Released by Chunsoft in the year 2009 on the Nintendo DS, Zero Escape: 9 Hours, 9 Persons,
9 Doors, often called '999' for short, would be the first game in an eventual trilogy.
Written and directed by series creator Kotaro Uchikoshi, the game is mainly a psychological
horror visual novel with sci-fi and puzzle solving gameplay elements. For story, the
game features a college student named Junpei, alongside 8 other kidnapped people who are
forced to play in a death game and try to survive. The game features multiple endings
and multiple routes based on the selection of doors the player chooses until the end,
though there is one true, canon ending. For gameplay, the story elements are broken up
by a variety of puzzles, tied in some way to numbers, and the overall death game, called
the Nonary Game (Nonary means 9), is a numerical puzzle on its own. There are point-and-click
adventure elements involving discovering items and manipulating a small inventory to uncover
clues as well. Due to a plot element, the true ending of the game can only be accomplished
once an entirely separate but specifc playthough has been completed. The story only gets larger
from here, so let's cut it down to size with a RECAPitation.
The year is 2027 and the game begins with an enormous cruise liner exploding, to which
we are introduced to a college student named Junpei, who is startled awake by a loud noise
and tumbles out of bed. He finds himself in a strange bunk with a door with the number
5 splattered across it. He also sees a strange watch-like device has been locked onto his
wrist that also displays the number 5, and observing his surroundings, it appears he's
inside of a ship. However, the window suddenly bursts open as water begins gushing in, and
as his room begins floodiing, his mind races. In the clarity, he recalls being kidnapped
by a strange masked man dressed in black and being knocked unconscious quickly by a strange
white smoke grenade before waking up here.
He finds a locked suitcase and solving the puzzle to its combination, he finds instructions
on how to mathematically calculate a digital root, as well as some key cards and a calculator.
Using this new knowledge to unlock the door before him, he escapes out of the flooding
room only to soon find himself in a luxurious lobby. He runs into a group of diverse people,
who are also in a rush, quickly checking for any escape route out of here. As they check
some large numbered doors, they all learn they each woke up here recently in a similar
locked room scenario as Junpei. Most surprisingly Junpei finds his childhood friend and secret
crush Akane among the crowd, but their reunion is cut short as a voice comes over a speaker
system. The voice introduces itself as Zero, the one who invited them all here to particpate
in a game where they put their life on the line, the Nonary Game. They discover the rules
of the game in their pockets, and learn that each of the numbered doors on the ship have
a specific number, as do each of the nine people there. If there is a group of 3-5 people
whose numbers are the digital root that match the door, then that door will open and all
who enter a door must contribute and leave together as well. The goal of the game is
simply to escape by finding a number 9 door. He also mentions this ship is intentionally
like the infamous Titanic ship, and is currently sinking with about 9 hours left of staying
afloat. A nearby clock chimes 9, and the Zero declares the game has begun.
At first, everyone rejects the game, and begins scouring for other means of escape, but after
searching, they find they are sealed in. They also learn they are confined to 3 decks, A,
B, and C, with a few additional locked doors and an elevator all with unique locks and
celestial symbols on them. Junpei finds it awfully suspicious that His childhood friend
Akane is here in this motely mix of people, but for now, the group is faced with choosing
between the number 5 or number 4 door. Junpei insists that firstly they should all at least
organize themselves and introduce each other. Despite Akane introducing Junpei by name,
a large man insists they use code names instead to hide their real identity in case Zero is
listening in. He then calls himself Seven after the number on his bracelet. A silver
haired boy then calls himself Santa as San means 3 in Japanese. An older man with the
number 1 calls himself Ace. A lady dressed as a dancer with the number 8 calls herself
Lotus after its 8 petals. A blind man with the number 2 calls himself Snake, after dice.
A red-headed girl with the number 4 calls herself Clover after its lucky 4 leaves, and
its also revealed she and Snake are siblings. Akane volunteers to give out her real named
since she outed Junpei, but Junpei instead names her June, after the month, and her number
6. The final man who seemed oddly quiet and nervous this whole time, does indeed hold
the number 9, but doesn't want anything to do with them.
