Garage (video game)

Garage (full title: GARAGE: Bad Dream Adventure; Japanese: ガラージュ) is a 1999 Japanese horror adventure video game developed by Kinotrope and published by Toshiba-EMI for Windows and Macintosh.

Garage
Developer(s)Kinotrope
Publisher(s)Toshiba-EMI
Platform(s)Windows, Macintosh
Release1999
Genre(s)Adventure, Horror

Production

The game was designed by Japanese surrealist Tomomi Yuki Sakuba.[1] It was also directed by Sakuba, produced by Masahiro Ikuta, co-produced by Akihiko Kawa, and programmed by Akiya Hayashi. 3D graphics were completed by Gengo Ito and Hiroki Watanabe, and music was composed by Tomonori Tanaka.[2]

Sakuba began his interest in games with the title Cosmic Osmo, which he had played around 1990. After learning the game had been written on HyperCard, a software that comes for free with a Mac, he went to the library and began reading up how to program using the language. He made a few experimental projects including Hobbit's Great Adventure and Talking before setting his sights on making a full-fledged game.[3]

When sketching out the design of the hero, Sakuba settled on a creature with an organic head on the body of the machine. He eventually decided to make this the design of all the characters.[4] At least one poster was designed before the final poster was chosen for marketing.[5] The official website for the game was founded in August 1995, and the director maintained a diary to update his progress.[6]

The first release of this game was limited to 3,000 copies. The game's publisher, Toshiba-EMI, withdrew from CD-ROM publishing before further copies could be produced.[7] Even in Japan, where the game was released, Garage is considered extremely rare, with only a few thousand copies in existence. When it appeared on the trading site Suruga-ya, it had an asking price of 300,000 yen.

It is currently available on the internet due to members of the 4chan's /vr/ board finding it on auction and putting together the money to purchase and preserve it.[1] The game's creator has resistance to republishing it, firstly because the "game balance" has changed, and secondly he does not own the rights to it.[8] A Garage Private Edition went on sales in mid-2007, and quickly sold out.[7] With permission of Tomomi Yuki Sakuba, the game was a repackaging of the first release.[7]

Plot and gameplay

Garage is surreal and nightmarish point and click adventure set in a world full of biomechanical machines. The player takes control of a small robot who is tasked with finding an entity called the "shadow", and to escape the world in which they live. The game's graphics are pre-rendered and digitized.

Critical reception

Hardcore Gaming 101 deemed Garage a "profoundly uncomfortable game to look at", due to its unsettling nature.[1]

References
  1. Kalata, Kurt (February 23, 2018). "Garage: Bad Dream Adventure". Hardcore Gaming 101.
  2. Sakuba, Tomomi Yuki (2018). "Garage Staff". T-s-k-b (developer's website).
  3. Sakuba, Tomomi Yuki (October 10, 1999). "Creating games". Kinotrope (Official Garage website). Archived from the original on October 10, 1999. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
  4. Sakuba, Tomomi Yuki (1997). "Character concept art". T-s-k-b (developer's website).
  5. Sakuba, Tomomi Yuki (1999). "Other concept art". T-s-k-b (developer's website).
  6. Sakuba, Tomomi Yuki (June 9, 2002). "The latest diary entry". Kinotrope (Official Garage website). Archived from the original on June 9, 2002. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
  7. Sakuba, Tomomi Yuki (April 30, 2008). "Garage Private Edition news". T-s-k-b (developer's website).
  8. Sakuba, Tomomi Yuki (December 14, 2014). ""@Kadd9th それは簡単じゃないんです。Win7でも割とまともに動くようですけど、ゲームバランス自体が変わってしまっていますし、あのままで良いと思っているわけでもないので、リリース当初のままに再販することにも抵抗があります。そしてこれは私一人の著作物でもありませんので。"". Twitter.
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