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Otogirisō

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Otogirisō
Cover art
Developer(s)Chunsoft
Publisher(s)Chunsoft
Director(s)Koichi Nakamura
Producer(s)Koichi Nakamura
Designer(s)Kazuya Asano
Programmer(s)Manabu Yamana
Fukashi Omorita
Kenichi Masuta
Artist(s)Satoshi Fudaba
Writer(s)Shukei Nagasaka
Kazuya Asano
Osamu Yamazaki
Takashi Tsuzuki
Composer(s)Chiyoko Mitsumata
Platform(s)Super Famicom, PlayStation
ReleaseSuper Famicom
  • JP: March 7, 1992
Genre(s)Visual novel
Mode(s)Single player

Otogirisō (Japanese: 弟切草, lit. Hypericum erectum, a species of St. John's wort) is a visual novel game produced and published by Chunsoft. Marketed by the company as a "sound novel" rather than a video game, it is the progenitor of the developer and publisher's sound novel series and of the format of electronic entertainment now usually known generically as a visual novel. Koichi Nakamura conceived the title after showing his work on the Dragon Quest role-playing video games to a girl he was dating. On finding she did not enjoy them, he was encouraged to make a video game that he described as "for people who haven't played games before." Influenced by the early survival horror game Sweet Home, he developed it as a horror-themed interactive story. Released in March 1992, the game sold over 400,000 copies in Japan, including over 300,000 for Super Famicom and 100,000 for PlayStation.

A film adaptation of the game, St. John's Wort, written by Goro Nakajima and directed by Ten Shimoyama, was released in January 2001, while a sequel game, Kirigirisō, produced by Spike Chunsoft and serving as a crossover with and prequel to the Danganronpa series, was released in November 2016.

Plot

Two passengers survive a car accident and arrive at a mansion. Nobody answers the doorbell, so they kick in the door. They cannot find anyone in the house, but hear things lurking in the shadows.

Gameplay

In Otogirisō, the player interacts by selecting the text options that progress and effect the narrative.

Otogirisō is a sound novel. Academic Rebecca Crawford described the sound novel as a term used for visual novels, particularly when discussing Chunsoft's 20th century games. It features background graphics as animated illustrations of the narrative as well as background music and sound effects such as doors creaking open, footsteps and screams. Unlike regular novels, Otogirisō has its players advance by reading the in-game text and then can influence how the story will proceed by choosing from a list of options that are presented to them at key points in the narrative.

The game keeps track of how many times they've progressed to a narrative ending in the game, and how many choices they have made. Outside of choosing menu options to progress the story, the player can also move backwards and forwards through parts of the story they have already read. After reaching an ending of a narrative, the player can restart the game and unlock more options to choose from during the narrative, leading to new storylines and endings.

Production

The game was developed at the same time as Dragon Quest V. Koichi Nakamura had previously been involved with the development of the previous Dragon Quest games, specifically Dragon Quest (1986), Dragon Quest II (1987) and Dragon Quest III (1988), and recalled that he was dating a girl at the time who did not play video games. Although she tried playing the games that Nakamura had helped develop, she expressed that she did not really understand the games or what was supposed to be fun about them. This led to Nakamura thinking he should make a game that he described as "for people who haven't played games before." He thought of older text adventures but even felt those were a bit complicated. Programmer Manabu Yamana said prior to the idea of the sound novel, the team attempted a game that would contain elements of Dragon Quest, Sim City (1989), and Populous (1989) which he said "didn't work at all."

Nakamura then began developing a game that would be simplified further by "having it be decision-based, where you're just reading the story and it will come to a branching point where it'll give you a choice: the character does A, B, or C. It's very simple, but it also gives the player some level of interaction with the game. I figured something very simple like this would be something anybody could pick up, and maybe it would also lead them to playing other games in the future."

In contrast to the lighter comical action games and fantasy games at the time, Nakamura had worked on previously, the game was set in the real world and made in the horror genre. He described the influence of developing a horror themed game at the time lied in the video game Sweet Home, saying: "there weren’t any real horror games. But right around the time I was thinking of making Otogirisō, Capcom created Sweet Home. The thing that was really interesting about Sweet Home was that it so scary that you didn't want to continue playing. I wanted to create an experience where the user would be too afraid to press the button to continue the story, too."

Release

The game was released for Super Famicom in March 7, 1992. The game was described as selling "quite high" in Japan by Rik Haynes of Super Play, with Koichi Nakamura saying that sales of Super Famicom version of the game exceeded 300,000 copies. The game was released digitally in Japan through Nintendo's Virtual Console for the Wii on August 28, 2007 and on the Wii U on July 30, 2014. On March 6, 2024, an unofficial English translation of Otogirisō was released by Translated.games.