Clover walks up to talk to him, but he then grabs her and pulls out a knife to her neck,
telling everyone to back off. He moves her to door 5 and forces her to put her hand on
a scanning panel next to it and register her bracelet to this door. Junpei finds it awfully
suspicious that this man knows how to operate these doors without anyone saying how. Mathematically,
as the number 9, the man is in an advantagous position to work with any other group of 2
to total a door independently, and he knows this as he forces Ace to register his number
1 and then step back. When the number 5 doors now open he shoves Clover away and dashes
through, closing the door behind him with a smirk.
The group finds the doors have relocked behind him, however they quickly hear loud beeping
coming from within, and the 9th man now panicking, accusing some man of lying to him and getting
him killed. The lock to the door is engaged and unable to be opened for now, as the group
hears an explosion go off in the room, and then the lock disengage. Using their own numbers,
they re-open the door without stepping in and are horrified to see the bloody fragments
of the 9th man splattered beyond the door. June has a feverish spell and everyone is
fearful about moving forward now, but Snake points out it wasn't a traditional trap that
killed the 9th man, but likely because he broke Zero's rule of everyone who verified
a door must go through and leave together as well. He produces a note given to him from
Zero specifically in braille to accomodate his blindness, and informs him since he cannot
see and solve puzzles in that sense. He explains there are RED and DEAD devices to every set
of doors, short for Recognition and Deactivation devices. The RED devices allow people to open
the doors and arm the detonators, and the DEAD devices deactivate the small bombs put
inside them while they all slept, that will explode in 81 seconds if not hit by the same
people who hit the RED. (So, people cannot sneak into a room they did not open) In addition,
the only way to remove the bracelets is to either escape or die, but either way the bracelets
become nonfunctional. With the rules of the game now fully explained, they resign themselves
to particpating.
With the remaining 8 people, they split to where Seven, Clover, Snake and Ace enter can
door 5, and Junpei, June, Santa and Lotus can enter door 4. Junpei is actually interested
in investigating the 9th man's bodies for clues since he did seem to know more, but
doesn't want to expose June to the traumatic sight. He thinks fast and make the hard decision
to go through door 5 instead. Snake then says to subtract 5 from their group in order to
accomodate Junpei, so Ace and Clover must go through door 4 now, and whispers something
to Clover before she goes. So now, Seven, Snake and Junpei enter Door 5, and the rest
through door 4.
Entering the door, Junpei and his team quickly find the DEAD to save themselves, though the
remains of the 9th man show his bracelet is still somehow functional. Entering a first
class cabin, they work to solve a musical riddle and progress forward, and Junpei feels
Seven is acting awfully suspicious despite claiming he's an amnesiac. Now solving a card-themed
puzzle in a casino locked room, they make it up to C deck and find the hospital room.
In the room are 4 large doors, 3 with numbers and REDs on them, for the number 3, 7, and
8 doors. Through the last door, the Second group of June and team now enter, and everyone
is surprised to meet up again. As they talk, Seven announces he suspects they're on the
Gigantic, one of the two sister ships to the Titanic that was convertered from a cruise
liner to a hospital ship in the first world war, but, its only a theory, and they turn
to search for missing hardware needed to activate the 3 REDs before them somehow missing parts.
After and hour, the group reconvenes empty-handed, but now somehow the REDs are repaired and
functional, but now Snake is missing.
As they search, Santa quietly mentions not ot trust anyone as he suspects one of them
repaired the doors without the others knowing and is keeping that and other things secret.
With Snake nowhere to be found, the group resigns to moving on ahead, but Lotus points
out that right now, with 7 people, there won't be enough people to get everyone through the
doors. No combination of 4 will result in 3 that works, so two groups of 3 will have
to work, leaving someone behind. She motions a vote on who gets sacrificed, but Ace vounteers
to stay behind, urging them to hurry and escape and come back and rescue him. He then turns
and injects himself with an anesthetic called Soporil-beta he found in the hospital search,
explaining he planned on using it at some point, though not on himself, but with this,
the group has no choice but to leave him behind.
With the group split in 3 different options for moving forward for either Door 7 or 8,
Junpei picks Door 8 with Lotus and Clover, while Santa, Seven and June enter Door 7.
