@@Deadguy2322forreal really! ARE YOU FOR REAL THOSE Italian zombie/cannibal movies only got made because George Romero forget to put a copyright thing on his night of the living dead and that why Italians market their zombie as PSEUDO=SEQUELS!
One thing I miss in modern anime is all the absurdly ill-fitting, oversized clothes. The Hellsing manga is a great example. Every shirt or coat is at least two sizes too large, the clothes are full of ridiculous folds and prominent creases; you know belts and ties are a dire necessity in that world. This game delivers this in spades too.
Modern anime is full of clothes that look very plain and ironed, WHILE ON THE BODY; it's a very strange look. This may be connected to animation and how animators are expected to pump out their product. Easier to do when the lineart is plain.
Yeah you can definitely see the influence of real life 80s & 90s fashion. Women's clothing (especially suit jackets and coats) had tons of shoulder padding.
To a certain extent, that was representative of real-world fashion in the 80s and 90s. Art follows life, and people seem to like their clothes a lot tighter these days.
true far too many modern animes go for the less is best approach to clothes and even thou that don't are often bare minimum - shirt, pants and shoes maybe a jacket if were lucky XD
I just love that this Doc Marty type seems to be always packing heat. Clearly the devs took one look at America and said “yep, these men always walk around strapped”
These types of games were so weirdly charming and I just can't get enough of that 80's/90's anime art style. This style does to me what brains do to a Zombie.
@@robertnomok9750 oh.. they all look the same? do you think all black people look the same? art is better than corpo trash.. wait.. huh.. blizzard games (overwatch, wow etc) are literal rip offs of anime style, but im sure you think they are just fine..by the by, anime itself was a japanese response to american pin up art they saw on ww2 era bombers and fighters..who was the first "waifu?" well lum from urusei yatsura, but the first western one they copied was JESSICA FUCKING RABBIT..
Not sure if this was said anywhere else, but the fix for the graphical repeating glitch you encountered in the first translation is due to GDC being set to 5mhz. To resolve press and hold the END key on your keyboard then using your mouse go to Emulator>Reset. The machine options menu will come up. It's in Japanese. Select the second option using the arrow keys and pressing ENTER. Navigate down to GDC and select 2.5MHZ. Then select the bottom option to go back to the previous screen and once again to leave the menu. That will solve the issue.
One thing about these games I love is how insanely good the art is - Especially with how the style of 80's/90's anime was so shiny, shaded and animated. I remember seeing anime like Record of Lodoss War and Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory thinking how every piece of machinery and article of clothing was drawn and colored with a level of detail you rarely see in modern anime. Being able to transfer that magic onto a computer with a UI and playing through it must have felt magical back then, and probably still does.
@@bullno1Sometimes insanely pointy, but you could definitely see them! Edit: Also the Japanese bubble economy (while absolutely awful when it popped) meant there was just insane loads of cash floating around. That's how a lot these very detailed pieces of media (like 0083 and Akira) were able to be produced: Incredibly over the top budgets.
@@TheCrewExpendable The bubble had burst by the late 80s, so I think it was the last vestiges of that money that trickled off in the early 90s. It was also the fact the animators were putting themselves through the ringer, usually by choice, to create to the level that they did.
@@blumiu2426 the early history of gainax basically mirrors everything you said, they had weirdly small animation teams but pumped out some ridiculous work, mostly because they were obsessed with it
@@Yixdy I miss that. Anime can't take risks like that now, and we still somewhat see that in the niche games market for Japan. Either it has to have a otaku fanbase or the publisher survives on niche games. Anime would come out that you knew was basically promo because it was few episodes, but now so many anime series live or die by the first season or they just license dozens of light novels which is what I call junk or fodder.
Goddamn, the PC-98 has some of the absolute best pixel art I've ever seen in video games. Damn shame that doing more of them would lead to... ya know, more "version 4" videos. Keep up the great work man!
Gave me House of the Dead vibes…it’s an awesome action experience and then the end just blurts something nonsensical about overpopulation before the final fight. It’s better off with no story tbh
I love how some Japanese nerds in the 90's watched some American grindhouse movies and just thought to themselves "hey we can do this but in a computer game". It's kind of wholesome in a way.
Yeah that's like Kojima's entire career. I usually describe Snatcher as "Have you ever seen Blade Runner? The Terminator? Well, so did Hideo Kojima and he turned it into a video game"
This game somehow managed to make a straightforward plot confusing. I was like, "Ok, so someone wanted to use Doc's seru-- wait, it makes you immortal an-- now Guol is a terminator what the fuck!"
I do find it fascinating how the initial requirement of "display complex japanese text accurately" shaped PCs and games in japan. A high resolution solves the text issue but means things like sprites, scrolling and animation AKA stuff thats typically crucial for games, is now pretty difficult. But you can display big beautiful images and tons of text is a breeze. Thus, the visual novel is born. And the other type of novel lol. Already a long comment but maybe interesting... This game being the way it is, is directly related to real life industry shenanigans. If you are aware of the Saori Incident in japan (google if you dont know), Dead of the Brain was the next game to come out from FairyTale afterwards and was intended to be a much less lewd "safe" game content wise after they bore the brunt of blowback from the incident. Safe meaning violence a-plenty and X hugely reduced but still, its a significant change from their earlier stuff.
Dead of the brain litterally was my introduction on the PC-98 fan translation scene ! When I was in high-school I was religiously watched the screenshot of this game on a website and love the gore and always though it is one of the game that I will never able to play and was dreaming that I could someday until like 3 years ago when I saw a youtube lets play in my recommendation out of nowhere and saw it was in english. I was excited like a kid receiving a Nintendo 64 at Christmas lol Nice video btw +1 sub ! :)
The best and dumbest moment in this game (unless I'm remembering something else) is you find some ammo and Cole goes "I dont have a gun so I'll just leave these here." Like...what? Cole sure has keen survival instincts.
Yes, he does? Carrying around random ammo in the hopes that you find a gun chambered for it is generally not a sensible thing to do in a survival scenario.
For anyone interested in PC-98 i recommend watching the recent anime "16-bit sensation" as it somewhat goes into the game development for that machine. Also one of it`s characters is a huge PC-98 fan.
I’m glad the TH-cam algorithm brought me here! If you could talk and show more of these PC98 type games, that would be awesome! Can’t wait to watch all your other videos niw
dead of the brain also seems to borrow heavily from return of the living dead 1985 a kinda sequel (but not really) to night of the living dead. Dr. Cooger accidentally exposing an entire graveyard to this serum that raises them from the dead, the zombies being a lot more smarter than in most media, even referencing the "of the dead" series and shooting zombies in the head; it's all there. the history behind the movie is really interesting and the movie itself is a great watch if you haven't seen it.
I’m so glad i discovered this channel. It’s nice to find a TH-camr that doesn’t have an awful speaking voice and doesn’t make a million unnecessary stupid jokes
This is the first time I'm watching one of your vids and it was an absolute blast ! The writing, the narration, the humour, I loved everything about it. Now that I've subscribed, time for a deep dive into your other videos ^^ Cheers !
