Garage: Bad Dream Adventure (found Japanese PC horror adventure game; 1999)

The game's protagonist.

Status: Found

Date found: 18 Mar 2014

Found by: cc0

Garage: Bad Dream Adventure, or simply Garage, was a Japanese PC/Macintosh point-and-click game developed by Kinotrope and directed by Tomomi Sakuba released in early 1999 with a limited release of 3000 units.^[1]

Content

The game features bizarre, surreal, often nightmarish (as the title implies) and sometimes graphic imagery. The player controls a small alien-like robot, maneuvering their way through a barren, foreboding landscape of cracked wood paneling and old, rusting machinery, complete with creepy, lifeless faces. The eerie background music (or lack thereof, at times) only adds to the sense of impending danger, making for a very unsettling atmosphere.

Search

A 2013 search effort for the game, spearheaded largely by 4chan's /vr/ board, had uncovered multiple copies for sale, though said copies were always immensely expensive.^[2] It was also discovered that a special "Private Edition" was made available for a very short time in April 2004 through Sakuba's official website with a limited release of only 90 copies, all of which were sold in a single day. This version featured the game itself, plus a collection of concept art.^[3] Notably, around the same time, the standard edition of the game was also made available for purchase (again, in somewhat limited quantities) on Sakuba's website up until September 2007, when it was officially discontinued.

Despite these re-releases, Garage had not shown up online at all prior to 2014, leading to the game becoming incredibly rare with only some thousand copies available in total. During this time, several people claimed to own copies of the game, though all of them were reluctant to provide a rip to the online community, fearing retribution on account of Japan's strict anti-piracy laws. One owner, however, recorded an entire playthrough of the game. Additionally, two short trailers were unearthed around this time.

Recovery

In early 2014, a copy of the game was put up on Yahoo Auctions Japan and was quickly bought by hg101.proboards.com user cc0 for 77,000 yen. The game was then arranged to be shipped from Japan to the U.S., then to Australia (due to potential issues regarding Australian customs), where it was ripped and uploaded by cc0. The .dmg file for the Mac version can be downloaded on another MEGA file.

Following the game's upload, cc0 also provided a collection of scans and photographs of the manual, box, case inlay, disc, and included map.

On December 10th, 2021 the game was rereleased on the Google Play Store and App Store, and on July 7th, 2022 the game was rereleased on Steam. These versions also have translations for English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, marking the first time the game was officially released in any other language besides Japanese.