Ōkōchi Gengorō Ikka (lost build of unreleased Nintendo 64 simulation game; late 1990s)

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FEATURED

Ōkōchi Gengorou Ikka.jpg

Title screen

Status: Lost

Ōkōchi Gengorō Ikka (大河内源五郎一家, lit. "Ōkōchi Gengorō Family") is an unreleased Nintendo 64 simulation game. During the N64 era, there was no information about this game being featured in magazines or other media, but it became generally known on April 12, 2007, when Game Tanteidan, a used retro game store in Nihonbashi, Osaka, introduced a prototype ROM of the game on its blog[1].

Overview

The game is set in Showa-era Japan, and the main character is Kokuzō Ōkōchi, the eldest son of a family in the fifth grade, along with his father (he is presumably Gengorō), mother, sister, baby (gender unknown), grandmother, grandfather, and Dan-chan, a relative who is staying with them, for a total of eight members.

The game consists of 12 scenarios. After a diary-style introduction by the protagonist, the game begins in the living room. The player controls the protagonist to increase or decrease the emotional parameters of the three family members. A monologue outlining the results of this process is given, and the scenario ends with the four family members discussing the day's events in the living room. The events that occur in the game are extremely absurd and chaotic. In the scenario of making curry and rice for dinner, detergent, rats, and dynamite are thrown into the pot, resulting in food poisoning as a result of eating the finished curry, and in the scenario of going shopping for a TV and a tombstone, suddenly a mother and sister kill each other over one man using a fire extinguisher and a kitchen knife[2].

Although the publisher of the game is unknown, as for the developer, Hiroshi Ogino, the main programmer of the racing game Gale Racer released for the Sega Saturn, mentioned that the development team for Ōkōchi Gengorō Ikka is almost identical to that of Gale Racer, and therefore the developer is likely to be System Sacom, which developed the same game[3].

Availability

As of 2023, the game has not surfaced online. In addition, the ROM is likely still in the possession of Game Tanteidan today.

Note

  • Ogino also testified that Ōkōchi Gengorō Ikka is a game for the 64DD, an add-on for the N64 which read games off of magnetic disks rather than ROM cartridges.[4] However, the ROM format currently found is a standard N64 cartridge rather than a 64DD disk. It is believed that the platform was changed to the 64DD during the development of this game, but this is not clear.
  • The title is a reference to the 1974 Japanese comedy TV series Terauchi Kantarō Ikka (寺内貫太郎一家).

Gallery

Video

Video introduction to the game by TheTsuburo.

References