I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to play a game called St. John's Wort

In this recent article about Level-5's Guild 02 over at andriasang.com, that site's proprietor mentions that one of this 3DS-based release's contributors (like its soon-to-be-released predecessor, Guild 02 will be a compilation of sorts) previously worked on an old Super Famicom "sound novel" called Otogirisō--or St. John's Wort, in English.

Thanks to my love of the Mystery Dungeon series--Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon, Shiren the Wanderer and Torneko: The Last Hope, especially--I'm always up for a ChunSoft-made game.

As such, I followed andriasang.com's link to Otogirisō's Wikipedia page, which describes the 1992 title thusly (and, yes, I do believe this is the first time I've ever used the word thusly on this blog):

"Kohei and his girlfriend Nami were on the midway when their car got accidentally hit by a tree felled by lighting. After that main characters got stuck in a forest in the middle of nowhere. They decided to spend the night in a large deserted western-style mansion nearby."

Aside: It took nearly all of my willpower to not fix the many spelling and grammatical errors in the paragraph above.

Anyway, despite the rather, um, quaint nature of the aforementioned description, I'm finding myself intrigued by this so-called sound novel. In part that's because it takes place in and around a deserted mansion (I've always been a sucker for such settings) and in part it's because of Otogirisō's ominous box art (right), which seems to include a depiction of said mansion.

Unfortunately, there's no reason for me to add this game to my ever-growing (much to the chagrin of my husband) collection, as I neither know Japanese nor own a Super Famicom. Thankfully, I've been able to experience a bit of it by watching the segmented playthrough--it's broken up into 22 parts--that YouTube user reinofheart uploaded a few years ago. (Watch part one here.)

I don't suppose any of you have played Otogirisō--or are interested in playing it now that you've read this post?

Cho Aniki + KiKi KaiKai = Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban?

I pride myself in being such a big retro geek that I know about most of the worthwhile games that were released for the Famicom, PC Engine, Mega Drive, Super Famicom and their North American equivalents.

Which is why I was surprised (pleasantly so) to find out about--thanks to a Twitter user named SuperFamicomGuy--a wonderfully quirky Super Famicom title called Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban over the weekend.

As suggested in the headline (and screenshot) above, this Sunsoft-published game seems to be a strange mix of the oh-so-campy Cho Aniki and the overhead cute 'em up, KiKi KaiKai.

For more on this pricy cart--the asking price of the only copy I could find on eBay is about $180--check out this video, produced by YouTube user reinofhearts, who calls the game "a cultural journey of the crazy and the overly muscular."