Missed Classic 120: Gram Cats - Introduction (1989)

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

That title is unreadable, but don't worry, that's just this game's text

It's been a while, and I don't really bring tidings of a great new game for you all to sink your teeth into. I bring you today the first in what will be a large number of Japanese adult anime games. Can I call it that? I get the feeling if I mention what this actually is there would be consequences. Now, of course, the first question you have is, Morpheus, why?

Well, there are a lot of these, even your wannabe Leisure Suit Larry types are outnumbered by games containing acts so filthy I am forced to use euphanisms to describe them lest Ilmari, Joe and/or Will give me a stern talking to. They still might, I'm not exactly classing up the joint here, but it's not like these sort of games are without example, Trickster did Coktel Vision's worst title by far, Joe did that early text adventure, and talking about Japan's contributions to the adventure genre without talking about these is like talking about some great war without talking about it's biggest event.

Also, I doubt as many people will care if I screw up the translation of random Japanese adult anime game as opposed to a forgotten game from some super famous dude. This is truly one of those. The company is called Dott Kikaku as it's called on some places and Dott Plan in others, and I don't know who the hell they are. They did a bunch of Japanese-only games, outside of adventures, gambling games. All the sort of thing you wouldn't want someone else to see you playing. Supposedly they're the same company as Bit^2, but I have no idea. There's a remake of this, but doesn't might not actually exist.

From a sales magazine, alongside three other games which will probably get played soon enough. Can't show you the other page, because there's a lady in a bath there.

I say random, but in actuality, despite this game's practical non-existence in more mainstream parts of the web, it does have a decent following in Japan. Everyone is more or less in agreement that the game is good, but mostly just praise the graphics. The MSX version was not a great seller. I'm not clear on how the sales data in these MSX magazines was tracked, but the least well selling game in all the issues I checked was presumably 4000+ copies that year. No idea what the PC-98 version sold, but it had to be more than enough to keep the lights on. It's between 6,800￥ and 7,800￥ in these issues close to the release, or about $68 to $78.

I've already checked the reviews, because I wanted to check something out about the game. Let's say I'm not sure whether or not the game is being serious or pulling my chain. Internet reviews fail to mention the tone, instead talking about how pretty the game is, while the one period review, from Technopolis, 1990/10, doesn't really give a score as such as much as spoil certain aspects of the game I imagine people in 1990 would enjoy. This makes me wonder if the game is really from 1989, because it doesn't take someone 10 months to complete a game then give it a two page spread exposing it in all it's "glory". I'm not even gonna take 10 months and I have more excuses than whoever wrote the review for the magazine. I assume it's a review, anyway. I note that in contrast, western, well, ratings, are universally negative.

The story is, according to the Visual Novel database, is that high school student Sayaka has been kidnapped/drafted by Earth's only defense against an alien invasion, Eagle. Sayaka has high ESP, something that is very helpful against the aliens. Sayaka is transformed into a cat woman and sent into an alien base disguised as a high school. Alone. The commander of Earth's defense force isn't voiced by Martin Sheen, is he? Unless she's a woman, entirely possible, as the game's tags helpfully inform me that this game is about "cutting paper", if you grok my meaning. Probably a lot of alien paper.

This only flashes by for a second, but the more I look at it, the worse it gets

After the title screen, I'm treated to a nice animated intro. As in, yes, there is an animation playing while the text arrives. Text is weird, it draws slowly, but the second it ends it all just zooms by. Makes taking screenshots a pain in the ass. This is like the third PC-98 original title I've played and they all have that problem. Then again, after I wrote this, I was watching a Yasujiro Ozu film, Dragnet Girl, as one does, and the intertitles went by so fast I could barely read the English translations, let alone the awkwardly drawn Japanese scribbles.

It's three screens in when we get our money's worth. I would show you, because it's just goofy. Third screen in after some dramatic city screens and all of a sudden it's The Sound of Music except they do it and the mountains look like they're about five feet away. Interesting background design, at first I disliked it, but now I'm not so sure. What about the girl you might ask? Generic '80s anime girl/woman. It doesn't really matter because the age of the character is what the author tells us, and he can pull whatever number out of his ass he wants. And somehow she has breasts that look like the victim of a really bad boob job. If you've seen one of these chicks before, you've seen them all.

