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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
Release	Super Famicom JP: March 7, 1992
Genre(s)	Visual novel
Mode(s)	Single player

Otogirisō (Japanese: 弟切草, lit. Hypericum erectum) is a 1992 visual novel game produced and published by Chunsoft. The games plot involves a protagonist and their girlfriend Nami lost down a forest road. After having to make an emergency stop, they find themselves in a Western-styled country house and let themselves in. While looking for the occupants of the home, they stumble upon a room with a mummified person who quickly vanishes when the lights go out. As they further explore the mansion and find further unexplained phenomenon, Nami discovers she has a history with the house and its previous occupants. The game involves the player making various choices through menu options to direct the narrative of the story. Completing a narrative in Otogirisō allows the player to reach new menu branches and new narrative conclusions.

The games director Koichi Nakamura developed the game after the success Chunsoft had with their Dragon Quest series of games. On attempting to attract an audience of non-video game players, they began on making a more simplified game where the player only choose various narrative branches through basic menu options to progress the story. Chunsoft promoted the game as a "Sound Novel". On its release for the Super Famicom, reviewers in Weekly Famitsu found the game difficult to review, but recommended it for adventure game fans. In January 1993, GAME Pia magazine included Otogirisō in their list of the best games of 1992. The game sold around 300,000 copies.

The game received various adaptions including a radio drama in 1992, a film adaptation in 2001, a new version of the game titled Otogirisō soseihen in 1999 for the PlayStation, and a new game based on the original titled Kirigirisō in 2016. Along with Chunsoft's next "Sound Novel" game, Banshee's Last Cry (1994), Otogirisō had a direct influence on contemporary visual novel games due to their unique format of placing text over illustrated backgrounds rather than confining it to dedicated text boxes. This style would become the model for similar games such as Leaf's Shizuku (1996) and Kizuato (1996).

Gameplay

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.

Plot

The protagonist drives down through a forest road with his girlfriend Nami. She asks about the flowers growing down the road, which the protagonist explains are hypericum, or the "otogirisou". Suddenly the brakes of the car stop working and after an oncoming car rushes by, the protagonist gets to the car to come to an emergency stop. Neither Nami or the protagonist are hurt as they leave the car. They see a flickering light in the distance when a strike of lighting hits a tree crushing their car. As rain falls, Nami and the protagonist follow a trail of flowers following the light they saw earlier and stumble upon a Western-style country mansion.

The two enter the house in various ways, such as ramming into the door or breaking a window, and find themselves in a room that is completely silent with only a murky aquarium and suit of armor worth investigating. They call out to see if anyone was there, but there was no response. After hearing noises upstairs, they discover a room which is dimly lit. The door closes behind them and they suddenly see an old mummified woman in a wheelchair. The power goes out and after hearing the sound of creaking wheelchair, the power returns and the room is revealed to be empty. They exit to investigate, finding a suit of armor downstairs that has gone missing.

On reinvestigating the room they were in, they discover a diary with the last entry being six years ago written in blood. They continue exploring the mansion further, find unexplained phenomena such as a disconnected phone ringing and a door that is nailed shut and a kitchen where food is prepared. After hearing a woman scream outside, they explore outside and find a greenhouse where otogirisou flowers are cultivated. When they return to the mansion, they find the name "Nami" written in red on the door.

On returning the mansion, the two seek a washroom as Nami had gotten her clothes soiled outside, and decided to each take turns taking a shower. After the protagonist showers after Nami, she finds that Nami has vanished. Outside the washroom, Nami appears in a dress but vanishes instantly. On looking for her further, the protagonist find the real Nami in a room with two dolls. The dolls make Nami realize she lived in the mansion with her mother and her sister Naomi.

Depending on choices made during the story and how many times the player has gone through the game, various concluding narratives are revealed ranging from Nami. The narratives generally extend the boiler in the basement exploding, leading to the protagonist and Nami leaving the mansion together as it collapses in flames.

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." Initially, the game was developed as text on top of a paper texture graphic. The company's marketing department said that this make the game difficult to sell, and asked that visuals be included.

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." As the price of the game was about 8,800 Japanese yen which was roughly the price of ten books, the game was made to include multiple narratives.

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."

Nakamura said the stories in Otogirisō ended up getting larger than they had initially imagined, making it difficult to test to make sure the narrative flowed appropriately and that sound effects went off at the correct time in the story.

Release

Otogirisō was released for Super Famicom in March 7, 1992. It became the first game published by Chunsoft themselves. 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.

Along with the games Banshee's Last Cry (1994) and Machi (1998), Otogirisō had a remake as part of the Saundonoberu eboryūshon (サウンドノベル・エボリューション, lit. Sound Novel Evolution) series. This 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. The Otogirisō soseihen version of the game was made available digitally on the PlayStation Store in Japan on September 14, 2011.

Reception

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 January 1993, GAME Pia magazine included Otogirisō in their list of the best games of 1992.

