News: Hiroyuki Kanno's Mystereet

January 16, 2006, 08:24 AM

by chazumaru, via Abel/H.Kanno -
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Abel Inc. opened the official webpage of their new PlayStation 2 game this morning, just a few days after revealing in Famitsu that the game was in development. Scheduled to be released next may, Mystereet ~Yasogami Kaeru no Jiken File~ is a port of a Dreamcast detective adventure game from 2000, already adapted to the PC in 2004. You can still download a demo movie of the Windows version here. The fully-voiced investigation will feature over 40 characters and 20,000 spoken sentences. The limited edition of the game will feature an original drama CD.

The man behind Mystereet is Hiroyuki Kanno (real name Yukihiro Kenno). That's the guy in the picture on the top left of this newspost. Although virtually unknown in the western media, he is possibly the most important japanese adventure game author (or "scenario game designer" as he prefers to describe himself). Most of his productions follow the traditional recipe of a detective story filled with ingenious plot twists, some paranormal shtick and gorgeous babes that will often get pretty intimate with the protagonist. The PC versions are strictly for adult only, whereas the console ports are toned down in order to keep a bit of kink and flesh in the games without crossing the border of porn. Some of his most famous work includes Eve Burst Error, Yu-No, Desire, Exodus Guilty (Brandon's note: one of the only such games you can play in english) and the Tantei Shinshi series. His masterpiece must be Eve Burst Error, originally released on PC-98, and voted by japanese Saturn fans as that system's greatest game in one of the last editions of SegaSaturn Magazine. Eve Burst Error subsequently spawned numerous drama CDs as well as sequels (written by other authors and of variable quality), then eventually got its own remake on PlayStation 2 in 2003. But Kanno had already left Elf and C's Ware to found Abel Software (now Abel Inc.) in 1997 - which is also when he switched to his current pen name. At Abel, Kanno wrote and produced numerous games for PS, DC and PC. His main work is the Tantei Shinshi series (tantei shinshi means "detective gentleman"), of which Mystereet is considered the second chapter. I never got to play or see Kanno's early works for the PC-98 such as "the college of pleasure" or "forbidden consanguinity" but I would guess from their titles that they did not focus as much on suspense and mystery as the detective games that later defined his career.