Highlights
- Indie horror games often rely on jump-scares rather than building fear, leaving desensitized players looking for something more international.
- The Simple 2000 Series Vol. 113: The Tairyō Jigoku is a cheap survival horror game inspired by Alice in Wonderland, perfect for fans of weird budget games.
- Nanashi no Game for the Nintendo DS takes advantage of the console's features to create an unsettling analog horror experience.
The Halloween season has come again, so it’s a great time to switch off the lights and fire up a good survival horror game for chills and thrills. Yet the problem is that a game can only be new once. Eventually, the dogs bursting through the windows in Resident Evil or Pyramid Head stalking James in Silent Hill 2 will feel run-of-the-mill rather than a shock.
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There’s still indie horror, which can be hit or miss as many of them go for jump-scares rather than building fear. So, these desensitized players may like to scour the net for something more international. For example, these survival horror games came out in Japan but never reached the West.
8 Simple 2000 Series Vol. 113: The Tairyō Jigoku
- Platform: PlayStation 2.
- English Translation: No.
The Simple 2000 Series was a series of low-budget games that are technically still around today, but they hit their peak in the 2000s when some of them actually got Western releases. Anyone who managed to play Zombie Vs Ambulance, Demolition Girl, or The Sister Swordfight (aka The Oneechanbara) played a Simple 2000 game. Many more didn’t make it westwards, like the surprisingly fun The Pro-Wrestling 2, and the less enjoyable The Tairyō Jigoku (The Overwhelming Hell).
Inspired by Alice in Wonderland, players control a schoolgirl who follows a white rabbit into a dark realm filled with bugs and other nasty creatures. On her own, she’s defenseless, but she can pick up different, perishable weapons like bats and clubs to hold back the hordes. It’s not spectacular, as it is meant to be a cheap game for quick chills. But it’s a must for people who like weird budget games.
7 ...Iru!
- Platforms: PlayStation.
- English Translation: Available via Patch.
If players want something a little more conventional, there’s Soft Machine’s …Iru! It’s a first-person survival horror where the player controls Tatsuya, an exchange student at Kirigaoka High School who has to help them prepare for their upcoming festival. Things start going wrong when he and the other students get locked in the building, and they start getting picked off individually by something (or things) lurking in the darkness.
The game plays similarly to Clock Tower, where Tatsuya can’t fight back directly against the terrors. He has to hide, run, and outwit the Lovecraftian beasts while talking to other survivors and solving puzzles to progress. The game’s surprisingly open-ended, as Tatsuya can explore to his heart’s content for one key item or another, though making them appear can be quite fiddly.
6 Devilman
- Platforms: PlayStation, Windows 98 PC.
- English Translation: No.
People outside Japan are now more familiar with Go Nagai’s demonic antihero Akira Fudo thanks to its updated anime Devilman Crybaby. But Devilman has been a recognizable name in Japan for 50+ years now and has appeared in all sorts of media, inspiring some characters (Tekken’s Devil forms), or being wholesale copied for others (he replaced Batman in The Revenge of Shinobi).
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Bandai tried adapting the original manga into a game for the PS1 and PC back in 2000. It’s split into three chapters, with the last two playing more like a beat ‘em up as Devilman fights the demons directly. Before then, the first chapter sticks to survival horror as a pre-Devilman Akira looks for his lost friend Ryo in a mansion. While it’s not exactly a lost gem, it does make for an interesting curio for Devilman and horror fans.
5 Night Of The Sacrifice
- Platform: Wii.
- English Translation: Available via Patch.
There weren't many top-quality games that used the Wii’s Balance Board beyond Wii Fit, but there are other ways to get people’s hearts racing. Square-Enix certainly thought so when they made Ikenie no Yoru, or Night of the Sacrifice in English. It saw five college students go to Tsukuyomi Ravine to "test their courage," as people were once sacrificed to the gods there. They soon come across their spirits, who want to avenge their fates on the living.
Players have to time their movements carefully to avoid getting touched by the ghosts, using one button to move forward, another to go back, and the Balance Board to control their speed and other movements. They can even use the Wiimote as a flashlight or as a cellphone to get calls via its speaker. It's an inventive take on survival horror, if not the scariest.
4 Seven Mansions: Ghastly Smile
- Platform: Sega Dreamcast.
- English Translation: Available via Patch.
Koei tried walking Capcom’s path by making their own RE-like series with Seven Mansions. There was a PS1/Saturn game, but its Dreamcast sequel Seven Mansions: Ghastly Smile was much more ambitious. It follows Kei and Reina as they land on an island in search of their missing friend Ernest. They come across seven mansions, with each holding new threats and mysteries for them to overcome.
Like RE, players could pick either Kei or Reina and use tank controls to navigate the mansions with fixed, third-person cameras (or first-person if they dare toggle the options). Most interestingly, it had a multiplayer mode where two players could control Kei and Reina at the same time in a shorter campaign with different enemy placements. It’s something RE wouldn’t do until their online-only game RE: Outbreak.
3 Mizzurna Falls
- Platform: PlayStation.
- English Translation: Available via Patch.
Human Entertainment already made its name in survival horror with the underrated original point-and-click version of Clock Tower. So, it wasn’t unusual for them to make Mizzurna Falls, a horror game inspired by Twin Peaks where a man called Matthew has to look for his friend Emma, who went missing outside the titular town.
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On the surface, it plays like RE, with its tank controls and combat. However, it’s also an open-world game! Players can go all around the town, talk to the residents and town businesses, drive around in a car, and eat at the local diners. Grand Theft Auto had to go 2D to fit its features on the PS1, but Mizzurna Falls was all in 3D. It kept players on their toes too, as they only had seven in-game days to solve the mystery and get the best of its three endings.
2 Nanashi no Game
- Platform: Nintendo DS.
- English Translation: Available via Patch.
Before Square-Enix got creative with the Wii in Night of Sacrifice, they published Epics’ Nanashi no Game, which used the DS to shock players with analog horror. Like The Ring, whoever plays the Cursed Game on the TS ("Twin-Screen") is doomed to die in seven days. One unlucky college student, i.e., the player, has to use their remaining time to find out how the game came to be, and with luck dispel the curse.
The DS isn’t really known for its horror games, so Epics has to be commended for taking a chance to use its features to instill fear. Most of the time, players navigate 3D areas to solve puzzles and avoid zombie-like spirits called "Regrets," which they explore by tilting the DS on its side. Players can also get meta by using the TS on their DS to receive emails and play the Cursed Game (an 8-bit RPG) to get clues for puzzles or help in getting past the Regrets.
1 Doctor Hauzer
- Platform: 3DO Interactive Multiplayer.
- English Translation: Available via Patch.
Most survival horror games both East and West in the late 1990s followed the formula set by RE. But Capcom’s zombie-athon wasn’t the first survival horror game, as there are older examples that laid the path for the genre. For example, Riverhillsoft brought the genre to the 3DO with Doctor Hauzer, where Adams Adler has to find out what happened to the titular doctor by investigating his mansion.
It’s similar to RE with its tank controls, only it has no combat or enemies. Instead, players had to watch out for instant death traps (with the help of its toggleable camera) and find ways to get around them. It has its flaws, like its sluggish frame rate. However, for a 1994 3D game, its gameplay holds up quite well. Out of survival horror’s different pioneers, Doctor Hauzer is the most underrated and is worth exploring.