this was an amazing ride terry..good luck also sheila just repeatedly going „thats alright, just another day as a woman :) „ is such a classic thanks so much for sharing this absolute mess of a masterpiece
I heard a long time ago (I'm 49, and was 17 in 1992) that the reason why "Dead Of The Brain 2" did not get translated was because the company that made these, and a lot of Japanese visual novels at the time, was "Cinemaware". See at the time a lot of the people secretly behind most Japanese pop culture were actually Americans who were using Japanese pen names, while Japanese creators fronted for them due to racism. Basically it became obvious in the late 70s through the 80s that Japan was in love with American culture and trying to replace their own with it, but they had no real idea how to do it right, leading to the whole "they're really big in Japan" gag in the 80s, oftentimes a stock of certain kinds of movies that would depict some Asian guys acting like rock stars and looking like really goofy parodies of American cool in the background. At any rate this is why you see so many American sci-fi, fantasy, and movie cliques, right down to D&D references, in Anime, especially in the 1990s. It wasn't that the Japanese were playing D&D heavily, it was that the nerds actually ghost writing this stuff were, and were teaching them. This is also why entire video game genres like JRPGs are also built around the mechanics and concepts (typically simplified from the originals despite people believing the option) from things like "Ultima" and "Wizardry" right down to Western RPG stat names and classes and such. At any rate to get back on the subject, Cinemaware was a game developer that tried to do an interactive movie type thing, and some credited with the creation of the entire Visual Novel genre as we know it now, especially the idea of introducing game play elements into the format. Their earliest, and perhaps most well known work, was something called "Defender Of The Crown" from the late 80s, and it was mostly bit on the apple, but they got heavily involved in a number of other projects and made a lot of connections in Japan while researching a game called "Lords Of The Rising Sun" which was based heavily on Japanese Samurai movies. At the time they had gotten heavily invested in The Amiga, and it was simply put turning into a train wreck for a lot of reasons. Not sure who was going to win the format wars in the US, they turned almost exclusively to developing games for the Japanese market on a freelance basis, and "Dead Of The Brain" was one of their first ghost writing projects, hence why it includes those elements like finding objects to resolve crisis scenes on a timer, pretty much one of their big trademarks going back as far as games like "It Came From the Desert" a few years before. At any rate apparently they had plans to release the second "Dead Of the Brain" game (but not the first one for some reason) in the US market as part of an exclusive deal with Radio-Shack back when it was doing it's Tandy systems. This is actually where I heard about this, and why I know what this is at all. The problem was the Cinemaware team which was not a formal thing anymore, broke up and different people went on to work in different projects. The game never got subbed because among fansubbers of the time (who I dealt with via BBS echoes) there were unofficial rules that they only translate and distribute things that were not being sold in the target market, they felt things that were being censored were fair game as long as they did not translate the "for sale" version, but in this case there was not supposed to be any censorship. This meant the first game was "fair game" for translation for anyone who wanted to do it, but nobody would work on the second game as it was going to be released... and well, with time it kind of faded away and being not as good nobody bothered with an official release or otherwise. It's questionable what Cinemaware was thinking in their choices, or what was going on with the Radio Shack Deal. Now part of why I know anything about this is that part of the story was that Radio Shack actually cut a deal to get special copies of the game "Legacy: Realm Of Terror" instead, it didn't want two games of the same type. "Legacy" being made by Microprose, which had the connotations you might expect when they were looking to do their own computer lines as well. I'm actually kind of a fan of "Legacy" and well... if you saw the zombies they have at the beginning of that game (adjusted for the time period these were made of course), and then looked at that version... and well, you can probably guess why they decided which game was a better one to pimp along with their PCs to horror fans.... not that Radio Shack's PC ambitions had a happy ending of course, but that has little to do with this mess. I don't have a real way of verifying it, but it is situation where what little I've heard from Fansubbers, Radio Shack, and others all seem to align. It also is the answer I came up with back then when I was asking the question "what the hell happened to Cinemaware" because for a while they were pretty well known, had some of the slickest games around, and a lot of their stuff was actually used to Demo various PCs that were on display at places like "Software Etc..." or "Radio Shack". Most people assumed they simply died out with the Amiga, but there is no reason they would have transitioned... and well as I said, they pretty much went Faux-Japanese to fuel their game boom in their preferred style, being able to get away with things there that they couldn't here, and broke up along the way meaning that by the time PC gaming in the US became less competitive there wasn't any Cinemaware to return... and to be fair I've never seen anything to contradict the story, and plenty to reinforce it... at least indirectly. I doubt anyone read this, but it may or may not be a satisfying answer to anyone who wondered about that one detail, which is really the only odd bit I have to elaborate on this (with some major tangents along the way).
Fascinating history, I was completely unaware. It makes much more sense why these games are so heavily influenced by American pop-culture. BTW - I'm also a huge fan of "Legacy: Realm Of Terror." I even have my original 1993 DOS version in the box (six-3.5" floppies!). I think it's one of the few games that really captures a Lovecraftian essence that most other Lovecraft-style games completely miss. It's probably the best horror game of the early/mid 1990s.
Those first two paragraphs are a load of bullshit. I have no idea whether what you say about this specific company, Cinemaware, is true(since it's based on rumors it's also likely all bullshit as well), but Japanese Pop Culture, in general, being secretly made by Americans is such a bizarre conspiracy theory. Regarding JRPGs specifically, you know that Wizardry is big in Japan, right? Yuji Horii and Koichi Nakamura, the creators of Dragon Quest, are on record as having played the game and been inspired by it. But no, it doesn't make sense that Japanese people could possibly play a Western-made game and take inspiration from it. Only American nerds could have made such games, and of course, they had to hide their identities because there is no way Japanese people in the 80s would have played a game developed by filthy gaijin, no sir, it's not like The Black Onyx in 1984 was also a big hit. But I bet you have a credible source for this sweeping claim about Japanese media in the 80s and 90s outside of rumors about a single company developing games for the Japanese market, I'm sure you aren't just claiming these things based on rumors from boards in the early 90s. Also, you seem to imply that fansubbers in the '90s translated the Dead of the Brain, which doesn't seem to be the case at all. The first translation patch was made in 2019 and was machine-translated. Honestly, I think you heard a lot of this shit as a teenager, and you have assumed it to be true for your whole life despite it being verifiably false. Like please give me some proof that there was a bunch of American writers and game designers that secretly made most of Japan's pop culture in the 80s because if you have no hard evidence, it's bullshit, and you have just been believing bullshit for over 30 years.
@@Illusionist345 Hate to break it to you but none of this is bullshit, a secret, or some kind of bizarre conspiracy theory. It's simply what was public knowledge a few decades ago, albeit public within what was a much smaller community. It's one of those cases where your ignorance is due to simply so much knowledge pre-internet being lost, specially if it's not on social media. What's more certain people just don't have a vested interest in making sure things like this remain public knowledge. See in the 1990s a lot of the companies important anime before it became huge, like ADV and the like were actually pretty public about it, as it affected their business and what they could get. It was also a big deal within the fansub community because as a general rule fansubbers only wanted to do fan translations of things that were not going to be released in an unedited format. The reason why so many people even knew what certain things were in order to request them was learning about it from the American creators. If you bother to ever want to do research, you'll find quickly that when things like "Lodoss Wars" were done, Japan knew nothing about western RPGs or D&D tropes. The Americans writing it on the other hand did, and that's why it was one of those things that went cross-national as it appealed to both the Japanese audience and the American D&D fans who had to see the "secret D&D anime" although it wasn't really a secret, just not officially released. Likewise guys like Kentaro Miura, famous for things like "Berserk" were terrified about their work becoming known in the US as they didn't understand copyright laws. He thought he could be sued over the fact that Guts having a giant sword and a fake arm because of Bruce Campbell's character in the "Evil Dead" franchise who inspired part of the idea, especially since they both fought demons. The fact that the name "Guts" is taken from a legendary French knight named "Goetz" along with some broad story bits also had him worried. He had nothing to worry about though. Recently a Marvel editor got yelled at due to a past using a Japanese pen name to write Manga there, claiming "cultural appropriation" and such, with the big defense of it being that it just generally isn't uncommon. It can get pretty deep, but basically during the 1990s when this stuff was becoming popular and there were all the fansub wars and such, there was a lot about it and how it all worked, and a lot of reveals about how things like "Armitage III", "Ghost In The Shell", "Tank Police", and others were all heavily inspired by various American novels. "Armitage" being one of the first big surprises as there was some cloak and dagger stuff to get it released as the rights olders were terrified as the titular character while very different is named after a character from the famous Cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" and they both deal heavily with AI issues (albeit different ones). That said it not getting anyone sued was quietly notable for causing widespread relief among Japanese creators given the direct lift of a character's rather distinctive (to them) name. You'll also find things like "The Slayers" have a similar western RPG input as Lodoss Wars, and a lot of American minds behind some of the names, and that one little known (now) series called "Devil Hunter Yohko" was a big deal when ADV released it because at the time most stuff being brought over had very heavy western influences, and that was one of the first animes officially transported that was actually extremely Japanese in it's themes , and had pretty much no American pop culture involved in it outside of the video collection (Yohko 4 Ever) mimicking numerous American CD/Album covers in some of the stills. Seriously though, educate yourself. I mostly point this out because for one I get sort of irritated about people acting like Japan invented things it copied (albeit copied well in many cases), and also with weebs acting like Japan is some kind of nirvana for nerds when culturally it's actually far more conservative (and was more so in the 90s), in deep historical denial, and still retains a lot of aggressive xenophobia. I do give credit where it's due, but I think while Japanaphilia was cute for a while, as certain important things are coming to a head it's important to be honest about what's being dealt with. See, understand, I want nerd culture to win. But with things like the localization wars going on (likely blind siding Japan as they are used to a lot of genuine American contribution behind the scenes without political issues,), I think we need to be up front about a lot of this because if not defended properly the opposition can use the truth to destroy us. See it's easy for a lot of people now to say "It's not even American, it was all the JApanese" by way of defense, but as often or not the only reason things became so incestuous is that they were using American culture and creations to begin with in many cases. Likewise if they start digging back into old interviews, articles, etc... they will find a lot of famous works being defended as "of Japanse Origins" were actually created by Americans with Japanese fronts, and faces, and they were doing it then to make stuff without American cultural censorship. What that means is, they could pretty much claim Japan was simply being used as a front to engage in illegal or at least immoral activity they couldn't get away with here, with the creations then being passed to the US through importers. It could be a huge mess, so it's best not to be blindsided by it. To be brutally honest a lot of the weird sex stuff is in fact Japanese, but a lot of the other stuff... yeah, that was all us teaching them that. They could even be so specific as to find animes and such that are just slightly modified versions of American novels and the like, or have lifted pieces qand characters directly from them. That's part of why I mention "Armitage" and that whole mess, because a I said, while the story is different, the character actually was based on an American Cyberpunk character from one of the most iconic novels. Something Japan had never heard of at the time, and that alone should tell you who was behind a lot of this.
