Games of the Abstract: Kowai Shashin - Shinrei Shashin Kitan (2002)

 

Developer: Media Entertainment

Publisher: Media Entertainment

One Player

Sony Playstation One

 

Many games were developed for the original Sony Playstation, one of the console's huge successes in combating veteran companies like Sony and Nintendo as a debut being the amount of developers and publishers they could sign to port games to the machine. As with any console, however, which is successful, you get many games, and there is an entire underbelly to a console like the PS1 just in titles which never left Japan, especially as in the modern day, Kowai Shashin eventually got an English translation.

The game, if you have heard about it, is known as being "cursed", and spoken as someone who is open minded to the occult, and is fascinated by the creepy pasta concept, I am however going to bring down the Monty Python giant foot and be a killjoy, as it is the least interesting aspect to Kowai Shashin. It is much more interesting as a Japanese horror game curiosity, especially when to my surprise, this was not from knee-deep into the console's glory years but released in 2002, where the Playstation 2 had been released in Japan in what is more of a fascinating curiosity in Japanese horror games, especially when to my surprise, thinking this is knee-deep in the console's golden era, it was instead released in 2002, where the Playstation 2 had been released in Japan in 2000 and thus a game like this exists on an original machine that, in its favour, lasted until 2006 but was not a priority.

The story is around the photos used in the game, real ones in one of the game's most curious touches, which was said to have been an ill-advised mistake from having actually used real ones and, deepening on the tale told, botching or compromising the spiritual barrier put in place so nothing bad happened¹. The concept of spirit photography, and the concept of ghosts haunting modern technology found in Japanese horror, is inherently fascinating for me, and yes, the concept of the haunted video game, a niche in itself, is curious to consider, if no way as interesting with this particular game. Maybe a tale around a game I can play undercuts the mystique, but even if the ghosts were real, they have left me be and will be treated with respect.

It begins with Media Entertainment, whose output is sadly maligned to Japan only, in mind that they surprised me with Kyuiin (1996), their scrolling shooter which not only won me. With one exception for the Sega Dreamcast, a pachinko game named Pachi-Slot Teiou: Dream Slot - Heiwa SP (2001), all their titles were PS1 exclusives, and in a better world, a brave publisher would have released these in the West. Good or bad, Ramen Hashi (1999), a life simulator of a ramen shop chef, or Yakiniku Bugyou (2001), their puzzle game surrounding being a barbecue chef trying to cook meat, even if I have deliberately picked on their food obsession, would fascinate many. Tragically they did not last long into the 2000s, and the urban tale is right that Kowai Shashin is their last game, but even if ghosts were involved too, that era was also one which claimed a lot of big Japanese developers and publishers famous in the West, so it was a turbulent time all round and ghosts may have to be blamed too for the likes of SNK going through bankruptcy among others. With a lot of their games in 2D, with Kowai Shashin a distinct exception, Media Entertainment really encompass that wonderful idea of the publisher/developer who were literally experimenting with fascinating concepts and making video gaming fun for those in Japan who got games like this.

To sum up the style of the game, you play Hiori, a young woman who has inherited through her family the ability to perform exorcisms on spirit photographs, devouring the souls of the vindictive ghosts from across Japan in button timed proto-QTAs (quick time events). The photos are real, the ghosts drawn but the photos including people's eyes obscured in black boxes, with real locations from a bowling alley to public buildings. It certainly stands out, an eeriness to feed many a tale that these photos contained images of real people who died. I have dismissed the creepypasta, but the images, even with the obvious Photoshop work, where faces and images have been added to them, do have a legitimate creepiness to them, even a reality, because of the obvious fakeness, alongside the fact that there is a time capsule nature to the images reconceptualised here. I have always found urban locations in Japan, and those in industrial land bordering the countryside, in their horror films and stories possess an atmosphere which adds so much, here seen again for me as you need to scan your psychic preceptor, a cursor, over the images to find the ghosts.

