Video Game / Yuuyami Doori Tankentai

Three kids and the truth.

SANGO: Nao, please explain us the rumor about the forest where we're going to.
NAO: Its official toponym is "Toritsuka no Mori"^note "Bird Gravesite Forest". In-game, it's popularly known among the neighbors as "Ura no Mori", i. e. "Back Forest" and/or "Hidden Behind Forest". A member of the Rugby Club who went to the forest had an accident, and soon after, the rumor started to spread out: whoever goes there during a full blood moon night shall be cursed. Did you know it, Shīna-san?
KURUMI: Nuh-uh.
SANGO: It is a so-called "forbidden forest", although I don't care about such fearmongering. • • • So, Nao... If the curse were true, how would you deal with it? According to the rumor, you should die after 100 days, isn't that right?
NAO: I know you don't believe it, but I heard it from a friend at the crammer. A friend of his older friend saw it and died.
SANGO: Do you realize what you've just said?
NAO: What?
SANGO: "FOAF"; "friend of a friend". It's the most common feature of urban legends. Didn't you notice it?

— The rumor of the crow's curse

Yuuyami Doori Tankentai (translated: Dusk Street Exploration Party) is a Horror-themed Adventure Game developed by Spike Chunsoft for the Playstation.

The game is set in the fictional Japanese town of Hirumi City. The game follows three kids: a boy named Naoki "Nao" Urase and two girls named Kurumi Shīna and Mayu "Sango" Heinai (and Nao's dog Melos). They've heard quite a number of pretty spooky urban legends about places all over town, and have decided to look into their legitimacy.

The hook of the game is that all your choices affect the story in some way. Who you listen to, which legends you learn about, which legends you decide to look into, and which of the kids you pick to go to where the legend is and look into it.

The gameplay follows a daily routine, where you must choose one of the three main characters every day to perform the following tasks:

• Morning (5 minutes): The chosen character is in the school, interacting with their schoolmates in search of new rumors. On Sundays, the school is replaced by a possible morning household cutscene.
• Afternoon (7 minutes): The chosen character and their two friends take a walk around the city, solving mysteries or simply taking a stroll.
• Evening (Cutscene): The chosen character gets a personal household scene, dealing with home matters, family conversations, and/or other chores.
• If your character's Spiritual Disturbance is above a certain level, s/he will have a Nightmare Sequence minigame during nighttime. Be careful, though, since suffering one too many will lead to a Nonstandard Game Over.

The objective of the game is to break the curse that befalls the main characters, which states that one of them will die after a hundred days, before it's too late. This will only be possible by solving a good number of mysteries in the city, and therefore uncovering the truth of the curse^note Debunking false urban legends will usually get you no points, although hearing or completing some of them may lead to other new useful ones..

The game was released on October 7th, 1999, but only in Japan. There's a walkthrough translated into English, in case you're curious to see what it's like.

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Yuuyami Doori Tankentai contains examples of:

