepitness of the dead handheld system. When she rang it up, the register insisted that the total cost was still 4900 yen. She ended up having to manually key in the discounted prince. I paid by dropping three 100-yen coins into a plastic tray on the counter.

As I left the store, I noticed that a handful of other Wonderswan games were available for sale, and all of them looked like they’d been sitting on the shelf for years. I am probably the first person to buy a Wonderswan game from that place in the last three years. The woman behind the register probably thought I was crazy.

We Produce it for Whole Human Beings

I’ve been in Japan for about a week now, and so far this trip has been extremely useful for The Quest. I’ve managed to pick up a bunch of Japan-only titles without destroying my wallet, which is good. I’m not sure that I’ve managed to buy any games that are actually good, but my goal here is collection, review, and transcription. So far I’ve managed to find Gregory Horror Show, Hungry Ghosts, Kyoufu Shimbun Heiseiban Kaiki! Shinrei File, and Michigan. The only games on my shopping list that I haven’t been able to locate yet are Nanatsu no Hikan: Senritsu no Bishou (the speed at which Dreamcast games are vanishing from the shelves over here is amazing) and Ghost Vibration.

Last year when I was in Japan, I ran across a game ominously titled The Fear. At the time, I didn’t buy it because it was horrifically expensive and looked, well, horrifically bad. I posted about it at the time, and 16bitman tracked down some info about this game. Today I picked the game up for 2900 yen (about $25), which may or may not be a good deal depending on how horrible the game turns out to be. I think I decided last year that this title probably isn’t survival horror (as it’s probably FMV and text), I’m still looking forward to playing through it. Maybe I’ll put together a feature about the game when I am done.

I wouldn’t want you guys to think that I flew 5000 miles just to buy potentially-terrible horror games. I’ve managed to get my shopping done in-between visiting friends in Nagoya and Osaka, chilling with my in-laws, and generally enjoying my time in this awesome country. But hey, this is a horror blog, so you guys get the horror news!

I should be back in the States early next week. Maybe then I can bring myself to finish Kuon once and for all. Ugh. Every time I play that game my opinion of it decreases.

I’m headed to Japan for New Years, so updates may be a little slow. I’ve got a pretty good feature update in the works though, so stay tuned for that. On my trip my shopping list includes Nanatsu no Hikan, Hungry Ghosts, and Gregory Horror Show, among other obscure titles. I’ll report back from the field as often as I can. See you in the new year!

Indigo Prohpecy

 I’ve just finished Indigo Prophecy (also known as Fahrenheit, which I think is a cooler name), a cinematic action-adventure game by French developer Quantic Dream. I’m posting about it here because it is probably of interest to readers of this site: though it’s not really a proper horror game, the creepy factor is pretty high in a couple of key scenes. The game takes notable influence from a range of films, including one very obvious reference to Silence of the Lambs. But even if horror isn’t the central theme, I’m recommending Indigo Prophecy to you because it’s a pretty awesome game.

I think the closest analog to Indigo Prophecy is the Shenmue series: a compelling storyline unfolds with the use of adventure game mechanics, quick time events (also employed to good effect in Resident Evil 4), and conversation trees. The presentation is incredibly cinematic, and the developers often employ a Steven Soderbergh-esque effect where the view is split between several different camera angles simultaneously. The quick time events are all analog stick based, which ends up being less frustrating than Shenmue 2’s D-Pad/Button system without becoming any less challenging. Though the game sort of falls apart at the very end, the story is, for the most part, extremely interesting, especially because it is told from the viewpoints of a variety of different characters. There’s something extremely compelling about playing a man who finds himself at the scene of a murder as well as the police who must try to track him down.

Though it isn’t perfect, Indigo Prophecy is an extremely well-done game, and I think that it’s something that anybody who is a fan of the horror or adventure genre will enjoy.

Design the Silent Hill Movie Poster, Win $2,500

1up.com has a story about a contest to design the upcoming Silent Hill movie by Christopher Gains. From their article:

The full contest details are available at www.welcometosilenthill.com, but here’s what you need to know: design a poster in JPG or GIF format no larger than 300K using assets provided on the website itself (art from the games are off limits) and submit it by January 3. Staring the next day, the website will start tallying votes for best poster design.

Sounds like a lot of fun! Time to bust out Photoshop!

Rule of Rose Info

Insert Credit has some interesting new information on Rule of Rose. Here’s an excerpt:

You take the role of a young girl in england in the 1930s, who is lured to a specific house by a boy who only she can see. He gives her a book of disturbing fairly tales, which by degrees come to a sort of life in this house. The house is occupied by other young girls who simply want to be loved, but through their naive innocence create a rather horrid lord of the flies-like environment, from which the heroine wishes to escape. … The game may not hit the states, given the rather disturbing, and sometimes psuedo-erotic content.

Sounds interesting! There’s also an official site.