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Friday 3 May 2019

COSMOLOGY OF KYOTO


Can games be art? Anyone who has followed this site will know that I consider the answer to be a resounding and obvious 'yes'. Yet, prominent critics of other mediums still ponder this question. Famed film expert Roger Ebert was one of these naysayers but there was one game that did impress him - Cosmology of Kyoto.

This Japanese adventure came out in the US in 1995 for PC and Macs, two years after being released in its native country. There were limited numbers and next to no advertising, with the only prominent information I can gather from the time of its release being the infamous Roger Ebert write up - the only game the respected movie pundit ever reviewed. That alone has given the game something of a reputation and it will often fetch many hundreds of dollars on the second-hand market if you're lucky enough to actually see one.

The subtitle on the US box claims it to be a 'visual mindscape of old Japan', and that is pretty accurate marketing. You don't play Cosmology of Kyoto, you experience it. Many of the locations are open to you outright, be it the eerily empty streets of the poor side of the city ravaged with disease, poverty and the ghosts of those claimed by them. The richer areas are filled with life and movement. Here you can bet on cockfights or purchase sushi while hiding from the glares of a creepy demon lurking in the shadows. The depressing and sometimes literal dog-eat-dog nature of 10th century life is pretty accurate. There is little to no direction, but as you play you'll discover there is a point.

Don't get too attached to your avatar as he will undoubtedly die.

Before all this urban exploring, you begin the game by choosing your avatar. There's not much choice, but anyone who has spent time tweaking their Miis on their Wiis will know what to expect. At first, this appears to have no impact on the game itself - you'll rarely see this cobbled face again, but later on, you'll appreciate that this is part of the game's greater theme. Once created, you are plonked in the middle of a field just outside the city walls, naked. A dead body is left to rot nearby so his clothes are no longer of use to him. After a short game of the world's eeriest whac-a-mole, the path to the city gates opens up, but they aren't open to you. To enter the city, you'll have to follow a ghostly white fox to a crumbled hole in the wall. Either that or prompt a nearby samurai to defeat the demon holding the gates shut.

These are indicative to the many events you'll witness throughout your play time, including actual incidents from Japan in the 900s, around 200 years since the capital's formation. You'll bump into a number of historical figures, including Buddhist monks Japanese royalty. That meteorite you saw falling from the sky actually happened. Known as the Kazan Stone, it is still a revered artefact of cultural significance. But there's also myth and superstition lurking beneath the surface. Long-necked demons and long-haired ghosts also wander the streets and many will lead to your demise. Don't worry though, death isn't game over. Instead, you'll be transported to one of the Six Realms of Existence, a type of hell depicted in Buddhism. You'll succumb to all kinds of disturbing imagery before you are reincarnated back onto the streets, complete with a new face and identity. Before you carry on, though, be sure to collect your clothes and belongings from the twisted body of your predecessor.

The in-game encyclopedia it commendably extensive (left)
It's easy to get lost in Kyoto so this map is welcome (right)

What torturous spectacles await all depend on your Karma level, which is cryptically depicted in the lower left of the screen. Click and hold on that tiny square and your score will be represented in bars. Similarly, the lower right square will detail the number of coins you have in your possession. The interface is a tad confusing with an over-abundance of empty black space, so a quick read of the manual is best to familiarise yourself with its quirks. Be sure to remember the name you gave at the beginning as this acts as a password of sorts when loading (the shortcuts are Ctrl-S to save and Ctrl-Q to quit in case you forget). One of the most annoying is that the direction you're facing is depicted in Japanese kanji so you'll have to memorise the correct character for the correct point of the compass.

That's not the only thing in Japanese either. All speech is dramatically acted in the native language and subtitled in English in the empty space below. In my opinion, this is to the game's benefit adding to the already rich and uncanny atmosphere.

While these points don't necessarily take away from the overall game, there are nevertheless a number of more damaging bugs and programming missteps. In the beginning, you'll have to wait until the music stops before you can interact with anything, initially making me think the game was broken when I first played it. The emulation has a minor bug to it as well. Whenever text needs to be typed, the bar turns white making the text illegible. Not totally game breaking, and beyond your name entry, it's possible you may not encounter the issue at all as it's that infrequent. Even so, you'll rarely repond with more than a 'yes' or a 'no'. It is something I couldn't resolve adequately no matter what I tried so I thought it was worth mentioning.

You can spend your coin in the many shops (left) or bet on cockfights (right)
Be aware that everything you do will affect your karma.

To accompany the meandering exploration of Japanese history and folklore is an exhaustive encyclopedia. You do have access to all of it from the beginning, but it will always open to the page that is most relevant to what you are witnessing. While not entirely needed to complete the game, it is still a welcome addition for those who are unfamiliar with Buddhist life and legends and makes for a read as fascinating as the game itself.