• Agent Scully: Sango serves as one to the team, and is into solving mysteries just to prove their truth and/or rationality.
• Animorphism: Yamabato Dōji, one of the Seven Deities of Hirumi, usually manifests as a boy with anachronistic clothing, but sometimes he's seen as a dove (never transforming on-screen, though). In fact, his name translates as "Oriental turtle dove boy".
• Beast with a Human Face: The very first case, "The rumor of the crow's curse", involves looking into an Urban Legend regarding a shrine behind the school. If you wait long enough at the stone there, you will see a Human-faced Crow (Jinmen Garasu) perch on it, look at you (as Nao), and tell you that someone will die in 100 days. However, only Nao sees it, and Sango hypothesizes that it's a hallucination caused by Nao's belief. The Human-faced Crow turns out to be the corrupted version of a former benevolent crow deity... As well as just a myth who probably can't harm anyone that doesn't believe in it.
• Born Lucky: Kurumi is mentioned to be very good at getting things like free extra snacks.
• The Bully: The Toilet Corps (named after their usual meeting place) and the Yuasa Corps (named after their leader Mitsuru Yuasa) serve as this not only to the main trio, but to many of their schoolmates. While their gossiping, slander and bullying is harmful, some of their conversations are useful to obtain rumors... Although expect many of them to be, well, bullshit.
• Bully Magnet: The dorky Shinta Segawa and the creepy Kojiro Kume, two of Nao's classmates. Kojiro is starting to get tired of the Yuasa Corps picking on him, and plans to get revenge.
• Canine Companion: Melos, who is prone to barking whenever things are going to get strange.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Seven Deities of Hirumi are literally alive thanks to people's belief. When Nao stops believing in the Human-faced Crow, it disappears along with the 100-day Curse... Along with the rest of the deities. That doesn't stop somebody from suffering a fatal fate on the cursed day, though.
• Fangirl: Mario Inagaki, a girl that admires Sango's Doujinshi works and seems to be obsessed with shipping anime characters and not much else. Sango seems mildly annoyed by the reputation she's starting to get, since she is into literature and doesn't have high regard for anime.
• Freudian Trio: Nao, as the heart of the team, serves as the Ego, while the intelligent Sango serves as the Superego, and Kurumi is the Id since she behaves oddly and seemingly almost irrationally.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The group is made up of two girls (Kurumi and Sango) and two boys (Nao and Melos).
• Golden Ending: To get the best ending, you have to unlock the final mystery and play it before the 100th day. In it, Nao banishes the Human-Faced Crow and its curse (and, by proxy, the Seven Deities of Hirumi) by ceasing to believe in them, but sadly, Kurumi dies nonetheless. However, during the night she appears alongside the Seven Deities of Hirumi to Nao and Sango... Or Was It a Dream?
• If I Were a Rich Man: Discussed in "The rumor of the forest's treasure", where the gang hypothesizes about being rich: Nao would save it in the bank, Sango would build a nuclear shelter, and Kurumi simply wants a green dog.
• The Ingenue: Kurumi, who acts way too childish for a girl of her age (having a possible disorder) and claims to have paranormal experiences. Her parents try to solve it with psychiatrist sessions.
• Insufferable Genius: Takumi Yamazaki, Nao's Class Representative. He doesn't hold Nao or Nishi Takayuki in high regard, seeing them as lazy and annoying. To a lesser extent, Sango is seen as one of these.
• I See Dead People: Kurumi seems to be the only character that can see supernatural things, although the fact that Nao witnessed the Human-faced Bird urban legend is part of the game's main plot.
• Love Triangle: Nao has a very obvious crush on Kurumi and tries to get her on a date, but Kurumi is so oblivious that she mistakes it for a mere night walk (which kickstarts the events of the game). Meanwhile, Sango has a crush on her pen pal Tomoki, but the fact that she's never seen him makes her develop feelings for Nao very slowly. In the Golden Ending, Kurumi dies and the two grow distant after her death. However, Sango breaks off contact with Tomoki, and the game's ending hints at the two former friends getting together again.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The subject matter of the game is about proving whether strange and paranormal rumors are true or not. Depending on the mystery and character, it may fall into Fake Mystery or Real After All:
  • The rumor of the crow's curse: Whoever goes to the Bird Gravesite Forest during the night of a full blood moon shall be cursed. Nao sees a Human-faced Crow and falls to its curse, which ensures that one of the three kids will die after 100 days... But only he seems to have seen it.
  • The rumor of Hanako-san's grave: A dead girl's ghost used to haunt the city, but her power has faded and doesn't appear anymore. Only a certain person can guide you to her grave, as long as s/he hears a certain word. An elderly woman leads you to the shrine of a child sacrificed to appease the floods, although it's unclear if it's the same story. The case ends on an unconclusive note, since the shrine has been replaced by a parking lot. That said, Kurumi meets a friendly Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl...
