It all started with a game company by the name "VISIT" that I had never seen before. I'm always looking for more obscure music to listen to for the Snes, I'd been searching for random Japanese games to see if I'd find some undiscovered or forgotten masterpiece in game music, (much like Last Bible III, Wagyan Paradise, or Waterworld before they had caught on and found popularity) and somehow I ended up on a game called "Tarot Mystery"
I suggest finding the music for Tarot Mystery to get an idea of what impression I got from it.
It's truly wild to me that a game like Tarot Mystery existed in 1995
Its a horoscope/fortune reading game with no more than 20 seconds of content. It's so daring and avant-garde for a game studio to put out hyper-focused and unconventional software like this.
Genres such as visual novels, music visualizers, and any kind of software tools, were not popular outside of Japan and most developers of the 90s were focused on polishing proven concepts and iterating on what worked before, experimentation and niche ideas like this were very rare at the time. For what it is I noticed the amount of effort it had, with the unique visuals and musical talent/direction they didn't have to go so far with something like this.
Overall, it stood out to me how mysterious and unusual the atmosphere of thas game is, and I had to see what else this studio had done.
And that's where I found this "quiz game" Shinri 2, and I was not prepared for what I was going to experience.
Have you ever just wanted to isolate the hypnotic backgrounds and off-beat tunes of Earthbound, and just take in the atmosphere while letting your mind wander? Do you enjoy the subconscious ethereal experience of L.S.D. Dream Emulator or the unnerving cozy horror of Yume Nikki?
There's a lot about a game like Earthbound that stands out and I will never forget, some of the animated battle backgrounds were so visually distinct and creative.
I'd always wanted to just be able to flip through them in some kind of easily accessible menu while perusing a sound test.
I never would have known that I'd basically find what I was looking for by random chance so many years later, and I'm still awe-struck that it exists.
Shinri Game 2: Magical Trip is so hard to describe, it's so many things. relaxing, mesmerizing, liminal, hostile, cursed.
Getting this game and powering on in my console feels like stumbling into some forbidden ritual, the game is so otherworldly, it feels subliminal.
This game has a sound test with 42 backgrounds to choose from and 22 audio tracks, there's also a mode with presets that loop through specific set background animations to a specific theme.
Going back to the Earthbound comparison, if you've experienced the final battle in that game, or the sound stone eight melodies screen, some visuals and audio from Shinri 2 gave me the exact same feeling that game did, it was noteworthy enough I took the time to capture it and share it here so you can understand what I mean, from a real game/system unedited...
(before I can show anything I must give a warning to anyone reading this, the visuals I've picked out are completely safe however)
I can not stress this enough, if you have any photo-sensitivity or epilepsy of any kind, even just motion sickness,
---------------------------------- DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME ------------------------------------------
this game was made before awareness about epilepsy became widespread and commonplace. I'm not exaggerating, some backgrounds change and flip every frame while flashing between opposite colors 60 times a second, they're really hard to look at, I've never seen such harsh visuals, don't take this lightly.
Some Calm sound and visuals
https://youtu.be/slZ83evfNP0
Hostile, unnerving
https://youtu.be/vFEEfe5c5-g
Some other themes very much bring to mind the visuals and sounds of L.S.D. Dream emulator on playstation with very unconventional music:
https://youtu.be/0hQuITm-g5A
It can be dreamlike and unnerving
https://youtu.be/9zoN3hmQ36U
https://youtu.be/YPuPQONQj4g
https://youtu.be/P4tM5DhS2qU
I did mention earlier this is a quiz game.
The quizzes are supposed to be the main part of the game, however I don't understand Japanese so this is all lost on me.
There seems to be quite a lot of it, around 20 quizzes that each can go on for a long time. As the player answers questions the tone changes with background and music to fit, at the end I think it gives some kind of explanation based on what answers were given, a psychological exam of some kind? I can only speculate here.
I can't engage with a significant portion of this, because I can't read the language, so I can't reasonably give it a rating.
This was such a unique experience, and I will probably end up putting on some of the presets while doing something else, working, playing a handheld game, ect. What strikes me about this specifically is that it feels more like an experimental art piece, and it's not trying to be anything more than that.
The Super nintendo/Famicom is a console I've very thoroughly explored and I'm at a point where I've played every notable game in the library. I'm at that point now, Digging into the deepest most obscured parts of this console to find what's left.
I'll try just about anything as long as it's different enough. Strange, Abnormal, Surreal, Ambitious, sometimes just terrible, generally speaking in just the last five years I've broadened my game preferences so much and found so many unforgettable and unique experiences that I would have ignored years ago.
I want to explore more creative outlets myself and put my own vision out there somehow but I've always struggled with thoughts that some ideas I have are too unusual to succeed or too much of a risk, and that everything I try will be misunderstood and ridiculed. Games like these inspire and motivate me with ideas that there is no real limit to concepts or ideas within any art form and that any idea can be done right with the right approach and execution.
There's this very specific kind of off-beat experimental vibe that comes with these games especially in this Snes/early PS1 era, there were people that wanted to just put their vision out there regardless of trends, an unfiltered and unapologetic raw experience. It seems like just about any idea could be approved and sold to the masses no matter how niche, small scope, or eccentric it was. I'm grateful for the indie space because games like this otherwise don't really have this kind of presence anymore and I kind of miss that, there were so many games from the 90s and early 2000s that were really pushing boundaries, it felt like anything could be a game and anyone could make them if they just had the passion and ideas for it.
