Yesterday Love

In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room.

"Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There"

It was only while I was reading up on the topic of today's review, that I realized I was going back in time with reviewing these Kanno games. Heck, I didn't even know that Tantei Shinshi DASH was one of his games...

Kanno Hiroyuki (1968-2011) was a game designer and scenario writer who's remembered for working on adult graphic adventure games, some of which have made major impact on the history of adventure videogames in Japan. When I say adult graphic adventures, I mean, 18+ with nudity and explicit sex scenes, so in essence story-driven porn. Kanno however was a profound fan of classic mystery fiction, and his major works are also interesting examples of mystery adventure games, often with a science-fiction angle, but with said porn iadded. Due to different regulations for the home console videogame market in Japan, the PC games Kanno designed/wrote were usually censored/altered to remove all the explicit content/rewritten whenever these games were ported to home consoles, and I have reviewed two of his games in the past. Kanno's best known game is perhaps YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World, which I haven't played through yet, but in the past I have reviewed the 'safe' console versions of Tantei Shinshi DASH! (2000) and EVE burst error R (modern remaster of a 1995 adventure): these were both games I did consider flawed in terms of design, but which also offered interesting concepts as mystery-themed adventures.

DESIRE remaster ver. is as the title suggests a remastered version of DESIRE - Haitoku no Rasen ("DESIRE - Spiral of Immorality"), a science-fiction mystery adult adventure game originally released in 1994 on PC-9801 systems, with the remastered version available on Windows, PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch. Desire is also the name of the mysterious laboratory on a small island in the South Seas, an institution financed completely (including the island) by the powerful Granchester Foundation. The island is sealed away from the rest of the world, with more than hundred researchers and maintenance staff living more-or-less permanently on the island. While Desire is supposed to be doing research that 'benefits the link between man and ecology', nobody seems to know exactly what is being researched here (not even the researchers and engineers), providing soil for rumors like Desire being a site for the development of military equipment. While Desire has always been shrouded in mystery, one day SNT reporter Albert learns he's been invited to do an interview with Dr. Stelladovic, the head of Desire. Albert's girlfriend Makoto happens to be the head engineer at Desire, whom he hasn't seen in months, so the invitation is accepted at once, but Albert remains cautious. For why call for a reporter now, after so much secrecy, and why him, a reporter of a small news agency? At arrival on the island, Albert finds the young girl Tina on the beach who suffers from amnesia, but that's not the only thing that's odd about the island, as he slowly learns that Desire is not at all what everyone, including the researchers working in the lab themselves, thinks it is.

DESIRE is also an absolutely horrible game to struggle through if you're only interested in the science-fiction mystery aspect of the story. With Tantei Shinshi DASH! and EVE burst error R, I knew that they were originally adult graphic adventures that were toned down later, and while it was never hard to guess what the awkwardly written kiss scenes in the censored versions actually were in the original, uncensored versions, at least the core design of these games and story were still focused on a mystery plot. In DESIRE, there is a core science-fiction mystery plot that taken on its own, does really make an impression and in hindsight is nicely foreshadowed (even if it's not a fair-play puzzle mystery exactly), but the plot is stretched out very thinly to hang horribly written and barely disguised adult scenes and/or innuendo-filled dialogues from, and it's basically impossible to sympathize with any of the characters (save for the young Tina) as everybody is just flirting with everyone and sleeping, errr, passionately kissing around in incredibly unbelievable 'plot' developments. Sure, this was originally an explicit adult graphic adventure, so I guess it's supposed to be like bad porn (and the console versions aren't even porn due to censorship), but there's actually a good idea in there underneath that all, a plot would've been so much more entertaining and enjoyable if not for these obnoxious characters and horribly written dialogue that make the game a true trial to get through. In comparison, the Kamiki Raichi novel series by Hayasaka do feature explicit sex scenes, but at least Hayasaka makes sure to actually implement those scenes for a reason, as they are always integral part of the core puzzle plot, for example because seeing a person naked herself allows Raichi her to rule that person out as as the murderer. That's not the case with DESIRE, where none of the implied sex scenes are even remotely necessary to the core story and only serve as distractions as the story seems to jerk around between extreme mood swings, with plot-important dialogues suddenly turning into passionate kissing scenes from one moment to the next.

EVE burst error (1995) introduced a Multi Sight System, where the player could jump on the fly between two narratives with two different protagonists and you could only solve the case by going through both stories. The older DESIRE uses a more primitive version of this concept: you start the game playing as Albert, learning about what happens at the island and inside the Desire lab. Curious events happen over the course of four days, some even deadly. Once you have finished his scenario, you can replay the game as his girlfriend Makoto. Her scenario shows things from a completely different perspective, so events that raised questions or seemed mysterious in Albert's scenario, are explained in Makoto's story. By completing Makoto's story, you unlocked a third scenario, which answers some remaining questions. In theory, this subsequent jumping from one perspective to another can be used to bring pretty interesting mystery stories, with multiple people seeing the same events from various perspectives, each point of view answering questions raised by other story routes. In practice, it feels just like padding to have more innuendo-filled conversations and build-up to the sex-scenes-censored-into-kiss scenes in this game. Albert's scenario is basically just him flirting with every girl he sees and of course every girl falling for him like that in the span of four days, while Makoto's scenario... it's really, really awful and almost torture to get through.