    • The rumor of the peeping old man: Yuasa claims to have seen the eye of a peeping old man between two vending machines at an adult store, although nobody believes him. The trio finds the store owner, who dislikes kids, and tells them that he scared Yuasa days ago. However, Kurumi dislikes the place and also claims something was peeping at her. Sango returns and finds a hole in the wall that connects to a neighbor's backyard, but the owner gets very irritated with the trio. Nao is the last to enter, but the store owner gives up and finally tells them what worries him: the man had a former friend (maybe the neighbor) who never had intimate relations with anyone before reaching old age, and his uncontrolled sexual urge resulted in him molesting a teenager. Therefore, he absolutely detests that any minor enters his store and tells them that they should behave as adults (i. e. don't go there until they grow up, admit that there will always be people who like porn, and that it may be shameful but not a crime)... Later, Nao very shamefully admits to the girls that he's into adult entertainment.
  • The rumor of the corpse: A smelly abandoned apartment bears a moldy corpse, who lives in a fridge. Debunked: It's just a messy debt evader who hides himself in the attic. The evader encourages the kids to keep the rumors going.
  • The rumor of the ghosts under the highway: A ghost haunts an eerie unkempt tunnel, which was the site of a traffic accident not too long ago. The team only finds a creepy salaryman and a confused woman there, but helping the latter cross the tunnel will ease Kurumi's mind. Kasuka advises Kurumi to help the woman and warns her not to go near the tunnel again, since it's a haunted place.
  • The rumor of the maze street: A strange street disorients whoever travels there until they die. Kurumi gets lost, but, of all things, a mailbox helps her to find Yamabato Dōji, a kid playing hide-and-seek near a small shrine who is implied to be responsible for getting people lost. The three kids try to find him together later, but just find a fairly normal street.
  • The rumor of the ghost in the stairway: A ghost in a stairway attempts to push people out if they climb them at midnight. The stairway was temporarily blocked because a fatal accident happened: a boy attemped to walk down the frozen stairs, slipped, and seemingly died. The crowd felt powerless after seeing his corpse, but the now-disfigured boy briefly rose to ask for help before dying, provoking the crowd who reacted with fright — the neighbors are ashamed to talk about it. Kurumi meets the resentful ghost of the victim in the stairs.
  • The rumor of the wandering ghosts: The Toilet Corps swears that Sango's block of flats is haunted (and Nao heard about a photo of a ghost taken there). Obviously, it's mere slander, and the photo is rather mundane. Although the gang learns that years ago, the Bird Gravesite (then named Crow Gravesite) was moved near the block, and four people committed suicide back then, before moving the Gravesite near the school (Kurumi seems to hear their screams). A janitor tells them the story, but dies shortly after their interrogation, which leaves Nao wanting to know where the Gravesite was originally from. The case ends with no clear causality between the rumor and the five deaths.
  • The rumor of the forest's treasure: A treasure of the Edo-era shogunate is hidden in a shrine within the city's forest. The gang finds an abandoned shrine and try to dig under it (a blasphemous act) to no avail. Later, they meet the barber who spread the rumor to the Yuasa gang in the first place, who is starting to regret being so childish... Although Kurumi, who was in charge of finding the treasure, is happy because she's found her own treasure in the forest: Tengu, a talking waterfall who only she has seen.
  • The rumor of the cats' gathering: Jelly and Cookies argue about whether seeing a gathering of cats is a good or bad augury. Kurumi goes to ask some stray cats, despite Nao and Sango finding it nonsensical. They tell her that they're going to meet in a temple at the Hour of the Cat for a naorai feast. Shortly after, the gang follows some cats to a shrine, until they find a big cat. Kurumi says that he's their leader, a Nekomata, and mostly evades his jinxes, but the cat is bewildered about how a human has seen him and refuses to give any augury, instead making her sleep. Nao and Sango simply follow her along.
  • The rumor of the lizard's hand: A lizard hand will bring death to a student if placed in that student's belongings. The only way to escape the curse is by putting it in somebody else's belongings... But it turns out that Kurumi already owns one. There's two other hands in Nao's desk and Sango's locker, put there by Segawa and a Sango classmate, who simply did it because they were the constant victims of the Yuasa / Toilet Corps and feared to retaliate and/or was in vain. Sango swears revenge on whoever started it: she finds the street vendor who sold them, and it turns that the buyer was none other than Kojiro Kume: Sango gets revenge by putting three plus one hands and a mocking letter in his desk, despite Nao's complaints.
