Twilight Syndrome: Human's OTHER Classic
Aug 1, 2006 11:03:21 GMT -5
Post by jenniferdarknight on Aug 1, 2006 11:03:21 GMT -5
A long long time ago, in a time far far back, there was a company called Human Entertainment, who had just gotten popular after their SNES hit, Clock Tower, flew off Japanese shelves. Putting their heads together, they got a new director and some of the same staff behind the original Clock Tower, but decided to use another angle for horror rather than the 'crazy psycho killer' end...
And thus, Twilight Syndrome was born.
Twilight Syndrome is one of those adventure titles with lots of exploration and not much else, having heavy focus on Japanese legends such as the Toilet Spirit (Hanako-san), as well as High School Urban Legends. You play as three girls (Yukari, Mika, and Chisato), who all have the "Twilight Syndrome", or the ability to see and sense spirits. Yukari is the leader character (AKA: You), whose decisions effect the course of the game; Chisato is Yukari's shy best friend who is overly psychic, but at the same time whines a lot and likes to tell you how important it is for you guys to run away from everything; Mika is an underclassman, running around with Yukari and Chisato as a sort of third leg, though she provides lots of insight and is usually the one who orchestrates these 'ghost searches' that these girls do in the middle of the night.
Like Clock Tower, this game relies on the "power of silence" to keep the player at a nail's end when playing. Unlike Clock Tower, the chase scenes and the adrenaline moments have you make text-based decisions, and you can't run around and hide yourself.
To an American gamer, a horror game with more story than scare factor (a lot of this game is just story and reading text, though there are plenty of frightening moments during the course of the game during your explorations...however, it's the story itself that builds up to the adrenaline-pumping scares during the game) will turn them off, and a game with more Japanese text than you know what to do with would also turn off most gamers here, but in Japan it got pretty popular, with multiple Drama CDs (I know there were two for the first game alone), a couple sequels (The rights were given to Sammy after Human fell, and they made the latest Twilight Syndrome game, "Twilight Syndrome: Seikai" shortly before the PS2 came out), and even a movie. In a sense, Twilight Syndrome did better than Clock Tower, and Clock Tower 2 (in Japan of course...) was actually used as a medium to advertise Twilight Syndrome's Drama CDs (look in the Japanese version's box, and see the little slip on "Twilight Syndrome Drama CD" included inside, I kid you not)...but it's hard to say which was more popular.
I'm trying to find all the other adventure games that Human did, because I know there are some lesser-known games that they made, though Human was, for the most part, known in Japan for their horror adventure titles.
I'm going to try to get some more information on these games later on...
And thus, Twilight Syndrome was born.
Twilight Syndrome is one of those adventure titles with lots of exploration and not much else, having heavy focus on Japanese legends such as the Toilet Spirit (Hanako-san), as well as High School Urban Legends. You play as three girls (Yukari, Mika, and Chisato), who all have the "Twilight Syndrome", or the ability to see and sense spirits. Yukari is the leader character (AKA: You), whose decisions effect the course of the game; Chisato is Yukari's shy best friend who is overly psychic, but at the same time whines a lot and likes to tell you how important it is for you guys to run away from everything; Mika is an underclassman, running around with Yukari and Chisato as a sort of third leg, though she provides lots of insight and is usually the one who orchestrates these 'ghost searches' that these girls do in the middle of the night.
Like Clock Tower, this game relies on the "power of silence" to keep the player at a nail's end when playing. Unlike Clock Tower, the chase scenes and the adrenaline moments have you make text-based decisions, and you can't run around and hide yourself.
To an American gamer, a horror game with more story than scare factor (a lot of this game is just story and reading text, though there are plenty of frightening moments during the course of the game during your explorations...however, it's the story itself that builds up to the adrenaline-pumping scares during the game) will turn them off, and a game with more Japanese text than you know what to do with would also turn off most gamers here, but in Japan it got pretty popular, with multiple Drama CDs (I know there were two for the first game alone), a couple sequels (The rights were given to Sammy after Human fell, and they made the latest Twilight Syndrome game, "Twilight Syndrome: Seikai" shortly before the PS2 came out), and even a movie. In a sense, Twilight Syndrome did better than Clock Tower, and Clock Tower 2 (in Japan of course...) was actually used as a medium to advertise Twilight Syndrome's Drama CDs (look in the Japanese version's box, and see the little slip on "Twilight Syndrome Drama CD" included inside, I kid you not)...but it's hard to say which was more popular.
I'm trying to find all the other adventure games that Human did, because I know there are some lesser-known games that they made, though Human was, for the most part, known in Japan for their horror adventure titles.
I'm going to try to get some more information on these games later on...
