A Game Based Upon A Real Life Act of Domestic Terrorism, Possibly Produced By The Cult Responsible, Is As Unsettling As It Sounds
Scares produced by video games is something being talked about, again, mostly due to the recent release of Resident Evil 7, though there’s also that Slender Man documentary on HBO. But you know what’s truly terrifying? Kamikuishiki-mura Monogatari.
FM Towns Marty recently posted an animated gif, the latest of several, from the aforementioned game. It’s basically a doujin soft published for the PC-88, which according to Tokugawa Corp is “Based on the Aum Shinrikyo cult responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway”. And those words are some of the precious few that has been written about the game, at least in English. There’s not much else as a whole actually, far as I can tell, other than the still and moving images above, plus some footage on YouTube. The best of which are presented below.
From what I’ve been able to figure out, Kamikuishiki-mura Monogatari operates as a resource management sim, with the goal being the successful deployment of the chemical agent to targeted trains. The graphics combine a variety of real world images and video with somewhat charming yet ultimately creepy cartoon renderings of mostly Shoko Asahara, the Aum Shinrikyo cult’s leader.
In the following video you’ll find a shot of him touching the head of a young boy, as if he’s being blessed (well, Asahara has claimed to be Christ), plus a close up of his hand, emphasizing either a divine or maybe even healing touch. We also see him sitting in a tub, with the bath water being collected into jars, and not long after is another image of presumably the same bath water being injected intravenously into someone’s arm, seen here…
Again, there’s footage of actual people throughout, mostly recordings of the cult’s various appearances by the news. Here we have the game’s so-called “story ending”, featuring young women dancing in public; research states that the cult was well known for such displays. These bits of real life are genuinely unnerving, because what we’re seeing are people who, presumably, led completely normal and healthy lives until they were brainwashed….
In the upper right corner are close ups of various individuals. I’m assuming they’re cult members, including perhaps perpetrators of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, as well as possible targets and victims (super morbid, I know), plus Shoko Asahara himself. Sometimes it’s a cartoony vestige, of him either happy, sad, or mad.
On that note, the following has been labeled as being the game’s good ending and also includes footage from the anime that the cult produced as part of its propaganda machine. It’s perhaps also worth pointing out that the song at the very end is seemingly the Aum Shinrikyo’s official theme song. It keeps popping up whenever I check out footage of the cult elsewhere. It too is supremely unsettling…
As for developed the game, it’s by Aum Soft, which leads me to believe that it might actually be a product of the Aum Shinrikyo(!!!), so it could therefore be viewed as yet another piece of propaganda. For those who truly feel like jumping down the rabbit hole, here’s footage of the game, from start to finish. BTW/FYI: it features the game’s bad ending…
It’s also worth pointing out that almost all of the clips presented, even the low quality playthrough, are all fairly recent. My best guess is that Kamikuishiki-mura Monogatari was recently the subject of some Japanese Lets Player, which raised awareness of its very existence and others are starting to investigate. Happens all the time here in America, but unlike some rare shmup’s price going up on eBay, I have to wonder if further dissemination of the game might unintentionally increase the ranks of the cult, which still exists to this very day (just last year in Russia, cult members were found and weeded out by government raids).
On, and bonus video time: here’s some color footage of the girls of Aum Shinrikyo dancing and here’s a better look at that aforementioned anime.
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