Beyond Door 8, they find the DEAD in time and avoid their bombs, but this time find
themselves before a Lab. With Clover and Lotus, who turns out used to work for a cyber-security
firm, Lotus muses that perhaps human minds are simply like wireless monitors receiving
data from a remote source, and not independantly. Such an idea may explain why there are people
with data processing issues, like those who are blind, amnesiac, or suffer illnesses like
prosopagnosia, which is the inablity to recognize faces. Working together, they get through
another locked-room puzzle, during which Clover asks more about her brother and reveals he
became blind through a bad car accident that claimed his vision. He even lost an arm and
his current left one is prosthetic. After escaping the room they are surprised to find
the second team so fast, and even more surprised to find their joint hallway leads right back
to the hospital room where Ace still is.
Ace has woken up from his nap, and each team found a celestial key to open corrsponding
celestial doors, but Clover still wants to check Door 3 to see if Snake was there. Lotus
urges them to check out the celestial locks in the meanwhile, so She and Santa investigate
one door while Junpei and June investigate an elevator. After some foreplay wordplay,
they take it and it pass by the flooded but sealed D deck and into the lower E deck. Finding
Door 6, they report back to Lotus and Santa who found Door 1. Returning now to the hospital
room, they find Clover and the others returned as well, but with the dismal news that they
found Snake, dead in the same gruesome manner that killed the 9th man.
Seven suspects Snake was murdered by at least two other people who opened Door 3 with him
and pushed him in alone to die when everyone else was searching for the RED pieces. Ace
suggests Zero killed Snake in order to rattle their trust and divide themselves so they
all lose the death game, but this backfires as Clover then suspects one of them here is
Zero. As the clock chimes in signalling 3 hours left, they focus for now, and find the
Number 2 door, which makes the only door left unfound the 9th door. With 3 door options,
the 7 prisoners each vote on which door they want to enter. Junpei is allowed to announce
the votes, but secretly cheats and reads his last, changing it to whichever one he wants,
which is Door 6. They reorganize and discuss, resulting in Junpei, June, Santa and Ace going
through Door 6, and Clover, Lotus, and Seven going through door 1.
Beyond they find a massive engine room and June suddenly feels feverish again. As she
rests, the guys solve the puzzles within, and Santa says this all reminds him of this
one experiments, where scientists ran rats through a deadly escape puzzle, and each generation
of rat got faster at finding the exit, to the point of instantly knowing. Stranger still,
the same experiment with a completely different set of rats yielded even faster results somehow
as the rats in the first experiment were solving it. Santa doesn't know what it meant, but
remarks that in a crisis, the real character and potential of a person comes out. Solving
the puzzle, Junpei picks up June and returning he sees Santa staring darkly at a picture.
He explains its a picture of his sister, and wonders if he's the type of person who rewards
others or punishes others. Moving past the puzzling action, they run into the cargo room
now, and find cards with pictures of all 9 of the players on them. They also find a box
with 9 slots and Junpei is relieved to find this puzzle blatantly obvious. However, June
has another fever spell, and he leaves it to Ace to put the pictures of them all in
numberical order. Santa mentions when they get out Ace can likely get medicine for her
easily as he told them he's actually the president of Cradle Pharacueticals, whose prize product
is an anesthetic called Soporil. Junpei finds it awfully suspicious that Ace is somehow
unable to arrange their pictures in numerical order, and suddenly remembers what Lotus mentioned
earlier about prosopagnosia, and suspects Ace suffers from it.
Solving the puzzle easily, Junpei solves another puzzle, and in doing so they uncover a strange,
ornate coffin, and within it, another key and a gun with 6 bullets. Intimidated by the
gun, Junpei leaves it and takes the key, and after moving on, the group is relieved to
finally discover Door 9, but are soon shocked to find there are two number 9 doors in this
room. Junpei is stumped but Santa says the letter from Zero never said there was one
exit, that was their own assumption, and seeing this, it means all 9 of them could have escaped
and left no one behind, and the death game was actually designed so everyone could live.
