@@Deadguy2322forreal really! ARE YOU FOR REAL THOSE Italian zombie/cannibal movies only got made because George Romero forget to put a copyright thing on his night of the living dead and that why Italians market their zombie as PSEUDO=SEQUELS!
One thing I miss in modern anime is all the absurdly ill-fitting, oversized clothes. The Hellsing manga is a great example. Every shirt or coat is at least two sizes too large, the clothes are full of ridiculous folds and prominent creases; you know belts and ties are a dire necessity in that world. This game delivers this in spades too.
Modern anime is full of clothes that look very plain and ironed, WHILE ON THE BODY; it's a very strange look. This may be connected to animation and how animators are expected to pump out their product. Easier to do when the lineart is plain.
Yeah you can definitely see the influence of real life 80s & 90s fashion. Women's clothing (especially suit jackets and coats) had tons of shoulder padding.
To a certain extent, that was representative of real-world fashion in the 80s and 90s. Art follows life, and people seem to like their clothes a lot tighter these days.
true far too many modern animes go for the less is best approach to clothes and even thou that don't are often bare minimum - shirt, pants and shoes maybe a jacket if were lucky XD
These types of games were so weirdly charming and I just can't get enough of that 80's/90's anime art style. This style does to me what brains do to a Zombie.
@@robertnomok9750 oh.. they all look the same? do you think all black people look the same? art is better than corpo trash.. wait.. huh.. blizzard games (overwatch, wow etc) are literal rip offs of anime style, but im sure you think they are just fine..by the by, anime itself was a japanese response to american pin up art they saw on ww2 era bombers and fighters..who was the first "waifu?" well lum from urusei yatsura, but the first western one they copied was JESSICA FUCKING RABBIT..
I just love that this Doc Marty type seems to be always packing heat. Clearly the devs took one look at America and said “yep, these men always walk around strapped”
I love how some Japanese nerds in the 90's watched some American grindhouse movies and just thought to themselves "hey we can do this but in a computer game". It's kind of wholesome in a way.
Yeah that's like Kojima's entire career. I usually describe Snatcher as "Have you ever seen Blade Runner? The Terminator? Well, so did Hideo Kojima and he turned it into a video game"
Not sure if this was said anywhere else, but the fix for the graphical repeating glitch you encountered in the first translation is due to GDC being set to 5mhz. To resolve press and hold the END key on your keyboard then using your mouse go to Emulator>Reset. The machine options menu will come up. It's in Japanese. Select the second option using the arrow keys and pressing ENTER. Navigate down to GDC and select 2.5MHZ. Then select the bottom option to go back to the previous screen and once again to leave the menu. That will solve the issue.
One thing about these games I love is how insanely good the art is - Especially with how the style of 80's/90's anime was so shiny, shaded and animated. I remember seeing anime like Record of Lodoss War and Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory thinking how every piece of machinery and article of clothing was drawn and colored with a level of detail you rarely see in modern anime. Being able to transfer that magic onto a computer with a UI and playing through it must have felt magical back then, and probably still does.
@@bullno1Sometimes insanely pointy, but you could definitely see them! Edit: Also the Japanese bubble economy (while absolutely awful when it popped) meant there was just insane loads of cash floating around. That's how a lot these very detailed pieces of media (like 0083 and Akira) were able to be produced: Incredibly over the top budgets.
@@TheCrewExpendable The bubble had burst by the late 80s, so I think it was the last vestiges of that money that trickled off in the early 90s. It was also the fact the animators were putting themselves through the ringer, usually by choice, to create to the level that they did.
@@blumiu2426 the early history of gainax basically mirrors everything you said, they had weirdly small animation teams but pumped out some ridiculous work, mostly because they were obsessed with it
@@Yixdy I miss that. Anime can't take risks like that now, and we still somewhat see that in the niche games market for Japan. Either it has to have a otaku fanbase or the publisher survives on niche games. Anime would come out that you knew was basically promo because it was few episodes, but now so many anime series live or die by the first season or they just license dozens of light novels which is what I call junk or fodder.
Goddamn, the PC-98 has some of the absolute best pixel art I've ever seen in video games. Damn shame that doing more of them would lead to... ya know, more "version 4" videos. Keep up the great work man!
Becareful with some of the pc 98 translations around the internet, I recall a controversy that had to do with the first translation of this game where it was found out that the person who translated this and many other pc98 games was using machine translation and just adding his own stuff that wasn't part of the story
You're not wrong but it's pretty easy to tell when something is machine translated, especially from Japanese. Direct translations from Japanese to English are INCREDIBLY dry and robotic. A necessary evil of translating a language with a completely different syntax, it doesn't allow for a lot of flowery detail. It's why most subs and dubs take matters into their own hands and write dialogue and especially jokes in ways that would make sense to the intended audience even if it's inaccurate rather than translating as-is. This is a long way of saying that it's pretty obvious when Japanese text has been machine translated because it reads like a washing machine manual.
This is why the PCE-CD translation is better, as it was actually done by humans (and has voice acting). Unfortunately, the art isn't 'quite' as good, but that's probably a decent trade-off if you don't know Japanese. And yeah, you're right, it's very easy to mess up JP to ENG translations. It's not just the syntax, but also things like present/future tense being often the same, a huge number of homophones, the lack of detail (from the point of view of Western languages - for example, dropping the pronouns, plural etc. 'a lot') - not to mention supremely difficult writing system with a lot of nuance. In other words, it's hard. Most European languages - besides, say, Finnish - are child's play to read by comparison.
@@mariusamber3237 As a JPN/FR translator. I couldn't agree more. The amount of times I have to double check my text for JPN is doubled/nearly tripled when compared to FR. Context is crucial and can change the meaning drastically when translating JPN to EN. While pretty rarely, I also have to reread some sentences multiple times just to make sure I have the right person in mind when they're talking. Having the wrong idea/context leads to mistranslations and changed dialogue without me even knowing until I'm near the end of the page. I never had these problems for FR tho lol.
That is actually really intuitive, for a point and click feature, only options you can actually use being available on each interactable, I wish that was in every point and click adventure game.
"Fuck this place, I'm just gonna shoot" is the most commercial painter-y thing possible. The fumes those guys inhale does some... interesting things to them. Only time I've ever seen a knife pulled on someone on a jobsite was by, you guessed it. Painter.
I do find it fascinating how the initial requirement of "display complex japanese text accurately" shaped PCs and games in japan. A high resolution solves the text issue but means things like sprites, scrolling and animation AKA stuff thats typically crucial for games, is now pretty difficult. But you can display big beautiful images and tons of text is a breeze. Thus, the visual novel is born. And the other type of novel lol. Already a long comment but maybe interesting... This game being the way it is, is directly related to real life industry shenanigans. If you are aware of the Saori Incident in japan (google if you dont know), Dead of the Brain was the next game to come out from FairyTale afterwards and was intended to be a much less lewd "safe" game content wise after they bore the brunt of blowback from the incident. Safe meaning violence a-plenty and X hugely reduced but still, its a significant change from their earlier stuff.
