I've been playing Sierra's Laura Bow games to cover for the site, and I figured I should probably cover Mystery House, Sierra's very first game, and the first text adventure game to implement graphics. During my searches, I found a "Mystery House" for the MSX...as well as a "Mystery House II". WHOA. Was there a secret sequel or something only in Japan?
Well, not quite...and I'm still a bit sketchy on the story, but I've been trying to interpret this based off the Japanese Wikipedia entry, as well as this fan site.
So, Sierra OnLine published Mystery House in 1980 for the Apple II. Two years later, a Japanese company called Microcabin released their own game inspired by Sierra's title, also called Mystery House, for several Japanese computer platforms. I haven't been able to get any versions I have properly working, but according to this site, it's pretty simplistic - you're just a dude in a house trying to find a diamond, so it's completely missing the whole "Ten Little Indians" thing that Sierra's game had going on for it. It also had a very simplistic parser - it couldn't understand even simple sentences, so you had to enter verb, hit Enter, then enter the noun, all entirely in English. This game was also ported to some Japanese cell phones more recently.
A year later, another Japanese company called Starcraft (no relation to the Korean national sport) ported Sierra's Mystery House to Japanese computers...also calling it Mystery House. This version is fantastically faithful to the Apple II version, except that all of the graphics have actually been improved and redrawn. It still uses the simplistic black and white line drawings, but all of the characters how have vaguely realistic proportions, despite not having any faces, and overall the visuals look far less rough. Part of this may have had to do with better technology, but the Japanese PCs also ran at a higher resolution than the Apple II, allowing for more screen real estate. See some of the below pictures, with the Apple II version on top and the PC6001 version on bottom.
Outside the house
Nothing terribly different here, other than the different angle of the house.
Inside the foyer
Here's where the obvious difference comes in. Look how much better the characters look! They look much more stylized and less like the notebook doodles of a first grader. The fact that they have no faces looks really creepy, which was for the better. The facial expressions in the original version just look silly.
Outside
One of the dead people. Note the blood by their head in the Japanese version, rather than the Looney Tunes-style lump in the English one.
The graveyard
This scene is a bit disturbing in both versions. The gravedigger in the Japanese version has his arms at his side, like, yeah, so, these graves are for you and your pals, what of it? In the English version, he seems awkwardly misplaced. Note how much less sketchy some of the items like the shovel look.
The seamstress' death
Look how much more dramatically she's posed in the Japanese version. There's also a strange little detail that's found in a few other rooms - note how the window in the Japanese version is boarded up, further establishing the fact that you can't leave. There's also a small change in events in the room next door. In the English version, someone offscreen throws a knife at you, and it lands on the bed, allowing you to pick it up. In the Japanese version, the knife is there for the taking, with no one having thrown it. It doesn't really matter, it's just a small detail.
The fireplace
Note just how much more detail everything has in the Japanese version, although they missed the cobweb in the left corner.
You can actually check out this site for a walkthrough. Note that the very second set of instructions lies to you - it says to "naka hairu" ("enter inside", literally) when the game only understands "doa iku" ("go door"), like the English version. Note that if you're playing in M88 like I am, you need to set the keyboard to kana mode by hitting the Scroll Lock key. You will also need to know the Japanese keyboard layout.
The Mystery House II is actually a sequel to Microcabin's Mystery House, so the premise is more or less the same, just with new layouts. I couldn't get this working either, sadly enough. I'm packing up the images together so other people can try them - this includes the cassette image files for the MSX version of the Microcabin Mystery House I and II, as well as the PC88 versions of the Sierra/Starcraft Mystery House and Microcabin Mystery House. You can download it here