For whom they have now, if they left June behind, the three of them could leave right
now, but all three of them agree to find the others, despite knowing that there was now
no way all seven people could leave together. Junpei now notes this room appears to be some
sort of altar, and in it, another coffin. Returning to the main lobby, they find Seven
and Lotus also there now explaining they can't find Clover who disappeared after searching
on her own. The group of 6 now split up to search for her, and Junpei thinks to check
by the dead body of Snake. He rechecks the body and notes something seems off, and realizes
this dead body has a left arm, while the real Snake didn't, so somehow, this is a decoy
corpse.
Unfortunately, when they return, the others have found Clover, in the 1st class suite,
literally stabbed in the back. In the same room, they find a safe that Seven found earlier
but couldn't open, but Junpei suspects someone recently did. Searching for nearby clues on
Clover's killer, he wanders to the hallway where the 9th man died, and Junpei notes its
odd how his bracelet is now missing. However, he keeps this information to himself, though
Seven now reports there was a note in Clover's hand. Picking it up, Junpei deciphers the
riddle to a sequence that deals with their bracelets, revealing a sequence of numbers
that turns out to be the combination for the safe. Within Junpei finds a sheet of information.
He learns the Nonary Game was played once 9 years ago, Snake was part of the previous
game, the owner of Crade Pharmaceuticals helped fund it, and Zero wants revenge. Putting his
hands in his pocket, Junpei asks all of them to follow him as he believes he has solved
who killed Clover and Snake, and the clock now chimes, indicating they have one hour
left.
Junpei first verifies one can verify a door just by having a bracelet near enough, and
a palm is not actually necessary. He then asks Ace to identify him, and then tells Ace
he's actually Santa in Junpei's clothes. Ace retorts he's obviously Junpei because the
bracelet for Junpei is 5 so he can't be Santa. Junpei then catches him, saying a normal person
doesn't distinguish people by their clothes or numbers, but their faces, and Ace could
not obviously tell the difference, so he must have prosopagnosia, and this clinches Ace
as the killer. Junpei explains his evidence; first, Ace volunteered to stay behind in the
hospital room at first since they required him to open Door 3, and without him, he could
hide the dead body in the shower. Second, the dead person in the shower wasn't Snake's,
but a person in snake's clothing, which is something someone with propagnosia could not
tell. The motive is clear when one considers Snake knew Ace's identity and thus could either
reveal him, or hold a grudge on him. Ace admits he is the CEO of Cradle, but the note Zero
left is a trap meant to frame him. However, Junpei reveals Ace has the number 9 bracelet
on him, and thus was the only person who could have opened the 3 door by himself. Breaking
down, Ace admits everything Junpei has said is true, and that he even got the knife he
killed Clover with, from the 9th man's corpse after he held up Clover earlier. He did indeed
grab the number 9 bracelet, run into a disoriented man who he thought was snake with the number
2 bracelet, and so opened the number 3 door and shoved the mystery man into it to die.
He then confronted Clover, who saw something past Door 1, and given what Snake had likely
told her, he had to kill her to silence her.
He then proclaims he didn't lose to Junpei, but to Zero, who somehow knew Ace would do
all of these things and set up this trap unerringly. He then grabs Lotus as well as the gun from
the coffin, and holds her hostage. He explains he also lied to the 9th man, setting him up
to be killed so he would not only serve as a test to the severity of consequences of
the game, but also because the 9th man knew Ace's real identity and this game, and this
would allow Ace to claim the 9 bracelet. He now moves away with Lotus, and intends to
use her to open the 9 door on his own.
Seven and Junpei follow after him anyway, but are too late to stop him from entering
one of the doors. They now hearing knocking from the coffin, and opening it up, they find
Snake, alive and in a change of clothes as suspected. Snake explains he actually was
knocked out by some gas, and has been here since, so it likely meant Zero had someone
else put on Snake's clothes. In fact, Seven now produces what Clover found and he pulled
off her body earlier, which is a bracelet with the number 0 on it. Testing it out without
leaving, they find the braclet scans, but doesn't produce a 0, which is something Snake
suspected. Trying a few combinations, they learn that while this watch claims its 0,
its actually 6, whatever that suggests.