Gave me House of the Dead vibes…it’s an awesome action experience and then the end just blurts something nonsensical about overpopulation before the final fight. It’s better off with no story tbh
Man that's some beautiful pixel art. I mean even ignoring that they're r34 some of the others that were shown at the start would look good as throwback games NOW.
This game somehow managed to make a straightforward plot confusing. I was like, "Ok, so someone wanted to use Doc's seru-- wait, it makes you immortal an-- now Guol is a terminator what the fuck!"
For anyone interested in PC-98 i recommend watching the recent anime "16-bit sensation" as it somewhat goes into the game development for that machine. Also one of it`s characters is a huge PC-98 fan.
Dead of the brain litterally was my introduction on the PC-98 fan translation scene ! When I was in high-school I was religiously watched the screenshot of this game on a website and love the gore and always though it is one of the game that I will never able to play and was dreaming that I could someday until like 3 years ago when I saw a youtube lets play in my recommendation out of nowhere and saw it was in english. I was excited like a kid receiving a Nintendo 64 at Christmas lol Nice video btw +1 sub ! :)
I don’t know why, but Guol’s face at the end before he’s shown to be a robot was reminding me of the faces from “The Running Man” short from “Neo Tokyo”. Don’t ask me how I came up with that connection.
I’m glad the RUclips algorithm brought me here! If you could talk and show more of these PC98 type games, that would be awesome! Can’t wait to watch all your other videos niw
The best and dumbest moment in this game (unless I'm remembering something else) is you find some ammo and Cole goes "I dont have a gun so I'll just leave these here." Like...what? Cole sure has keen survival instincts.
Yes, he does? Carrying around random ammo in the hopes that you find a gun chambered for it is generally not a sensible thing to do in a survival scenario.
Of all horror games I've played throughout the years, this is the one that felt the most like you're in Romero's Dead universe. And I guess No More Room in Hell, but that's a FPS multiplayer game.
Im really liking these videos. Partially because they are interesting, and partially because your PFP is Pokheil. Glad to see more Legend of Mana fans out there.
Man, I love your content. I've got this on at work, and the Mister Plinkett "Oh my God!" sound byte just stun-locked me in the middle of writing an email. Well done.
I love your commentary! I feel like i finally struck a gold mine with a creator who is well-read, funny, charismatic, and actually good at making videos to talk about my favorite type of video game. Props to you sir :)
dead of the brain also seems to borrow heavily from return of the living dead 1985 a kinda sequel (but not really) to night of the living dead. Dr. Cooger accidentally exposing an entire graveyard to this serum that raises them from the dead, the zombies being a lot more smarter than in most media, even referencing the "of the dead" series and shooting zombies in the head; it's all there. the history behind the movie is really interesting and the movie itself is a great watch if you haven't seen it.
Gosh I remember when Western awareness of PC-98 games wasn’t as developed online and I found Possessioner thinking it looked like a fun RPG, just to be assailed by a lot of sex after the first action sequence lmao. I was in early high school and was completely blindsided. All screenshots and coverage of the game online only covered the first few minutes so there was no warning for me. I was sad because I just wanted it to be a cool RPG with cute characters but got porn instead. I kept playing it and got to the third or fourth boss before having to give up bc I can’t read Japanese. I was using google translate as I went and it got way too confusing but the story was awesome as I remember it! Think someone is working on an official translation now. Good memories though despite the very graphic sex scenes
please do more of these obscure anime games, im assuming most of us didn't have access to these consoles and computers that seemed to have all these anime titles. Fun to see these explored
I definitely get the re-animator influences mentioned, but something about the doc’s relationship with Cole reminds me of the opening of the return of the living dead. Just something about an older guy going “hey check this out” and absolutely ruining everyone’s night when it goes south.
I’m so glad i discovered this channel. It’s nice to find a RUclipsr that doesn’t have an awful speaking voice and doesn’t make a million unnecessary stupid jokes
Just got into your work and really appreciate your style of giving history and context in addition to waking through the game! Would you ever cover “space griffin VF-9”? My first PS1 game back in the day, had no idea what I was getting into😂 Thanks for your work and much love from the Midwest!❤️
Wow... the title of the game is pretty apt. Between the random rape and nudity, the random terminator, and the random fairytale wand wave of a happy ending that was pretty dead of the brain alright. "dead of the brain really is dead of the brain" Great minds think alike, lol
This is the first time I'm watching one of your vids and it was an absolute blast ! The writing, the narration, the humour, I loved everything about it. Now that I've subscribed, time for a deep dive into your other videos ^^ Cheers !
Your videos are so genuinely good that they can be rewatched and enjoyed. Perfect audio mixing, perfect pacing. I wish I was as good at content as you, but I also wish the algo recognized you.
Re-animator is an awesome movie! This game looks great too, I'm definitely getting it! Thanks for talking about cool old games. Not just the ones everyone has heard of too.
I love your khaaantent man. Seriously though, it rocks! I tend to keep it short and sweet but know your stuff really helps me chill tf out after typically long boring tedious annoying days lol. Thanks a million
this was an amazing ride terry..good luck also sheila just repeatedly going „thats alright, just another day as a woman :) „ is such a classic thanks so much for sharing this absolute mess of a masterpiece
This is why people are awesome though. People in Japan got inspired from films here in America, and now America does the same with Japan. Sharing stuff we think is cool and making it cooler.
22:30 Fuckin killed me LMFAO Also Cole slept with the wrong girl :'( Sally was SO much hotter! Cathy was a badass too... RIP to both of them. Definitely got a sub from me man. My first vid from ya!
Most people probably know Dungeon Chill from his chill RPG videos - but did you know he also released a freestyle rap EP over the intro song, Copacabana Drill? It’s true! Back in 1987, when NEC released the TurboGrafx-16…
11:22 I'd like to point out that Dr. Cooger's pistol is animated, something not done in much newer horror games, such as Resident Evil 7. Truly ahead of its time.
I wish more older games like these would hit modern consoles or distribution servers. Something magical about older media and games that modern technology can’t quite replicate.
i havent finished this but your narration is so damn funny ive been trying to keep quiet at night as i Watch this but when you yelled GO for the go option i almost lost my mind LOL
That's some absolutely gorgeous (and grisly) pixel art. I did a spit-take on "big dogs" because that's what my boyfriend and I call hot dogs after I made a dumb typo. I can't believe some Japanese person from the 90s also knew about this inside joke...
Love all these old games with similar interfaces. Like Uninvited for the NES, and there was another one, where you were a early 20th century detective. Cant remember the name.
