999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

999 is an adventure game in which the player assumes the role of a college student named Junpei. The gameplay is divided into two types of sections: Novel and Escape. In the Novel sections, the player progresses through the branching storyline and converses with non-playable characters through visual novel segments. Some endings contain hints to how to reach further endings. In between Novel sections are Escape sections, which occur when the player finds themselves in a room from which they need to find the means of escape. These are presented from a first-person perspective, with the player being able to move between different pre-determined positions in each room. To escape, the player is tasked with finding various items and solving puzzles, reminiscent of escape-the-room games. At some points, the player may need to combine objects with each other to create the necessary tool to complete a puzzle. The puzzles include various brain teasers, such as baccarat and magic squares. An in-game calculator is provided for math-related problems, and the player can ask characters for hints if they find an Escape room too difficult. All Escape sections are self-contained, with all items required to solve the puzzles being available within that section; items are not carried over between Escape sections. After finishing an Escape section, it becomes available to replay from the game's main menu. ==Plot==

Characters and setting 999 features nine main characters, who are forced to participate in the Nonary Game by an unknown person code-named Zero. The player-controlled Junpei (Takahisa Suzuki/Evan Smith) is joined by June, a nervous girl and a childhood friend of Junpei whom he knows as Akane Kurashiki (Miyuki Sawashiro/Rena Strober); Lotus (Rie Tanaka/Valerie Arem), a self-serving woman with unknown skills; Seven (Kenta Miyake/Edward Bosco), a large and muscular man; Santa (Kisho Taniyama/Sean Chiplock), a fashionable punk with a negative attitude; Ace (Takaya Hashi/Richard Epcar), an older and wiser man; Snake (Takahiro Sakurai/Taliesin Jaffe), a blind man with a princely demeanor; Clover (Yukari Tamura/Wendee Lee), a girl prone to mood swings and Snake's younger sister; and the 9th Man (Nobuo Tobita/Cam Clarke), a fidgety individual. The events of the game occur within a cruise ship, though all of the external doors and windows have been sealed, and many of the internal doors are locked. The game's nine characters learn that they have been kidnapped and brought to the ship to play the Nonary Game, with the challenge to find the door marked with a "9" within nine hours before the ship sinks. To do this, they are forced to work in separate teams to make their way through the ship and solve puzzles to find this door. This is set in part by special locks on numbered doors that are based on digital roots; each player has a bracelet with a different digit on it, and only groups of three to five with the total of their bracelet's number with the same digital root as marked on the door can pass through. Story Junpei escapes a flooding cabin after waking up, wearing a bracelet displaying the number "5". He encounters the eight other passengers. Zero announces over a loudspeaker that all nine are participants in the Nonary Game, explains the rules, and states each carry an explosive in their stomach that will go off if they try to bypass the digital root door locks. Trying to escape on his own, the 9th man threatens Clover, and is able to coerce Ace and her to scan their bracelets on Door 5's keypad. It is then revealed that it is not only necessary for all of the entrants to scan their bracelets at the entrance, but everyone who scanned must also authenticate within the rooms behind the Doors as well—lest the bombs of everyone who entered explode. Fearing what harm might come to them, the group adopts code names and splits up to explore the ship. Over the course of the story, Snake and an unknown man are found dead. The player has the option to select which group that Junpei travels with, which affects the story; several choices lead to Junpei and the cast's death at the hands of either Ace or Clover. Through various choices, Junpei learns of a previous Nonary Game, played nine years earlier, and the connections of the other characters through that, as well as studies about morphic resonance and stories of the Egyptian priestess Alice, who is frozen in ice-nine. In one ending, Clover is found dead. Junpei learns that the dead man was not Snake and that the first Nonary Game was run by Cradle Pharmaceutical, of which Ace is the CEO. Zero was a participant of this game, and had set up the second Nonary Game as revenge towards Ace. The surviving players confront Ace and deduce he killed every person found dead in order to both cover his identity and obtain their bracelets. Ace holds Lotus hostage and escapes. As they find Snake and the door with the 9, Akane becomes weak. Santa watches over her while the others enter the door, leading to an incinerator where Ace and Lotus are. Learning of his sister's murder, Snake tackles Ace, and the others pull Junpei out of the incinerator before it activates, consuming Snake and Ace. Junpei returns to Akane, finding her nearly dead. Zero claims over the loudspeakers that he has lost. Junpei investigates a nearby room, and returns to find Akane and Santa have disappeared, after which he is knocked out by a gas grenade. After the player views this ending, they can then access the "true" ending. In the true ending, Junpei learns that the previous Nonary Game consisted of nine pairs of kidnapped siblings separated onto the ocean-bound Gigantic and in a mock-up in Building Q in a Nevada desert. The game was designed to explore morphic fields; the research anticipated that the stress of the game would activate the fields between siblings, allowing solutions solved by one to be sent via these fields to their counterpart at the other location. This research was to help Ace cure his prosopagnosia. This Nonary Game went awry: Akane and her brother Santa were placed at the same location instead of being separated, and Seven discovered the kidnappings and rescued the children from the ship. Ace grabbed Akane before she could escape, forced her into the incinerator room, and started the incinerator while leaving a puzzle for her escape. Unable to solve the puzzle, Akane was apparently burnt to death while the other children, including Snake and Lotus's daughters, escaped with Seven. After rescuing Snake, Junpei and the others reach the incinerator; Akane disappears and Santa escapes while taking Ace hostage, trapping the others inside. It is then revealed that the portion of the game's narrative portrayed on the bottom screen of the Nintendo DS, which only shows narration and interacts with puzzles, is presented from a 12-year-old Akane's point of view during the first Nonary Game. Through morphic fields, she connected to Junpei in the future, witnessing several possible endings and directing Junpei to help him survive. Junpei then faces the same puzzle Akane did, and relays the solution back to Akane in the past, allowing her to escape with Seven and the other children. Junpei realizes that Akane was Zero and, with assistance from Santa, had recreated the game and all the events she had witnessed in order to ensure her survival and avoid a temporal paradox. As Junpei and the others escape, they discover that the game had taken place in Building Q the entire time; Akane and Santa have fled, leaving behind a car with Ace restrained in the trunk. In the game's epilogue, they drive away hoping to catch up with them and pick up a hitchhiker in Egyptian robes (later revealed to be Alice from ''Virtue's Last Reward''). ==Development==