Just got into your work and really appreciate your style of giving history and context in addition to waking through the game! Would you ever cover “space griffin VF-9”? My first PS1 game back in the day, had no idea what I was getting into😂 Thanks for your work and much love from the Midwest!❤️
Re-animator is an awesome movie! This game looks great too, I'm definitely getting it! Thanks for talking about cool old games. Not just the ones everyone has heard of too.
That's some absolutely gorgeous (and grisly) pixel art. I did a spit-take on "big dogs" because that's what my boyfriend and I call hot dogs after I made a dumb typo. I can't believe some Japanese person from the 90s also knew about this inside joke...
i havent finished this but your narration is so damn funny ive been trying to keep quiet at night as i Watch this but when you yelled GO for the go option i almost lost my mind LOL
Hey I just found this video in my recommended and I noticed a lot of issues here. I don't want to be THAT GUY, but I was the project lead for the new PC-98 translation, doing hacking and script editing. I saw immediately that you were using the old PC-98 translation by Retronomicon that's machine translated. I also saw you use a mix of footage from both translations, easily seen by the different font. Yes, that whole issue with the screen breaking up is a major issue that was not noticed while testing because every single tester we had, including everyone who played it had their GDC clock speed on their emulator set to 2.5 MHz instead of 5, which is strangely the default even though 100% of the time, everything works better on 2.5 MHz. It wasn't noticed until hours after the patch was released, which is why it wasn't noted in the text file. Also, on the guide you posted, it literally says to put your GDC clock speed to 2.5 MHz (and the example is very similar to what you saw. Retronomicon's translation fixed this by putting a white screen over the text bar somehow to make it not happen, but this completely skips the text seen when it occurs. Why is Retronomicon's translation bad? I didn't see this noted at all in the video, just questions about why it made such bizarre changes. Well, and I'm shocked this still isn't known well enough even now, Retronomicon's translation was fully done by Google translate and half of the stuff he wrote was apparently made up. A good friend of mine named @ashleyriot made a very good video on the controversy from 2019 including tons of examples and problems with the six translations he made, from the various bugs to bizarre translation changes. This video made me and my friend, Virginia Maxwell (CrookerWine) want to do the translation, so if you want to watch it, look up "Retronomicon: Behind the Dead of the Brain Translation" on TH-cam. I don't know if you can post links in these comments without getting the comment removed, so I won't post a link just in case. I looked through every single problem and mistranslation in that Retronomicon patch and I can say for certain that it's absolute garbage. Quick example is the names being changed, Kiel (18:47) is absolutely supposed to be Killer, also Goul (19:36) is Ghoul because no wonder. Some other minor things that I noticed: 12:04 No, it was not taking cues from Snatcher. DOTB is a typical Japanese adventure game, but with point and click elements, which is what both games are riffing on. A major difference between both games is that Snatcher is menu based, but DOTB is point and click based. 13:23 Yeah the shooting sections were probably influenced by Snatcher, but this game's sections are a lot more basic (only one shot needed to kill all enemies usually) and do have that countdown timer, unlike Snatcher. EDIT (4/11/24): Snatcher also didn't sell as well as people may think originally. The MSX2 and PC-88 versions were the only ones that were around when DOTB was made. As I thought about it more, I think DOTB and Snatcher were both inspired by arcade games instead of one game directly influencing the other. Snatcher didn't have much actual influence on anyone in Japan around the time from my knowledge, or even today, so the chances of DOTB's mechanics truly coming from Snatcher are extremely low. 15:21 It's not completely superior "CDDA audio". Only a very small amount of the tracks are re-arranged to CD audio, while most are PSG tracks, which are obviously inferior to FM synth because of less channels. Hell, you even showed one of the PSG tracks in the example instead of one of the CD audio tracks. 17:49 Not an issue but yeah, the story is so nonsensical that even I don't understand it despite playing the game 20+ times during playtesting and editing. Overall, I thought it was an ok video. Could've been better with a bit more research and disclaimers. Also, I am personally not a big fan that most of the video is a plot summary when you're also recommending people to play it, but I guess it's not my kind of content. I recommended to anyone reading this to absolutely avoid the Retronomicon translation. You have 2 better options, the WINE translation (the one I directly lead) and David Shadoff's translation for the PC Engine version. Neither use the original for a very good reason. Have fun. EDIT: ignore this statement below. the video was extremely new at the time but i didnt get noticed in the comments until a long while later. Sorry for making an ass of myself. Keeping it anyways for anyone who wants to read the comments out there. If you can, Dungeon Crawl, could you maybe reupload the video with at least a few changes? NOTE (4/11/24): I edited parts of this comment to be a bit more clear because people started calling me autistic and annoying in the comments. Thanks guys, I love the kind replies. Also, we did get someone to translate Part 2 a while back, but he's a little busy with other big projects so don't expect it to release for a while due to that and also us not going to speedrun the project like in October. That was a hell I never want to go back to again.
@@chucklebutt4470 I said this in the text file, but Maxwell doesn't like Part 2, and ofc who would translate a game they don't like? It's a matter of personal preference, as her main complaint was the change to 1980s punk themes (which she thinks as a theme is utterly obnoxious) instead of the Romero horror themes from the first. The PCE translator, David Shadoff, who did a great job translating that version himself (except for a few name changes I don't agree with but other than that it's perfectly solid), is also not wanting to do Part 2 for a while. DOTB1 took him years to hack and translate and was just done and over with it after the patch was finished. DOTB2 is a huge game, larger than Part 1, so he might do it in a few years or whatever. I want to do DOTB2, but I lack any real Japanese knowledge, so I hope any translator who's interested could come forward to translate the script.
This was really interesting! I saw someone else mention that the translation was questionable at best, but I'm glad to hear more details about it. Hopefully Dungeon will see this and can play the new translation with the fix, though I would understand if he had to just move on to another game at this point. Thank you for providing extra info and context! (Hopefully commenting on this will bump it up a bit, though I don't really know how the comment algorithm works haha)
Your videos are so genuinely good that they can be rewatched and enjoyed. Perfect audio mixing, perfect pacing. I wish I was as good at content as you, but I also wish the algo recognized you.