I heard a long time ago (I'm 49, and was 17 in 1992) that the reason why "Dead Of The Brain 2" did not get translated was because the company that made these, and a lot of Japanese visual novels at the time, was "Cinemaware". See at the time a lot of the people secretly behind most Japanese pop culture were actually Americans who were using Japanese pen names, while Japanese creators fronted for them due to racism. Basically it became obvious in the late 70s through the 80s that Japan was in love with American culture and trying to replace their own with it, but they had no real idea how to do it right, leading to the whole "they're really big in Japan" gag in the 80s, oftentimes a stock of certain kinds of movies that would depict some Asian guys acting like rock stars and looking like really goofy parodies of American cool in the background. At any rate this is why you see so many American sci-fi, fantasy, and movie cliques, right down to D&D references, in Anime, especially in the 1990s. It wasn't that the Japanese were playing D&D heavily, it was that the nerds actually ghost writing this stuff were, and were teaching them. This is also why entire video game genres like JRPGs are also built around the mechanics and concepts (typically simplified from the originals despite people believing the option) from things like "Ultima" and "Wizardry" right down to Western RPG stat names and classes and such. At any rate to get back on the subject, Cinemaware was a game developer that tried to do an interactive movie type thing, and some credited with the creation of the entire Visual Novel genre as we know it now, especially the idea of introducing game play elements into the format. Their earliest, and perhaps most well known work, was something called "Defender Of The Crown" from the late 80s, and it was mostly bit on the apple, but they got heavily involved in a number of other projects and made a lot of connections in Japan while researching a game called "Lords Of The Rising Sun" which was based heavily on Japanese Samurai movies. At the time they had gotten heavily invested in The Amiga, and it was simply put turning into a train wreck for a lot of reasons. Not sure who was going to win the format wars in the US, they turned almost exclusively to developing games for the Japanese market on a freelance basis, and "Dead Of The Brain" was one of their first ghost writing projects, hence why it includes those elements like finding objects to resolve crisis scenes on a timer, pretty much one of their big trademarks going back as far as games like "It Came From the Desert" a few years before. At any rate apparently they had plans to release the second "Dead Of the Brain" game (but not the first one for some reason) in the US market as part of an exclusive deal with Radio-Shack back when it was doing it's Tandy systems. This is actually where I heard about this, and why I know what this is at all. The problem was the Cinemaware team which was not a formal thing anymore, broke up and different people went on to work in different projects. The game never got subbed because among fansubbers of the time (who I dealt with via BBS echoes) there were unofficial rules that they only translate and distribute things that were not being sold in the target market, they felt things that were being censored were fair game as long as they did not translate the "for sale" version, but in this case there was not supposed to be any censorship. This meant the first game was "fair game" for translation for anyone who wanted to do it, but nobody would work on the second game as it was going to be released... and well, with time it kind of faded away and being not as good nobody bothered with an official release or otherwise. It's questionable what Cinemaware was thinking in their choices, or what was going on with the Radio Shack Deal. Now part of why I know anything about this is that part of the story was that Radio Shack actually cut a deal to get special copies of the game "Legacy: Realm Of Terror" instead, it didn't want two games of the same type. "Legacy" being made by Microprose, which had the connotations you might expect when they were looking to do their own computer lines as well. I'm actually kind of a fan of "Legacy" and well... if you saw the zombies they have at the beginning of that game (adjusted for the time period these were made of course), and then looked at that version... and well, you can probably guess why they decided which game was a better one to pimp along with their PCs to horror fans.... not that Radio Shack's PC ambitions had a happy ending of course, but that has little to do with this mess. I don't have a real way of verifying it, but it is situation where what little I've heard from Fansubbers, Radio Shack, and others all seem to align. It also is the answer I came up with back then when I was asking the question "what the hell happened to Cinemaware" because for a while they were pretty well known, had some of the slickest games around, and a lot of their stuff was actually used to Demo various PCs that were on display at places like "Software Etc..." or "Radio Shack". Most people assumed they simply died out with the Amiga, but there is no reason they would have transitioned... and well as I said, they pretty much went Faux-Japanese to fuel their game boom in their preferred style, being able to get away with things there that they couldn't here, and broke up along the way meaning that by the time PC gaming in the US became less competitive there wasn't any Cinemaware to return... and to be fair I've never seen anything to contradict the story, and plenty to reinforce it... at least indirectly. I doubt anyone read this, but it may or may not be a satisfying answer to anyone who wondered about that one detail, which is really the only odd bit I have to elaborate on this (with some major tangents along the way).
Fascinating history, I was completely unaware. It makes much more sense why these games are so heavily influenced by American pop-culture. BTW - I'm also a huge fan of "Legacy: Realm Of Terror." I even have my original 1993 DOS version in the box (six-3.5" floppies!). I think it's one of the few games that really captures a Lovecraftian essence that most other Lovecraft-style games completely miss. It's probably the best horror game of the early/mid 1990s.
Those first two paragraphs are a load of bullshit. I have no idea whether what you say about this specific company, Cinemaware, is true(since it's based on rumors it's also likely all bullshit as well), but Japanese Pop Culture, in general, being secretly made by Americans is such a bizarre conspiracy theory. Regarding JRPGs specifically, you know that Wizardry is big in Japan, right? Yuji Horii and Koichi Nakamura, the creators of Dragon Quest, are on record as having played the game and been inspired by it. But no, it doesn't make sense that Japanese people could possibly play a Western-made game and take inspiration from it. Only American nerds could have made such games, and of course, they had to hide their identities because there is no way Japanese people in the 80s would have played a game developed by filthy gaijin, no sir, it's not like The Black Onyx in 1984 was also a big hit. But I bet you have a credible source for this sweeping claim about Japanese media in the 80s and 90s outside of rumors about a single company developing games for the Japanese market, I'm sure you aren't just claiming these things based on rumors from boards in the early 90s. Also, you seem to imply that fansubbers in the '90s translated the Dead of the Brain, which doesn't seem to be the case at all. The first translation patch was made in 2019 and was machine-translated. Honestly, I think you heard a lot of this shit as a teenager, and you have assumed it to be true for your whole life despite it being verifiably false. Like please give me some proof that there was a bunch of American writers and game designers that secretly made most of Japan's pop culture in the 80s because if you have no hard evidence, it's bullshit, and you have just been believing bullshit for over 30 years.
