is a text-based adventure

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

developed and published by

Sunsoft , stylized as SUNSOFT, is a Japanese video game developer and publisher. Sunsoft is the video games division of Japanese electronics manufacturer Sun Corporation. Its U.S. subsidiary operated under the name Sun Corporation of America, though, ...

for the

Famicom Disk System The commonly shortened to the Famicom Disk System or just Disk System, is a peripheral for Nintendo's Family Computer home video game console, released only in Japan on February 21, 1986. It uses proprietary floppy disks called "Disk Cards" for ...

in Japan on November 20, 1986.

Plot

In the space calendar 0385, the Earth suffers from overpopulation and humans start to build space colonies. Cark, the protagonist, works for the Earth Federation's space development office. He is a brilliant engineer in space physics and is working for the Sirius third planet colony. He gets engaged to his girlfriend Mary, but they have to postpone their wedding. Five months later, Cark, accompanied by his robot Carry, decides to visit Mary and prepare the ceremony at last. But when he arrives at the space station where she is in, everything is quiet. Then a beam of light hits him. He wakes up sometimes later, inside a sort of underground graveyard, with pieces of dismantled robots surrounding him (including from SunSoft's unreleased

Nintendo Vs. Series The is an arcade system developed and produced by Nintendo from 1984 to 1990. It is based on most of the same hardware as the Family Computer (Famicom), later released as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Most of its games are conversion ...

title of the same name).

Gameplay

The player proceeds through the game by choosing from a selection of text menu commands. Like any traditional digital comic/text adventure games, a large view shows the surroundings. The bottom of the screen proposes simple action commands, like see, take or push; however, the game is entirely in Japanese (although it uses

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

exclusively). One of the original features of the game is to use real sampled sound in some places, which was very unusual for the time. A complete English fan translation patch was released in November 2019.

Reception and legacy

''Dead Zone'' received a score of 23 out of 40 from ''Famicom Tsūshin'' (''

Famitsu formerly ''Famicom Tsūshin'', is a line of Japanese video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly formats as well as in the ...

''). Cark and Carry from ''Dead Zone'' have made appearances in a few games, including ''Nazoler Land 3'' (1988), the strategy game '' Barcode World'' (1992) for Famicom (as SD characters), and the puzzle game ''Shanghai Musume: Mahjong Girls'' (2011) for iOS and Android.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dead Zone (Video Game) 1986 video games Adventure games Famicom Disk System games Famicom Disk System-only games Japan-exclusive video games Sunsoft games Video games scored by Naoki Kodaka Video games developed in Japan Single-player video games