11:22 I'd like to point out that Dr. Cooger's pistol is animated, something not done in much newer horror games, such as Resident Evil 7. Truly ahead of its time.
22:30 Fuckin killed me LMFAO Also Cole slept with the wrong girl :'( Sally was SO much hotter! Cathy was a badass too... RIP to both of them. Definitely got a sub from me man. My first vid from ya!
Wow... the title of the game is pretty apt. Between the random rape and nudity, the random terminator, and the random fairytale wand wave of a happy ending that was pretty dead of the brain alright. "dead of the brain really is dead of the brain" Great minds think alike, lol
I wish more older games like these would hit modern consoles or distribution servers. Something magical about older media and games that modern technology can’t quite replicate.
Why was there never an Always Sunny Zombie Episode? I love the dumb Idea of turning People into Terminators (Or replace their entire Skeleton) because it implies you at some Point have to just remove the Skull and somehow fit a new One around the Brain
Seen quite a few commentary videos on this game (big PC-88/PC-98 fan by proxy) and this was a great look at it. Definitely love when American media goes through a weird Japanese filter to create something that's both more pure yet also more bizarre than it's inspirations. Dead of the Brain is very much one of those games that despite the mystique of the random horror movies of my young wearing off manages to respark in such a way as to remind me why I was so fascinated with it as a kid.
I found out in the sequel that Ghoul was a good guy the whole time, but was turned into a monstrous cyborg by the main antagonist of that game to not only steal the immortality drug but to test it on the precinct he was in charge of. His evil personality was programmed into him to take the fall by Dr Gill, the director of the research for the drug.
Just wanna correct you on something. "Kiel" is the Celtic american spelling of the name "Kyle" and is pronounced the same. "Kiel" as "Keel" is the German name of a city and probably what you got when you googled how'd to pronounce it lol.
Love all these old games with similar interfaces. Like Uninvited for the NES, and there was another one, where you were a early 20th century detective. Cant remember the name.
I wish you just had better luck with the new translation because it’s so much better and leagues more accurate. A ton of stuff about the game’s history is also missing, like the stuff on the Saori Incident, which directly lead to the game’s creation in the first place. Also, why didn’t you not mention at all that the original Retronomicon patch was a machine translated mess with half of the script being made up? It’s common knowledge if you take a look around a bit, I even made a video on the situation myself back in May, which got two thousand views (which seemed to be a lot but I guess not). It’s a major disclaimer to anyone because it’s just so Working Designs-esque, buggy, and low quality that it’s not even funny. Also please don’t put piracy links in the video description if you don’t want your video taken down. Just a hint.
In the Turbografx fan translation, Kiel name is "Killer"... seriously I just find it weird, dunno if it the real Japanese translation or just a fan translation. Also about Terry, Sheila did say that she released the prison cell rooms for other to escape while Cole was fighting Terminator guy
im thinking the older translation used the name schrodinger for the cat joke, because they took the original name "kitty" to be a "hello kitty" joke; and they thought the schrodongers cat joke was more "western" ? literally the only thing i can think of as to why they would change the cats name.
Either someone ordered a Katana from Japan and did something stupid or someone on the force bought it on a trip to Japan, and couldn't keep it at home so they brought it to work and someone hid it the evidence room as a joke. As for the grenade maybe the military guy brought it, someone raided what was left the local national guard armory en route to the hotel, or if this had been an evac point maybe there were national guard or US Army troops there and some grenades got left behind when they pulled out. Most likely one of the first two options. Edit 2: As for the Uzi I'm guessing someone saw the guns tore scene in The Terminator or a similar scene in some other movie, and didn't realize that Uzis legally sold in gun stores had to be modified to fire full-auto (The movie's novelization mentions this during the gun store scene then later briefly mentions the T-800 performing the needed modification to its Uzi and AR-18) Edit 3: Did I miss something or did this game commit one of the most horrible sins a Zombie game can carry out and never give the Player Characters access to a Shotgun? The Department store would have been a great chance and it would have made a lot more sense then an Uzi.
Yeah most PC-98 games aren't "family-friendly" but some of them have really cool art styles. Especially the cyberpunk games which are definitely inspired by 80s anime. The cyborg at the end of this game is ripped off directly from Bubblegum Crisis.
@@jackdbs I've never actually played any PC98 games. Visual novels just aren't for me, but like I said, the art can be really cool. I do find it kind of odd how much more prevalent nsfw games are in Japan compared to the rest of the world. It's quite surprising how many mainstream game/anime franchises started off as adult content. The most notable is the Fate series, but there's other franchises like Muv Luv.
A member of the police force who secretly works for the corporation that made the virus? Someone at Capcom really liked this idea.
@@UnknownName5050nice
Capcom ripped the idea from MANY Italian zombie/cannibal movies. Resident Evil was a love letter to Lucio Fulci's Zombie and other classics.
Peak comedy right here.@@UnknownName5050
And apparently sega liked the look of the logo….
@@Deadguy2322forreal really! ARE YOU FOR REAL
THOSE Italian zombie/cannibal movies only got made because George Romero forget to put a copyright thing on his night of the living dead and that why Italians market their zombie as PSEUDO=SEQUELS!
One thing I miss in modern anime is all the absurdly ill-fitting, oversized clothes. The Hellsing manga is a great example. Every shirt or coat is at least two sizes too large, the clothes are full of ridiculous folds and prominent creases; you know belts and ties are a dire necessity in that world. This game delivers this in spades too.
Modern anime is full of clothes that look very plain and ironed, WHILE ON THE BODY; it's a very strange look. This may be connected to animation and how animators are expected to pump out their product. Easier to do when the lineart is plain.
"you know belts and ties are a dire necessity in that world." It's Nomura's dream world.
Yeah you can definitely see the influence of real life 80s & 90s fashion. Women's clothing (especially suit jackets and coats) had tons of shoulder padding.
To a certain extent, that was representative of real-world fashion in the 80s and 90s. Art follows life, and people seem to like their clothes a lot tighter these days.
true far too many modern animes go for the less is best approach to clothes and even thou that don't are often bare minimum - shirt, pants and shoes maybe a jacket if were lucky XD
I just love that this Doc Marty type seems to be always packing heat. Clearly the devs took one look at America and said “yep, these men always walk around strapped”
Man, you’re spot on 😁
@@Lobo_Argent *eagle screech* 🇺🇸
its doc brown but yeag it is accurate
Murica!
Doc Brown was also strapped too.
These types of games were so weirdly charming and I just can't get enough of that 80's/90's anime art style. This style does to me what brains do to a Zombie.
mmm brains
I love it to, its a shame you rarely see it anymore and its all Moe anime style now.
Modern anime style is just generic moe waifu shit. Every character looks the same. The just use same design every time.
@@robertnomok9750 oh.. they all look the same? do you think all black people look the same? art is better than corpo trash.. wait.. huh.. blizzard games (overwatch, wow etc) are literal rip offs of anime style, but im sure you think they are just fine..by the by, anime itself was a japanese response to american pin up art they saw on ww2 era bombers and fighters..who was the first "waifu?" well lum from urusei yatsura, but the first western one they copied was JESSICA FUCKING RABBIT..
I like the 80-90’s art style very much it looks so nostalgic
Not sure if this was said anywhere else, but the fix for the graphical repeating glitch you encountered in the first translation is due to GDC being set to 5mhz.
To resolve press and hold the END key on your keyboard then using your mouse go to Emulator>Reset.
The machine options menu will come up. It's in Japanese. Select the second option using the arrow keys and pressing ENTER. Navigate down to GDC and select 2.5MHZ. Then select the bottom option to go back to the previous screen and once again to leave the menu.
That will solve the issue.
I talked about it in my comment but sadly it got filtered out.