@@Illusionist345 Hate to break it to you but none of this is bullshit, a secret, or some kind of bizarre conspiracy theory. It's simply what was public knowledge a few decades ago, albeit public within what was a much smaller community. It's one of those cases where your ignorance is due to simply so much knowledge pre-internet being lost, specially if it's not on social media. What's more certain people just don't have a vested interest in making sure things like this remain public knowledge. See in the 1990s a lot of the companies important anime before it became huge, like ADV and the like were actually pretty public about it, as it affected their business and what they could get. It was also a big deal within the fansub community because as a general rule fansubbers only wanted to do fan translations of things that were not going to be released in an unedited format. The reason why so many people even knew what certain things were in order to request them was learning about it from the American creators. If you bother to ever want to do research, you'll find quickly that when things like "Lodoss Wars" were done, Japan knew nothing about western RPGs or D&D tropes. The Americans writing it on the other hand did, and that's why it was one of those things that went cross-national as it appealed to both the Japanese audience and the American D&D fans who had to see the "secret D&D anime" although it wasn't really a secret, just not officially released. Likewise guys like Kentaro Miura, famous for things like "Berserk" were terrified about their work becoming known in the US as they didn't understand copyright laws. He thought he could be sued over the fact that Guts having a giant sword and a fake arm because of Bruce Campbell's character in the "Evil Dead" franchise who inspired part of the idea, especially since they both fought demons. The fact that the name "Guts" is taken from a legendary French knight named "Goetz" along with some broad story bits also had him worried. He had nothing to worry about though. Recently a Marvel editor got yelled at due to a past using a Japanese pen name to write Manga there, claiming "cultural appropriation" and such, with the big defense of it being that it just generally isn't uncommon. It can get pretty deep, but basically during the 1990s when this stuff was becoming popular and there were all the fansub wars and such, there was a lot about it and how it all worked, and a lot of reveals about how things like "Armitage III", "Ghost In The Shell", "Tank Police", and others were all heavily inspired by various American novels. "Armitage" being one of the first big surprises as there was some cloak and dagger stuff to get it released as the rights olders were terrified as the titular character while very different is named after a character from the famous Cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" and they both deal heavily with AI issues (albeit different ones). That said it not getting anyone sued was quietly notable for causing widespread relief among Japanese creators given the direct lift of a character's rather distinctive (to them) name. You'll also find things like "The Slayers" have a similar western RPG input as Lodoss Wars, and a lot of American minds behind some of the names, and that one little known (now) series called "Devil Hunter Yohko" was a big deal when ADV released it because at the time most stuff being brought over had very heavy western influences, and that was one of the first animes officially transported that was actually extremely Japanese in it's themes , and had pretty much no American pop culture involved in it outside of the video collection (Yohko 4 Ever) mimicking numerous American CD/Album covers in some of the stills. Seriously though, educate yourself. I mostly point this out because for one I get sort of irritated about people acting like Japan invented things it copied (albeit copied well in many cases), and also with weebs acting like Japan is some kind of nirvana for nerds when culturally it's actually far more conservative (and was more so in the 90s), in deep historical denial, and still retains a lot of aggressive xenophobia. I do give credit where it's due, but I think while Japanaphilia was cute for a while, as certain important things are coming to a head it's important to be honest about what's being dealt with. See, understand, I want nerd culture to win. But with things like the localization wars going on (likely blind siding Japan as they are used to a lot of genuine American contribution behind the scenes without political issues,), I think we need to be up front about a lot of this because if not defended properly the opposition can use the truth to destroy us. See it's easy for a lot of people now to say "It's not even American, it was all the JApanese" by way of defense, but as often or not the only reason things became so incestuous is that they were using American culture and creations to begin with in many cases. Likewise if they start digging back into old interviews, articles, etc... they will find a lot of famous works being defended as "of Japanse Origins" were actually created by Americans with Japanese fronts, and faces, and they were doing it then to make stuff without American cultural censorship. What that means is, they could pretty much claim Japan was simply being used as a front to engage in illegal or at least immoral activity they couldn't get away with here, with the creations then being passed to the US through importers. It could be a huge mess, so it's best not to be blindsided by it. To be brutally honest a lot of the weird sex stuff is in fact Japanese, but a lot of the other stuff... yeah, that was all us teaching them that. They could even be so specific as to find animes and such that are just slightly modified versions of American novels and the like, or have lifted pieces qand characters directly from them. That's part of why I mention "Armitage" and that whole mess, because a I said, while the story is different, the character actually was based on an American Cyberpunk character from one of the most iconic novels. Something Japan had never heard of at the time, and that alone should tell you who was behind a lot of this.
8:18 is probably why the older translator used Schrodinger for the cats cat's name. The serum may have worn off and the cat in the box (fridge) may or may not be dead
A member of the police force who secretly works for the corporation that made the virus? Someone at Capcom really liked this idea.
@@UnknownName5050nice
Capcom ripped the idea from MANY Italian zombie/cannibal movies. Resident Evil was a love letter to Lucio Fulci's Zombie and other classics.
Peak comedy right here.@@UnknownName5050
And apparently sega liked the look of the logo….
@@Deadguy2322forreal really! ARE YOU FOR REAL
THOSE Italian zombie/cannibal movies only got made because George Romero forget to put a copyright thing on his night of the living dead and that why Italians market their zombie as PSEUDO=SEQUELS!
One thing I miss in modern anime is all the absurdly ill-fitting, oversized clothes. The Hellsing manga is a great example. Every shirt or coat is at least two sizes too large, the clothes are full of ridiculous folds and prominent creases; you know belts and ties are a dire necessity in that world. This game delivers this in spades too.
Modern anime is full of clothes that look very plain and ironed, WHILE ON THE BODY; it's a very strange look. This may be connected to animation and how animators are expected to pump out their product. Easier to do when the lineart is plain.
"you know belts and ties are a dire necessity in that world." It's Nomura's dream world.
Yeah you can definitely see the influence of real life 80s & 90s fashion. Women's clothing (especially suit jackets and coats) had tons of shoulder padding.
To a certain extent, that was representative of real-world fashion in the 80s and 90s. Art follows life, and people seem to like their clothes a lot tighter these days.
true far too many modern animes go for the less is best approach to clothes and even thou that don't are often bare minimum - shirt, pants and shoes maybe a jacket if were lucky XD
These types of games were so weirdly charming and I just can't get enough of that 80's/90's anime art style. This style does to me what brains do to a Zombie.
mmm brains
I love it to, its a shame you rarely see it anymore and its all Moe anime style now.
Modern anime style is just generic moe waifu shit. Every character looks the same. The just use same design every time.
@@robertnomok9750 oh.. they all look the same? do you think all black people look the same? art is better than corpo trash.. wait.. huh.. blizzard games (overwatch, wow etc) are literal rip offs of anime style, but im sure you think they are just fine..by the by, anime itself was a japanese response to american pin up art they saw on ww2 era bombers and fighters..who was the first "waifu?" well lum from urusei yatsura, but the first western one they copied was JESSICA FUCKING RABBIT..
I like the 80-90’s art style very much it looks so nostalgic
I just love that this Doc Marty type seems to be always packing heat. Clearly the devs took one look at America and said “yep, these men always walk around strapped”
Man, you’re spot on 😁
@@Lobo_Argent *eagle screech* 🇺🇸
its doc brown but yeag it is accurate
Murica!
Doc Brown was also strapped too.
I love how some Japanese nerds in the 90's watched some American grindhouse movies and just thought to themselves "hey we can do this but in a computer game". It's kind of wholesome in a way.
Yeah, this had a very strong "Return of the Living Dead: The unofficial game" vibe
Yeah that's like Kojima's entire career. I usually describe Snatcher as "Have you ever seen Blade Runner? The Terminator? Well, so did Hideo Kojima and he turned it into a video game"
stand up to them.. you know its better than spider man 2
Is it bad that I want to see _Dead of the Brain_ redone as a live action schlock b-movie?
Don't even re-imagine it, just put it out as-is.
@@PresidentBarackbar don't forget Body Snatchers ! ;)
Not sure if this was said anywhere else, but the fix for the graphical repeating glitch you encountered in the first translation is due to GDC being set to 5mhz.
To resolve press and hold the END key on your keyboard then using your mouse go to Emulator>Reset.
The machine options menu will come up. It's in Japanese. Select the second option using the arrow keys and pressing ENTER. Navigate down to GDC and select 2.5MHZ. Then select the bottom option to go back to the previous screen and once again to leave the menu.