.|alt=A 2016 photograph of Kotaro Uchikoshi. 999 was developed by the Japanese game studio Chunsoft and directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi, Development of 999 began in 2008. The inspiration for the story was the question "where do mankind's inspirations come from?"; Uchikoshi researched it, and found the British author Rupert Sheldrake's theories of morphogenetic fields, which became the main theme of the game. The theory is similar to telepathy, which answers the question of how organisms are able to simultaneously communicate ideas to each other, without physical or social interaction. Uchikoshi used the theory to develop the concept of esper characters, which are able to either transmit or receive information from another individual. Because of the vital role of the number 9 in the plot, each of the characters was based on one of the nine personality types from the Enneagram of Personality. Another source of inspiration was Kamaitachi no Yoru, which, like 999, begins with putting the characters in a state of discomfort. Uchikoshi started writing the script by working on the ending first. From there, he would continue to work backwards, in order to not get confused when writing the plot. The game's setting, with characters who are trapped and try to escape, was meant to embody two of humanity's instinctive desires: the unconscious desire to return to one's mother's womb and shut oneself away, and the desire to escape and overcome one's current condition. This was a theme Uchikoshi had used before, when writing the visual novel Ever 17: The Out of Infinity (2002). The Escape sequences were created to appeal to players' innate desires: Uchikoshi wanted them to feel the instinctive pleasure that he described as "I found it!". Shinji Hosoe, the president of the game music production company SuperSweep, was chosen to compose the game's soundtrack for being skilled in a wide range of music genres, ensuring that he could compose music that would fit a lot of different types of moods and scenes. He described his work on the game as the most straightforward music project he had had, due to receiving concise reference material that answered all his questions about the game; he made a few test tracks, after which everything went smoothly. The music was written using the Nintendo DS's internal synth, and Hosoe worked together with fellow SuperSweep composer Yousuke Yasui to make this less obvious. Localization The North American localization of the game was handled by Aksys Games; Chunsoft was introduced to Aksys by Spike while looking for a company that could publish the game in North America. When Aksys evaluated 999, many at the company did not believe in its commercial viability and at first turned it down; as many of the people who evaluate games at Aksys do not speak Japanese, it was difficult for them to gauge whether a game was good or not. In the end they decided to localize it, which was considered a big risk for the company. During the localization, Bateman had to keep track of the numerous plot points throughout the game, as the script had not been written in chronological order due to the numerous endings. Localizing the game took roughly two months. Another challenge was getting the localization done in time: Nobara Nakayama, the game's translator, worked on it for 30 days, and the editing process took two months. Because of this, Bateman had to do most of the work "on the fly". Nakayama had started playing the game prior to starting work on the localization, but did not finish playing it until she was more than halfway through translating it; after learning that the plot hinged on a Japanese pun, they had to halt the localization to discuss it with Uchikoshi and come up with a solution, after which they went through the whole game to make sure that it still made sense. During a scene related to an abstract painting of a dog, one of the localized answers for what the painting depicts is "Funyarinpa", a nonsense word directly translated from the original Japanese game. Picking it prompts a humorous exchange between Junpei and Lotus. This became a highly popular meme within Zero Escape circles. ==Release==