A new version of the game was released for the PlayStation in Japan on March 25, 1999 titled Otogirisō soseihen (弟切草　蘇生篇, lit. Otogirisou Resurrection). Nakamura said in interview from 2006 that the PlayStation version of the game sold around 100,000 copies.

Reception

Reception
Review scores
PublicationScore
PSSNES
Dengeki PlayStation
  • 80/100
  • 85/100
Weekly Famitsu
  • 8/10
  • 7/10
  • 8/10
  • 7/10
  • 6/10
  • 6/10
  • 7/10
  • 6/10

For the original Super Famicom release, the four reviewers in Weekly Famitsu said that Otogirisō will be very divisive and found it difficult to evaluate. Two of the authors found that there may have been too many different stories in the release and two recommending for fans of films and the horror genre. One reviewer included as one of the best releases of the week with the requirement that the player enjoys adventure games. Yutaka Noguchi of Weekly Famitsu later commented on the game, found the game had simple graphics calling it an "unusually restrained production". Noguchi complimented the ability to form a protagonist that ranged from timid to being comic relief and found that having more selectable narrative moves based on how many times you've cleared the game as an innovative system. While finding the release closer to a novel than a video game, he praised Otogirisō, saying that no mater how it is received, the release takes a step forward in game design and that alone took courage.

In an article on Japanese games in Nintendo Power, an anonymous writer commented that "to American gamers who have made fast-action games the biggest sellers, the concept of a video mystery novel would seem quite foreign. The experienced Japanese players we talked to thought it was an interesting change and commented that the great sound made the game." Jeremy Parish of Polygon discussed the game in 2018, stating that it "could perhaps be written off as little more than a digital version of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books of the '80s. However, the mature writing combined with the eerie atmosphere created by the graphics and music set the game apart from anything that had come before."

The four reviewers in the Japanese video game magazine Weekly Famitsu found that the PlayStation version of the game new graphics made the game scarier and enjoyed being able to play the game from Nami's perspective. The two reviewers in Dengeki PlayStation magazine also complimented the new graphics and the ability to view the game from Nami's perspective. Bag Koji said it was his choice of the top game in the Sound Novel Evolution Trilogy.

Legacy

Towards the final quarter of 1992 Otogirisō began appeear in other forms of media. This included its music from the game being recorded by the Tokyo Memorial Orchestra and released on compact disc by Warner Music Japan and a radio drama adaptation which was broadcast on Japanese satellite radio on December 5. A film adaption of the game titled St. John's Wort was released in Japan on January 27, 2001. It was released in both an English dub and subtitled edition by Asylum Home Entertainment on March 23, 2004.

While games described as visual novels or novel games had existed on home computers in Japan since DOME (1988), Yuhsuke Koyama in the book History of the Japanese Video Game Industry (2023) found that Otogirisō and Chunsoft's Banshee's Last Cry (1994) were the two works that had a direct influence on contemporary visual novel games. This included the format of placing text over illustrated backgrounds rather than confining it to a box dedicated for dialogue. Academic Ko On Chan said that this style used in Otogirisō and Banshee's Last Cry allowed for more text on screen which intensified the experience of reading through sound effects and illustrations. This style would become the model for similar games to follow, such as Leaf's Shizuku (1996) and Kizuato (1996).

A new game based around Otogirisou was announced in October 2016 titled Kirigirisō. The game's scenario was written by Kitayama Takekuni, author of Danganronpa: Kirigiri and features the character Kyoko Kirigiri from the Spike Chunsoft Danganronpa series. The game was released on November 2016 for Windows-based home computers.

Notes

  1. Each of the four reviewers in Famitsu graded the game on a ten point scale each.

References

  1. ^ Parish 2018.
  2. ^ Nintendo Power 1994, p. 61.
  3. ^ Chunsoft 1992, p. 2.
  4. ^ McFerran 2024.
  5. Crawford 2021, p. 169.
  6. Chunsoft 1992, p. 3.
  7. Chunsoft 1992, p. 6.
  8. Chunsoft 1992, p. 7.
  9. Chunsoft 1992, p. 10.
  10. ^ Haynes 1994, p. 17.
  11. ^ Ogi 2006.
  12. Nintendo of Japan.
  13. Nintendo of Japan 2014.
  14. Chunsoft.
  15. ^ PON & Koji 1999, p. 141.
  16. ^ Famibo et al. 1992, p. 36.
  17. ^ Chunsoft 1999.
  18. ^ Noguchi 1992, p. 36.
  19. Maya & Kyou 1992, p. 249.
  20. Weekly Famitsu 1992, p. 11.
  21. ^ Galbraith IV 2008, p. 417.
  22. Timpone 2002, p. 60.
  23. ^ Koyama 2023, p. 146.
  24. ^ Chan 2023, p. 122.
  25. ジャイアント黒田 2016.

Sources

External links

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