That will solve the issue.
I talked about it in my comment but sadly it got filtered out.
RUclips sucks @@jackdbs
One thing about these games I love is how insanely good the art is - Especially with how the style of 80's/90's anime was so shiny, shaded and animated. I remember seeing anime like Record of Lodoss War and Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory thinking how every piece of machinery and article of clothing was drawn and colored with a level of detail you rarely see in modern anime. Being able to transfer that magic onto a computer with a UI and playing through it must have felt magical back then, and probably still does.
Anime people have noses back then
@@bullno1Sometimes insanely pointy, but you could definitely see them!
Edit: Also the Japanese bubble economy (while absolutely awful when it popped) meant there was just insane loads of cash floating around. That's how a lot these very detailed pieces of media (like 0083 and Akira) were able to be produced: Incredibly over the top budgets.
@@TheCrewExpendable The bubble had burst by the late 80s, so I think it was the last vestiges of that money that trickled off in the early 90s. It was also the fact the animators were putting themselves through the ringer, usually by choice, to create to the level that they did.
@@blumiu2426 the early history of gainax basically mirrors everything you said, they had weirdly small animation teams but pumped out some ridiculous work, mostly because they were obsessed with it
@@Yixdy I miss that. Anime can't take risks like that now, and we still somewhat see that in the niche games market for Japan. Either it has to have a otaku fanbase or the publisher survives on niche games. Anime would come out that you knew was basically promo because it was few episodes, but now so many anime series live or die by the first season or they just license dozens of light novels which is what I call junk or fodder.
Goddamn, the PC-98 has some of the absolute best pixel art I've ever seen in video games. Damn shame that doing more of them would lead to... ya know, more "version 4" videos. Keep up the great work man!
Becareful with some of the pc 98 translations around the internet, I recall a controversy that had to do with the first translation of this game where it was found out that the person who translated this and many other pc98 games was using machine translation and just adding his own stuff that wasn't part of the story
You're not wrong but it's pretty easy to tell when something is machine translated, especially from Japanese. Direct translations from Japanese to English are INCREDIBLY dry and robotic. A necessary evil of translating a language with a completely different syntax, it doesn't allow for a lot of flowery detail. It's why most subs and dubs take matters into their own hands and write dialogue and especially jokes in ways that would make sense to the intended audience even if it's inaccurate rather than translating as-is. This is a long way of saying that it's pretty obvious when Japanese text has been machine translated because it reads like a washing machine manual.
This is why the PCE-CD translation is better, as it was actually done by humans (and has voice acting). Unfortunately, the art isn't 'quite' as good, but that's probably a decent trade-off if you don't know Japanese. And yeah, you're right, it's very easy to mess up JP to ENG translations. It's not just the syntax, but also things like present/future tense being often the same, a huge number of homophones, the lack of detail (from the point of view of Western languages - for example, dropping the pronouns, plural etc. 'a lot') - not to mention supremely difficult writing system with a lot of nuance. In other words, it's hard. Most European languages - besides, say, Finnish - are child's play to read by comparison.
@@mariusamber3237 dropping the pronouns? No wonder Japan hasn't gone Woke yet
Cope
@@mariusamber3237 As a JPN/FR translator. I couldn't agree more. The amount of times I have to double check my text for JPN is doubled/nearly tripled when compared to FR. Context is crucial and can change the meaning drastically when translating JPN to EN. While pretty rarely, I also have to reread some sentences multiple times just to make sure I have the right person in mind when they're talking. Having the wrong idea/context leads to mistranslations and changed dialogue without me even knowing until I'm near the end of the page. I never had these problems for FR tho lol.
That is actually really intuitive, for a point and click feature, only options you can actually use being available on each interactable, I wish that was in every point and click adventure game.
"Fuck this place, I'm just gonna shoot" is the most commercial painter-y thing possible. The fumes those guys inhale does some... interesting things to them. Only time I've ever seen a knife pulled on someone on a jobsite was by, you guessed it. Painter.
Not just the paint my dude it’s also all the pills and meth 24oz Steele reserves lmao
I do find it fascinating how the initial requirement of "display complex japanese text accurately" shaped PCs and games in japan. A high resolution solves the text issue but means things like sprites, scrolling and animation AKA stuff thats typically crucial for games, is now pretty difficult. But you can display big beautiful images and tons of text is a breeze. Thus, the visual novel is born. And the other type of novel lol.
Already a long comment but maybe interesting...
This game being the way it is, is directly related to real life industry shenanigans. If you are aware of the Saori Incident in japan (google if you dont know), Dead of the Brain was the next game to come out from FairyTale afterwards and was intended to be a much less lewd "safe" game content wise after they bore the brunt of blowback from the incident. Safe meaning violence a-plenty and X hugely reduced but still, its a significant change from their earlier stuff.
This game had such an excellent start, and then it falls apart in the end. Thanks for the vid Dungeon Gil
Gave me House of the Dead vibes…it’s an awesome action experience and then the end just blurts something nonsensical about overpopulation before the final fight. It’s better off with no story tbh
Man that's some beautiful pixel art. I mean even ignoring that they're r34 some of the others that were shown at the start would look good as throwback games NOW.
Actually, Schrodinger is quite clever for a zombie cat, because is both dead and alive at the same time, in a way :D
no
Yes
nerd
It is, but I feel it should have kept closer to the original names
Just too rudimentary
I have a deep love of PC-98 visuals and think they’re pixel art perfection. Great video
Dead of the Brain? More like Re-Anime-tor
That’s a disgustingly good pun, I hate you/lie
Get out.
This game somehow managed to make a straightforward plot confusing. I was like, "Ok, so someone wanted to use Doc's seru-- wait, it makes you immortal an-- now Guol is a terminator what the fuck!"
For anyone interested in PC-98 i recommend watching the recent anime "16-bit sensation" as it somewhat goes into the game development for that machine. Also one of it`s characters is a huge PC-98 fan.
Congrats on 50k! Running thru your library is a BLAST
Aw man, I saw a longplay of this a few years back, and it was hella fun to watch- so glad more people are talking about this game!
I love the sound effects in this game... Particular the sound the evil reanimated cat makes when it springs to life!💖
Dead of the brain litterally was my introduction on the PC-98 fan translation scene ! When I was in high-school I was religiously watched the screenshot of this game on a website and love the gore and always though it is one of the game that I will never able to play and was dreaming that I could someday until like 3 years ago when I saw a youtube lets play in my recommendation out of nowhere and saw it was in english. I was excited like a kid receiving a Nintendo 64 at Christmas lol
Nice video btw +1 sub ! :)
I’ve always absolutely loved the look of PC-98 games. It’s one of my favorite aesthetics, such as it is.
So this is where that pixel stuff is from, great video and subscribed!
Legends say that Terry is still waiting to be rescued to this day.
I don’t know why, but Guol’s face at the end before he’s shown to be a robot was reminding me of the faces from “The Running Man” short from “Neo Tokyo”.
Don’t ask me how I came up with that connection.
It's in the extreme exaggeration of the open mouth. This game has a very Madhouse look to it, along with a penchant for questionable sex and violence.