I have mixed feelings on this artwork. It felt goofy at first look, but now I'm not so sure. The background artist seems to be more of a painter than a pixel artist. His mountains feel like the work of someone used to the brush strokes one would use to paint a mountain rather than the very precise nature of pixel art. I know because that's how I was taught to paint mountains. And while you can't see it here, the way this guy does pixel grass is how I do it. That combination does give me pause, because it feels wrong. Even though I just said I draw pixel grass roughly the same way as this guy, I've never really considered it the right way to do so. More of just doing it that way because I couldn't do it any other way better. Does that mean that I'm not wrong to do it that way?

Someone else took a video of the PC-98 version's intro, which is censored, but not something you should watch while engaged in your power lunch with a business executive or whatever it is our readers do.

The intro roughly says:

The year is 20XX, The civilizations of Earth have been set free from violence, the time of peace has arrived. Society boasts of freedom for everyone, of pleasures in everyday living. (scene, man and woman doinking) Aliens visit a borderless Earth, brought into this period of peace and truth. Men and women pass the time with alcohol, the anxiety society offered is gone! (scene, drained corpse) However, before anyone knows, the terrifying rumors of departure begins. For the aliens, the human body exists as a necessary component, the truth is that the male earthling's purpose is food....Soon, everywhere terrifying corpses are discovered, their life sucked out and taken in a disgusting way...

I'm halfway through this intro and this is...just cowpies. I am halfway through this intro and it's cowpies. The only masturbation going on here has been the author's writing. Yes, to a certain degree this could be my old relative unfamiliarity with the language, I am perhaps not the greatest at linking these words together. On the other hand, the word borderless or rather national boarders and without are so hamfistedly put together I can't make any sense of it otherwise.

Writer: The societies of Earth have have achieved peace! Aliens visit a utopic Earth without borders. To ease the anxiety society gives, alcohol is consumed!

Artist: DOINK DOINK DOINK.

What in the actual hell is going on with the pink hair lady here? I confused her chest for a clipboard, not because she's flat, it just looks that off, and what is up with her pants? What the hell is going on there? TELL ME PLEASE!

Earth Union Defense Army, Eagle, first branch commander room.

Commander Jobu: My buddies, what I want to say is, someone is coming to recieve. For quite some time we searched, now our new companion has been found, first department, that is the list of personal data. Of course, Mazaa, the printout of our new arrival's sex has come.

Could the commander's name be Job? By sheer coincidence, I have a Japanese Bible, and I'm currently reading through The Book of Job. And you know what? It's pronounced Yobu, much like how Job should be pronounced, albeit with that Japanese flair. Of course that assumes that the writer of this game knew that and didn't just steal a random English name, and I'm certainly someone who didn't realize you pronounced it Yob. Meanwhile, Mazaa is probably Maza, a Spanish surname. It's also Spanish for mace, so I think the writer here was trying to give an international flavor of cool. The question is, is Mazaa Boardboobs McPinkhair or Flatneck Nerdgirl? Will it actually matter?

The rest is just information about our heroine, Sayaka. You know, things like being able to transform into a cat, that she has a sunny disposition and is a freewheeling lass. Also she's 17. Kind of have to bring that up even if I don't want to. This is a complex issue, because on one side of the debate you have people who are very much for free speech, who don't really like government interference in this sort of thing even in a case like this, on the other, you have people who would apply this with such a wide brush that even a real person above the age of 18 who looks youthful enough would be banned. And from experience, the kind of people who actually like this sort of stuff can be found more frequently with the latter than the former. This is a debate, beause legally, this is just a drawing. It's not a real person or a drawing of a real person, which is not up for debate since that's something very much harming a person. This is a drawing and thus, isn't harming a person, so the theory goes. This is also the reason why Netflix hasn't had been successfully done for certain films and TV series.

Personally, I'm not the kind of person who likes governments interfering with free speech, because that strikes me as very much a slippery slope. Even someone deciding that generic anime blob girl should be 18 instead of 17. Any well-meaning bill is probably stuffed to the brim with unrelated or far more questionable policies, or easily misinterpretable wording. But this sort of thing is very controversial for good reason.

The intro has been in dead silence, which is something you might note from that video. The PC-98 version works fine, but the MSX version has sound and music and seems to run at a reasonable pace, albeit slightly slower. Upon seeing this system in action, it immediately struck me how good this system was at displaying text, far better than any PC-98 game I've ever played, though with 2 lines of text.

Problem is, it's basically the same game graphically, but the music is so bad that silence is preferable. The sounds of construction, as heard through an Intellivision. They got a whopping sixteen seconds to make the most obnoxious sound possible, and I spent a good evening getting this to run only to waste my time for this garbage. Chances are I'll be listening to something else instead.

