The Gamer's Quarter - Issue #6 - TextFiles.com

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liquor. But the spoils do not come without
risk: automated tanks and drones patrol
the cities—the sole combatants in a war
with no humans left to fi ght it—and it’s
never in a Junker’s best interest to work
with—or be a meat shield for—another
Junker.
The protagonist—an unnamed Junker
with little left in the way of hope or
optimism—has found the remains of a
sealed city from the war that bears no
signs of investigation by other Junkers
and so might still remain unplundered.
But once inside, he is chased by the
robotic war machines that still patrol
the streets and is forced to take refuge
in the planetarium of an abandoned
department store. The planetarium isn’t
entirely uninhabited, however; the Junker
discovers Reverie, a robot in charge of
greeting guests, and the device known
as Miss Jana, a circa-1940 planetarium
projector fallen into disrepair.
Reverie seems to have more than her
fair share of short circuits as well. She
seems unable to come to grips with the
idea that the human race is nearly all but
extinct and highly unlikely to ever visit
the planetarium again. She cheerfully
refers to the Junker as “Mr. Customer,”
and irritates him to no end with chatter.
Despite this, the Junker has something
of a change of heart and decides to
oversee the repairs of Miss Jana,
reasoning that even a babbling robot
is better than evading mindless automatons
set to “kill.”
The story remains cute and amusing
until about the halfway point, where
the writing—and translation—really
shines. Miss Jana is repaired, but it drains
the remaining power in the building’s
generators. Reverie reveals that she is
only active for one week of the entire
year, and then will soon shut down in
The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #6
order to recharge her batteries. But with
the building’s power depleted, there’s
nothing to recharge from. And as nice as
the planetarium is, it contains neither
food nor supplies to sustain the human
Junker.
From the beginning, the game
provides subtle foreshadowing—the
entire city ought to be without power,
and the Junker entered the city for the
express reason of procuring rations and
tools—but you are still met with anxiety
when the pair decide to brave the mech
patrols and caustic rain to escape from
the doomed city. The heart-wrenching
climax is a Voight-Kampf test; only an
android could hold back his tears. But
it-also invokes a feeling of, “Oh God, I
should have seen this coming from way
back!” The author scatters small clues
throughout the story, producing the
vague unease that grows as the story
winds on. Only at the end of the tale do
you fully grasp the minimalist essence of
Planetarian: a game stripped of all the
trappings of what constitutes a game in
our minds until there is only the story
left, and the emotion created through our
participation.
Yes, participation. We as readers
play the game just as we would with a
controller fi rmly in hand, only instead
of the victory and gratifi cation of high
scores or the slaying of demonic hordes,
we receive for our troubles a beautiful,
moving, and even cautionary tale worth
at least fi ve “epic” cinematic RPGs. And
this is a claim I do not make lightly.
Like almost every visual novel,
Planetarian is written entirely in
Japanese. However, the translation
group Insani has translated both the free
demo and the full game into English (and
done an amazing job). Their website, for
more information on the game, is http://
Planetarian.insani.org.
The full version of Planetarian was
initially released only as a web download
as part of the Kinetic Novel series
published by Visual Art’s. At ¥1050
(approximately $9.00–$10.50,
depending on exchange rates), the
game is an amazing bargain.
Insani’s site walks prospective
buyers through the relatively
painless process of
purchasing and activating
the title through the
Japanese-only website. For
those who wish to try the
product fi rst, a translated
demo is available for free
download from Insani’s site.
We at the The Gamer’s Quarter
strongly encourage you to purchase the
title, rather than pirating it. Regardless of
your views on digital rights, $10 is hardly
a devastating amount. Both the Japanese
game and its English translation are
labors of love more than anything else,
and for the creators of the game to not
receive due compensation for their work
is an obscenity of the worst possible sort.
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