PixlBit

This is the game i've been keeping as a secret and that just today got an international release for the Vita (with the added subtitle of Trigger Happy Havoc). I guess I can use this blog for information about the game and the story of how it got popular.

Danganronpa was originaly released for the PSP back in 2010 in Japan, but never say an international release, and also it's the first release of what would become a franchise.

The story centres around Makoto Naegi, an ordinary student who got selected by a random lottery to enroll Hope's Peak Academy, a High School that only admits the best of the best students from all over Japan. He's baffled about why he was choosen, but still doesn't worry that much, but just when he takes the first step to the school, he inmediately looses conciousness. After he awakes, he finds himself trapped inside the school with 14 other students with no escape and confused just as him on what's happening. Just then, a sadistic teddy bear (but don't call him that) called Monokuma reveals himself as the person behind their trapping and gives them two choices of escape: kill another student without being discovered or live inside the school without escaping. Murdering, plot-twists, character development, sadness and despair ensues.

As far as I had seen on the gameplay, it's a Visual Novel combined with Phoenix Wright, a shooting game and a dance game. Also, I should say that, if the students accuse a wrong culpcrit, all except the murderer "Graduate (aka, everyone dies while the culcript escapes the school), but if the murderer is found, he suffers what can be describe as a Cruel and Unusual Death.

For more info, just look at the english website.

Now, how did this game got popular? Or more exactly, how did western audiences discovered the game?

Around maybe 2012-ish, Something Awful user orenronen started doing a Let's Play of this game with its own translation on the forums of that same website. The LP started to become popular on the website, and much later, people around the internet started to know about this game and the on-going LP, so they started flooding the forums and catch up while also keeping up with the then unfinished LP..... And that's really how the game got VERY popular around the internet, which convinced NIS America to release the game outside Japan.

The curious thing is that it's not the gameplay, but the story that proved to be the most popular thing, so people didn't care that much if they haven't experienced the meat of the game (unless they already had thanks to import copies or emulators) and I can't blame since it's a damm great story and the characters are great.

As for myself, I can consider myself a fan, but my iniciation into the franchise wasn't with the LP, but with the Anime adaptation that was oddly released in the US before the game (and made it just in time when the LP was finished and Danganronpa became a popular thing). Though since it was a 13 episode anime, I could see why some have said it rushes the events of the game while giving small character development to the murderes and victims, but I didn't know of the LP and I actually thought it was still and excellent anime to make me fall in love.

I think if I get Vita, this would be game I would instatly buy. Even if I already know the events of the game and how it ends, I still would like to experience the gameplay and maybe see the bits of story that didn't appear on the Anime...... or maybe just see the LP.

You can just get the game right now, since today it's the release of the game. Though if you don't have a Vita and you don't mind to watch but not play, you're in luck, because the original SA LP is now here. The complete thing.

If you want to see the Anime legally (atleast for those who live in the US), go here.

For just a bit more information, here's the tv tropes page for the game.

Now, about the sequel to the game..... Maybe in another blog.