TH-cam sucks @@jackdbs
One thing about these games I love is how insanely good the art is - Especially with how the style of 80's/90's anime was so shiny, shaded and animated. I remember seeing anime like Record of Lodoss War and Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory thinking how every piece of machinery and article of clothing was drawn and colored with a level of detail you rarely see in modern anime. Being able to transfer that magic onto a computer with a UI and playing through it must have felt magical back then, and probably still does.
Anime people have noses back then
@@bullno1Sometimes insanely pointy, but you could definitely see them!
Edit: Also the Japanese bubble economy (while absolutely awful when it popped) meant there was just insane loads of cash floating around. That's how a lot these very detailed pieces of media (like 0083 and Akira) were able to be produced: Incredibly over the top budgets.
@@TheCrewExpendable The bubble had burst by the late 80s, so I think it was the last vestiges of that money that trickled off in the early 90s. It was also the fact the animators were putting themselves through the ringer, usually by choice, to create to the level that they did.
@@blumiu2426 the early history of gainax basically mirrors everything you said, they had weirdly small animation teams but pumped out some ridiculous work, mostly because they were obsessed with it
@@Yixdy I miss that. Anime can't take risks like that now, and we still somewhat see that in the niche games market for Japan. Either it has to have a otaku fanbase or the publisher survives on niche games. Anime would come out that you knew was basically promo because it was few episodes, but now so many anime series live or die by the first season or they just license dozens of light novels which is what I call junk or fodder.
Goddamn, the PC-98 has some of the absolute best pixel art I've ever seen in video games. Damn shame that doing more of them would lead to... ya know, more "version 4" videos. Keep up the great work man!
This game had such an excellent start, and then it falls apart in the end. Thanks for the vid Dungeon Gil
Gave me House of the Dead vibes…it’s an awesome action experience and then the end just blurts something nonsensical about overpopulation before the final fight. It’s better off with no story tbh
I love how some Japanese nerds in the 90's watched some American grindhouse movies and just thought to themselves "hey we can do this but in a computer game". It's kind of wholesome in a way.
Yeah, this had a very strong "Return of the Living Dead: The unofficial game" vibe
Yeah that's like Kojima's entire career. I usually describe Snatcher as "Have you ever seen Blade Runner? The Terminator? Well, so did Hideo Kojima and he turned it into a video game"
stand up to them.. you know its better than spider man 2
Is it bad that I want to see _Dead of the Brain_ redone as a live action schlock b-movie?
Don't even re-imagine it, just put it out as-is.
@@PresidentBarackbar don't forget Body Snatchers ! ;)
This game somehow managed to make a straightforward plot confusing. I was like, "Ok, so someone wanted to use Doc's seru-- wait, it makes you immortal an-- now Guol is a terminator what the fuck!"
I do find it fascinating how the initial requirement of "display complex japanese text accurately" shaped PCs and games in japan. A high resolution solves the text issue but means things like sprites, scrolling and animation AKA stuff thats typically crucial for games, is now pretty difficult. But you can display big beautiful images and tons of text is a breeze. Thus, the visual novel is born. And the other type of novel lol.
Already a long comment but maybe interesting...
This game being the way it is, is directly related to real life industry shenanigans. If you are aware of the Saori Incident in japan (google if you dont know), Dead of the Brain was the next game to come out from FairyTale afterwards and was intended to be a much less lewd "safe" game content wise after they bore the brunt of blowback from the incident. Safe meaning violence a-plenty and X hugely reduced but still, its a significant change from their earlier stuff.
I have a deep love of PC-98 visuals and think they’re pixel art perfection. Great video
Dead of the Brain? More like Re-Anime-tor
That’s a disgustingly good pun, I hate you/lie
Get out.
Congrats on 50k! Running thru your library is a BLAST
I love the sound effects in this game... Particular the sound the evil reanimated cat makes when it springs to life!💖
Dead of the brain litterally was my introduction on the PC-98 fan translation scene ! When I was in high-school I was religiously watched the screenshot of this game on a website and love the gore and always though it is one of the game that I will never able to play and was dreaming that I could someday until like 3 years ago when I saw a youtube lets play in my recommendation out of nowhere and saw it was in english. I was excited like a kid receiving a Nintendo 64 at Christmas lol
Nice video btw +1 sub ! :)
Unironically, would like to see DungeonChiller cover more PC98 titles even the P* ones.
Legends say that Terry is still waiting to be rescued to this day.
The best and dumbest moment in this game (unless I'm remembering something else) is you find some ammo and Cole goes "I dont have a gun so I'll just leave these here."
Like...what? Cole sure has keen survival instincts.
There's a happy middle ground between "not picking up ammo at all" and "being weighed down with 50 lbs. of miscellaneous ammo like a Fallout hoarder".
Yes, he does? Carrying around random ammo in the hopes that you find a gun chambered for it is generally not a sensible thing to do in a survival scenario.
So this is where that pixel stuff is from, great video and subscribed!
For anyone interested in PC-98 i recommend watching the recent anime "16-bit sensation" as it somewhat goes into the game development for that machine. Also one of it`s characters is a huge PC-98 fan.
These old pc games have art that's just so beautiful in a way!
Detective Kiel looks like a Skyrim elf lmao.
This is essentially a mash up of 70s and 80s horror b movies. Like reanimator... Its basically the plot of Reanimator, Rabid and From Beyond combined.
I’m glad the TH-cam algorithm brought me here! If you could talk and show more of these PC98 type games, that would be awesome! Can’t wait to watch all your other videos niw
Crazy how I just looked up ur channel to watch the last video and another banger gets uploaded 🔥
This is a reupload
32:00 The "what year is it" from twin peaks is really haunting if you know what its supposed to mean
I personally like the cat name change being Schrödinger lol, because it’s both alive and dead. But great video! Def gonna check out more from you
dead of the brain also seems to borrow heavily from return of the living dead 1985 a kinda sequel (but not really) to night of the living dead. Dr. Cooger accidentally exposing an entire graveyard to this serum that raises them from the dead, the zombies being a lot more smarter than in most media, even referencing the "of the dead" series and shooting zombies in the head; it's all there.
the history behind the movie is really interesting and the movie itself is a great watch if you haven't seen it.
Return is one of the best zombie movies of all time!
Goul ~ Wesker energy
Kiel ~ Chief Irons energy
I’m so glad i discovered this channel. It’s nice to find a TH-camr that doesn’t have an awful speaking voice and doesn’t make a million unnecessary stupid jokes
This is the first time I'm watching one of your vids and it was an absolute blast ! The writing, the narration, the humour, I loved everything about it. Now that I've subscribed, time for a deep dive into your other videos ^^ Cheers !
6:12 nice kitty :3
Thanks!I hope to hear about more PC-98 games!
I'm hoping for Emerald Dragon personally. I enjoyed playing the cut down SNES version like 15 years ago but I'd love to see it in its original glory.
this was an amazing ride
terry..good luck
also sheila just repeatedly going „thats alright, just another day as a woman :) „ is such a classic
thanks so much for sharing this absolute mess of a masterpiece
Wow, interesting stuff. More PC-98 content please!
I heard a long time ago (I'm 49, and was 17 in 1992) that the reason why "Dead Of The Brain 2" did not get translated was because the company that made these, and a lot of Japanese visual novels at the time, was "Cinemaware". See at the time a lot of the people secretly behind most Japanese pop culture were actually Americans who were using Japanese pen names, while Japanese creators fronted for them due to racism. Basically it became obvious in the late 70s through the 80s that Japan was in love with American culture and trying to replace their own with it, but they had no real idea how to do it right, leading to the whole "they're really big in Japan" gag in the 80s, oftentimes a stock of certain kinds of movies that would depict some Asian guys acting like rock stars and looking like really goofy parodies of American cool in the background.
At any rate this is why you see so many American sci-fi, fantasy, and movie cliques, right down to D&D references, in Anime, especially in the 1990s. It wasn't that the Japanese were playing D&D heavily, it was that the nerds actually ghost writing this stuff were, and were teaching them. This is also why entire video game genres like JRPGs are also built around the mechanics and concepts (typically simplified from the originals despite people believing the option) from things like "Ultima" and "Wizardry" right down to Western RPG stat names and classes and such.