I'LL SWALLOW...YOUR SOUL

Now I can actually play the game. On the main menu, I'm given the option of starting a new game and loading an old one. No options to check if I have any sound, which is a problem if you don't have any. The game uses a list of actions, given to you on a per screen basis. So every function that'll be useful on this screen is indeed here. "get up", "change clothes" and "leave". No CAPs for guessing what I have to do and what Sayaka does. Then Sayaka goes outside and enters a car.

We're back at Eagle HQ. Now my commands are "look", "listen", "speak" and "escape". Shocking that I might need to escape from bootleg "Leader of Questionably Moral Pro-Human Group", I know. What might actually be shocking is what the actions here actually do. Look doesn't really tell me anything because thankfully the writer has stopped believing in the value of a thousand words for a second, while listen and speak are commands I alternate. Yes, that's right, to advance the conversation, you alternate between talking and listening. Imagine if every adventure game had this! Usually having more commands than you really need is a western failing, but apparently the Japanese could get up to this too. (for the record, the Japanese approach is have so few commands you cannot ever actually lose the game)

Yes, all this does fit in about two lines of English text

I'm not translating all that crap. I'm giving you the shortened version for both our sakes. Sayaka wants to know why she was called here; Jobu says that we didn't mean to frighten you, and that this is the organization Eagle and he is the commander, and he wants her to join. Sayaka says, "that Eagle?", that there wasn't a need for such secrecy and she's not good at cooperating and just a child. I'm sorry, our protagonist isn't stupid? In this game? Impressive. Shame she's not going to hold onto that intelligence.

Jobu says no, our investigation revealed you are capable of ESP, and that you can transform, and we're interested in that. Sayaka replies, never, that's impossible、your source is mistaken. Jobu says your training will begin. Sayaka says make me. Jobu replies with that huge ass wall of text. Which says that yellow aliens are coming to Earth for food, they claim to protect us. But we know their friendly public actions aren't true, and Yusura Academy...and sort of trails off to instead talk about infiltrating the place. And that's it.

Now I can "escape", which takes me to a bunch of corridors. I will say this, despite the colossal wall of text I have to deal with to get here, these commands are pretty good practice. In addition to previous commands、we now have "forward", "backward", "left" and "right". What's the last one, "panmora"? That's not a word, but pan is bread and mora can mean "too". So that means "bread too"? I think, until I meet my first enemy. At least I think it's an enemy. Yeah, it's not bread, unless we're talking about these buns. An accurate translation would be "flash".

Other than that, it's a maze. Think your typical Myst-like control scheme, just done with a menu you control via the arrow keys. Relative movement, which confused the hell out of me. I identify three locations. A door I can't open, one Sayaka is afraid of entering and a place blocked off by some dude I can't just flash Sayaka's panties at to get by. I have to admit, I did not expect the game to be throwing anything like a challenging puzzle at me.

After spending an unacceptable amount of time wandering around the maze, I look up the walkthrough. Yeah, that exists. This is probably the Maniac Mansion of the Japanese adventure game scene or something.

"Hi, I'm a serial killer."

What I missed was that on the invisible wall corridor I was supposed to look, well, look twice, but walkthroughs aren't supposed to be perfect, after all. Then we get Mr. Eyes here, I think. He's a child, a pervert, to quote the game. Sayaka asks him where the exit is. He is silent. So I try to escape, only Sayaka can't, so she flashes him. Guess this is the ESP, the kid can hold people down, Sayaka can cause a brain aneuryism by flashing people. By the way, this part is supposed to be funny.

Sayaka can apparently just flash these people now, though it doesn't come up

Back at kidnapper HQ...I'm sorry, Earth Defense Force Eagle or whatever their name was supposed to be. Speaking of names, I think the boy's is Boron and the nerd girl is Rui. Maybe. I won't know for certain until I get them alone. Wait, that's not going to end well. Being back at HQ means more text, and more text means I have to translate more stuff.

Jobu says that this is unacceptable, girl, so...Sayaka did it wrong? You didn't escape, something about cooperation again. Sayaka seems to think she did okay, but what the heck is with the kid? Boron says busy, but you insult me. Sayaka then...insults him...but he is a friend...?　Rui says we don't need to be divided, don't fight, and that's sort of the end of it. I don't catch Sayaka's last sentence, which is going to be a persistent problem, increasing the language difficulties. Also...

I'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!

This is going to be interesting. I'm not really sure in what way, but it'll be interesting. Everyone here will definitely remember this game, one way or another.

This Session: 40 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 20 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.