The thing is, I do think that in essence, DESIRE has a very emotional and touching science-fiction mystery plot. It might not be a fair play puzzle plot mystery, but dig between the awkwardly written scenes of both Albert and Makoto's scenarios, and you'll also come across little instances of competent foreshadowing and build-up to reveal a mystery plot, a concept that one is not likely to forget soon. As you go through the final scenario, you'll realize how a lot of the small comments in the dialogues or actions of certain characters suddenly make sense now and the story itself is truly heartbreaking. But it would've worked much better as a focused short story, rather than how it's done now. There are still unanswered questions/scenes that don't make much sense, so surely this story would've benefitted so much if it had been written as a proper, focused science-fiction mystery adventure game, rather than a science-fiction mystery adventure game that also needs to perform as porn.

In the end, I really can't recommend DESIRE remaster ver., even if it's a very early example of a science-fiction mystery adventure, providing a lineage from DESIRE/EVE to more current mystery games like the Zero Escape series. I do really like the core idea of DESIRE, but for me, it would've worked much better if it had not been conceived as an explicit adult graphic adventure game, and if basically all the characters were completely different for there's basically only one character who's likeable in the whole game now. When I played EVE burst error R, I was also slightly annoyed by awkward writing due to the adult parts, but at the very least, EVE burst error felt more balanced and the story was also better suited for a longer experience. That balance is missing in DESIRE, and you basically have a good, if short science-fiction mystery story that is trapped by awful characters.

Original Japanese title(s): 『DESIRE remaster ver.』

Everlasting

いくつもの糸もつれあう中

僕たちは繋がっている

 「Everlasting」（B'z）

Even among these entangled threads

We are still connected

"Everlasting" (B'z)

I hope to do at least one other mystery videogame review before the end of the year, as the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou prequel Daedalus: The Awakening of Golden Jazz will release in December, but I can't make any promises (depends on how long the game is.

The private investigator Amagi Kojirou hasn't seen a single client in the three months since he had to open his own office, but a friend brings the womanizing detective in contact with Stoleman Kou, director of the Yale International School. Kou wants Kojirou to locate a small painting for him, which he needs for a service to commemorate his wife who died three years earlier. The painting has gone missing, but Kou has no idea whether it was stolen or simply mislaid in his house while he was abroad. Meanwhile, government agent Houjou Marina is assigned to a special undercover mission: she is to protect Midou Mayako, daughter of the Eldian ambassador to Japan. The Republic of Eldia is a small, multi-ethnic Middle-Eastern country that has developed tremendously lately, but is also torn by internal struggles between pro-monarch and pro-democracy factions. It seems Mayako has become the target of some group to put pressure on her father the ambassador, so Marina goes undercover as Mayako's personal tutor to protect her from danger. As Kojirou and Marina work on their own respective jobs however, they uncover an international plot involving the future of the Republic of Eldia and a mysterious serial killer "Terror" who always seems to be one step ahead of the two detectives in the PlayStation Vita/Windows/Nintendo Switch game EVE burst error R (2016).

EVE burst error is a famous graphic adventure game developed by C's Ware originally released in 1995 for the PC-9800 system (a kind of PC for the Japanese market). As you can gather from the summary above, it's a mystery adventure game, but it should also be mentioned that the original EVE burst error is an adult graphic adventure. Which means the game also contained nudity and explicit sex scenes. Explicit adult content is a big no-no for home console releases though, so in later ports and remakes for home console systems like the SEGA Saturn and PlayStation 2, the adult content is removed or rewritten. EVE burst error has been remade several times, and EVE burst error R is the most recent version, released on PlayStation Vita, Windows and Nintendo Switch (EVE burst error A, a version of R which does include the explicit adult content is also available on Windows). There exists an official English translation of the older Windows 98 release of EVE burst error by the way, though I played the Nintendo Switch which was released recently. As far as I know the main story is the same across all the versions (though newer versions may contain scenes not found in the original 1995 version), and while the non-adult versions don't feature the sex scenes, you have still have plenty of flirt scenes featuring skimpily dressed women shot from rather suggestive angles that horribly interrupt the pacing of the main mystery story.

