Retro Games Beaten

I get how the level of possible control and precision is higher on an arcade joystick, though. But yeah, I bought one years ago for the Saturn, and I sucked with it. It really takes learning.

So, I finished a game. Well, "game". Mirrors was released in 1990 for the last PC-88 model, the first to come with a CD-ROM drive. At the time, a new genre was branching out from the Japanese adventure genre; the visual novel. While ADV games (as they are known over there, because three-letter genre acronyms like RPG, STG (shmups) and FTG (vs fighters) were popular) featured things like menu-based exploration and conversation (which often acted as interrogations in search of clues), and sometimes even had little action sequences to spice things up, visual novels are all story, with perhaps a few choices leading to branching paths. Mirrors is a visual novel.

From what little I know of them, it's certain an unusual one. There's no anime or manga influence whatsoever; the visuals consist entirely of gritty, low-res digitized photographs. There's no dating sim aspect, as those didn't exist at the time. It's also much longer than other early games of its type, as it came out on CD-ROM (the romhackers estimated it at around 10 hours; I didn't count.)

It's a fantasy-horror tale about a British indie rock band and its lead singer, David. David has long been haunted by vivid nightmares in which people are forever trying to kill him, usually in various medieval settings. As the band embarks on its first European tour and their popularity explodes, the nightmares become more and more frequent, and the line between dream and reality begins to blur. Often, David has no consciousness of falling asleep; upon awaking, he usually learns of some gruesome murder whose circumstances resemble his dreams. Meanwhile, the crowds at the band's concerts become wilder and wilder, as if in a trance, while a pair of private detectives tail Susanna, the band's new manager, who was appointed after their previous manager suddenly died in a car crash the day before their tour began.

The core plot is certainly intriguing, and interactions between the band members are interesting. There is also a touristic aspect as the band tours France, Italy and Germany that may have been of interest to Japanese players, for whom those places are more exotic; I found that stuff pretty boring. In general, the writing is a bit bloated in parts, leading to a few tedious sequences; I place the blame on ambitious writers who probably set out to make the biggest VN ever at the time. Still, overall, it's all pretty involving, and ultimately reveals itself to be more fantasy than horror. I won't give it a rating, but if anyone's interested in playing an atypical VN, this is a good choice.

It also has some above-average music. Here are two groovy tracks I liked:




There also creepier / more mysterious ones.