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A playthrough of Hector's 1993 adventure game for the Super Famicom, Ihatovo Monogatari (イーハトーヴォ物語). Ihatovo Monogatari was only ever released in Japan, and never officially in any language but Japanese. But now, thanks to the excellent efforts of some talented fans, there exists a patch that translates all of the game's text into English: that is what I am playing here. The quality of the translation is excellent. It's well above the expected standard for fan work - the tone is dead on and it's clear that someone has carefully edited this script. I daresay it's a far better effort than we would have seen if the game had officially come westward back in the day. If you're at all interested in playing the game yourself, you can find the details here: So anyway, the first time I ever played this game was probably about ten years ago. I remembered reading somewhere that it was based on the short stories of an author, Kenji Miyazawa, whom I had studied in a course on post-Meiji era lit. His stories were pretty good as I recalled, and apparently a number of them have been made into anime. I haven't seen any of those. But Ihatovo Monogatari reminds me of an old PC game called “The Dark Eye,“ inspired by the life and work of Edgar Allen Poe. This SNES title is an equally fascinating attempt at adapting from source material to create an homage. It never feels like it's taking from the original stories - it doesn't take its source material for granted, but rather, it's a charmingly well-made frame through which we can have our own experiences within the text. The plot is deceptively engaging for all its simplicity - you're a man who one day decides to get off the train at an unfamiliar stop and finds himself in a idylic little town taking inspiration from whatever happens to be around him, and eventually finds himself looking for Miyazawa's notebooks in hopes of finding the man himself. That is, if the player's character isn't a super-meta version of Miyazawa himself. The game ever says that outright, but still, it's an interesting possibility. The game succeeds amazingly well considering how seemingly niche a product this is. It's dedicated to and based on the life of an author of fairy tales that died sixty years before the game came out, there's no action at all in the game, and there aren't really any puzzles. There isn't much challenge at all, but that's one of the best things about Ihatovo Monogatari. It's a game, yeah, but it's not a “game“ in that you can win or lose - it's more of an experience, like an interactive walk through a cleverly conceived museum/monument honoring the works of a highly influential, well respected man. For whatever it lacks in traditional gameplay mechanics, it more than makes up for in the simple charm of its plot, the care that was taken in its presentation (good God that soundtrack!), and the sheer respect it shows for Miyazawa himself. It's a fairy tale that frames a man who created fairy tales, and the warmth conveyed by the development team is apparent from the get go. Way to come out of left field, Hector. It's hard to talk about a game like this, you know? It's like... it's somehow nostalgic, even if it isn't situationally familiar at all. It manages to evoke a sort of universally-relevant, human tone that makes the whole thing all sorts of both wonderful and melancholy all at the same time. It's one helluva a game. If you don't require that your video games have guns, you really should play it. _ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete () punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games! Visit for the latest updates!
