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  Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse
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Fatal Frame, Meet Your New HomeIn late January 2008, at a press conference held in Japan by Tecmo, it was revealed that the next installment in the horror-filled Fatal Frame series would be hitting Wii. This meant that the series would be straying away from its home on PS2 and Xbox and unto Nintendo’s newest console. Perhaps even more a shock was that the game was to be a major collaborative effort for Temco. Nintendo would publish the game in Japan and lend some help on the development side. Grasshopper Manufacture’s Goichi Suda, commonly referred to as Suda 51 among his fans, would help with the development of the game as well. It was announced that the game would be hitting Japanese retailers sometime during the summer, to coincide with the popular Japanese tradition of telling ghost stories. Months passed and the game completely disappeared from the media. Little did they know that the game’s development was progressing well. Late May, Nintendo of Japan announced that the title would be officially hitting Japanese retailers on July 31st. Then the time rolled around for Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse to be released. Being the pinnacle of Japan’s first-party Wii games for the summer, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was met fairly positive. The increasingly popular Japanese magazine Famitsu quite gracefully gave the game a thirty-four out of forty. Two of the reviewers gave the game a nine, while the other two decided to give it an eight. When compared to other releases, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was very well received. Unravelling the MysteriesEvery ten years a special ceremony is held at a sacred shrine on Rougetsu Island, located south of Japan’s largest island, Honshu. One year though, something bizarre occurred. During a very traditional Japanese concert, five girls mysteriously vanished without a trace. Little did people know… the five girls were being held hostage in a haunted house on Rougetsu Island. Eventually a police officer by the name of Choushiro Kirishima managed to rescue the girls from Rougetsu Island and return them to their homes. During the time the girls had suffered from a special type of amnesia. Everything about their abduction was forgotten, however everything else remained intact. Though the amnesia affected the girls’ emotions, they seemed to have settled down after they moved away from the haunted island. Years passed and the girls remained blinded about the incident. Ten years later, two of the girls, Marie Shinomiya and Tomoe Nanamura, died in a brutal manner. The remaining survivors believed that their death was linked to their childhood abductions on Rougetsu Island. Wanting to unravel the mysteries of their past and the deaths of the two girls, two of the remaining girls, Misaki Aso and Madoka Tsukimori, return to Rougetsu Island, only to go missing. The remaining girl, Ruka Minazuki, is the only survivor who can remember something about their ordeal. She remembers both a melody and a group of musicians being surrounded by a circle of masked men and a masked woman; dancing as if though they had been possessed by a spirit. Also hoping to unravel her foggy past, she, too sets out to Rougetsu Island to try and find Misaki Aso and Madoka Tsukimori and to try and clear things up a little. Ruka Minazuki’s mother, Sayaka Minazuki, requests that Choushiro Kirishima follow Ruka to protect her if something happens. Hoping to dig up some pieces of their past, Ruka sets out to Rougetsu Island with Choushiro Kirishima following behind her.   |
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| At a glance |
| Hardcore gamers finally got what they wanted – a game that will frighten casual gamers to death and satisfy the hardcore. |