Cosmology of Kyoto isn't one of those games where you'd want to rush to the end. In fact, if you do follow a concise walkthrough you'll only experience a tiny fraction of what the game has to offer. The brilliance of the game is that you just take in the strange events with its off-kilter artwork and let the melancholy atmosphere wash over you. I disagree with Roger Ebert over a lot of things, but not when it comes to Cosmology of Kyoto. It is an artistic masterpiece.


To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses DOSBox running Microsoft Windows 3.1 to get the game working on modern systems. Manual, Japanese Manual and Reference Guide included. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 319 Mb.  Install Size: 694 Mb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

Download



Cosmology of Kyoto is © SOFTEDGE Inc
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me


Like this? Try These...

https://collectionchamber.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/eastern-mind-lost-souls-of-tong-nou.html  https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/2019/02/legend-of-lotus-spring.html  http://collectionchamber.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/romantic-blue.html

44 comments:

  1. I had no idea Cosmology of Kyoto was praised by Roger Ebert! That makes me much more excited about it than I otherwise would have been. Biffman's informative reviews are so helpful.

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  2. Great,thanks made me a retro gamer.

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    Replies
    1. Turned another one! Retro games are much better than the games-as-service rubbish we have now.

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  3. Can't argue with that.

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  4. An excellent addition to the collection. I did have a question though: I've noticed in all versions of this game I've seen floating around, there appears to be an issue with the few portions you have to enter text (such as the name entry screen at the very beginning). Whenever these sections pop up all I see is a white box and I can't see the text I'm typing. This isn't a massive inconvenience, since there don't seem to be many types you need to type anything, but it is an issue nonetheless.

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    1. Yes, it exists and I mention it in the review. It doesn't occur when using PCEm and Windows 95, but the speed is so slow it's unplayable. Out of all the options I tried, this is the best way to play (outside of original hardware) and it's too good of a game to not put up over something that is ultimately a minor inconvenience.

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    2. How do you back out of dialogue? I got stuck in a loop when I couldn't answer the question and was unable to continue.

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  5. Finally pushing myself out of lurking for a long time to say thank you, Biff. I love this game so very much and have never been able to play it since my old Win95 laptop. Now I can finally try getting friends to play it too.

    Thank you again for all your hard work here.

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  6. Can you do Hunter Hunted next? Or Darby the Dragon?

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    1. Both are on my radar. I've dabbled with Darby on SCUMMVM but only briefly.

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  7. I can't seem to get save games to work. The filename prompt box only offers *txt files but a *kpr extension is necessary. Has anyone succeeded with save games? Thanks!

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    1. It's one of the many quirks in the game (like always defaulting to the read-only D drive when loading or saving), but it will save. The prompt box will always say .txt but if you save it with the correct suffix (eg *savename*.kpr), it will create a kpr file. You can still rename it to a kpr in Windows proper if you wish, or type the full name and suffix (eg *savename*.txt) when restoring a game to load from a text file.

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    2. Thank you, this works perfectly. A great and appreciated effort all around on your part! I had hoped to be able to rescue this game, which I encountered long ago. It's remarkable and not a little scholarly; for instance, a knowledgeable Japanese friend tells me the spoken dialog is a faithful reproduction of what was is thought to be the older Japanese dialect of the era.

      Another game in a similar vein in Qin, which is pretty easy to get to run compared to Cosmology of Kyoto.

      And a final note: it's really easy to use the files in your distribution to make the game run on a Linux system.

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    3. Hi, how did you get this running on Linux? I’ve been trying to get this game running for days

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  8. Hey, in my experience the white box glitch seems to be a tad game-breaking: in quite a few 'side-quests' I have to answer "Y" and no one seems to understand what I write (and appear to default to a "No", or some other rude response). Very rarely, someone understands my yeses. Have you found any consistent way to get this to work?

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    1. someone else said " sometimes there appears to be a space or a line break when you first click on the text box, I find arrowing down and backspacing to the beginning after clicking the text box initially prevents a lot of issues." LOL hope you still want to know

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  9. Roger Ebert was a moron. About the only time he was right as a critic was when he praised CoK

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  10. Fascinating game, but I found the text prompt bug much more significant then the article suggests. There were a number of prompts that I simply couldn't get past, such as the old men prompting you to ask questions, the thugs asking if you wanted to help the girl, the priest with the mantra or the lady asking if you were a minister. 'yes' prompted no reaction and not being able to see what I was typing made it hard to troubleshoot.

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    1. Bob Newell (chipschap)27 August 2022 at 21:10

      Email me at fredflake@netzero.com and I'll email you my setup for Linux.

