Flower, Sun, and Rain: Murder and Mystery in Paradise (花と太陽と雨と終わらない楽園, Hana to Taiyō to Ame to: Owaranai Rakuen; "Flower, Sun, and Rain: Unending Paradise") is an adventure video game for the Nintendo DS video game system. It was directed by Goichi Suda, developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and published by Marvelous Entertainment, Rising Star Games and XEED Games. Flower, Sun, and Rain was originally published by Victor Interactive as a PlayStation 2 title exclusively in Japan on May 2, 2001, however increasing interest in Grasshopper's later releases, particularly killer7 and No More Heroes, gave Suda ambition to release his earlier works internationally. With assistance from h.a.n.d. Inc. in porting Flower, Sun, and Rain to Nintendo DS, this updated version of the game debuted in Japan on March 6, 2008, followed by Europe that November 14, and finally in North America on June 16, 2009. The Entertainment Software Rating Board rated the game T in North America for "alcohol and tobacco reference, mild blood, mild language, mild suggestive themes and mild violence."
Gameplay
Players control protagonist Sumio Mondo, a "searcher" contracted to seek out people's misplaced possessions and other items. Unfortunately, Mondo quickly finds himself locked in a seemingly endless time loop, as he is forced to live out the same day over and over again: At the end of every day, a jumbo jet explodes as it takes off, resetting the loop. Every day, he must work to try and learn about the catastrophe, growing nearer and nearer to preventing the explosion and, he hopes, allowing him to escape.
The majority of gameplay consists of traversing the resort on foot and locating the right people and items to interact with. Mondo uses his suitcase-shaped computer, Catherine, to solve the mysteries he runs up against. Mondo is able to crack secret codes by using Catherine's dial for inputting numbers and her universally compatible serial bus to connect with various electronic systems and other jack-in points. The player uncovers various hints by speaking with people Mondo encounters, combined with a guidebook of Lospass Island to determine the correct numbers to input into Catherine and crack the codes.
The DS remake includes an additional feature called "Lost and Found" that allows players to find additional hidden capsules, crack their codes and unlock bonus items. At the beginning of every chapter, the player is given a "Lost and Found Report" which gives him or her three clues regarding the capsules' whereabouts.
Characters
- Sumio Mondo, a "searcher"
- Catherine, Mondo's computer
- Edo Macalister, the hotel's manager, porter and proprietor
- Sandance Shot, a mysterious terrorist
- Toriko Kusabi, a third-year high school student opposing Sandance Shot
Plot
Searcher Sumio Mondo has been drafted to Lospass Island in order to deter a potential terrorist attack at its airport. After introducing himself, as well as his Toyota Celica, Giggs, to the player, Mondo proceeds to the Cunningham Bluesky parking lot, where he meets Commission agent Peter Bocchwinkur, a broker who takes him to his destination, the Flower, Sun, and Rain hotel, where his services have been hired. Mondo meets the hotel's manager Edo Macalister, who has hired Mondo to locate the bomb planted at Lospass Airport. Mondo is shown to his room, where he rests for his job the next morning.
Sumio Mondo approaches the Flower, Sun, and Rain hotel.
Mondo is woken the following morning by a call from the hotel's front desk, however as he leaves the room to start his day, he finds he has been locked inside and his room has miraculously transformed. After hearing a strange voice, he investigates the contents of the room, finding a peephole in the wall where two women have gathered on the other side. One woman introduces herself as Sue Sding, a hotel employee, while the other, a spiritual medium dubbed Sister Phantom, informs him that she can see an evil spirit swirling with Mondo, as Room 402 is apparently cursed. She goes on to explain that the trio must work fast to prevent Mondo from being possessed. As Sister focuses, Mondo continues rummaging around the room, his only significant find being a rare German camera pointed at a Bellini chair. However when he peers through the hole to report on his findings, he learns that Sister Phantom has panicked and fled. Sding attests that she has her own powers, and attempts to help Mondo in Sister's place, however in the process she falls asleep for a few moments. When she wakes up, Sding recalls Edo Macalister once telling her about a harmless ghost residing at the hotel, which she realizes might have to do with strange phenomena at the Flower, Sun, and Rain such as toilet water overflowing, a drawing on a flower vase and her skirt being flipped up. She also claims the camera and the chair in Mondo's room may have to do with a page in the island's guidebook, which becomes an integral part of Mondo's days on Lospass to come. Referring to the guidebook, Mondo resolves the puzzle, allowing him to leave the room, which has spontaneously returned to normal. Outside, Mondo meets Sue Sding face-to-face, and Sister Phantom returns to confront them as well, contesting that she never actually fled. After explaining how evil spirits form and why Mondo was targeted by the ghost, Sister Phantom sets out to leave the island when an airplane explodes over Lospass.
Edo Macalister introduces Mondo to his hotel room.