As an adventure game, EVE burst error R is most of the time quite classic. You'll be using commands like "Move", "Check" and "Talk" to interact with other characters and the environment as you move between locations in search of clues and people to talk to to move the story forward. As long as you try all options, it's impossible to get stuck, and most of the time, you'll just be chasing after the story, finding the right characters to talk to. And like in most classic Japanese command-type adventure games, it can be quite irritating to figure out what to do to move the story forward. Luckily, EVE burst error R has an optional mode that gives a visual cue where you have to go next, and I really recommend this, as come on, how am I going to guess I have to first go to the school dorm to activate an inner monologue about something completely unrelated, go back to Central Avenue, and then go to the school dorm again to have character X appear in order to proceed!? EVE burst error R features nice redrawn art, but it definitely feels really like the 90s adventure it is.

Interesting however is the so-called Multi Sight System, which is unique to the EVE series. In the game, you control both Kojirou and Marina in their respective scenarios, and you can switch between the two stories at any time. So you're following two stories simultaneously. While most of the times, the two detectives pursue their own goals, at times we see the two stories intersect, and it's pretty interesting to see some events from both perspectives and it's only by seeing both sides that all the questions are answered, as both Kojirou and Marina will learn things that the other has no inkling about (though there are also times you just see the same events twice, and that can be a bit boring). The Multi Sight System is also used as a rudimentary "zapping" system as seen in games like Machi and 428: sometimes you can't continue in a particular scenario, unless you reach a specific point in the other scenario too. For example, early in the game, you'll hit a stop in the story with Marina unless you swap over to the Kojirou story, and play with him until the point where he discovers a murdered man, after which Marina in her scenario is informed of that same murder and heads out to the crime scene. In games like Machi and 428, you had "zap" between the various characters and make story-changing choices to help the others out (for example, choose to open a certain door with character X so later character Y can use that door), though in EVE burst error R, it's not about making the correct choice to help out the other protagonist, all you have to do is simply reach a certain point in the story, so in a way, it's only a mechanic to make sure you get too far ahead in either scenario. 

Is EVE burst error R an interesting mystery game though, with these systems? Err... I have to voice some reservations. First of all, both Kojirou and Marina are rather passive players in their respective scenarios, with most of the events happening to them, and giving them little space to really go out investigate the various events themselves. Once in a while, both detectives will learn fragments of useful information, but they never really manage to become active agents in their own stories. The Tantei Jinguuji Saburou games are also fairly straighforward in chasing after the main mystery, but at least in those games, you feel more like a detective actively investigating a case, rather than just someone who's the target of event after event. Several murders occur over the course of the story of EVE burst error R, and you slowly learn it all has to do with the Republic of Eldia, but the furher you come, the more the story becomes like a somewhat ridiculous spy story with secret agents and conspiracies etc. At the very end of both the Kojirou and Marina scenarios however, the game suddenly takes on a different form and gives you two options: one is to replay some of the significant parts that involve the various murders (in case you'd forgotten the details), and the other option is to accuse a murderer for each of these murders. Here EVE burst error R presents a rather "classic" take on the detective game, simply asking you to name the murderer(s). As a mystery plot, EVE burst error R has some merits, but also big flaws.

What is entertaining is definitely the use of the Multi Sight System: in order to figure out who the murderer(s) are for each of the murders, you have to combine the facts you learn from both sides. The way these hints and clues are spread across both scenarios is done competently, and gives meaning at the use of two, simultaneously developing stories. On the other hand though, the solution treads into the science-fiction genre, and is not completely fair. Yes, there are events that happen in both scenarios that hint at the solution, but for example the most incriminating clue is shown on the screen literally one second before the game asks you to name the murderer(s), without any context or comment on what you just saw, and that is definitely something from science fiction we had never seen before in the story. Comparing it to WorldEnd Syndrome, which I reviewed a few months ago, I'd say EVE burst error R has more clues that actually point towards the solution, but still WorldEnd Syndrome is more satisfying as the underlying rules were clearer and did a better job at preparing the player for the supernatural background setting of a game, while in EVE burst error, you're suddenly confronted in the solution with something that up to that point, had not been shown as possible in that world in that form.

EVE burst error R is therefore a game I find difficult to recommend as a mystery adventure game. Yes, it is a classic in the history of Japanese adventure games, but it definitely also feels like an old game in terms of storytelling. As a mystery story, the game definitely tries something interesting, making good use of its Multi Sight System, but the story is also hampered by the over-the-top foreign-spy-agents-and-conspiracies backdrop and the ending that's basically science fiction, which would have actually worked perfectly if only the set-up had been better for this reveal, as the main clue as to the actual answer to all the murders now depends on a physical clue that has not been explained enough in the main story.

Original Japanese title(s): 『EVE burst error R』

Strange Bedfellows

"A true gentleman never refuses the request of a beautiful lady"

"Professor Layton and the Curious Village"

Hmm, the last time I reviewed a detective adventure game on the DreamCast, it didn't end well...

