Given that Ashley was three years old when she last saw her mother, Jessica assures Ashley that the nightmare is nothing more than a dream – after all, Jessica assures her, no one remembers things from when they were so young.
Her confusion is further exacerbated by a recurring nightmare she’s been having… a nightmare in which she sees her mother telling her to hide before a mysterious individual comes in with a gun and fires. Ashley feels equal parts happy to get her father back, confused by his extended absence and betrayed by her aunt’s long-held secret. She knows only that Richard asked her to take care of Ashley, and made her promise never to tell Ashley that he was alive. Jessica doesn’t know why Richard gave up Ashley and went into hiding, though. She always knew that Richard was alive, and that one day he would come back for Ashley. I want to spend your fourteenth birthday with you.Īshley is understandably taken aback. I’ll be waiting for you here on Blood Edward Island. It responds to Ashley’s fingerprint, takes photos, reads messages left on memory cards that look exactly like DS game cards, and a whole lot more. The package contains a machine called a “Dual Trace System” or DTS (it’s the “Dual Another System” – DAS – in the Japanese and European versions), which looks extremely similar to the Nintendo DS. But then, just before her 14th birthday, she receives a package. As far as she knows, both of her parents died when she was only three years old, and her aunt has raised her ever since. The story focuses on Ashley Mizuki Robbins (“Robins” in the European version), who lives in an apartment in Seattle with her aunt, Jessica. Unfortunately, only the first made it to North America the beautifully refined sequel received an English translation in Europe, but traveled no farther. Although the twists of both tales can occasionally feel predictable, there are more than enough surprises, engaging characters and clever puzzles to make both of Ashley’s adventures worth experiencing. In both stories, the investigation winds up revolving around a machine known as “Another” (“Trace” in the American version), which can manipulate human memory. Her aunt quickly confirms that Ashley’s dad has been living on the island in secret for the previous decade, however, which leaves only the questions of what he’s been doing there and why.īoth the first game and its Wii sequel involve Ashley teaming up with a male sidekick to investigate the secrets of their respective pasts. The only problem is that Ashley has believed her father to be dead for the past 11 years. She is about to celebrate her 14th birthday when she receives a message from her father, who invites her to come see him on Blood Edward Island. It was renamed Trace Memory for its eventual American release, but in all versions the story deals with Ashley Mizuki Robbins, a half-Japanese teenager living in Seattle with her aunt. In comparison to something like the Phoenix Wright series, the Another Code games are definitely less heavy on text and more focused on adventuring, but the amount of reading is still significant.ĬING’s first experiment in “interactive mystery novels” came in 2005 with the release of Another Code: Two Memories. As if CING’s titles weren’t already made esoteric enough just by being modern adventure games, they’re made even more unique – for good or ill – by the inclusion of text exchanges that can last as long as 10-15 minutes in some cases. There are plenty of gamers, however, who are bored to tears when reading lengthy segments of text-based dialogue. Though their games almost exclusively favor text-based dialogue over actual audio, it’s a testament to the quality of their storytelling that reading the exchanges between the characters remains consistently engrossing… for the fans who can handle them.
Much of CING’s following revolves around their ability to create fully-realized, three-dimensional characters. The “novel” element of these games is most clearly seen in the extensive use of well-written dialogue. Four of these are DS games, but more notable is the fact that four of them – all except Again and The Glass Rose – were published by Nintendo.
CING has produced six of these types of games as of 2010 – The Glass Rose, Trace Memory, Hotel Dusk: Room 215, Another Code: R, Again and Last Window: The Secret of Cape West. Unlike your standard “visual novels,” however, there is an emphasis here on exploring environments, solving puzzles, and using the right item at the right time. Before they declared bankruptcy in March of 2010, the Japanese development house CING built a cult following for their games that they referred to as “interactive mystery novels.” Some call them “visual novel-style adventures,” which accurately reflects how the games combine dialogue-heavy plots with the trappings of a graphic adventure.
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