Dead of the Brain
Template:Infobox video game Template:Nihongo foot is a Japanese horror-themed adventure game, developed by Template:Ill and released in March 1992. The player controls a man named Cole amidst a zombie outbreak, arisen from his friend's resurrection experiment gone wrong.
FairyTale had, following an incident regarding their erotic game Saori (1991), switched to developing horror video games which began with Dead of the Brain. Two other games were released as part of the Nightmare Collection: the game's sequel Dead of the Brain 2 (1993) and Marine Philt (1993). Following these releases, the company returned to developing eroge.
A port of Dead of the Brain was bundled with its sequel to the PC Engine CD. While originally planned for release in January 1996, the bundle only released in 1999, making it the final official PC Engine game.
Plot and gameplay
Dead of the Brain has the player take on the role of Cole, a man who finds himself in the middle of a zombie outbreak after his best friend, Doctor Cooger, has his experiment involving bringing the dead back to life go awry.[1]
Dead of the Brain is an adventure game[1] where players control Cole by using a set of command verbs and clicking sections of the screen.[2] The goal of the game is to survive and find a way to save his friends from the zombie horde.[1] Occasional action sequences require the player to figure out a correct action within a short time limit.[2]
Development and release
After the release of Saori (1991), an eroge game, there was a scandal involving a teenager stealing a copy of the game which led to the arrest of the Template:Ill's president for distributing erotic material. This led to the company pivoting to different kind of material with their Nightmare Collection series, beginning with as the Dead of the Brain.[2]
While Kurt Kalata described the game as being influenced by Western zombie films such as the films of George A. Romero, Template:Ill said they lacked the philosophy of Romero's work and were closer in tone to splatter films such as The Evil Dead (1981) and Re-Animator (1985).[2][3] Along with Alone in the Dark (1992), Dead of the Brain was described by Template:Ill as the horror genre returning to personal computers games in the early 1990s with games that paid homage to horror films.[4]
Dead of the Brain was first released in Japan in April 1992.[5][6] The MSX2 port was said to be 95% complete by July 1992.[7] Releases for the X68000 and MSX2 series of computers were scheduled for release in July 1992.[8]
Reception
A review in Template:Ill complimented on the games's production quality and graphics as well as its story being interesting with many twists and turns.[8]
The magazine Template:Ill said the version released for the X68000 had better graphics than the original release.[6]
From retrospective reviews, Kalata described the game as "remarkably schlocky" specifically due to the amount of gore and cheesy dialogue and gratuitous nudity. He found the game "remarkably effective at being creepy" with its manga-styled artwork by Template:Ill.[2] Takeshi Uechi writing for Template:Ill in 2016 described Dead of the Brain and its sequel as an important cult titles in the history of Japanese horror games, due to its B-film plots and comic-book like graphics giving it its own unique appeal. TheTemplate:Copyedit inline said the game's high price on the second-hand market and no re-release of the title made it difficult to re-evaluate.[3]
Aftermath
Other entries in the companies' Nightmare Collection include the game's sequel Dead of the Brain 2 (1993) and Marine Philt (1993).[1] Dead of the Brain 2 follows the narrative of the first game.[9][2] After the release of these games, FairyTale resumed releasing eroge.[9] Dead of the Brain and its sequel were bundled together as a video game compilation by NEC and released for the PC Engine on June 3, 1999[6][9][10] (originally set to be released in January 1996[11]). It became the final official release for the PC-Engine in Japan.[6][9] The release for the PC Engine CD features voice acting.[6]
The game has received several fan translation patches; one in 2019 and one in 2023 for the PC-98 version, and another one for the PC Engine port in 2023.[1] An English fan translation for Dead of the Brain 2 was released in 2025.[9]
Notes
References
External links
This article incorporates text from the Wikipedia article "Dead of the Brain", available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.Retrieved 2026-03-02.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Template:Cite web
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Template:Cite book
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite book
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Template:Cite magazine
- ↑ Template:Cite magazine
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Template:Cite magazine
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite magazine