According to himself, private detective Agyou Souma has the worst luck in the world, which always gets him into trouble. And up until now, he has also always managed to get out of it (somehow). His impressive record has made him one of the very few License A detectives working for the IDLA (International Detective License Agency). Souma (he prefers being called by his first name) lives in a shabby detective office however, as he likes to keep the fact he is a license A detective a secret (to keep clients away). One day, his new IDLA contact Maiko puts him on a new job: investigating ghost sightings near the beach. The murder on another IDLA detective who had been put on the job has made a simple ghost story into something much more serious. As Souma starts his investigations in the DreamCast videogame Tantei Shinshi DASH! ("The Gentleman Detective DASH!") though, he also bumps into several other cases, some involving a criminal organization called Outfit and even takes custody over a cute high-tech female android.

Tantei Shinshi DASH! was originally released in 2000 for the DreamCast and a port from the PC game Fukakutei Sekai no Tantei Shinshi ("A Gentleman Detective In An Uncertain World"), released in the same year. The PC game was actually aimed at a mature (18+) audience and included some erotic scenes: these were changed for the home console DreamCast release (though the script still includes quite a dash of innuendo). The game is also one of the few detective games on the DreamCast, which was my reason of purchase, and it appears Tantei Shinshi DASH! is doing alright for the developers: it's by no means a famous game, but it has been ported to a number of platforms and several sequels have been made.

As a detective adventure game on a home console, Tantei Shinshi DASH! plays pretty much like you'd expect it to. You advance in the story by moving between various locations, talking with characters and gathering information. The story of Tantei Shinshi DASH! has its ups and downs. It tries a bit too hard to be hardboiled, edgy and cool, which just didn't work for me. But the cases themselves are also a mixed lot: there is a lot of variety in the sort of cases Souma has to solve in the course of the game, but they are not all as good as another. Early in the game you investigate a ghost sighting, as well as a curious case of a wife who has lost her husband (and everybody says there was no husband in the first place!), but as you progress, you pick up more cases, all somehow connected with a main storyline involving the criminal organization Outfit. None of the cases invite the player to really think though: there are some murder cases, but the game basically tells you what happened if you can just manage to perform the right actions/be at the right place at the right time, without any mental activity asked of the player. The emphasis is laid on following the adventures of Souma.

The "uncertain world" from the original title is also a problem: at first it appears it's a 'normal' world like where we live in, but it doesn't take long for a humanoid android (a cute girl called Mint) to appear, together with enemies that seem to come straight out of the post-apocalyptic world of 20XX. The worldview needs a little polishing. The android plays a very big part in the story by the way, and Tantei Shinshi DASH! also includes elements of dating simulation games and even Tamagotchi pet raising elements. With slightly erotic undertones. As I said, this was originally a game with a mature rating and even though the developers have rewritten/redrawn the scenes that gave it its original rating, it still has a lot of risque shots and innuendo-filled dialogue.

The biggest issue I have with Tantei Shinshi DASH! however is also the most unique feature of the game: there is a time-system that is locked to your movements. Moving from one location to another close by takes half an hour. From one side of the city to the other takes about four hours. After twenty-four hours, it's the next day. You have a certain amount of time to solve each case and you only make advancements in the story by being at the right location at the right time (for example, to talk to character X). So the idea is that you need to always keep the time in mind if you need to be somewhere and you should not walk around too much unneccesary. You can also work on multiple cases at the same time, but this could also result in you being too busy with one case, and not being able to solve another case on time. This is an interesting idea, that is something novels can never do: give you the freedom to experience the story in your own manner/order (within certain boundaries).

The problem is that the game seldom tells you where you need to be at what time. Important characters you need to meet with to advance in the story appear at the most random places and times, without any hint to why they are there at that time. There is often no way you could've known that important character X would be at Y at time Z. It's like the game at one hands tries to limit your freedom by giving you hard deadlines and a time system, while also urging you to go explore because stuff can happen practically anywhere, anytime. Tantei Jinguuji Saburou - Tomoshibi ga Kienu Ma ni (PSX) is also a detective adventure game that also included a time system and deadlines for cases, but that game was much better than Tantei Shinshi Dash!. It was always fair, with no random encounters and more hints to where you needed to go to advance the story. Tantei Shinshi DASH! shows how it can be done in a very bad way.

All in all, I can't really recommend Tantei Shinshi DASH!.  The story is not particularly exciting or amusing (and tries too hard to be cool). But what really hurts the game, is how it works as a game. The way the game should be played (as dictated by its gameplay) and the way the game must be played (because of randomness) contradict each other and result in a game that is just frustrating to play. Games can do a lot books can't do, but at least I still have to come across an example of a book where the system of a book (turn pages around) doesn't mesh with how I'm supposed to read the book.

Original Japanese title(s): 『探偵紳士DASH!』