Moonlight Syndrome Explained, Chapter 03: Sowguw

Ever since I played the 1998 open world Twin Peaks inspired Japan only mystery thriller, Mizzurna Falls, I’ve been learning Japanese. Mizzurna Falls was already getting a translation patch by the time I played it, but it still peaked my interested. There had to be others, there had to be hidden gems, there had to be other games that were just as interesting but lacked the immediate appeal of being inspired by Twin Peaks. So, I started studying, and I started doing it the only way I know how to learn anything, by making it fun and applying it practically. I had previously picked up a little here and there by playing through my Japanese copy of A Link to the Past, where I had to look up item descriptions for items I couldn’t remember what did, and sign posts what not, and just doing that, had imprinted a few characters in my head, so I knew that was the way to do it. I can by no means speak or even read Japanese by now, but I know enough to search and catalogue games, and navigate their title and menu screens and get into the games and get playing. But I really didn’t need to go to the obscure corners of the wayback machine and translate my way through archaic Japanese usenet forums to find the good shit, I just needed to look at Human Entertainments backlog, the very same people that produced Mizzurna Falls, because right there is a series. Twilight Syndrome. It’s an incredibly intriguing series of games that stars young high schoolers usually, as they investigate rumors of paranormal phenomena like young people do in real life, and the rumors are often based on real life urban legends, and to make it really interesting, the cases that these young people investigate somehow often makes them realize something about themselves or involves themselves in some way, and they’re incredibly well told stories that unlike a lot of other horror games, really nail…. Tension. These games can build up to a confrontation like it’s nobody’s business, to the point that there is rarely if ever any actual supernatural happening appearing on screen, but you feel it. You’re right there with the people investigating, and as they get more and more tense, so do you, and that’s an incredible feat for games that are just glorified walking simulators. They’re the kind of games that I would beg people to play, because these almost 30 year old pieces of media, do things with storytelling in games that modern games could learn a lot from, and just experiencing them is an event and an incredibly immersive experience. Unfortunately they’re in Japanese, they never really sold all that well to my knowledge, they’ve never received a fan translation, and the sort of creator of them, Suda51, is uninterested in localizing them or even releasing them on modern platforms for Japanese audiences, because according to him, Western audiences will find some of the content objectionable, which.. yeah, probably, but we’ll get to that, and they aren’t really his games, since he was only brought into the project of the first one, well into development because previous director was moved to other projects, which in the Japanese gaming world ususally means that he pissed away the teams time and money and didn’t get shit done but had a pretty good contract so they couldn’t outright sack him…. Which was exactly what happened, as Suda was brought into salvage the project when only 3 of the 10 planned scenarios were done, with only 3 months left until the project was supposed to be finished. Whether or not the game made its original release is unknown, but when Suda came in, he quickly split the project into 2 releases as it wasn’t gonna fit on one disc anyways, and he expanded the 10 scenarios or rather, investigations, to be much bigger than they originally were. We’ve already played through the first part of the duology, and during the last moments of that game, one of our protagonists Mika, disappeared, and now, it’s time to see what might have happened to her. So sit back and relax, and let me for probably the first time in English, Take you on a journey through the 3rd game in the series, Moonlight Syndrome