#Kamikuishiki Village Story

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Scans of pages from Game Urara vol. 4

Page 188-189: An article satirising  Aum Shinrikyo’s PSI headgear.

Perfect Salvation Initiation (PSI): An initiation ritual in which the user wore a headgear device which passed a weak electrical current to the head. Shaped like a helmet and lined with electrodes touching the scalp, the PSI claimed to synchronise Asahara’s brainwaves with the initiand’s.

Page 190-191: An advertisement for the PC-98 Aum Shinrikyo game: The Story of Kamikuishiki Village (上九一色村物語, Kamikuishiki-mura Monogatari) developed by HappySoft - the same company that developed the equally disturbed Hong Kong 97.

For anyone curious as to whatever is being said about the game can find a complete translation of the page here. 

sources: https://archive.org/details/gameurara

https://www.vice.com/en/article/vb5k7a/the-true-secret-history-of-the-creepiest-cult-game-ever-made

https://www.gamingalexandria.com/

Ushiyama, Rin, 'Appendix: Glossary of Terms', Aum Shinrikyo and religious terrorism in Japanese collective memory (London, 2022; online edn, British Academy Scholarship Online, 19 Jan. 2023), https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197267370.005.0001

[glitchphotography]

“上九一色村物語  (Kamikuishiki Village Story)”  1995, PC-98 

// This underground homebrew parody Aum cult simulator was considered to be authentic cult propaganda by Youtubers until Vice tracked down the game’s creators, who just happened to be Takeshi Kanai and Kouichi Kanasawa. So yeah, it’s some 90s edgelord art and it won’t brainwash you (don’t listen to gamebros on ytube).

But how about that memecore mix of news footage with digital illustrations. The game was released just months after the infamous aum gas attacks, quietly foreshadowing today’s post-internet media landscape. The game audio is also pretty crunchy and it makes for an interesting experience. I wish I spoke Japanses so I could comment more on it.

GIFs sourced from Youtube walkthroughs by Comfortable Hole and SciFiRenegade Productions