Unironically, would like to see DungeonChiller cover more PC98 titles even the P* ones.
I bet you would 👀
@@Anthony-jh6xt ???
I’m glad the RUclips algorithm brought me here! If you could talk and show more of these PC98 type games, that would be awesome! Can’t wait to watch all your other videos niw
9:49 - So Stephen King has been dead since 1934/1984 and is actually some kind of undead horror writer? I KNEW IT
This is essentially a mash up of 70s and 80s horror b movies. Like reanimator... Its basically the plot of Reanimator, Rabid and From Beyond combined.
Congrats on reaching 50 thousand subs my man. Well deserved.
The best and dumbest moment in this game (unless I'm remembering something else) is you find some ammo and Cole goes "I dont have a gun so I'll just leave these here."
Like...what? Cole sure has keen survival instincts.
There's a happy middle ground between "not picking up ammo at all" and "being weighed down with 50 lbs. of miscellaneous ammo like a Fallout hoarder".
Yes, he does? Carrying around random ammo in the hopes that you find a gun chambered for it is generally not a sensible thing to do in a survival scenario.
Of all horror games I've played throughout the years, this is the one that felt the most like you're in Romero's Dead universe.
And I guess No More Room in Hell, but that's a FPS multiplayer game.
dungeon chill making pc98 videos, hell yea
Im really liking these videos. Partially because they are interesting, and partially because your PFP is Pokheil. Glad to see more Legend of Mana fans out there.
These old pc games have art that's just so beautiful in a way!
Man, I love your content. I've got this on at work, and the Mister Plinkett "Oh my God!" sound byte just stun-locked me in the middle of writing an email. Well done.
I love your commentary! I feel like i finally struck a gold mine with a creator who is well-read, funny, charismatic, and actually good at making videos to talk about my favorite type of video game. Props to you sir :)
dead of the brain also seems to borrow heavily from return of the living dead 1985 a kinda sequel (but not really) to night of the living dead. Dr. Cooger accidentally exposing an entire graveyard to this serum that raises them from the dead, the zombies being a lot more smarter than in most media, even referencing the "of the dead" series and shooting zombies in the head; it's all there.
the history behind the movie is really interesting and the movie itself is a great watch if you haven't seen it.
Return is one of the best zombie movies of all time!
Crazy how I just looked up ur channel to watch the last video and another banger gets uploaded 🔥
This is a reupload
anyknow the game names showin during the intro? for science.
Possessioner and Virgin Angel. For science.
@@dungeonchill The Researcher we need, but don't deserve.
Is that one of the names of the game with the green haired mecha lady that kind of looks like marina from mischief makers?@@dungeonchill
Love the artwork but don’t understand the logic behind the plot
The game as the backdrop that presents, dungeon chill, is shining in the Darkness
Detective Kiel looks like a Skyrim elf lmao.
Goul ~ Wesker energy
Kiel ~ Chief Irons energy
I love the art style of that era. They outright butchered it with the newer version, so I am glad you can still play the OG.
More games like this one please :D I love sleazy movies like this (italian zombie movies ftw!) and it's as charming as ever in game form as well.
18:43 I was not ready for this😂😂
Dan Hibiki
Gosh I remember when Western awareness of PC-98 games wasn’t as developed online and I found Possessioner thinking it looked like a fun RPG, just to be assailed by a lot of sex after the first action sequence lmao. I was in early high school and was completely blindsided. All screenshots and coverage of the game online only covered the first few minutes so there was no warning for me. I was sad because I just wanted it to be a cool RPG with cute characters but got porn instead. I kept playing it and got to the third or fourth boss before having to give up bc I can’t read Japanese. I was using google translate as I went and it got way too confusing but the story was awesome as I remember it! Think someone is working on an official translation now. Good memories though despite the very graphic sex scenes
Oh no! Graphic sex scenes? That's so awful! How did you ever recover???
@@AB0BA_69 I was a kid lmao, sorry i’m not a porn addict like you
Wow, interesting stuff. More PC-98 content please!
Thanks!I hope to hear about more PC-98 games!
I'm hoping for Emerald Dragon personally. I enjoyed playing the cut down SNES version like 15 years ago but I'd love to see it in its original glory.
32:00 The "what year is it" from twin peaks is really haunting if you know what its supposed to mean
please do more of these obscure anime games, im assuming most of us didn't have access to these consoles and computers that seemed to have all these anime titles. Fun to see these explored
I definitely get the re-animator influences mentioned, but something about the doc’s relationship with Cole reminds me of the opening of the return of the living dead. Just something about an older guy going “hey check this out” and absolutely ruining everyone’s night when it goes south.
I’m so glad i discovered this channel. It’s nice to find a RUclipsr that doesn’t have an awful speaking voice and doesn’t make a million unnecessary stupid jokes
Just got into your work and really appreciate your style of giving history and context in addition to waking through the game! Would you ever cover “space griffin VF-9”? My first PS1 game back in the day, had no idea what I was getting into😂
Thanks for your work and much love from the Midwest!❤️
Wow... the title of the game is pretty apt. Between the random rape and nudity, the random terminator, and the random fairytale wand wave of a happy ending that was pretty dead of the brain alright.
"dead of the brain really is dead of the brain"
Great minds think alike, lol
nah, this shit is great. don t diss it
This is the first time I'm watching one of your vids and it was an absolute blast ! The writing, the narration, the humour, I loved everything about it. Now that I've subscribed, time for a deep dive into your other videos ^^ Cheers !
Your videos are so genuinely good that they can be rewatched and enjoyed. Perfect audio mixing, perfect pacing. I wish I was as good at content as you, but I also wish the algo recognized you.
I guess you got 100k so not bad sorry I watch a lot of smaller creators and forget who’s still waiting for success
I personally like the cat name change being Schrödinger lol, because it’s both alive and dead. But great video! Def gonna check out more from you
Never heard about this game, but wow look at that pixel art and ooh man that music.
Super enjoyed the video. Thanks very much.
7:05 wait, so nobody was asking why the cat was dead a week ago?
If you were paying attention, you'd know he said it died of feline senile dementia.
Re-animator is an awesome movie! This game looks great too, I'm definitely getting it! Thanks for talking about cool old games. Not just the ones everyone has heard of too.
I hope youll do more sleezy retro horror games. Theyre so interesting xD
So glad stuff like stonks 9800 and world of horror exist to keep the visuals alive
I love your khaaantent man. Seriously though, it rocks! I tend to keep it short and sweet but know your stuff really helps me chill tf out after typically long boring tedious annoying days lol. Thanks a million
this was an amazing ride
terry..good luck
also sheila just repeatedly going „thats alright, just another day as a woman :) „ is such a classic
thanks so much for sharing this absolute mess of a masterpiece
I've been listening to dead of the brain OST pieces for years now, cute to learn about it.
6:12 nice kitty :3
Been wanting to play this for a bit now! Even more stoked to try it out!
This is why people are awesome though. People in Japan got inspired from films here in America, and now America does the same with Japan. Sharing stuff we think is cool and making it cooler.
This was awesome 👌.