The game is curious, in that it's gameplay and style is fascinating, one that if it appeared on Steam would gain traction as a curious cult indie. Playing Hiori, eventually uncovering her family's demonic past, you scan each photo for ghosts with the cursor, going from blue to yellow to red, with mind that using the ability drains your life's candle (life bar) if you take too long. Once a ghost is caught, it is a two stage exorcism. First, you need to zap the ghost a few times, for early stages only left (square on the PS1 controller) and right (circle) to worry about, later including up (triangle) and down (cross). After that, you need to complete with button combinations for the second part, more needed as you go on to succeed without having to restart the two stages again if you screw up. The last are always the same button combinations, almost ritualistic befittingly for the game's premise, but slipping and finding yourself losing health trying to catch the ghost presents the one flaw with the game which stands out. It is repetitious and frustrating, and whilst the gameplay is fascinating and the game will be getting a good nod of respect to it in the end for this review, it does feel a game you can lose your temper with, a game which could have been fine tuned. It is telling that, when a fan translation came into existence, two alternative versions on opposite sides of the difficulty also came to be - one which jettisoned the gameplay, effectively turning this into a visual novel, and one which randomised the button combinations in the later section of the exorcism to add a greater challenge.

The game's repetition is its own worst enemy, a shame as this fascinates as a curiosity, a reminder of how fascinating the fifth into the sixth eras of game consoles, even in the games we were lucky enough to get in the West, could be so unique. With the best consoles, even if too many of the gems being too expensive second hand nowadays, a lot of others still, if flawed or "bad", are still available cheap especially for the Sony consoles, and with the obscure Japanese only titles, they are being found over time and being made available. The low budget production, in the end times for the Playstation One, is not a negative either, with only that the cut scenes are images with text only, matched by voice acting, the lead the only voice heard. It is an idiosyncratic game difficult to even classify in terms of genre, which is really compelling to think of.

Kowai Shashin has seven chapters altogether, and its short length is contrasted by its gameplay being focused around stress in completing the challenges. The story eventually leads to the equivalent of a final boss battle, [Major Spoiler] against an ancestor whose skills they decided to invest into devouring the souls of their own clan to become Godlike [Spoilers End]; to its credit, if abruptly introduced, a conclusion with bombast. The game does cement the tantalising nature of the Playstation, as talked of early in this review, of how to beat Nintendo and Sega in the fifth generaiton of consoles as outsiders, Sony were open in making the console enticing for developers to make games for it. In how Square jumped from Nintendo when they realised the Nintendo 64 sticking to the cartridge format would kibosh their ambitions for Final Fantasy VII (1997) but also in how the console let people, with ease, produce games for the console. It led to shovelware, but luckily, you find weird ethereal content like this still being tripped over decades later and being preserved outside official channels.

It is a premise which could be expanded upon, which is Kowai Shashin's best virtue, the "crude" use of photographs, if still possible to use in the modern day, as potent considering the creepypasta legend based entirely on them nowadays. It is an eerie game if you can get past the moments of irritation trying to beat it, the photos doctored in ways which are obvious but also startling, like a pair of vending machines with, in the gap in-between, a multi-limbed monstrosity poking out. The ghosts are not cuddly either - foetus babies, burning men, piles of multi-being flesh - to add to the morbidness. The issues are just the need for improving the gameplay, the sort of thing, if this had not been Media Entertainment's last game, where this got a sequel, the Kowai Shashin II game we never got which would fix its frustrations and take its mechanics and flex them in little touches. If this had even gotten a Western release, now selling at a ridiculous second hand price as some games sadly do, this would have gotten a cult audience with ease just by itself. What we get instead in this timeline is just as interesting, more and more games like this being found in just the Japanese exclusive Playstation One games, so many enticing games yet to be translated and uncovered before you even consider other formats.

 

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1) The (Not So) True Story of a Haunted Game, written by Baxter's Mono Omoi for Medium and published on March 27th 2021.