HDR-0033
グラウエンの鳥籠 Kapitel1 契約
Grauen No Torikago Kapitel 1 -Keiyaku- (Bird Cage Chapter 1: Keiyaku)
30/09/1999


HDR-0034
グラウエンの鳥籠 Kapitel2 鳥籠 (Dreamcast Direct)
Grauen No Torikago Kapitel 2 -Torikago- (Bird Cage Chapter 2: Torikago)
25/11/1999


HDR-0035
グラウエンの鳥籠 Kapitel3 陥穽 （Dreamcast DIRECT専売）
Grauen No Torikago Kapitel 3 -Kansei- (Bird Cage Chapter 3: Kansei )
27/01/2000


HDR-0036
グラウエンの鳥籠 Kapitel4 邂逅 （Dreamcast DIRECT専売）
Grauen No Torikago Kapitel 4 -Kaikou- (Bird Cage Chapter 4: Kaikou)
30/03/2000


HDR-0037
グラウエンの鳥籠 Kapitel5 贖罪 （Dreamcast DIRECT専売）
Grauen No Torikago Kapitel 5 -Shokuzai- (Bird Cage Chapter 5: Shokuzai)
25/05/2000


HDR-0038
グラウエンの鳥籠 Kapitel6 戦慄 （Dreamcast DIRECT専売)
Grauen No Torikago Kapitel 6 -Senritsu- (Bird Cage Chapter 6: Senritsu)
27/07/2000




First of all, is it porn? With a provactive name like Bird Cage, it sounds like porn. Not only are the games some what rare, but all the content seems to have been online and now the servers are gone. Very little seems to be known about them, at least in english anyway.

I found a prologue for the game here: http://todays-game.seesaa.net/article/47850174.html



It has some controls as well:


And this information, but nothing new at all:


Doesn't look like porn at all. Especially considering "Bird Cage" isn't a heathenism in Japan. =P It just seems to be a interactive detective game. They've been all the rage in Japan for years. Most likely text-heavy, so it becomes more of an interactive novel than a game. But I wont knock it, my favourite games are extremely text heavy.

Also seems a very poorly thought-out idea as well. A gimmick for sure, to try and show how 'superior' the Dreamcast was at online functionality. Doesn't look like this game was very popular, there's some copies of the game going on Amazon Japan for 9,800 Yen... But for a game which doesn't do dick now-a-day, that's a stupid price to pay.

Hope that helps you, Eggfan.

I'd say, from those images and text / translations; it looks nothing more than an online (MMO?) interactive show of Eastenders.

Cheers SSUK. It's strange. You'd think the online component would be unnecessary, it could have easily have been an offline game.

But is there a sequence where the protaganist is trapped in an oversized birdcage? Naked or not it doesn't matter, I still want to know.

So was is just still images and text or FMV? I somehow doubt they had servers to constantly stream FMV to you if that was the case. You know most of the content is probably on the disc, it's just a matter of converting it to a usable format or making an emulator thing that can spoof the servers maybe?

I'm willing to bet that pretty much the whole game is on the discs, yeah. Can you imagine how unplayable it would otherwise be at 33/56k?

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%BB%E3%82%AC...1686&sr=1-2

If someone feels like wasting £30, Amazon has a game disc for you. But I'm more than positive this must have been dumped by someone, somewhere.

I've read a few sites about the game, unfortunately it seems the developer of the game; e-sekai has gone under. Which may be the reason why the game's servers were shut down pretty quickly. I've also found some character voices for the game off the Japanese language version of Wikipedia, however doesn't have anything directly about the game. It also seems to be that the game isn't actually a game at all. It's listed by a lot of places as "Web drama" rather than "game", one website suggested that the title wasn't always a Dreamcast 'game' either, saying that the GD-ROM version of the game came shortly after initial release of Grauen.

http://ascii24.com/news/i/serv/article/199...605485-000.html

I was under the impression that the game was actually 3D visuals, however now looking closer at the small shots on the back of the packaging (see Eggfan's post), it seems that it's all live-action. So it seems there was no actual gameplay involved, it was just a TV show broadcasted over the 'net. Pioneering, but could you imagine YouTube on 56k? Noooo-ho-ho way.

So here's my shoddy summary of what Grauen was (hopefully): 320x280 movie files, heavily compressed on a server. The disc was merely the player and some bonus content (an interview with the main character when offline), the controls I posted earlier were probably just there for menus which would go something like this: "Connect to internet? Yes No" and perhaps another for "Connection Error. Retry / Fuck this, I'll go outside." Perhaps there'd be a rudimentary chat system or something as well, hence the keyboard support.

Thanks for the info SSUK.

I've considered buying them, and the only reason I'm considering it is because they were catalogued in the HDR series, and my obsessively anal self wants to get the full set. I find it really hard to justify buying a 'game' that doesn't work, so right now, I've decided against it.