999 was originally released in Japan by Spike on December 10, 2009, for the Nintendo DS. In the United States, a replica of the in-game bracelets was included with pre-orders at GameStop; due to low pre-orders, Aksys made these available on their website's shop, both separately and bundled with the game. Upon release, 999 became the eleventh and ultimately final Nintendo DS game to be rated M by the ESRB. It was a commercial failure in Japan, with 27,762 copies sold in 2009 and an additional 11,891 in 2010, reaching a total of 39,653 copies sold. Meanwhile, American sales were described as being strong; according to Uchikoshi, this was a surprise, as the visual novel genre was seen as being particular to Japan and unlikely to be accepted overseas. In addition to the game, other 999 media was released. The game's soundtrack was published by SuperSweep on December 23, 2009. A novelization of the game, Kyokugen Dasshutsu 9 Jikan 9 Nin 9 no Tobira Alterna, was written by Kenji Kuroda and released by Kodansha in 2010 in two volumes, titled Jou and Ge. Coinciding with the release of the game's sequel, ''Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (2012), 999 was reprinted under the title Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, with new box art featuring the Zero Escape'' brand. An iOS version of the game, 999: The Novel, was developed by Spike Chunsoft as the second entry in their Smart Sound Novel series. It was released in Japan on May 29, 2013, and worldwide in English on March 17, 2014. This version lacks the Escape sections of the Nintendo DS version, and features high resolution graphics and an added flowchart that helps players keep track of which narrative paths they have experienced; additionally, dialogue is presented through speech bubbles, and an extra ending is included. Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, a bundle that contains remastered versions of 999 and ''Virtue's Last Reward, was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in the West on March 24, 2017. People who purchased the Windows version through Steam in its first week of release received a complimentary soundtrack, with songs from 999 and Virtue's Last Reward. In Japan, the Microsoft Windows version launched on March 25 and the console versions on April 13. The European PlayStation Vita version was released on December 15. The Nonary Games was later released for Xbox One on March 22, 2022, and was added to the Xbox Game Pass service for console, PC and cloud on the same date. The 999 remaster retained most of the features from The Novel'', but the extra ending from the iOS version was not included. ==Reception==

999 was well received by critics, according to the review aggregator Metacritic. Reviewers enjoyed the writing and narrative, A Famitsu writer said that they enjoyed solving puzzles, and that it gave them a sense of accomplishment; Best Graphic Adventure of 2010 on a Handheld System from RPGFan, and an Editor's Choice Award from Destructoid. and Jason Schreier at Kotaku included it on a list of "must-play" visual novels worth playing even for people who do not like anime tropes. RPGFan listed it as one of the thirty essential role-playing video games from the years 2010 to 2015. ==Sequels==

999 is the first game in the Zero Escape series, and was originally intended to be a stand-alone game. The development for the sequel began after the first game got positive reviews. was developed by Chunsoft for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita, and was first released on February 16, 2012, in Japan, and later that year in North America and Europe. ''Virtue's Last Reward'' also follows a group of nine people, and focuses on game theory, specifically the prisoner's dilemma. Zero Time Dilemma, released in 2016, is set between the events of the previous two games, and has morality as its main theme. ==Notes==