113-489: Zero Escape , formerly released in Japan as Kyokugen Dasshutsu ( Japanese : 極限脱出 , lit. "Extreme Escape") , is a series of adventure games directed and written by Kotaro Uchikoshi . The first two entries in the series, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009) and Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (2012), were developed by Spike Chunsoft (formerly Chunsoft ), while the third entry, Zero Time Dilemma (2016),
226-637: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
339-432: A depiction of two of humanity's instinctive desires: the unconscious desire to return to one's mother's womb and shut oneself away, and the desire to escape and overcome one's current condition. Uchikoshi had initially written 999 as a stand-alone game, but its positive reception led to its sequels' development. The tension present in its first sequel Virtue's Last Reward was deliberately toned down from that in 999 , as
452-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
565-536: A facility where they are forced to play a death game where the participants are locked inside rooms and have to solve puzzles in order to get out. In the first two games, the death game is referred to as the Nonary Game, while the one in the third game is called the Decision Game. The characters do not at first appear to have anything in common, but throughout the course of the games, it is revealed that each
678-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
791-484: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
904-406: A puzzle, by including hints that would appear if the player repeatedly clicked on items; as the player continues clicking, the hints get more obvious, to the point of almost revealing the solution outright. In the second game, a difficulty setting was added, with puzzles being easier to solve on lower settings. While the first game was in 2D, the second game features 3D graphics; this change affected
1017-435: A response to the news of the game's hiatus, fans of the series created Operation Bluebird, an online campaign to raise awareness of the series and support the development. By July 2015, the development of the third game had been resumed; the game being put on hold becoming big news, and fans being vocal about wanting a third game, was what led to the game being reevaluated. With the third game, the development team wanted to renew
1130-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
1243-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
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#17327836860161356-399: A way where puzzles are integrated into the story and includes clues, and need to be solved in order for the player to make progress. The inspiration for the first game was the question "where do mankind's inspirations come from?"; while researching it, Uchikoshi came across the theories of the English biochemist Rupert Sheldrake , and used them as the main theme. The game's setting was meant as
1469-680: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
1582-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of
1695-449: Is "pushing the boundaries of what video game narrative can be". Tony Ponce of Destructoid called 999 "one of the greatest videogame tales ever told", and a great example of how engaging and powerful narratives in video games can be. Bob Mackey of 1UP.com featured 999 on a list of "must-play" Nintendo DS visual novels, citing its story and themes as being among the darkest on a Nintendo platform, and called Virtue's Last Reward "one of
1808-657: Is also considering releasing merchandise based on the third game. Aksys and Spike Chunsoft worked with the Japanese puzzle event studio SCRAP to create Real Zero Escape: Trust on Trial , a real-life room escape game based on the Zero Escape universe, which was held at SCRAP's studio in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles for several months, starting in April 2016. Players had to solve real-life escape-the-room puzzles in
1921-448: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
2034-527: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
2147-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
2260-701: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
2373-466: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
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#17327836860162486-429: Is common to both of them, concluding that it was the character Zero and how both games involve "a dangerous escape"; the title also has the double meaning of "you have zero chance to escape". The title was later used as part of the Japanese title for Zero Time Dilemma , and replaced the previous Japanese title Kyokugen Dasshutsu for the re-release of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward . For
2599-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
2712-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
2825-755: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
2938-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
3051-498: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
3164-462: Is primarily based on the original PlayStation Vita version, but corrects some typographic errors. A novelization of the first game, titled Kyokugen Dasshutsu 9 Jikan 9 Nin 9 no Tobira Alterna , was written by Kenji Kuroda and published by Kodansha in Japan in two volumes in 2010. An original video animation based on the beginning of the second game was made by Gonzo ; it has been dubbed and released in English by Aksys Games. An untitled Flash game
3277-442: Is the main theme of the first game. The second game focuses on game theory , specifically on the prisoner's dilemma. The third game's main theme is morality, and it is the game in the series with the largest focus on philosophy. The first two Zero Escape titles were developed by Chunsoft , while the third was developed by Chime. The series is directed and written by Kotaro Uchikoshi , with music by Shinji Hosoe . Character design
