Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

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Marc
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Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

Post by Marc »

I thought I might try to raise the profile of a VERY obscure (even in Japan) Japanese adventure game that was released in 1993 for the PC98 and FM Towns computer formats. Called Marine Philt and made by Fairytale, the guys who made the Dead of the Brain games, this puppy has hints of Snatcher's influence -- the main character's name is Seed, the intro is very similar visually and aurally, there's walls and walls of text about technical details of the game's world -- though the subject matter is quite different. It's basically Aliens if it were set in a futuristic Tokyo instead of another planet, and you play as a group of young adults who accidentally discover this alien that's made its way from outer space into the city. It's probably as close as you'll get to another Snatcher in terms of feel. As you may have guessed, it was never released in English.

Check out some screenshots here, the one and only website devoting any coverage to it. I've cleared the game, so I should be able to answer any questions about it.
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

Post by Henry Spencer »

Woah. Looks good. My first question is what happened to the development team, are they still making games? How's the story/characters/immersion? How did you get ahold of it? Are there shooting sequences in the game? Are there any differences from the two versions? Is it voice acted? And lastly, how's Dead of the Brain coming along?

The last game that gave me a great cyberpunk feeling was Dreamweb [DOS version]. Terribly underrated game, that. Incredible atmosphere.
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

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Fairytale still makes games, mostly hentai games. Well, actually, to my knowledge, the only non-hentai games they ever made were Dead of the Brain 1 and 2, and Marine Philt. The studio is now known as F and C (probably NSFW).

The characters I liked a lot. They're a normal group of young adults, which makes them easy to relate to. They're not part of the police or the military or anything like that. The story is somewhat predictable, but there are enough memorable scenes to make up for it. I don't want to spoil anything, but the first part of the game in particular is genuinely creepy. The point-and-click gameplay reminded me very much of Snatcher and Policenauts because the wealth of information provided in the text makes it so immersive.

An actual copy of the game is virtually impossible to find, even on Japanese auction sites, so I had to resort to acquiring the game, the PC98 version, another way....

There are shooting sequences, and they're free shooting like you find in arcade gun games and Policenauts, instead of a grid like Snatcher.

I haven't played the FM Towns version, though I suspect it will have beefed up music. There is no voice acting in the PC98 version (it's on floppies), and I doubt they went to the trouble of recording any for the Towns version.

Dead of the Brain I had to drop out of (see the project thread). I just don't have the time for a project of that size anymore, unfortunately.

I think you mentioned Dreamweb before, didn't you? Never tried it myself.
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

Post by Henry Spencer »

Thanks for answering my questions, the game sounds fantastic.
Dead of the Brain I had to drop out of (see the project thread). I just don't have the time for a project of that size anymore, unfortunately.
That's unfortunate. Best of luck with whatever projects you are busy on though.
I think you mentioned Dreamweb before, didn't you? Never tried it myself.
It's abandonware now, so I can give you the download link to play it, if you would like. (You need DOSBOX to get it to work though, of course). It's a fantastic game, that really concentrates on story and atmosphere more than anything else. It's a very unique game, even for a cyberpunk game. Has a really unique, really dark plot that I don't want to spoil for you. Sufficed to say, the game is very controversial and I'd say if it got released nowadays, the media would jump on it and hound it. Point and click game.

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/363/DreamWeb.html

Hope you like it, mate.
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

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Abandonware does not mean legal to download. It just means that the company who made it is not doing anything with it at the moment and besides it only $3 bucks on eBay! :P
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

Post by Henry Spencer »

It may be cheap and easy to get in the US, but over here: it's expensive and very hard to get ahold of. Besides, the companies who made it cease to exist (that goes for the developers and the publishers).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Int ... ertainment

:mrgreen:
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

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Very few company’s ever take their copyright laws with them to their grave. Chances are they ether got bought out before they died or one of the employees there owns the copyright law (Most likely the guy who made the game or the leader of the company)
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

Post by XenoMorph »

When I saw the aliens in the screenshots of that game my first thought was that someone has been watching too much of H.R. Gigers' art :D
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

