Yakōchū

Yakōchū^[a] is a 1995 visual novel made by Athena for the Super Famicom. The game involves players following a text-based narrative over illustrated backgrounds with sounds that play at key moments to enhance the story. Yakōchū is about a student who travels on a cruise ship that falls victim to an explosion, leading the passengers to flee to lifeboats. They are picked up by a new ship where mysterious events begin to occur. After completing the game once, the player can restart where new narrative branch options become available, allowing new stories to be available.

Yakōchū was one of the early sound novels released following the release of Chunsoft's Otogirisō (1992) and Banshee's Last Cry (1994). Some critics in Famicom Tsūshin found the game's narrative too short, while the Hamamura Tsūshin listed the game as the "Best Picks of This Week" for June 12 to June 18, 1995. The game was later ported to the Game Boy Color as Yakōchū GB in 1999 and received a sequel for the Nintendo 64 titled Yakōchū II: Satsujin Kouro .

Weekly Famitsu described Yakōchū as a sound novel.^[2] Mark Kretzschmar and Sara Raffel, authors of The History and Allure of Interactive Visual Novels, described the term used to primarily define Japanese games that rely on graphics and sounds instead of puzzles to tell a story and was more generally interchangeable with visual novels.^[3] In Yakōchū, there are narrative branches out into different stories depending on the choices the player makes.^[4]

Yakōchū was designed for control to be performed with one hand for either left-handed or right-handed players. The player can control the game through advancing the text forward and backwards and confirming options for narrative branches when prompted.^[5] After playing through the story once, restarting the game allows for new narrative branches to become available, allowing for new stories to become available to the player.^[6]

In Yakōchū the player can choose to name the main character. They are a first-year high school student. Along with Hayami Arisa, their classmate and childhood friend, they go aboard the maiden voyage of the luxury cruiser called Diana. As passengers celebrate the trip on the ship's deck, a surprise explosion ends the party and causes the boat to sink. This leads the student protagonist to board a lifeboat and escape, eventually losing sight of the other survivors.

Soon, the separated group manages to take shelter on a new ship called Pandora that suddenly appeared before them. The location becomes the set of a mystery where the survivors are slowly being targeted for murder. Depending on the choices made during the game, some stories are told, ranging from one involving a potential ghost aboard the ship to an unknown stowaway, and the discovery of killer bees, among others.

In 1995, the Japanese video game magazine Famicom Tsūshin said that a new form of Japanese adventure games was on the rise with the advent of the sound novel genre, noting upcoming releases such as Yakōchū and Gakkou de atta Kowai Hanashi (1995).^[7] Prior to this, earlier games by Chunsoft such as Otogirisō (1992) and Banshee's Last Cry (1994) helped establish the genre.^[8]

Yakōchū was developed by Athena, a video company created by Sakae Nakamura in 1987. Nakamura recalled the development of Yakōchū, saying he wanted to create a sound novel for the company. He contacted the Japan Broadcast Writers Association and was introduced to their young writers club, which held an open call to create scenarios for Yakōchū. Nakamura said the person selected was a female office worker.^[9]

Yakōchū was released in Japan on June 16, 1995, for the Super Famicom.^[4] Nakamura said the release date for Yakōchū was lucky as it was after Banshee's Last Cry was released in November 1994 which was a hit game and quickly ran out of stock, which he said contributed to the sales of Yakōchū which had already stopped production on new copies and had to make more when requests came in.^[9]

For the port made for the Game Boy Color, additional narrative branches were added to the game. The game also added support to explain some more difficult to read Kanji characters.^[10]

Reviewing the original release, the four reviewers of Famicom Tsūshin commented on the quality of the narrative. Two reviewers found the stories short, while another said the stories lacked major climaxes. One reviewer compared the title unfavourably to Chunsoft's Banshee's Last Cry, which they felt was superior due to its puzzle-solving elements.^[4] In the same magazine, critic Hamamura Tsūshin listed the game as the "Best Picks of This Week" for June 12 to June 18, 1995, saying it would potentially be what audiences who have completed Otogirisō have been looking for.^[11] In Game Criticism  the reviewer found there were too few variations on the story and that all the stories were too short.^[1]

In the Japanese book Perfect Guide to Nostalgic Super Famicom (2016), the game was included in their list of the top six horror games for the Super Famicom. Their overview said that there was no doubt that it was a good game, but said that if played consistently, some players may find it lacking due to its short run time.^[12]

On October 22, 1999, two other Yakōchū titles were released. The first was a port of the original game to the Game Boy Color as Yakōchū GB and the second was a sequel titled Yakōchū II: Satsujin Kouro  for the Nintendo 64.^[10][13][14] While being promoted as a sequel, the Nintendo 64 game does not have any returning characters or scenarios from Yakōchū.^[15]

• List of Super Nintendo Entertainment System games
• Video games in Japan

• Yakōchū at The Visual Novel Database