3390-665: Is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as
3503-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
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3616-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
3729-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
3842-563: The Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered
3955-621: The Enneagram of Personality as reference, which classifies people into nine groups; the decision to do this came from the importance of the number "9" in the storyline of 999 . An important thing to him when making characters was to create a mystery behind them, to make players curious about who the characters are and what their pasts are like. Another important element was the use of misdirection: by deliberately making certain characters seem like bad people, he would aim to get players to focus on them more, making it more difficult for them to see who
4068-462: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
4181-514: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
4294-738: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
4407-806: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
4520-417: The "real bad guy" is. He aimed to not give the player characters strong personalities, in order to make it easier for players to empathize with them. He chose to have the games be played from a first person perspective as he felt it makes for "a stronger impact" and is more interesting than a third person perspective; it was also used to limit the information that is available to the player in a realistic way, as
4633-527: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
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4746-486: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
4859-736: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
4972-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
5085-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
5198-416: The additional narration from the bottom screen. Both modes have animated characters and voice acting. The updated version also includes a story flowchart, similar to the other two games in the series, to help players with getting to the game's true ending. It does not include the additional story content that was part of the iOS version, but the final puzzle is different. The new version of Virtue's Last Reward
5311-569: The biggest, boldest visual novels to ever hit America". Writers for Famitsu liked the tense story and the sense of accomplishment when solving puzzles in 999 , and the intertwined story and flowchart system in Virtue's Last Reward . Jason Schreier of Kotaku included both 999 and Virtue's Last Reward on a list of "must-play" visual novels worth playing even for people who do not like anime tropes . Schreier also wrote for Wired , calling 999' s narrative "innovative" and saying that he liked
5424-471: The console versions on April 13 the same year. The European PlayStation Vita version was released on December 15. The Nonary Games was also released for Xbox One on March 22, 2022. The updated version of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has separate Adventure and Novel modes; the Adventure mode presents the character interactions similar to the top screen of the original game, while Novel mode uses
5537-456: The controls used in the puzzle sections of Virtue's Last Reward . Austin Boosinger of Adventure Gamers felt that while the puzzles in Virtue's Last Reward were thematically appropriate, he thought they were "relatively uninspired in their variety" and that not many of them were fun or engaging. Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] )
5650-463: The course of the story. During the Escape sections, the player aims to find a way out of rooms by exploring the room and solving puzzles. The player can move around during these sections, and can pick up and combine items in order to open locks or get access to new items. Each room also includes more complex puzzles, such as sliding puzzles and mini-games, which can not be solved without finding clues in
5763-596: The development of Virtue's Last Reward . Meanwhile, the series has been a commercial failure in Japan, with the first two games underperforming; in their respective debut years in Japan, the first game sold 27,762 copies, and the second sold 14,023 copies across Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita. As of July 2018, the series has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. Several critics have praised the series' stories: Andy Goergen of Nintendo World Report commented on how 999 "truly expands what narrative video games can be capable of", and Christian Nutt at Gamasutra said that Uchikoshi
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#17327836860165876-578: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
5989-435: The first game, a big challenge was getting the localization done in time; Nobara Nakayama, the game's translator, worked on it for 30 days, and the editing process took two months. Because of this, Bateman had to do most of the work "on the fly". Nakayama had started playing the game prior to starting work on the localization, but did not finish playing it until she was more than halfway through translating it; after learning that
6102-406: The first game, the player has to start over from the beginning after completing each branch, replaying Escape sections; in the second game, the branches are represented by an interactive flowchart , allowing the player to jump to any point in the game that they have reached, and try different outcomes. This flowchart was also implemented in the iOS and The Nonary Games versions of the first game. In