At any rate to get back on the subject, Cinemaware was a game developer that tried to do an interactive movie type thing, and some credited with the creation of the entire Visual Novel genre as we know it now, especially the idea of introducing game play elements into the format. Their earliest, and perhaps most well known work, was something called "Defender Of The Crown" from the late 80s, and it was mostly bit on the apple, but they got heavily involved in a number of other projects and made a lot of connections in Japan while researching a game called "Lords Of The Rising Sun" which was based heavily on Japanese Samurai movies. At the time they had gotten heavily invested in The Amiga, and it was simply put turning into a train wreck for a lot of reasons. Not sure who was going to win the format wars in the US, they turned almost exclusively to developing games for the Japanese market on a freelance basis, and "Dead Of The Brain" was one of their first ghost writing projects, hence why it includes those elements like finding objects to resolve crisis scenes on a timer, pretty much one of their big trademarks going back as far as games like "It Came From the Desert" a few years before.
At any rate apparently they had plans to release the second "Dead Of the Brain" game (but not the first one for some reason) in the US market as part of an exclusive deal with Radio-Shack back when it was doing it's Tandy systems. This is actually where I heard about this, and why I know what this is at all. The problem was the Cinemaware team which was not a formal thing anymore, broke up and different people went on to work in different projects. The game never got subbed because among fansubbers of the time (who I dealt with via BBS echoes) there were unofficial rules that they only translate and distribute things that were not being sold in the target market, they felt things that were being censored were fair game as long as they did not translate the "for sale" version, but in this case there was not supposed to be any censorship. This meant the first game was "fair game" for translation for anyone who wanted to do it, but nobody would work on the second game as it was going to be released... and well, with time it kind of faded away and being not as good nobody bothered with an official release or otherwise. It's questionable what Cinemaware was thinking in their choices, or what was going on with the Radio Shack Deal.
Now part of why I know anything about this is that part of the story was that Radio Shack actually cut a deal to get special copies of the game "Legacy: Realm Of Terror" instead, it didn't want two games of the same type. "Legacy" being made by Microprose, which had the connotations you might expect when they were looking to do their own computer lines as well. I'm actually kind of a fan of "Legacy" and well... if you saw the zombies they have at the beginning of that game (adjusted for the time period these were made of course), and then looked at that version... and well, you can probably guess why they decided which game was a better one to pimp along with their PCs to horror fans.... not that Radio Shack's PC ambitions had a happy ending of course, but that has little to do with this mess.
I don't have a real way of verifying it, but it is situation where what little I've heard from Fansubbers, Radio Shack, and others all seem to align. It also is the answer I came up with back then when I was asking the question "what the hell happened to Cinemaware" because for a while they were pretty well known, had some of the slickest games around, and a lot of their stuff was actually used to Demo various PCs that were on display at places like "Software Etc..." or "Radio Shack". Most people assumed they simply died out with the Amiga, but there is no reason they would have transitioned... and well as I said, they pretty much went Faux-Japanese to fuel their game boom in their preferred style, being able to get away with things there that they couldn't here, and broke up along the way meaning that by the time PC gaming in the US became less competitive there wasn't any Cinemaware to return... and to be fair I've never seen anything to contradict the story, and plenty to reinforce it... at least indirectly.
I doubt anyone read this, but it may or may not be a satisfying answer to anyone who wondered about that one detail, which is really the only odd bit I have to elaborate on this (with some major tangents along the way).
Fascinating history, I was completely unaware. It makes much more sense why these games are so heavily influenced by American pop-culture. BTW - I'm also a huge fan of "Legacy: Realm Of Terror." I even have my original 1993 DOS version in the box (six-3.5" floppies!). I think it's one of the few games that really captures a Lovecraftian essence that most other Lovecraft-style games completely miss. It's probably the best horror game of the early/mid 1990s.
Is this a joke. This is just completely wrong.
Those first two paragraphs are a load of bullshit. I have no idea whether what you say about this specific company, Cinemaware, is true(since it's based on rumors it's also likely all bullshit as well), but Japanese Pop Culture, in general, being secretly made by Americans is such a bizarre conspiracy theory. Regarding JRPGs specifically, you know that Wizardry is big in Japan, right? Yuji Horii and Koichi Nakamura, the creators of Dragon Quest, are on record as having played the game and been inspired by it. But no, it doesn't make sense that Japanese people could possibly play a Western-made game and take inspiration from it. Only American nerds could have made such games, and of course, they had to hide their identities because there is no way Japanese people in the 80s would have played a game developed by filthy gaijin, no sir, it's not like The Black Onyx in 1984 was also a big hit. But I bet you have a credible source for this sweeping claim about Japanese media in the 80s and 90s outside of rumors about a single company developing games for the Japanese market, I'm sure you aren't just claiming these things based on rumors from boards in the early 90s. Also, you seem to imply that fansubbers in the '90s translated the Dead of the Brain, which doesn't seem to be the case at all. The first translation patch was made in 2019 and was machine-translated. Honestly, I think you heard a lot of this shit as a teenager, and you have assumed it to be true for your whole life despite it being verifiably false. Like please give me some proof that there was a bunch of American writers and game designers that secretly made most of Japan's pop culture in the 80s because if you have no hard evidence, it's bullshit, and you have just been believing bullshit for over 30 years.
@@Illusionist345 Hate to break it to you but none of this is bullshit, a secret, or some kind of bizarre conspiracy theory. It's simply what was public knowledge a few decades ago, albeit public within what was a much smaller community.
It's one of those cases where your ignorance is due to simply so much knowledge pre-internet being lost, specially if it's not on social media. What's more certain people just don't have a vested interest in making sure things like this remain public knowledge.
See in the 1990s a lot of the companies important anime before it became huge, like ADV and the like were actually pretty public about it, as it affected their business and what they could get. It was also a big deal within the fansub community because as a general rule fansubbers only wanted to do fan translations of things that were not going to be released in an unedited format. The reason why so many people even knew what certain things were in order to request them was learning about it from the American creators.
If you bother to ever want to do research, you'll find quickly that when things like "Lodoss Wars" were done, Japan knew nothing about western RPGs or D&D tropes. The Americans writing it on the other hand did, and that's why it was one of those things that went cross-national as it appealed to both the Japanese audience and the American D&D fans who had to see the "secret D&D anime" although it wasn't really a secret, just not officially released.
Likewise guys like Kentaro Miura, famous for things like "Berserk" were terrified about their work becoming known in the US as they didn't understand copyright laws. He thought he could be sued over the fact that Guts having a giant sword and a fake arm because of Bruce Campbell's character in the "Evil Dead" franchise who inspired part of the idea, especially since they both fought demons. The fact that the name "Guts" is taken from a legendary French knight named "Goetz" along with some broad story bits also had him worried. He had nothing to worry about though.
Recently a Marvel editor got yelled at due to a past using a Japanese pen name to write Manga there, claiming "cultural appropriation" and such, with the big defense of it being that it just generally isn't uncommon.
It can get pretty deep, but basically during the 1990s when this stuff was becoming popular and there were all the fansub wars and such, there was a lot about it and how it all worked, and a lot of reveals about how things like "Armitage III", "Ghost In The Shell", "Tank Police", and others were all heavily inspired by various American novels. "Armitage" being one of the first big surprises as there was some cloak and dagger stuff to get it released as the rights olders were terrified as the titular character while very different is named after a character from the famous Cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" and they both deal heavily with AI issues (albeit different ones). That said it not getting anyone sued was quietly notable for causing widespread relief among Japanese creators given the direct lift of a character's rather distinctive (to them) name.
You'll also find things like "The Slayers" have a similar western RPG input as Lodoss Wars, and a lot of American minds behind some of the names, and that one little known (now) series called "Devil Hunter Yohko" was a big deal when ADV released it because at the time most stuff being brought over had very heavy western influences, and that was one of the first animes officially transported that was actually extremely Japanese in it's themes , and had pretty much no American pop culture involved in it outside of the video collection (Yohko 4 Ever) mimicking numerous American CD/Album covers in some of the stills.
