Jul 5, 2013

Silent Hill: Genesis finds its scary, visual novel self on Sega's 16-bit console (!)


In an era when 3D graphics scared artists left and right and console storytelling was in its early infancy, Silent Hill managed something utterly impressive: it was interesting and atmospheric. It felt right and more than a bit scary, and promptly went on to become such a commercial and critical success as to be nowadays considered a classic.

I, having only played three hours into the thing, am sadly in no position to seriously discuss such a lofty status, though I can happily inform you that you can now play Silent Hill: Genesis on your Sega Genesis/Megadrive (something that would probably involve a lot of technical trickery) or your Sega 16-bit emulator of choice. For that I would suggest you grab the incredibly handy Gens.


As for Silent Hill: Genesis, it is a most interesting, freeware and properly indie adaptation of obscure GBA visual novel Silent Hill: Play Novel using story and graphical assets from the original Silent Hill. Yes, it's pretty weird and definitely not a gameplay extravaganza, but it also is an obvious labour of love and way more enjoyable than I expected it to be.

You can grab it from this lovely place, though do keep in mind it's still in beta. Haven't run into any problems myself, but we all know how finicky betas can be, don't we?

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

6 comments:

  1. Strange that they did not just make it a PC game.
    Any reason to grab this version over a GBA rom?

    And is this legal? It ?sounds? like some random indie group just ported a commercial game, but there are copyrights that would be involved in that.

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    1. They did not grab the ROM. The aped the gameplay and added new graphics. So, yeah, as legal as any remake really.

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  2. Hey that's a pretty cool find there Gnomey, I'll check that one out. And somehow their choice of the Genesis as their platform makes it a bit more intriguing to me than if they had made it a standalone PC executable. Never even heard of the GBA game either but I'll check it too. Thanks!

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    1. You are most welcome dear MadPlanet. It's a surprisingly decent game, mind you and, I too, must applaud the choice of platform.

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  3. More Silent hill goodness, just the thing to make my day a good one. Thanks!

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