The most famous early Japanese adventure game, however, was the 1983 murder mystery game Portopia Serial Murder Case, developed by Yūji Horii (of Dragon Quest fame) and published by Enix. The game was viewed in a first-person perspective, followed a first-person narrative, and featured colour graphics. Originally released for the PC-6001, the player interacts with the game using a verb-noun parser which requires typing precise commands with the keyboard; finding the exact words to type is considered part of the riddles that must be solved.[48] The game was well-received in Japan for allowing multiple ways to achieve objectives, its well-told storyline, and its surprising twist ending.[54] Hideo Kojima also praised the game for its mystery, drama, humor, 3D dungeons, for providing a proper background and explanation behind the murderer's motives, and expanding the potential of video games.[56] The game has also been compared to the later-released Shadowgate where the player must examine and collect objects, and find their true purpose later on.[57] According to Square Enix, Portopia was "the first real detective adventure" game, and was ported to the NES in 1985.[58] With no keyboard, the NES version, developed by Chunsoft, replaced the verb-noun parser with a menu list of fourteen set commands selectable with the gamepad and introduced a cursor that can be moved on the screen using the D-pad to look for clues and hotspots, similar to a point-and-click interface.[48]
In 1986, Square released the science fiction adventure game Suishō no Dragon for the NES console. The game featured several innovations, including the use of animation in many of the scenes rather than still images,[49] and an interface resembling that of a point-and-click interface for a console, like Portopia, but making use of visual icons rather than text-based ones to represent various actions. Like the NES version of Portopia, it featured a cursor that could be moved around the screen using the D-pad to examine the scenery, though the cursor in Suishō no Dragon was also used to click on the action icons.[49][50] Sega's Anmitsu Hime: From Amakara Castle, released in 1987,[59] was an adventure game with some platform game segments. The adventure game segments were puzzle-oriented and played in a side-scrolling view where the player has direct control over the character. Originally based on the Anmitsu Hime anime, an edited version based on Alex Kidd was later released in 1989 as Alex Kidd in High-Tech World.[60] The Goonies II, also released in 1987, was a first-person adventure game with some side-scrolling action game segments. The game featured a non-linear open world environment similar to Metroid.[61]
A distinct form of Japanese adventure game that eventually emerged is the visual novel, which uses many conventions that are less popular in the West. They are almost universally first-person, and driven primarily by dialog. They also tend to use menu-based interactions and navigation, with point and click implementations that are quite different from Western adventure games. Inventory-based puzzles of the sort that form the basis of classic Western adventures, are quite rare. Logic puzzles like those found in Myst are likewise unusual. Because of this, Japanese visual novels tend to be streamlined, and often quite easy, relying more on storytelling than challenge to keep players interested.[62]
Hideo Kojima (of Metal Gear fame) was inspired by Portopia to enter the video game industry,[56] and produce his own adventure games. After completing the stealth game Metal Gear, his first graphic adventure was released by Konami the following year: Snatcher (1988), an ambitious cyberpunk detective novel graphic adventure that was highly regarded at the time for pushing the boundaries of video game storytelling, cinematic cut scenes, and mature content.[63] It also featured a post-apocalyptic science fiction setting, an amnesiac protagonist, and some light gun shooter segments. It was praised for its graphics, soundtrack, high quality writing comparable to a novel, voice acting comparable to a film or radio drama, and in-game computer database with optional documents that flesh out the game world. The Sega CD version of Snatcher was for a long time the only major visual novel game to be released in America, where it, despite a Mature rating limiting its accessibility,[62] gained a cult following.[64]
Following Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Kojima produced his next graphic adventure, Policenauts (1994), a point-and-click adventure notable for being an early example of extensive voice recording in video games.[65] It also featured a hard science fiction setting, a theme revolving around space exploration, a plot inspired by the ancient Japanese tale of Urashima Taro, and some occasional full-motion video cut scenes. The gameplay was largely similar to Snatcher, but with the addition of a point-and-click interface and some first-person shooter segments. Policenauts also introduced summary screens, which act to refresh the player's memory of the plot upon reloading a save, an element Kojima would later use in Metal Gear Solid. The PlayStation version of Policenauts could also read the memory card and give some easter egg dialogues if a save file of Konami's dating sim Tokimeki Memorial is present, a technique Kojima would also later use in Metal Gear Solid.[64] From 1997 to 1999, Kojima developed the three Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series titles, which were adaptations of Tokimeki Memorial in a visual novel adventure game format.[66]
In 1995, Human Entertainment's Clock Tower: The First Fear was a hybrid between a point-and-click graphic adventure and a survival horror game, revolving around survival against a deadly stalker known as Scissorman that chased players throughout the game. The success of Resident Evil in 1996 was followed by the release of the survival horror graphic adventures Clock Tower and Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within for the PlayStation. The Clock Tower games proved to be hits, capitalizing on the success of Resident Evil, though both games stayed true to the graphic-adventure gameplay of the original Clock Tower rather than following the lead of Resident Evil.[67]
From the early 1990s, Chunsoft, the developer for the NES version of Portopia, began producing a series of acclaimed visual novels known as the Sound Novels series, which include Kamaitachi no Yoru (1994), Machi (1998), 428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de (2008), and 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2010). From the late 1990s, a number of Japanese adventure games began using a 3D third-person direct control format, particularly on consoles like the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. Examples include Sega's Shenmue series (beginning in 1999), Konami's Shadow of Memories (2001), and Cing's Glass Rose (2003).
In recent years, Japanese visual novel games have been released in the West more frequently, particularly on the Nintendo DS handheld following the success of mystery-solving titles such as Capcom's Ace Attorney series (which began on the Game Boy Advance in 2001), Cing's Hotel Dusk series (beginning in 2006),[62] and Level-5's Professor Layton series (beginning in 2007).[68] English fan translations of visual novels such as Square's Radical Dreamers (a 1996 side story to the Chrono series of role-playing video games) and Key's Clannad (2005) have also been made available in recent years.
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