I suggest finding the music for Tarot Mystery to get an idea of what impression I got from it.
It's truly wild to me that a game like Tarot Mystery existed in 1995
Its a horoscope/fortune reading game with no more than 20 seconds of content. It's so daring and avant-garde for a game studio to put out hyper-focused and unconventional software like this.
Genres such as visual novels, music visualizers, and any kind of software tools, were not popular outside of Japan and most developers of the 90s were focused on polishing proven concepts and iterating on what worked before, experimentation and niche ideas like this were very rare at the time. For what it is I noticed the amount of effort it had, with the unique visuals and musical talent/direction they didn't have to go so far with something like this.
Overall, it stood out to me how mysterious and unusual the atmosphere of thas game is, and I had to see what else this studio had done.
And that's where I found this "quiz game" Shinri 2, and I was not prepared for what I was going to experience.
Have you ever just wanted to isolate the hypnotic backgrounds and off-beat tunes of Earthbound, and just take in the atmosphere while letting your mind wander? Do you enjoy the subconscious ethereal experience of L.S.D. Dream Emulator or the unnerving cozy horror of Yume Nikki?
There's a lot about a game like Earthbound that stands out and I will never forget, some of the animated battle backgrounds were so visually distinct and creative.
I'd always wanted to just be able to flip through them in some kind of easily accessible menu while perusing a sound test.
I never would have known that I'd basically find what I was looking for by random chance so many years later, and I'm still awe-struck that it exists.
Shinri Game 2: Magical Trip is so hard to describe, it's so many things. relaxing, mesmerizing, liminal, hostile, cursed.
Getting this game and powering on in my console feels like stumbling into some forbidden ritual, the game is so otherworldly, it feels subliminal.
This game has a sound test with 42 backgrounds to choose from and 22 audio tracks, there's also a mode with presets that loop through specific set background animations to a specific theme.
Going back to the Earthbound comparison, if you've experienced the final battle in that game, or the sound stone eight melodies screen, some visuals and audio from Shinri 2 gave me the exact same feeling that game did, it was noteworthy enough I took the time to capture it and share it here so you can understand what I mean, from a real game/system unedited...
(before I can show anything I must give a warning to anyone reading this, the visuals I've picked out are completely safe however)
I can not stress this enough, if you have any photo-sensitivity or epilepsy of any kind, even just motion sickness,
---------------------------------- DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME ------------------------------------------
this game was made before awareness about epilepsy became widespread and commonplace. I'm not exaggerating, some backgrounds change and flip every frame while flashing between opposite colors 60 times a second, they're really hard to look at, I've never seen such harsh visuals, don't take this lightly.
Some Calm sound and visuals
https://youtu.be/slZ83evfNP0
Hostile, unnerving
https://youtu.be/vFEEfe5c5-g
Some other themes very much bring to mind the visuals and sounds of L.S.D. Dream emulator on playstation with very unconventional music:
https://youtu.be/0hQuITm-g5A
It can be dreamlike and unnerving
https://youtu.be/9zoN3hmQ36U
https://youtu.be/YPuPQONQj4g
https://youtu.be/P4tM5DhS2qU
I did mention earlier this is a quiz game.
The quizzes are supposed to be the main part of the game, however I don't understand Japanese so this is all lost on me.
There seems to be quite a lot of it, around 20 quizzes that each can go on for a long time. As the player answers questions the tone changes with background and music to fit, at the end I think it gives some kind of explanation based on what answers were given, a psychological exam of some kind? I can only speculate here.
I can't engage with a significant portion of this, because I can't read the language, so I can't reasonably give it a rating.
This was such a unique experience, and I will probably end up putting on some of the presets while doing something else, working, playing a handheld game, ect. What strikes me about this specifically is that it feels more like an experimental art piece, and it's not trying to be anything more than that.
The Super nintendo/Famicom is a console I've very thoroughly explored and I'm at a point where I've played every notable game in the library. I'm at that point now, Digging into the deepest most obscured parts of this console to find what's left.
I'll try just about anything as long as it's different enough. Strange, Abnormal, Surreal, Ambitious, sometimes just terrible, generally speaking in just the last five years I've broadened my game preferences so much and found so many unforgettable and unique experiences that I would have ignored years ago.
I want to explore more creative outlets myself and put my own vision out there somehow but I've always struggled with thoughts that some ideas I have are too unusual to succeed or too much of a risk, and that everything I try will be misunderstood and ridiculed. Games like these inspire and motivate me with ideas that there is no real limit to concepts or ideas within any art form and that any idea can be done right with the right approach and execution.
There's this very specific kind of off-beat experimental vibe that comes with these games especially in this Snes/early PS1 era, there were people that wanted to just put their vision out there regardless of trends, an unfiltered and unapologetic raw experience. It seems like just about any idea could be approved and sold to the masses no matter how niche, small scope, or eccentric it was. I'm grateful for the indie space because games like this otherwise don't really have this kind of presence anymore and I kind of miss that, there were so many games from the 90s and early 2000s that were really pushing boundaries, it felt like anything could be a game and anyone could make them if they just had the passion and ideas for it.