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The '90s horror output of controversial Japanese developer FairyTale is headed to PC, translated into English (officially) for the very first time. Published by FAKKU, the first release in FairyTale's "Nightmare Collection" will be the PC-98 title Dead Of The Brain, which gooed up the Japanese market back in 1992.
Dead of the Brain: Day of the Living Dead spearheaded FairyTale's forced genre shift from erotic games (or "Eroge") to horror titles. In a story that seems almost quaint today, a high-school student stole a copy of the studio's 1991 release Saori: The House of Beautiful Girls from Japanese store shelves. You wouldn't steal an Eroge.
Anyway, the student's eventual apprehension would lead to an investigation of FairyTale, and the ultimate arrest of the studio's President for possession of obscene material. The scandal caused by the incident would led to the formation of the regulatory body EOCS (Ethics Organisation of Computer Software)
FairyTale, looking to lay low while the heat died down, decided to make the natural transition from sex games to horror games, producing a series of point-and-click adventure titles with an emphasis on ghosts, ghouls, and gore.
Dead of the Brain was the first offering in this dubious endeavour - smashing together the stories and splatter of American pictures such as The Evil Dead (1981), Return of the Living Dead (1985), and H.P. Lovecraft's Reanimator (1985).
The plot sees an overly ambitious scientist, Dr. Cooger, concoct a serum which he believes has the ability to reanimate the dead. It works, of course, or else we wouldn't have a game. But instead of showing him any gratitude, the cadavers immediately embark on a brain-eating rampage across the city, leaving it up to the player - in the role of Dr. Cooger's super-cool friend, Cole - to bring an end to the fast-spreading zombie apocalypse.
Dead of the Brain features windows-driven, point-and-click gameplay, a modus operandi adopted by myriad horror games of the era (and expertly aped by Ysbryd Games' 2023 release, World of Horror). The simple design is a frame wherein FairyTale can hang its gory images, sneaking in nudity here and there because they never learned. A mixture of point-and-click, visual novel, and formative QTE gameplay guides the player through the unholy narrative, where one wrong move could find Cole on the menu.
Dead of the Brain would be followed by two more horror titles: sequel Dead of the Brain 2 (1993) and mutant alien thriller Marine Philt (1993). While the three games would receive ports on other Japanese platforms, including the PC Engine CD and the MSX 2, these Steam releases - accompanied by their first official English localisation ever - offers a wider community its best opportunity yet to take a look at FairyTale's catalogue of misadventures.
There are plans in motion at FAKKU to localise further PC-98 games from the era, including Dengeki Nurse (1992), Necronomicon (1992), and Dracula Hakushaku (1992). No release dates have been confirmed as of this writing.
Following the release of the Nightmare Collection, FairyTale returned to making Eroge.
Won't someone think of the children?