Seriously though, educate yourself. I mostly point this out because for one I get sort of irritated about people acting like Japan invented things it copied (albeit copied well in many cases), and also with weebs acting like Japan is some kind of nirvana for nerds when culturally it's actually far more conservative (and was more so in the 90s), in deep historical denial, and still retains a lot of aggressive xenophobia. I do give credit where it's due, but I think while Japanaphilia was cute for a while, as certain important things are coming to a head it's important to be honest about what's being dealt with.
See, understand, I want nerd culture to win. But with things like the localization wars going on (likely blind siding Japan as they are used to a lot of genuine American contribution behind the scenes without political issues,), I think we need to be up front about a lot of this because if not defended properly the opposition can use the truth to destroy us. See it's easy for a lot of people now to say "It's not even American, it was all the JApanese" by way of defense, but as often or not the only reason things became so incestuous is that they were using American culture and creations to begin with in many cases. Likewise if they start digging back into old interviews, articles, etc... they will find a lot of famous works being defended as "of Japanse Origins" were actually created by Americans with Japanese fronts, and faces, and they were doing it then to make stuff without American cultural censorship.
What that means is, they could pretty much claim Japan was simply being used as a front to engage in illegal or at least immoral activity they couldn't get away with here, with the creations then being passed to the US through importers. It could be a huge mess, so it's best not to be blindsided by it.
To be brutally honest a lot of the weird sex stuff is in fact Japanese, but a lot of the other stuff... yeah, that was all us teaching them that. They could even be so specific as to find animes and such that are just slightly modified versions of American novels and the like, or have lifted pieces qand characters directly from them. That's part of why I mention "Armitage" and that whole mess, because a I said, while the story is different, the character actually was based on an American Cyberpunk character from one of the most iconic novels. Something Japan had never heard of at the time, and that alone should tell you who was behind a lot of this.
Wow that's a ton of BS. Cool read though, if wrong.
I hope youll do more sleezy retro horror games. Theyre so interesting xD
Never heard about this game, but wow look at that pixel art and ooh man that music.
Super enjoyed the video. Thanks very much.
Just got into your work and really appreciate your style of giving history and context in addition to waking through the game! Would you ever cover “space griffin VF-9”? My first PS1 game back in the day, had no idea what I was getting into😂
Thanks for your work and much love from the Midwest!❤️
Re-animator is an awesome movie! This game looks great too, I'm definitely getting it! Thanks for talking about cool old games. Not just the ones everyone has heard of too.
That's some absolutely gorgeous (and grisly) pixel art. I did a spit-take on "big dogs" because that's what my boyfriend and I call hot dogs after I made a dumb typo. I can't believe some Japanese person from the 90s also knew about this inside joke...
i havent finished this but your narration is so damn funny ive been trying to keep quiet at night as i Watch this but when you yelled GO for the go option i almost lost my mind LOL
Hey I just found this video in my recommended and I noticed a lot of issues here. I don't want to be THAT GUY, but I was the project lead for the new PC-98 translation, doing hacking and script editing.
I saw immediately that you were using the old PC-98 translation by Retronomicon that's machine translated. I also saw you use a mix of footage from both translations, easily seen by the different font.
Yes, that whole issue with the screen breaking up is a major issue that was not noticed while testing because every single tester we had, including everyone who played it had their GDC clock speed on their emulator set to 2.5 MHz instead of 5, which is strangely the default even though 100% of the time, everything works better on 2.5 MHz. It wasn't noticed until hours after the patch was released, which is why it wasn't noted in the text file. Also, on the guide you posted, it literally says to put your GDC clock speed to 2.5 MHz (and the example is very similar to what you saw. Retronomicon's translation fixed this by putting a white screen over the text bar somehow to make it not happen, but this completely skips the text seen when it occurs.
Why is Retronomicon's translation bad? I didn't see this noted at all in the video, just questions about why it made such bizarre changes. Well, and I'm shocked this still isn't known well enough even now, Retronomicon's translation was fully done by Google translate and half of the stuff he wrote was apparently made up.
A good friend of mine named @ashleyriot made a very good video on the controversy from 2019 including tons of examples and problems with the six translations he made, from the various bugs to bizarre translation changes. This video made me and my friend, Virginia Maxwell (CrookerWine) want to do the translation, so if you want to watch it, look up "Retronomicon: Behind the Dead of the Brain Translation" on TH-cam. I don't know if you can post links in these comments without getting the comment removed, so I won't post a link just in case.
I looked through every single problem and mistranslation in that Retronomicon patch and I can say for certain that it's absolute garbage. Quick example is the names being changed, Kiel (18:47) is absolutely supposed to be Killer, also Goul (19:36) is Ghoul because no wonder.
Some other minor things that I noticed:
12:04 No, it was not taking cues from Snatcher. DOTB is a typical Japanese adventure game, but with point and click elements, which is what both games are riffing on. A major difference between both games is that Snatcher is menu based, but DOTB is point and click based.
13:23 Yeah the shooting sections were probably influenced by Snatcher, but this game's sections are a lot more basic (only one shot needed to kill all enemies usually) and do have that countdown timer, unlike Snatcher.
EDIT (4/11/24): Snatcher also didn't sell as well as people may think originally. The MSX2 and PC-88 versions were the only ones that were around when DOTB was made. As I thought about it more, I think DOTB and Snatcher were both inspired by arcade games instead of one game directly influencing the other. Snatcher didn't have much actual influence on anyone in Japan around the time from my knowledge, or even today, so the chances of DOTB's mechanics truly coming from Snatcher are extremely low.
15:21 It's not completely superior "CDDA audio". Only a very small amount of the tracks are re-arranged to CD audio, while most are PSG tracks, which are obviously inferior to FM synth because of less channels. Hell, you even showed one of the PSG tracks in the example instead of one of the CD audio tracks.
17:49 Not an issue but yeah, the story is so nonsensical that even I don't understand it despite playing the game 20+ times during playtesting and editing.
Overall, I thought it was an ok video. Could've been better with a bit more research and disclaimers. Also, I am personally not a big fan that most of the video is a plot summary when you're also recommending people to play it, but I guess it's not my kind of content.
I recommended to anyone reading this to absolutely avoid the Retronomicon translation. You have 2 better options, the WINE translation (the one I directly lead) and David Shadoff's translation for the PC Engine version. Neither use the original for a very good reason. Have fun.
EDIT: ignore this statement below. the video was extremely new at the time but i didnt get noticed in the comments until a long while later. Sorry for making an ass of myself. Keeping it anyways for anyone who wants to read the comments out there.
If you can, Dungeon Crawl, could you maybe reupload the video with at least a few changes?
NOTE (4/11/24): I edited parts of this comment to be a bit more clear because people started calling me autistic and annoying in the comments. Thanks guys, I love the kind replies. Also, we did get someone to translate Part 2 a while back, but he's a little busy with other big projects so don't expect it to release for a while due to that and also us not going to speedrun the project like in October. That was a hell I never want to go back to again.
When will the second game be translated?
@@chucklebutt4470 I said this in the text file, but Maxwell doesn't like Part 2, and ofc who would translate a game they don't like? It's a matter of personal preference, as her main complaint was the change to 1980s punk themes (which she thinks as a theme is utterly obnoxious) instead of the Romero horror themes from the first. The PCE translator, David Shadoff, who did a great job translating that version himself (except for a few name changes I don't agree with but other than that it's perfectly solid), is also not wanting to do Part 2 for a while. DOTB1 took him years to hack and translate and was just done and over with it after the patch was finished. DOTB2 is a huge game, larger than Part 1, so he might do it in a few years or whatever. I want to do DOTB2, but I lack any real Japanese knowledge, so I hope any translator who's interested could come forward to translate the script.
Wonder why this comment's getting buried.
@@Healnavime too. it fucking sucks.
This was really interesting! I saw someone else mention that the translation was questionable at best, but I'm glad to hear more details about it. Hopefully Dungeon will see this and can play the new translation with the fix, though I would understand if he had to just move on to another game at this point. Thank you for providing extra info and context!
