Mizzurna Falls[a] is a 1998 Japanese video game developed and published by Human Entertainment for the PlayStation. The game focuses on the search for a lost classmate in a fictional small rural American town of Mizzurna Falls. The story and setting draw inspiration from the American television drama series Twin Peaks.
The game has never been localized outside of Japan, but in 2021 an English-language fan translation project was completed and released to the public.[1]
On Christmas Day 1998, a young girl, Kathy Flannery, is discovered unconscious in the forest, apparently attacked by a bear because of the claw marks.[4] When brought to the hospital she dies, and the cabin where the attack took place is now the site of a police investigation.[4] Soon after, high school student Emma Rowland goes missing and the lead investigator Morgan believes the two cases are linked.[4]
Emma's classmate Matthew Williams becomes involved in the investigation and strives to solve the case, in part because he was the last person to see Emma before she vanished.[4]
Gameplay
The player has seven days to explore the town and countryside talking to the residents in order to solve the mystery.[5][6] The game operates on a day-night cycle, and the NPCs in the game act accordingly based on the time of day.[7] The large integrated map of the game will result in instances where one can see an NPC arrive at a location for a scheduled appointment.[8] One in-game hour is around five minutes in real time.
The player can move in all directions and has total freedom to explore the town.[4] The player has access to a Volkswagen Beetle and a boat to move around town quickly. Matthew can eat at the local diners, and must keep his car fueled. Matthew can also use his mobile phone to call other characters and certain businesses in the town.[citation needed] The kind of player control used is similar to Silent Hill.[4]
The strict seven-day time limit makes it difficult to see all the events and get the best of the three endings. The player can save the game by sleeping for either one or five in game hours.[citation needed]
Development and release
Mizzurna Falls is the only game by designer Taichi Ishizuka (The Firemen) as a writer and director.[9] The game's setting is reminiscent of Twin Peaks.[7] He worked with a team contracted from Sun Studio, consisting of three graphic designers and four programmers.[10] The plot originally called for a game that depicts a murder mystery in a mansion, which changed during development.[10]
The game was released on 23 December 1998 in Japan for the Sony PlayStation, and was published by Human Entertainment themselves.[6][11] The game was never localized nor published in the West.[9]
After Mizzurna Falls was released, Ishizuka retired from video game development and emigrated to Canada, where he became a tour guide for visitors going to the Canadian Rockies.[10]
Reception and legacy
Upon release, four reviewers from Famitsu gave it a score of 22 out of 40.[6] The game is considered a predecessor for open world games, and an unusual title for a Japanese video game of that era, with its stress on realism.[8]
Rolling Stone commented that the title was "quirky, weird, and rife with references to a cornucopia of media, namely Twin Peaks, and traces of it can now be seen in cult favorites like Deadly Premonition."[12] Los Pakos, writing in Gametype in 2003, said that the game would undoubtedly had been considered a classic due to its more realistic storytelling in a horror game, and the most faithful simulation of an investigation on the PlayStation.[4]
The game was never officially released outside of Japan.[4] The game however, attracted curiosity of outsiders who could play the game by purchasing a Japanese version of the game.[9][13] In 2017, free-lance translator started to translate the game.[9] In mid-2019, an unofficial English localization was released in an incomplete state, but was pulled from various sites due to a copyright complaint.[14] In 2021, a full English fan translation was released.[1]
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