Made my Saturday night after training
There's something special about 80's and 90's horror games. Old graphics fit so well with horror games and they add to the horror.
22:30
Fuckin killed me LMFAO
Also Cole slept with the wrong girl :'(
Sally was SO much hotter!
Cathy was a badass too... RIP to both of them.
Definitely got a sub from me man. My first vid from ya!
Ray from the gang Bloody Foxes - with a leatherband around his arm, is so very 1980s Italian zombie, barbarian and post apocalyptic movies. Love it.
9:12 Jesus😂
Thanks for bundling everything so neatly and making it easy to get started. And avoiding issues.
Most people probably know Dungeon Chill from his chill RPG videos - but did you know he also released a freestyle rap EP over the intro song, Copacabana Drill?
It’s true! Back in 1987, when NEC released the TurboGrafx-16…
I guess you can never escape your past…
11:16 - Doc's MO seems to revolve around shooting. Wether it's with a gun or a syringe.
I've never played any PC98 games, but this has me intrigued. Time to sail the stormy seas methinks 🏴☠️
11:22
I'd like to point out that Dr. Cooger's pistol is animated, something not done in much newer horror games, such as Resident Evil 7. Truly ahead of its time.
I wish more older games like these would hit modern consoles or distribution servers. Something magical about older media and games that modern technology can’t quite replicate.
i havent finished this but your narration is so damn funny ive been trying to keep quiet at night as i Watch this but when you yelled GO for the go option i almost lost my mind LOL
Thanks man, what an awesome video ! Never heard of this game before.
Now I want to play this. Definitely would have back in the day.
back then you had to draw one pixel at a time with a mouse, that's dedication to art
I love these kinds of games, mainly because of the 80s anime style that I miss so much. Also, your voice is nice to listen to.
I really love the art in these, it’s so intricate!
i like how the time you play the game music with the error happening, the noise fits perfectly of "oh god, wth is happening here?"
The highlighted katakana at 4:35 says "shiira", i think. Which is still technically "Sheila" (since the L-sound isnt used in japanese).
Yep, he literally mentions that.
This story is better than any movie that has come out since 2003
That's some absolutely gorgeous (and grisly) pixel art. I did a spit-take on "big dogs" because that's what my boyfriend and I call hot dogs after I made a dumb typo. I can't believe some Japanese person from the 90s also knew about this inside joke...
Love all these old games with similar interfaces. Like Uninvited for the NES, and there was another one, where you were a early 20th century detective. Cant remember the name.
The Cemetary gate @ 9:42 really reminds me of one from Return of the Living Dead.
Where Trash does her dance…..
I heard a long time ago (I'm 49, and was 17 in 1992) that the reason why "Dead Of The Brain 2" did not get translated was because the company that made these, and a lot of Japanese visual novels at the time, was "Cinemaware". See at the time a lot of the people secretly behind most Japanese pop culture were actually Americans who were using Japanese pen names, while Japanese creators fronted for them due to racism. Basically it became obvious in the late 70s through the 80s that Japan was in love with American culture and trying to replace their own with it, but they had no real idea how to do it right, leading to the whole "they're really big in Japan" gag in the 80s, oftentimes a stock of certain kinds of movies that would depict some Asian guys acting like rock stars and looking like really goofy parodies of American cool in the background.
At any rate this is why you see so many American sci-fi, fantasy, and movie cliques, right down to D&D references, in Anime, especially in the 1990s. It wasn't that the Japanese were playing D&D heavily, it was that the nerds actually ghost writing this stuff were, and were teaching them. This is also why entire video game genres like JRPGs are also built around the mechanics and concepts (typically simplified from the originals despite people believing the option) from things like "Ultima" and "Wizardry" right down to Western RPG stat names and classes and such.
At any rate to get back on the subject, Cinemaware was a game developer that tried to do an interactive movie type thing, and some credited with the creation of the entire Visual Novel genre as we know it now, especially the idea of introducing game play elements into the format. Their earliest, and perhaps most well known work, was something called "Defender Of The Crown" from the late 80s, and it was mostly bit on the apple, but they got heavily involved in a number of other projects and made a lot of connections in Japan while researching a game called "Lords Of The Rising Sun" which was based heavily on Japanese Samurai movies. At the time they had gotten heavily invested in The Amiga, and it was simply put turning into a train wreck for a lot of reasons. Not sure who was going to win the format wars in the US, they turned almost exclusively to developing games for the Japanese market on a freelance basis, and "Dead Of The Brain" was one of their first ghost writing projects, hence why it includes those elements like finding objects to resolve crisis scenes on a timer, pretty much one of their big trademarks going back as far as games like "It Came From the Desert" a few years before.
At any rate apparently they had plans to release the second "Dead Of the Brain" game (but not the first one for some reason) in the US market as part of an exclusive deal with Radio-Shack back when it was doing it's Tandy systems. This is actually where I heard about this, and why I know what this is at all. The problem was the Cinemaware team which was not a formal thing anymore, broke up and different people went on to work in different projects. The game never got subbed because among fansubbers of the time (who I dealt with via BBS echoes) there were unofficial rules that they only translate and distribute things that were not being sold in the target market, they felt things that were being censored were fair game as long as they did not translate the "for sale" version, but in this case there was not supposed to be any censorship. This meant the first game was "fair game" for translation for anyone who wanted to do it, but nobody would work on the second game as it was going to be released... and well, with time it kind of faded away and being not as good nobody bothered with an official release or otherwise. It's questionable what Cinemaware was thinking in their choices, or what was going on with the Radio Shack Deal.
Now part of why I know anything about this is that part of the story was that Radio Shack actually cut a deal to get special copies of the game "Legacy: Realm Of Terror" instead, it didn't want two games of the same type. "Legacy" being made by Microprose, which had the connotations you might expect when they were looking to do their own computer lines as well. I'm actually kind of a fan of "Legacy" and well... if you saw the zombies they have at the beginning of that game (adjusted for the time period these were made of course), and then looked at that version... and well, you can probably guess why they decided which game was a better one to pimp along with their PCs to horror fans.... not that Radio Shack's PC ambitions had a happy ending of course, but that has little to do with this mess.
I don't have a real way of verifying it, but it is situation where what little I've heard from Fansubbers, Radio Shack, and others all seem to align. It also is the answer I came up with back then when I was asking the question "what the hell happened to Cinemaware" because for a while they were pretty well known, had some of the slickest games around, and a lot of their stuff was actually used to Demo various PCs that were on display at places like "Software Etc..." or "Radio Shack". Most people assumed they simply died out with the Amiga, but there is no reason they would have transitioned... and well as I said, they pretty much went Faux-Japanese to fuel their game boom in their preferred style, being able to get away with things there that they couldn't here, and broke up along the way meaning that by the time PC gaming in the US became less competitive there wasn't any Cinemaware to return... and to be fair I've never seen anything to contradict the story, and plenty to reinforce it... at least indirectly.
I doubt anyone read this, but it may or may not be a satisfying answer to anyone who wondered about that one detail, which is really the only odd bit I have to elaborate on this (with some major tangents along the way).