6215-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure
6328-551: The game's ending and cast, but that he thought that some of the game's prose was "sloppy" and that there was no sense of real danger. Reception of the games' puzzle sections has been more mixed. Virtue's Last Reward was featured on Gamasutra 's and Game Developer ' s jointly created list of the ten best games of 2012 for having storytelling as gameplay rather than aside from gameplay. Schreier disliked having to repeat puzzles in each playthrough of 999 . Mike Manson of Nintendo Life and John McCaroll of RPGFan found problems with
6441-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
6554-433: The gimmicks and props found in the game; after deciding on them, they were integrated with the puzzles. He would also use puzzle-related websites as reference. He did not handle puzzle design himself, instead leaving a lot of the direction to other staff, and checking it multiple times. Because of the puzzle–story integration, the development team tried to avoid situations where the player gets stuck due to being unable to solve
6667-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,
6780-458: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
6893-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
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#17327836860167006-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
7119-412: The narrative. He first came up with a setting, and then made characters along with the drama and stories behind them. After this, he decided on the core of the game's story, and created a flowchart based on it, which became the "bone structure of the story". According to Uchikoshi, it did not matter that the setups of the games were far-fetched, as long as their internal logic worked; he said that as long as
7232-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
7345-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
7458-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
7571-416: The player might be thinking as they play through it, and decided what to write based on it; this was one of the most important things to him when writing. A key element to Uchikoshi when writing the outcomes of player decisions is that the importance of the decision usually is much greater after the player has made it, with the consequences only being revealed later on as the player learns more information; this
7684-401: The player only knows what they experience or are told. Because the player characters in most games can die many times, Uchikoshi felt that video game characters' deaths may be taken lightly, which he saw as a weak point in games. To combat this, he focused on trying to get players to want to keep the story alive, rather than trying to keep the player character alive; as a result of wanting to keep
7797-402: The plot hinged on a Japanese pun, they had to halt the localization, discuss it with Uchikoshi, come up with a solution, and go through the whole game to make sure that it still made sense. The second game took around three months to translate and four months to edit. A big challenge in localizing it was catching the several subtle hints to the game's ending that appear throughout the story. Unlike
7910-476: The previous two Zero Escape titles, the North American version of the third game was produced alongside the Japanese version. The Zero Escape series has been positively received by critics, with the first two games in the series attaining perfect scores in reviews from various publications. Uchikoshi noted that the positive reception of 999 from international fans outside of Japan directly influenced
8023-481: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
8136-405: The puzzle creation, as the development team could choose to layer objects behind each other or have them all visible at once. As the second game was made with a worldwide release in mind, Japanese characters and references to Japanese culture were avoided in the puzzle design; the puzzles ended up using numbers a lot since they are internationally used symbols. For the iOS version of the first game,
8249-411: The puzzles were removed and replaced with new story sequences; this was done as the development team wanted to reach people who are not good at solving puzzles, or who do not play games at all and who might not have a game console, but according to Uchikoshi, the staff felt that the game was incomplete without the puzzle sequences of the original version. The series is localized by Aksys Games; Chunsoft
8362-444: The results of a survey indicated that some Japanese people had not bought 999 because it seemed "too scary". Uchikoshi stated that Zero Time Dilemma , the second sequel which was released in 2016, will "tone it up" in response to feedback from players who praised the sense of fear present in 999 . The two sequels were specifically intended to be "paired as a set": the second game has a cliffhanger ending, while Uchikoshi intended for
8475-431: The room. The games are non-linear : the first two games' stories branch depending on player choices, and lead to several different endings, with a final true ending that the player can only reach by playing through various different branches; the third game divides the story into chapters called "fragments", each representing a 90-minute period, which can be chosen from a "Floating Fragment" menu and played out of order. In
8588-401: The same idea in English. Most parts of the games that include a joke in the localization also have a joke in the Japanese versions, but a different one; Bateman did try to make similar types of jokes with similar contents and ideas. He was given mostly free rein in what he could change or add to the writing, as long as it did not disrupt the plot. The biggest challenge with localizing the series