Next morning, however, Mondo awakens in his hotel room and discovers that something strange has happened. He has not even headed to the airport yet and the airplane explosion and crash have not happened yet, either. Mondo once again attempts to head to the airport to prevent the explosion, and once again ends up being thwarted; he repeatedly encounters other hotel guests and island residents people requesting his help with various problems, largely including searching for missing items. Day after day, this distracts him long enough to lead to a repeat of the previous day's explosion, and over and over again Mondo awakens in his hotel room before any of the day's events have taken place.
Mondo finds his room altered by a ghostly presence, on his first day at the hotel.
Halfway through the game, Mondo experiences his first and last night on the island. Sue Sding the maid sends Mondo to the lighthouse, because her powers as a medium have informed her that Mondo will save the island on a night with a crescent moon. Per her instructions, Mondo solves the secret of the island (though he doesn't understand what he's uncovered), and after following her to the roof, he is killed by a terrorist named Sandance Shot. The next morning, two federal agents, Yoshimitsu Koshimizu and Remy Fawzil (recurring characters from The Silver Case) arrive to investigate investigate Mondo's murder. Yoshimitsu encounters Step Sding, a local thief, making off with Catherine, and finds that the culprit is actually a clone transformed into a living bomb; Remy, for her part, finds a hidden cloning facility underneath the island. Later, a third-year high school student named Toriko Kusabi, up til now seen in snatches of Mondo's dreams, makes a pact with her enemy Sandance Shot to somehow resurrect Mondo and let him continue his quest. Their bet is that if Mondo is able to find Sandance, the terrorist will cease to exist, but Mondo in turn is unknowingly staking his own life as well.
In the game's penultimate chapter, Mondo meets Tokio Morishima (another character from The Silver Case), who is responsible for the time loop. He explains that it is caused by the Silver Eye, which grants its bearer immortality, something that both he and Sandance possess; when two Silver Eyes come within a certain range of each other, the will of God is invoked and time begins to spiral. Tokio agrees to stop the time loop with Catherine's help, allowing Mondo to finally reach the airport on time.
Mondo witnesses the first of a number of airplanes explode over Lospass Island.
As the final chapter opens, Edo reveals that Lospass Island is an artificial island which was colonized to cultivate a particular type of indigenous hyena for their silver eyes. This eventually lead to the birth of the "Shot Tribe," aborigines on Lospass. Because of this, he was planning to blow it up with a time bomb, but that time bomb was stolen by Sandance and taken to the plane to stop the island from blowing up. Mondo heads to the airport and defuses numerous android bombs. After defusing all of the android bombs, he meets Yoshimitsu and Remy blocking access to the plane he's supposed to be on. They stop his progress, but Toriko shows up presently, assuring him that the saviour is about to arrive. In fact, the genuine Sumio Mondo then arrives on the scene as well, to the deep confusion of everyone but Toriko, and finally Sandance appears on the scene.
Sandance reveals that Sumio Mondo is actually the 16th genome clone of Sumio Kodai (the main character of The Silver Case) and that Sandance is one of the other 15 clones. He explains that each of the clones lived through one day on Lospass Island, and now their memories are in Sumio's possession, because the others will remain on Lospass when Sandance's body explodes, destroying the island. Sumio then catches the plane with agent Bocchwinkur, who also transported him there to begin with, and escapes the island.
The game ends with a cliffhanger, in which Peter reveals himself as Tetsuguro Kusabi (another character from The Silver Case), Toriko's father and Sumio's former partner from the Felonious 2nd Division.
Music
The music of Flower, Sun, and Rain was originally composed by Masafumi Takada and Shingo Yasumoto, credited as "Torn." When the game was ported to Nintendo DS, Grasshopper's sound team made several adjustments to the game's soundtrack, altering select songs and even adding new ones written by Takada and Jun Fukuda. Flower, Sun, and Rain also features a number of arrangements of classical songs by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Claude Debussy, George Gershwin and Erik Satie. The lyrics heard in the theme from the original PlayStation 2 version, "F.S.R. (Anata no Tameni)", were written by director Goichi Suda.
Cover art
Trivia
- An actual replica of The Lospass: Official Guide Book, used to solve most of the puzzles in Flower, Sun, and Rain, was published in limited numbers by Sony Magazines Inc.
- Early in the Nintendo DS version of the game when Peter Bocchwinkur drives Sumio Mondo to the Flower, Sun, and Rain hotel, Bocchwinkur mentions Edo Macallister's name, to which Mondo asks if he means "Ed." This is a reference to the fact that in the original Japanese PlayStation 2 version, Edo's first name translates to Ed.
- The game shares its title with that of a song by Japanese supergroup Pyg.
- The PlayStation 2 version of Flower, Sun, and Rain was reissued twice before the game was ported to Nintendo DS and released internationally. These occurred on September 5, 2002 and January 13, 2005, when the game was released under a best-seller marketing label by Victor Interactive.
External links
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