Fascinating history, I was completely unaware. It makes much more sense why these games are so heavily influenced by American pop-culture. BTW - I'm also a huge fan of "Legacy: Realm Of Terror." I even have my original 1993 DOS version in the box (six-3.5" floppies!). I think it's one of the few games that really captures a Lovecraftian essence that most other Lovecraft-style games completely miss. It's probably the best horror game of the early/mid 1990s.
Is this a joke. This is just completely wrong.
Those first two paragraphs are a load of bullshit. I have no idea whether what you say about this specific company, Cinemaware, is true(since it's based on rumors it's also likely all bullshit as well), but Japanese Pop Culture, in general, being secretly made by Americans is such a bizarre conspiracy theory. Regarding JRPGs specifically, you know that Wizardry is big in Japan, right? Yuji Horii and Koichi Nakamura, the creators of Dragon Quest, are on record as having played the game and been inspired by it. But no, it doesn't make sense that Japanese people could possibly play a Western-made game and take inspiration from it. Only American nerds could have made such games, and of course, they had to hide their identities because there is no way Japanese people in the 80s would have played a game developed by filthy gaijin, no sir, it's not like The Black Onyx in 1984 was also a big hit. But I bet you have a credible source for this sweeping claim about Japanese media in the 80s and 90s outside of rumors about a single company developing games for the Japanese market, I'm sure you aren't just claiming these things based on rumors from boards in the early 90s. Also, you seem to imply that fansubbers in the '90s translated the Dead of the Brain, which doesn't seem to be the case at all. The first translation patch was made in 2019 and was machine-translated. Honestly, I think you heard a lot of this shit as a teenager, and you have assumed it to be true for your whole life despite it being verifiably false. Like please give me some proof that there was a bunch of American writers and game designers that secretly made most of Japan's pop culture in the 80s because if you have no hard evidence, it's bullshit, and you have just been believing bullshit for over 30 years.
@@Illusionist345 Hate to break it to you but none of this is bullshit, a secret, or some kind of bizarre conspiracy theory. It's simply what was public knowledge a few decades ago, albeit public within what was a much smaller community.
It's one of those cases where your ignorance is due to simply so much knowledge pre-internet being lost, specially if it's not on social media. What's more certain people just don't have a vested interest in making sure things like this remain public knowledge.
See in the 1990s a lot of the companies important anime before it became huge, like ADV and the like were actually pretty public about it, as it affected their business and what they could get. It was also a big deal within the fansub community because as a general rule fansubbers only wanted to do fan translations of things that were not going to be released in an unedited format. The reason why so many people even knew what certain things were in order to request them was learning about it from the American creators.
If you bother to ever want to do research, you'll find quickly that when things like "Lodoss Wars" were done, Japan knew nothing about western RPGs or D&D tropes. The Americans writing it on the other hand did, and that's why it was one of those things that went cross-national as it appealed to both the Japanese audience and the American D&D fans who had to see the "secret D&D anime" although it wasn't really a secret, just not officially released.
Likewise guys like Kentaro Miura, famous for things like "Berserk" were terrified about their work becoming known in the US as they didn't understand copyright laws. He thought he could be sued over the fact that Guts having a giant sword and a fake arm because of Bruce Campbell's character in the "Evil Dead" franchise who inspired part of the idea, especially since they both fought demons. The fact that the name "Guts" is taken from a legendary French knight named "Goetz" along with some broad story bits also had him worried. He had nothing to worry about though.
Recently a Marvel editor got yelled at due to a past using a Japanese pen name to write Manga there, claiming "cultural appropriation" and such, with the big defense of it being that it just generally isn't uncommon.
It can get pretty deep, but basically during the 1990s when this stuff was becoming popular and there were all the fansub wars and such, there was a lot about it and how it all worked, and a lot of reveals about how things like "Armitage III", "Ghost In The Shell", "Tank Police", and others were all heavily inspired by various American novels. "Armitage" being one of the first big surprises as there was some cloak and dagger stuff to get it released as the rights olders were terrified as the titular character while very different is named after a character from the famous Cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" and they both deal heavily with AI issues (albeit different ones). That said it not getting anyone sued was quietly notable for causing widespread relief among Japanese creators given the direct lift of a character's rather distinctive (to them) name.
You'll also find things like "The Slayers" have a similar western RPG input as Lodoss Wars, and a lot of American minds behind some of the names, and that one little known (now) series called "Devil Hunter Yohko" was a big deal when ADV released it because at the time most stuff being brought over had very heavy western influences, and that was one of the first animes officially transported that was actually extremely Japanese in it's themes , and had pretty much no American pop culture involved in it outside of the video collection (Yohko 4 Ever) mimicking numerous American CD/Album covers in some of the stills.
Seriously though, educate yourself. I mostly point this out because for one I get sort of irritated about people acting like Japan invented things it copied (albeit copied well in many cases), and also with weebs acting like Japan is some kind of nirvana for nerds when culturally it's actually far more conservative (and was more so in the 90s), in deep historical denial, and still retains a lot of aggressive xenophobia. I do give credit where it's due, but I think while Japanaphilia was cute for a while, as certain important things are coming to a head it's important to be honest about what's being dealt with.
See, understand, I want nerd culture to win. But with things like the localization wars going on (likely blind siding Japan as they are used to a lot of genuine American contribution behind the scenes without political issues,), I think we need to be up front about a lot of this because if not defended properly the opposition can use the truth to destroy us. See it's easy for a lot of people now to say "It's not even American, it was all the JApanese" by way of defense, but as often or not the only reason things became so incestuous is that they were using American culture and creations to begin with in many cases. Likewise if they start digging back into old interviews, articles, etc... they will find a lot of famous works being defended as "of Japanse Origins" were actually created by Americans with Japanese fronts, and faces, and they were doing it then to make stuff without American cultural censorship.
What that means is, they could pretty much claim Japan was simply being used as a front to engage in illegal or at least immoral activity they couldn't get away with here, with the creations then being passed to the US through importers. It could be a huge mess, so it's best not to be blindsided by it.
To be brutally honest a lot of the weird sex stuff is in fact Japanese, but a lot of the other stuff... yeah, that was all us teaching them that. They could even be so specific as to find animes and such that are just slightly modified versions of American novels and the like, or have lifted pieces qand characters directly from them. That's part of why I mention "Armitage" and that whole mess, because a I said, while the story is different, the character actually was based on an American Cyberpunk character from one of the most iconic novels. Something Japan had never heard of at the time, and that alone should tell you who was behind a lot of this.
Wow that's a ton of BS. Cool read though, if wrong.
You telling me theres a serious game out there titled more or less "braindead" ?
amazing... absolutely amazing
The only one I'm familiar with on MS DOS is Cobra Mission, and I had no idea it was a PC-98 port.
Dungeon Chill, I appreciate you mate. Cheers
8:18 is probably why the older translator used Schrodinger for the cats
cat's name.
The serum may have worn off and the cat in the box (fridge) may or may not be dead
I watched an entire playthrough of this game a couple years back. Love the art of these old Japanese VNs.
I know is probably like many other games of the genre, but found the design UI amazing
Any time I watch a video like this about the PC 98 I feel like we really missed out.