  • The rumor of the antiques shop's curse: According to Mario, there may be something cursed in an antiques shop. Maybe it's the fact that the owner changed four times? ^note Storytelling is definitely not her forte. Nao is stubbornly focused in finding a curse somewhere. The closest thing to it is the fact that the shop changed its tenant ten times straight (probably for low sales), and will probably do so again sometime soon since the shop is later closed.
  • The rumor of the lovers' suicide incident: Two lovers committed suicide by driving their car into a pond. Whoever sees their shadow in the pond will have a happy marriage. The gang finds a submerged auto and a cellphone at its side: if Kurumi takes the call, she can hear a woman angrily asking for a man who escaped from her. Nao and Kurumi agree to give the cellphone to the police. On the way, they ask about the truth of the rumor: the policeman tells them that the car is probably a case of illegal dumping, although an attempted double suicide happened years ago (the woman forced him by drugging him, but he escaped from the suicide attempt, dying later in the hospital). Later, a businessman goes to the police station to pick up his phone.
  • The rumor of the riverbed ghost: Shinta claims to have seen a ghostly barefoot woman while fishing. The Yuasa Corps swear that he's now cursed, as well as Nao who heard his story. The gang find the woman beside the riverbed, who doesn't say anything other than random river-related meanderings. Kurumi tries to do it later with the same results, but sees two fetal ghosts at her feet, and manages to make them leave. Later, Sango is bothered by the woman's total inaction, but the two end up fighting while the woman reveals that she had to abort because her boyfriend disappeared overnight — although the fight somehow convinces the woman to get revenge on her former boyfriend.
  • The rumor of the deadly words: Whenever a woman remembers the words "Dancing Baby" until her 20th birthday, she will give birth to a faceless baby. However, a counter-spell (that only the leader of the Toilet Corps knows) can solve it. Although Sango doesn't care about the curse, she's intrigued by the familiarity of the words. To solve it, she calls her beloved Tomoki (whom Sango has been prohibited to call) to try to solve it. Tomoki advises Sango to solve its meaning through the phone. The mystery is solved when Sango realizes that it's an unlikely reference to Yumeno Kyūsaku's novel Dogra Magra, which might be found in Sango's favourite bookstore.
  • The rumor of the never-opening Pachinko parlor: The owner of a permanently closed Pachinko parlor had a breakdown and killed himself, and haunts the place since then. Sango breaks in and finds the owner preparing to reopen, but says that the ghost of a woman who hanged herself haunts the place. A friend of the owner and some gossiping women vaguely confirm the incident, but the policemen refuse to tell the children what happened. After interrogating the owner again, he says that the woman "was killed in self-defense" and is right behind Sango, but only he sees her. In a later interrogation, he says that he's about to open the parlor taking profit from the urban legends, and that the woman burnt herself. The parlor never opens, and the kids speculate that he went mad from whatever incident happened there.
• Medicate the Medium: Kurumi's parents are concerned with her behavior, so they take her to the psychiatrist. Ironically, Takehiko (the head psychatrist and an old acquintance of the family) doesn't believe her to be mentally ill and at most thinks that it's a minor behavioral issue — it's Akigawa (the junior psychiatrist) who decides that a medication-lead treatment is more appropriate to treat her possible psychotic condition, and who her parents end up trusting.
• Miko: Minami Aiba, one of Kurumi's classmates who spends more time in her parents' shrine than in her classroom. For some reason, she only appears at the school during cloudy days.
• Moral Guardians: Sae Sunakawa, Kurumi's Class Representative, whose patronizing attitude and teacher-pleasing behavior is more annoying to her classmates than truly harmful.
• Multiple Endings: The game has three non-Game Over endings: reaching the 100th day with less than 33 Rumor Resolution points; reaching the 100th day with 33 or more Rumor Resolution points, and the Golden Ending (completing the final mystery unlocked after acquiring 33 Rumor Resolution points). It's recommended that, to get a high score, the player priorizes the stories involving Kasuka or shrines (i. e. the Seven Deities of Hirumi), or to a lesser extent cases with a paranormal basis, over hoaxes.
• My Beloved Smother: Nao's mother is constantly worried about her child, despite Nao being fairly well-behaved and studious. This is caused in part by Nao being her only child and his father almost never coming home from work, to the point that his family is growing distant from him.
• Nature Spirit: While most of the Seven Deities of Hirumi probably fall under this category, some of them are clearly this, such as Tengu (a waterfall spirit) and Naruko-sama (a former sacred Shinboku tree, now merely a stump).