Post by Henry Spencer »

best name ever wrote:Very few company’s ever take their copyright laws with them to their grave. Chances are they ether got bought out before they died or one of the employees there owns the copyright law (Most likely the guy who made the game or the leader of the company)
I checked up on MobyGames and found something very interesting out. The writer/director of the game is now at Rockstar studios and made Chinatown Wars. His resume prior to Dreamweb is blank, obviously working on such an influential game was enough for him to land on his feet at Rockstar and produce similarly controversial games (although in hindsight nowhere near as much as Dreamweb). If I could give the guy the money for the full product I would, but since the production companies are dead, you can understand why I pointed to the website.
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

Post by best name ever »

Henry Spencer wrote: If I could give the guy the money for the full product I would, but since the production companies are dead, you can understand why I pointed to the website.
Still not legal though. (Back on topic) does anyone one know if anyone on the web is thinking of making a fan translation of this game (but I doubt anyone is) because this game looks amazing! :mrgreen:
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

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sorry to double post but I found a game play video on YouTube for this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz0Pp2DHmBw and my brother added this to gaintbomb http://www.giantbomb.com/marine-philt/61-31637/ he hasn't put much on it but more will be added later
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

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Hey, that's my video lol :P

I've managed to complete it since then. Was quite surprised by the game, it was better than I expected. Although I'm still a bit unsure on the details of the story, I did enjoy it more than the Dead of the Brain games.
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

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Trickless wrote:Hey, that's my video lol :P
Oh really!? Well then thank you for posting it :wink:
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

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I 'v recently been looking into ways of hacking the text in PC-98 version of Marine Philt and found out that it was surprisingly easy!

I unpacked the first floppy image using DiskExplorer and found out (from what I can tell) that none of the text seems to be compressed and can be directly edited in Hex, the game can even display English text as longs as it's Shift-JIS characters. The bad news is that I can't seem to put spaces in between words without the game freezing.

I only know very basic rom hacking, so if anyone out there that's a more experienced hacker and would like to take a whack at it, then please be my guest :wink:
BEFORE
BEFORE
4.bmp (125.12 KiB) Viewed 13141 times
EDIT!: I fixed the spacing!...well sorta.
What I did was open up Neko Project II's font.bmp file and made the "^" symbol I was using for spaces transparent. Yeah I know it's kinda cheap but hay it works and I doubt the game ever uses that symbol any ways.
AFTER
AFTER
6.bmp (125.12 KiB) Viewed 13138 times
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

Post by JimboKudo »

best name ever wrote:I 'v recently been looking into ways of hacking the text in PC-98 version of Marine Philt and found out that it was surprisingly easy!

I unpacked the first floppy image using DiskExplorer and found out (from what I can tell) that none of the text seems to be compressed and can be directly edited in Hex, the game can even display English text as longs as it's Shift-JIS characters. The bad news is that I can't seem to put spaces in between words without the game freezing.

I only know very basic rom hacking, so if anyone out there that's a more experienced hacker and would like to take a whack at it, then please be my guest :wink:
4.bmp
EDIT!: I fixed the spacing!...well sorta.
What I did was open up Neko Project II's font.bmp file and made the "^" symbol I was using for spaces transparent. Yeah I know it's kinda cheap but hay it works and I doubt the game ever uses that symbol any ways.
6.bmp
Hey man, if you finish translating it, that'd be great. You can never have too many obscure non-hentai japanese visual novels.
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Re: Marine Philt (adventure game like Snatcher)

Post by best name ever »

JimboKudo wrote:Hey man, if you finish translating it, that'd be great. You can never have too many obscure non-hentai japanese visual novels.
I wasn't planning on doing a translation patch for it, I was just showing how easy it was to change the text in the game and as you can probably tell by the screenshots I don't know any Japanese so I couldn't translate the game even if I wanted to.

I also haven't beaten the game nor have I gotten very fare, mainly because I'm just clicking on random spots hoping for the next screen to appear :P
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