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    2. someone else said " sometimes there appears to be a space or a line break when you first click on the text box, I find arrowing down and backspacing to the beginning after clicking the text box initially prevents a lot of issues."

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    3. Thanks bro this is another guy but your information about backspacing works

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  11. Has anyone found the solution for "yes/no" prompts that don't work?

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    1. If I recall correctly, you have to type in these prompts. The box seems blanked out, but you still type in blindly, though it has to be the full word. This is something I couldn't fix, no matter what program I used (director is notoriously particular, even back then) but I do remember getting past them. On the plus side, ScummVM is actively working on it and aiming to add it sometime in the future. When they do I'll update it asap.

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    2. Awesome, thank you. Just found this site and its one of the most amazing things I've come across. I truly appreciate the work you've put into making these obscure games playable, as there's really nothing like them anymore. Another that would fit here is Eyewitness Dinosaur Hunter.

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  12. The white text box bug seems to be fixed if you use dosbox-x instead, though you may want to tinker with the config to get it looking exactly the same it will run well and have no text bugs.

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    1. I want to amend this with, sometimes there appears to be a space or a line break when you first click on the text box, I find arrowing down and backspacing to the beginning after clicking the text box initially prevents a lot of issues.

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  13. It seems that my game will not save. I used the correct filenames with filename*.txt or filename*.kpr but the files never save. I've tried saving to different folders but every time I hit the "OK" button, nothing happens. Any help would be appreciated.

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    1. See posts from 19 June 2021 where this problem is solved!

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  14. Seems to be working fine on DOSBox SVN-Daum + Win 3.11 from old-games.ru site.
    But I had same problem with Text Box. Replies just seemed to be unrecognized.

    HERE'S SOLUTION:
    When you start typing a thing, there's a blank space or line break that spoils your answer. Just make sure to delete it before you press Enter and that's it.

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    1. can confirm, there is a blank space, also if you press the down arrow button, you will be able to see your answer. i would write the answer, erase the hidden space in front of the answer an press the down arrow key, i would see the answer then.

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  15. Impressive game.

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  16. Hey can you please tell me how do I run this game?

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  17. I have run in some issue, maybe i am doing something wrong so if you could help me out i would really appreciate that. The only map i can get access to dont show my position at all. Is in the "reference tab" and allways show "first asia-zoom- japan-zoom kyoto-zoom a simple grid layout of the city" and im getting lost constantly cause is hard to understand in what street i actualy walk in. there is another map somewhere? Also i accept to help a guy and walk in the "goblin-infested house". there are some good cut-scene there!...but im stuck! i cant get out and i can only trigger the same 3 scene over and over (a lot of micro kids rushing to a door, a demon with a huge nose pretending to be a woman makes fun of my behind his fan, and some ghost comes from the ceiling.(again, top shit right there! but after trigger it like 10 times lose its charm XD

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  18. Can anyone help me with the problem of saving the game? Every time I save the game it says "this filename is invalid" error.

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  19. the game is always displayed with a lower resolution(smaller screen)..how do i make the game in full screen?

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    1. i use ALT+ENTER. for me work, but for a friend of mine dosent...so.. i hope you are like me

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    2. It worked for me too. Thanks!

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  20. could someone please help me out? When I try to download the game file, it is saying that the file is corrupt and cannot complete downloading. Is there any way to fix this or am I just doing it wrong? I downloaded dosbox as well and I'm barely able to use it. any tips are helpful!

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    1. You need both files (the .exe and .D01) in the same folder during installation, else it will fail.

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  21. How do I save? I thought I loaded a save, it asks me to type something, and it says I made a mistake

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  22. how to save in this game?

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  23. just found this website
    thank you very much man for games

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  24. I'm in the middle of fixing this in ScummVM's Director engine. The code behind this game is pretty loose, so there's a lot of edge cases and race conditions that we need to emulate exactly for parts of the game to work.

    Lots of people seem to have issues with the dialogue text boxes; the game treats these as three-way branch points checking for a "yes", "no" or "error" response. The list of phrases for "yes" and "no" changes for each dialogue box, several of the choices have typos, and while the comparison is case insensitive quite a lot of them -need- to end with a full stop. My guess is that this might have been placeholder text missed by the localization team, as the rest of the translation feels very polished compared to this.

    e.g. when the warrior outside the gates asks you if you heard something:
    - yes branch: "Behind.", "demon.", "I do.", "I fell it.", "feel it.", "Look out.", "Oh.", "I see it.", "see it.", "oh!."
    - no branch: "Uh-uh.", "yes.", "noting.", "I don't know.", "don't know.", "where?"

    An option might be to add a script patch in ScummVM's quirks table, to strip the punctuation, and make "yes" and "no" answers that always work regardless of context.

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