8701-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
8814-401: The second game has players learn information and not being able to continue past certain points until they have input a solution; this was influenced by the 1994 video game Kamaitachi no Yoru , and was intended to make the story get "under the skin" of players, and allow the player and the player character to understand the game world in tandem, and progress together. Among other influences for
8927-600: The second game was released in English in Europe by Rising Star Games . The third game was released by Aksys Games in both North America and Europe for consoles, and by Spike Chunsoft worldwide for Windows. A bundle containing the first two games, titled Zero Escape: The Nonary Games , was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita in the West on March 24, 2017. In Japan, the Windows version launched on March 25 and
9040-418: The second game, and two sub-writers for the third game. They would help with brainstorming ideas and finding what does not work so well and how to improve scenarios. The Escape sequences were made to appeal to the players' instinctive desires; Uchikoshi wanted the player to experience the instinctive pleasure of "I found it!". For the puzzles, Uchikoshi would think about the details within the overall story, and
9153-410: The series were writers Isaac Asimov and Kurt Vonnegut ; Uchikoshi felt that 90% of any creative work consists of pieces from others' works, and that the remaining 10% is creativity, with the result being worthwhile hinging on how well a writer can incorporate their influences with their own ideas. Uchikoshi prioritized storylines over characters, and used the feeling of discomfort as the foundation of
9266-532: The series' image in Japan; to do this, they used the English series title, Zero Escape , instead of the Kyokugen Dasshutsu title that had been used for previous Japanese releases. For Zero Escape , Uchikoshi conceived the storytelling as being gameplay; he said that while other games might consist of the player shooting people, with a story just there to enhance it, he thinks that the narrative of visual novels should be gameplay. As an example of this,
9379-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
9492-469: The spirit of the Zero Escape series within a limited amount of time. The gameplay of the series is divided into two types of segments: Novel sections – presented in a visual novel format in the first two games, and as animated cutscenes in the third – and Escape sections, which are escape-the-room scenarios. During the Novel sections, the player reads dialogue, occasionally inputting choices that change
9605-817: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
9718-505: The stories more believable was adding concepts such as Schrödinger's cat , which he felt added flavor and kept players wondering whether a particular concept could be the main idea of the game; he felt that when players wonder that, it makes the story feel more real, as they create the game world in their minds. After deciding on the story and the main character, he would balance the characters, in terms of genders, personalities, and ages represented; when making character personalities, he used
9831-419: The story backwards. During the projects, Aksys Games would do email correspondence with Spike Chunsoft, to make sure that they conveyed the message of the games as intended. The title Zero Escape was decided on during the localization of the second game, when the localization team wanted to create a "branding umbrella" for both games. They chose the title based on what they thought defines the first two games and
9944-464: The story going, players would also avoid the death of their character. When writing the stories, he started with their twist endings , and then worked his way back from that. He designed the flow of the story by using a spreadsheet , and wrote prototypes of potential outcomes of the different scenarios in the game; after this, he matched it with the flowchart he had made, and came up with the details of each story. As he wrote each scene, he imagined what
10057-486: The story is interesting and immersive, implausible situations feel plausible to the player. On the other hand, he felt that if he had specifically tried to make it more plausible, by forcing explanations that justify the situations, the story would become boring and the implausible would look even more implausible. Instead, he chose to rely on players' imagination, saying that players can make things seem plausible in ways he had not even imagined himself. One thing he did to make
10170-456: The story is presented, and Escape sections, where the player solves escape-the-room puzzles. In the first two games, the Novel sections are presented in a visual novel format, whereas the third uses animated cutscenes . The stories branch based on player choices, and include multiple endings. In addition to Uchikoshi, the development team includes character designers Kinu Nishimura and Rui Tomono, and music composer Shinji Hosoe . The series
10283-481: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
10396-437: The third game to resolve all mysteries left from the second game, as well as all introduced in the third game. While he intended for the series to be a trilogy with a story that ends on the third game, he is open to "new incidents arriving" if fans still request it. While the first game performed well enough in the West for Spike Chunsoft to decide to develop a sequel, both games were commercial failures in Japan. Because of this,