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. ^ Chunsoft 1992, p. 2.
2. ^ McFerran 2024.
3. Crawford 2021, p. 169.
4. Chunsoft 1992, p. 3.
5. Chunsoft 1992, p. 6.
6. Chunsoft 1992, p. 7.
7. Chunsoft 1992, p. 10.
8. ^ Parish 2018.
9. ^ Gantayat 2006.
10. MSX・FAN 1994, p. 23.
11. ^ Haynes 1994, p. 17.
12. ^ Ogi 2006.
13. Nintendo of Japan.
14. Nintendo of Japan 2014.
15. Sandaiko 2014. sfn error: no target: CITEREFSandaiko2014 (help)
16. Chunsoft.
17. Sony Computer Entertainment.
18. ^ PON & Koji 1999, p. 141.
19. ^ Famibo et al. 1992, p. 36.
20. ^ Chunsoft 1999.
21. ^ Noguchi 1992, p. 36.
22. Saito 1993, p. 163.
23. Nintendo Power 1994, p. 61.
24. Maya & Kyou 1992, p. 249.
25. Weekly Famitsu 1992, p. 11.
26. ^ Galbraith IV 2008, p. 417.
27. Timpone 2002, p. 60.
28. ^ Koyama 2023, p. 146.
29. ^ Chan 2023, p. 122.
30. ジャイアント黒田 2016.

Sources

• 弟切草: 取扱説明書 [Otogirisou: Hypericum Perforatum: Instruction Manual] (in Japanese). Chunsoft. 1992.
• "弟切草 蘇生篇" (in Japanese). Chunsoft. Archived from the original on December 12, 2000. Retrieved November 26, 2024.
• "週間ファミ通 99/4/2号". Chunsoft (in Japanese). April 2, 1999. Archived from the original on December 12, 2000. Retrieved November 26, 2024.
• "Virtual Console". Nintendo of Japan (in Japanese). Archived from the original on February 14, 2008. Retrieved November 27, 2024.
• "弟切草" (in Japanese). Nintendo of Japan. 2014. Archived from the original on November 26, 2017. Retrieved November 27, 2024.
• "ゲーム職人". MSX・FAN [ja] (in Japanese). Tokuma Shoten Intermedia. August 1994.
• "Only in Japan: Games That Never Made it to America". Nintendo Power. Vol. 56. Nintendo of America. January 1994. ISSN 1041-9551.
• "弟切草　蘇生篇" (in Japanese). Sony Computer Entertainment. Archived from the original on September 25, 2011. Retrieved November 27, 2024.
• "Broadcast". Weekly Famitsu (in Japanese). No. 210. ASCII Corporation. December 15, 1992.
• Chan, Ko On (2023). "From Fantasy to Trauma: Sound and Sex in School Days". In Scoggin, Lisa; Plank, Dana (eds.). The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music: Making Movement Sing. Routledge. ISBN 9781000871067.
• Crawford, Rebecca (Spring 2021). "The Sound of Visual Novels". Mechademia: Second Arc. 13 (2). University of Minnesota Press. ISSN 2152-6648.
• Famibo, Tofuya; Mizuno; Morishita, Mariko; Chuji, Giorgio (March 13, 1992). "New Games Cross Review". Weekly Famitsu (in Japanese). No. 169. ASCII Corporation.
• Galbraith IV, Stuart (2008). The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-1461673743. Retrieved October 29, 2013.
• Gantayat, Anoop (July 10, 2006). "Gaming Life in Japan". IGN. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved November 27, 2024.
• Haynes, Rik (January 1994). "Fantasy Quest". Super Play. No. 15. Future Publishing. ISSN 0966-6192.
• Koyama, Yuhsuke (2023). History of the Japanese Video Game Industry. Springer Nature. ISBN 978-981-99-1341-1.
• Maya; Kyou (December 1992). "Game Music". Micom BASIC Magazine [ja] (in Japanese).
• McFerran, Damien (March 6, 2024). "32 Years On, Spike Chunsoft's First Game Has Been Translated Into English". Time Extension. Archived from the original on March 6, 2024. Retrieved November 26, 2024.
• Noguchi, Yutaka (May 1, 1992). "Software Impression ソフ トウ ェ ア イ ンプ レッ ショソ". Weekly Famitsu (in Japanese). ASCII Corporation. p. 36.
• Ogi, Yutaka (July 26, 2006). "業界に一石を投じたジャンル"サウンドノベル"を今一度振り返る". ねとらぼ (in Japanese). ITmedia [ja]. Archived from the original on December 29, 2019. Retrieved November 26, 2024.
• Parish, Jeremy (December 17, 2018). "Making a Game in the World's Busiest Crosswalk: The Story Behind 428". Polygon. Archived from the original on December 17, 2018. Retrieved January 31, 2021.
• PON; Koji, Bag (March 26, 1999). "サウンドノベル・エボリューション1 - 弟切草 蘇生篇". Dengeki PlayStation (in Japanese). Vol. 101. ASCII Media Works.
• Saito, Yoshiko (January 1, 1993). "1992 Best Game Catalog". GAMEぴあ (in Japanese). Vol. 3. ぴあ [ja].
• Timpone, Anthony (April 2002). "Fantasia: Enter the Fest". Fangoria. No. 211. p. 60. ISSN 0164-2111.
• ジャイアント黒田 (November 19, 2016). "『弟切草』ファンだからこそできた『霧切草』。『ダンガンロンパ霧切』も手掛ける、ミステリ作家・北山猛邦氏インタビュー". Famitsu (in Japanese). Archived from the original on November 22, 2016. Retrieved November 26, 2024.

External links

• Chunsoft
• Otogirisō at The Visual Novel Database

• 1990s horror video games
• 1992 video games
• Chunsoft games
• Japan-exclusive video games
• Kadokawa Dwango franchises
• Mystery video games
• PlayStation (console) games
• PlayStation Network games
• Single-player video games
• Super Nintendo Entertainment System games
• Video games developed in Japan
• Virtual Console games for Wii U
• Visual novels