(Hopefully commenting on this will bump it up a bit, though I don't really know how the comment algorithm works haha)
9:12 Jesus😂
Thanks for bundling everything so neatly and making it easy to get started. And avoiding issues.
The highlighted katakana at 4:35 says "shiira", i think. Which is still technically "Sheila" (since the L-sound isnt used in japanese).
Yep, he literally mentions that.
Your videos are so genuinely good that they can be rewatched and enjoyed. Perfect audio mixing, perfect pacing. I wish I was as good at content as you, but I also wish the algo recognized you.
I guess you got 100k so not bad sorry I watch a lot of smaller creators and forget who’s still waiting for success
So glad stuff like stonks 9800 and world of horror exist to keep the visuals alive
11:22
I'd like to point out that Dr. Cooger's pistol is animated, something not done in much newer horror games, such as Resident Evil 7. Truly ahead of its time.
Ray from the gang Bloody Foxes - with a leatherband around his arm, is so very 1980s Italian zombie, barbarian and post apocalyptic movies. Love it.
I've never played any PC98 games, but this has me intrigued. Time to sail the stormy seas methinks 🏴☠️
I love the art style of that era. They outright butchered it with the newer version, so I am glad you can still play the OG.
7:05 wait, so nobody was asking why the cat was dead a week ago?
If you were paying attention, you'd know he said it died of feline senile dementia.
22:30
Fuckin killed me LMFAO
Also Cole slept with the wrong girl :'(
Sally was SO much hotter!
Cathy was a badass too... RIP to both of them.
Definitely got a sub from me man. My first vid from ya!
The Cemetary gate @ 9:42 really reminds me of one from Return of the Living Dead.
Where Trash does her dance…..
Wow... the title of the game is pretty apt. Between the random rape and nudity, the random terminator, and the random fairytale wand wave of a happy ending that was pretty dead of the brain alright.
"dead of the brain really is dead of the brain"
Great minds think alike, lol
nah, this shit is great. don t diss it
back then you had to draw one pixel at a time with a mouse, that's dedication to art
There's something special about 80's and 90's horror games. Old graphics fit so well with horror games and they add to the horror.
Been wanting to play this for a bit now! Even more stoked to try it out!
I wish more older games like these would hit modern consoles or distribution servers. Something magical about older media and games that modern technology can’t quite replicate.
Why was there never an Always Sunny Zombie Episode?
I love the dumb Idea of turning People into Terminators (Or replace their entire Skeleton) because it implies you at some Point have to just remove the Skull and somehow fit a new One around the Brain
Seen quite a few commentary videos on this game (big PC-88/PC-98 fan by proxy) and this was a great look at it. Definitely love when American media goes through a weird Japanese filter to create something that's both more pure yet also more bizarre than it's inspirations. Dead of the Brain is very much one of those games that despite the mystique of the random horror movies of my young wearing off manages to respark in such a way as to remind me why I was so fascinated with it as a kid.
26:04 Cole-umbo?
I found out in the sequel that Ghoul was a good guy the whole time, but was turned into a monstrous cyborg by the main antagonist of that game to not only steal the immortality drug but to test it on the precinct he was in charge of. His evil personality was programmed into him to take the fall by Dr Gill, the director of the research for the drug.
Just wanna correct you on something. "Kiel" is the Celtic american spelling of the name "Kyle" and is pronounced the same. "Kiel" as "Keel" is the German name of a city and probably what you got when you googled how'd to pronounce it lol.
I love these kinds of games, mainly because of the 80s anime style that I miss so much. Also, your voice is nice to listen to.
Now I want to play this. Definitely would have back in the day.
Love all these old games with similar interfaces. Like Uninvited for the NES, and there was another one, where you were a early 20th century detective. Cant remember the name.
That pixel art is so nice to look at
Some actually obscure stuff, cool! And subbed :)
This was awesome 👌.
Made my Saturday night after training
I wish you just had better luck with the new translation because it’s so much better and leagues more accurate. A ton of stuff about the game’s history is also missing, like the stuff on the Saori Incident, which directly lead to the game’s creation in the first place. Also, why didn’t you not mention at all that the original Retronomicon patch was a machine translated mess with half of the script being made up? It’s common knowledge if you take a look around a bit, I even made a video on the situation myself back in May, which got two thousand views (which seemed to be a lot but I guess not). It’s a major disclaimer to anyone because it’s just so Working Designs-esque, buggy, and low quality that it’s not even funny.
Also please don’t put piracy links in the video description if you don’t want your video taken down. Just a hint.
I really love the art in these, it’s so intricate!
Dungeon Chill, I appreciate you mate. Cheers
Always fun to see these older computer games...
God your videos get better EVERY upload
In the Turbografx fan translation, Kiel name is "Killer"... seriously I just find it weird, dunno if it the real Japanese translation or just a fan translation.
Also about Terry, Sheila did say that she released the prison cell rooms for other to escape while Cole was fighting Terminator guy
are there a lot of games done in the this style?! I LOVE IT!!
I know is probably like many other games of the genre, but found the design UI amazing
Maybe the translator was trying to push more of the back to the future vibes with naming the cat schrodinger since in the docs dogs name was einstein.
Love these type of games.
Night of Xantar and Vice City were awesome.
The only one I'm familiar with on MS DOS is Cobra Mission, and I had no idea it was a PC-98 port.
im thinking the older translation used the name schrodinger for the cat joke, because they took the original name "kitty" to be a "hello kitty" joke; and they thought the schrodongers cat joke was more "western" ?
literally the only thing i can think of as to why they would change the cats name.
..."and then the penny falls out of her bra again." That line delivery killed me.
Feel like a OVA from the 80's/90's with all the sleaziness you can expect
You telling me theres a serious game out there titled more or less "braindead" ?
amazing... absolutely amazing
27:57 - That was a *very* funny bit.
Wish I had this game on my PC back in the day, I would have loved it. 😅
We were so close to having a game called "dead in the brain". I can feel Tipper's disappointment from here.
Loved the video, thanks for making it! Muich respect, and Please Come to Brazil.
Any time I watch a video like this about the PC 98 I feel like we really missed out.
“Cat dead, details later.”
A fun look at an obscure title that certainly isn't shy about what it is.
Either someone ordered a Katana from Japan and did something stupid or someone on the force bought it on a trip to Japan, and couldn't keep it at home so they brought it to work and someone hid it the evidence room as a joke. As for the grenade maybe the military guy brought it, someone raided what was left the local national guard armory en route to the hotel, or if this had been an evac point maybe there were national guard or US Army troops there and some grenades got left behind when they pulled out. Most likely one of the first two options.
Edit 2: As for the Uzi I'm guessing someone saw the guns tore scene in The Terminator or a similar scene in some other movie, and didn't realize that Uzis legally sold in gun stores had to be modified to fire full-auto (The movie's novelization mentions this during the gun store scene then later briefly mentions the T-800 performing the needed modification to its Uzi and AR-18)
Edit 3: Did I miss something or did this game commit one of the most horrible sins a Zombie game can carry out and never give the Player Characters access to a Shotgun? The Department store would have been a great chance and it would have made a lot more sense then an Uzi.
I love the artstyle and type of game this is
Id love to find out more like this
Loved the Twin Peaks reference. Also love this channel!
What music did you use during this video? Sounds cool
Amazing video by the way... Watched it twice!
Yeah most PC-98 games aren't "family-friendly" but some of them have really cool art styles. Especially the cyberpunk games which are definitely inspired by 80s anime. The cyborg at the end of this game is ripped off directly from Bubblegum Crisis.
only 40% of the PC98 library is NSFW. It's just that people remember that stuff more.
@@jackdbs I've never actually played any PC98 games. Visual novels just aren't for me, but like I said, the art can be really cool.
I do find it kind of odd how much more prevalent nsfw games are in Japan compared to the rest of the world. It's quite surprising how many mainstream game/anime franchises started off as adult content. The most notable is the Fate series, but there's other franchises like Muv Luv.
I really love this game's color palate.
Stephen King is STILL alive, 20 some years after this came out...