10509-521: The third game was put on hold in 2014, only to resume the development for Zero Time Dilemma the following year, due to fan demand and the hiatus becoming big news. Critics have been positive to the series, praising its narrative for being experimental and for pushing boundaries for what can be done with video game narratives. The series consists of three video games. The first two games were released in English by Aksys Games in North America, and
10622-403: The third game, fragments are placed in a flowchart upon completion, indicating where they take place in the story. The three Zero Escape games are narratively linked, with events of Zero Time Dilemma occurring between 999 and Virtue's Last Reward . Each game in the series follows a group of nine people who get kidnapped by masked individuals who call themselves "Zero", and are locked inside
10735-452: The third game, which had originally been mentioned in 2012, was not approved by the management at the company. By February 2014, the development was put on hold indefinitely. Uchikoshi examined the possibility of financing the development through the use of crowdfunding on a website like Kickstarter , but felt that the idea would not be persuasive enough for it to meet the goal; he also sought out opportunities with executives and investors. As
10848-579: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Flash game Too Many Requests If you report this error to
10961-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
11074-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
11187-480: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
11300-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
11413-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
11526-539: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
11639-437: Was chosen for a specific purpose, including connections to previous narrative elements from the other games in the series. The characters attempt to escape from the facility, to identify Zero, and to learn of Zero's goal. The series has science fiction and horror elements, and philosophical and supernatural themes. A recurring theme is the concept of morphogenetic fields , which is explored in different ways in each game, and
11752-503: Was considered a big risk for the company. They worked by the philosophy of keeping true to the spirit of the original Japanese version, opting to make dialogue sound like what a native speaker would say rather than strictly adhering to the Japanese wording. Ben Bateman, the editor of the first two games' localizations, did this by looking at the writing from a wider view, examining it line by line or scene by scene, rather than word by word or sentence by sentence, and thinking about how to convey
11865-458: Was developed by Chime. Zero Escape is published by Spike Chunsoft in Japan, while Aksys Games and Rising Star Games have published the games for North America and Europe respectively. Each game in the series follows a group of nine individuals, who are kidnapped and held captive by a person code-named "Zero", and are forced to play a game of life and death to escape. The gameplay is divided into two types of sections: Novel sections, where
11978-510: Was first introduced to Aksys through Spike , when Chunsoft was looking for a company that could publish the first game in the United States. During Aksys' evaluation period of it, many people at the company did not believe in the game and turned it down; as many of the people who evaluate games at Aksys do not speak Japanese, it was difficult for them to determine whether a game was good or not. Eventually, they decided to localize it, which
12091-401: Was handled by Kinu Nishimura in the first two games, and by Rui Tomono in the third. The series was originally conceived when Chunsoft contacted Uchikoshi and asked him to write visual novels for them; they had found success in the genre, but wanted to create a new type of visual novels which could be received by a wider audience. Uchikoshi's idea for this was to combine puzzles with a story, in
12204-735: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
12317-474: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
12430-454: Was made for Virtue's Last Reward and made available on the official Japanese developer website. An artbook featuring art from the first two games was published by SB Creative in 2012 in Japan; an artbook for the third game was released as a pre-order bonus in Japan, and is sold separately in the West. Music albums with the soundtracks of the first two games were released by Super Sweep on December 23, 2009 and April 19, 2012, respectively. Aksys
12543-491: Was originally conceived when Chunsoft wanted Uchikoshi to write visual novels for a wider audience; he came up with the idea of combining the story with story-integrated puzzles. While Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was initially planned as a stand-alone title, its success in the international market led to the development of two sequels, intended to be paired as a set. Both Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward were commercial failures in Japan, and
12656-415: Was to keep track of everything, as the games feature branching paths, and the characters learn different things in different branches, affecting word choices and attitudes. While a lot of this had been taken care of by Spike Chunsoft, many parts of the game required different word choices in English depending on if a character knew of a particular thing or not; in these cases, the localization team had to track
12769-429: Was to maintain the high suspense level, and to avoid situations where choices end up not actually mattering. One big challenge for him was to maintain player interest through all branches; he tried to have each branch develop differently, as to avoid repetition and fatigue, and keep the player motivated. While he came up with the set-up, the setting, and the characters on his own, he had a sub-writer helping him with writing
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