• Nightmare Fetishist: Kojiro Kume, one of Nao's classmates who is way too much into occult stuff.
• Nintendo Hard: While the gameplay itself is very simple, completing the minimum number of mysteries requires very good planning of every day's schedule, since most of them only appear under special circumstances — not to mention how the game expects you to have the city map memorized.
• Non-Standard Game Over: If the "Spiritual Disturbance" meter reaches 100 points, the character will have a lethal Nightmare Sequence: Kurumi will be captured by the night spirits and die, Nao will wake up alone in a hospital, and Sango will be run over by a car after shopping in a grocery store during the night.
• P.O.V. Cam: One of the game's gimmicks is that, during certain encounters, the player can see their surroundings through a 360 panoramic view.
• Powers That Be: The Seven Deities of Hirumi, a bunch of Blue-and-Orange Morality spirits that haunt Hirumi City. While during most of the game only Kurumi can see them, the Golden Ending makes Nao and Sango have visions of them.
• Relationship Values: Kurumi has a very simple one with her shy classmates Aiba Minami and Jelly and Cookies, where gaining their trust will get Kurumi rumors from them.
• Rotoscoping: Every character in the game is rotoscopied, as well as the backgrounds.
• Sanity Meter: The game has an invisible "Spiritual Disturbance" meter, which grows a point higher on each day after the Human-faced Crow encounter. After 20 points are obtained ^note 10 in the case of Kurumi, your last played character will suffer a Nightmare Sequence minigame after every 10 points: in the case that you reach 100 points, the last one will be fatal. It's possible to lower or raise it during some investigations and through some actions: the gauge will increase after passing the tunnel under the highway, whenever Kurumi has an (usually skippable) encounter with a remorseful ghost, after Nao and especially Sango mess with sacred objects, or if any of them picks the wrong actions during a nightmare sequence. Inversely, it's possible to lower it by visiting one of the temples or, especially, after Kurumi talks with Kasuka.
• School Idol: Takayuki Nishi, one of Nao's classmates who has good grades, is an ace sportsman, and is always surrounded by girls. Despite that, he's a bit of a loner, and has no animosity against the main team.
• Shout-Out: The dog Melos' name is probably taken from Osamu Dazai's short story "Run, Melos!".
• Sibling Rivalry: Sango and her older sister Ai usually annoy each other: Sango sees her sister as an immature teenager that cares way more about dating than about studying, while Ai sees Sango as an Insufferable Genius who spends too much of their parents' money on the phone talking to her telephone pal. Despite their fights, they have probably the most normal household life of the three main characters.
• Slice of Life: Although the game is technically about three kids proving spooky rumors, its (mostly) mundane daily structure puts it firmly in this territory. It's also got heavy doses of Magic Realism, but doesn't completely fall into it due to the ambiguity of most of the situations.
• Spiritual Sequel: To the Twilight Syndrome series: both of them revolve around three kids solving urban legends, and Yuuyami Doori is partly made by some of the staff of the former.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Kasuka, a girl that only Kurumi seems to see. She actually turns out to be one of the Seven Deities of Hirumi, and tries to help Kurumi and her friends solve their mysteries, plus she is very beneficial to her Spiritual Disturbance meter (decreasing 10 points per encounter)... Although she is very interested in Kurumi joining her and the other Deities.
• Team Pet: Melos serves as this to the three kids.
• Those Two Girls: Reiko "Jelly" Sagami and Tomomi "Cookies" Yoshino, two shy girls who are always seen chatting together. While they're not interested in other people, Kurumi is one of the very few schoolmates who can join their circle as "Pez" (after insistence on her part, though).
• Tulpa: The Human-faced Crow's "true identity" is implied to be a Creepy Child who escaped from a mental institution and was found dead inside a well near the Human-Faced Crow's zone, and at some point her evil presence was mixed-up with the folk belief of a benevolent crow deity.
• Urban Legend: The game is all about looking into urban legends all around town.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Hirumi City is not stated to be in a specific prefecture, although it's loosely based in Hino, Tokyo (and to a lesser extent in other Tokyo and Chiba cities).
• Youkai: Some of the most animalistic Seven Deities of Hirumi are based on Yōkai, like the talking cat Nekomata Daigongen and the possessing spirit Kitsunetsuki.
• Your Days Are Numbered: The game starts after the main characters suffer a supposed curse, and serves as the justification of the 100-day-long game. The Golden Ending isn't so much about breaking the curse, but about Nao refusing to believe in it anymore and accept that Kurumi's illness is a very unfortunate coincidence.

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