They now hear water begin filling the lower levels, and Snake says he has an idea so the
three of them could enter the last door now. Crushing his fake arm and squeezing off the
bracelet, Snake is now immune to the effects of the doors, and the three of them dash forward.
They find themselves in front of a giant incinerator, and within it, Ace with Lotus still hostage,
and yet another 9 door behind them. The incinerator now warns it will close in 9 minutes, and
Ace infuriates and mocks Snake for killing Clover personally. Snake flies into a rage,
and while Ace shoots him and puts him down, Snake rises up, coldly determined to kill
Ace. Ace empties the rest of his bullets into Snake, but Snake still clutches strongly onto
him like a man possessed. Escaping out of the incinerator as it closes, they yell out
to Snake, but he is fiercely determined to die taking Ace down with him as they are both
burned to death.
Junpei finds an elevator back to June and Santa, but finds June by herself collapsed
before the altar. He hurries to her, calling out her real name, and horrified to find her
so cold. She tells him she's not likely to make it, and that she's always liked him since
they were kids. Zero now comes on the intercom, explaining the Game is now over, and Junpei
has chosen the wrong path. However, Zero explains the true loser is Zero himself, and a confused
Junpei hears a door close behind him. He leaves Akane behind for just a second to check and
sees no one, but is shocked to turn back and see Akane gone into thin air. He screams for
her and gets no reply, and as the game ends, he sees a familiar smoke grenade release its
fumes and collapses as the amount of players to escape this round, is zero.
That is, for this timeline. As the game begins for a different but similar Junpei, the events
progress exactly as before, but this time, rather than change his mind and enter Door
5, this Junpei has chosen to enter door 4 with Lotus, June and Santa. As they solve
their first puzzle, June mentions how this ship is like the Titanic Zero mentioned, and
how she believes the story of how a curse sank the Titanic, as rumor goes in the cargo
hold of the Titanic was a cursed stolen mummy from Egypt that was frozen in ice. Santa then
angrily gives Junpei a four-leaf clover bookmark claiming he found it, but hates the notion
of hope, faith, and luck. They find an abstract picture and Lotus mentions she recognizes
this from a book she read that talked about the Morphogenetic field, which relies on the
theory of morphic resonance, which is kind of like telepathy in which information is
transmitted through an unseen medium. She brought up a a study of two large groups of
people with a picture, with both groups guessing at what the image was. What's strange is that
when the second group was told the answer and first group was retested, somehow, with
no communication to the second group, the number of correct answers jumped significantly
in the first group, apparently because more people elsewhere knew the correct answer.
While she laughs it off as pseudoscience, something within Junpei feels off and his
head slightly hurts.
As they move along and solve a puzzle in the kitchen, June then brings up the novel Futility,
which is a real-world story about a cruise liner named Titan that uncannily detailed
the sinking of the ship and tragedy in eerily the same way the actual Titanic did, though
the book came out years before the Ship did. In the story, even the cause, the time, the
date, the dimensions of the ship, and even its speed and cause of failure all ended up
happening to the real Titanic over a decade after it was written. Stranger still, there
was another book by another author where similar events to the Titanic occured, even with the
iceberg collision, and June suggests the possibilty both authors where guided to write their stories
by another spirit. In fact, she suggests the possibility of one of the authors actually
possessing himself to write about the incident 20 years before it happened because his future
self was on the ship and witnessed it firsthand. Junpei is blown away by this random topic
and focuses on the puzzle for now. Later, when solving a puzzle to get out of a locked
freezer, she mentions how there is a special kind of ice, called Ice-9 that actually has
a melting point of 96 degrees Fahrenheit and mentions the potentional for unseen communication
at even the molecular level.
Moving onto the hospital room, events play out as before when both teams meet, though
this time, Junpei joins Clover and Seven in door 7, while Santa, Lotus, and June head
through door 8. This time, they must solve the puzzle within an operating room, and during
which, Seven browses the chemicals and recounts a bizarre mass crystallization story similar
to something June just said in the freezer. Junpei mentions Ice-9 and Seven has a sudden
flash of memory, exclaiming there is a woman named Alice here that will not melt at room
temperature. He mentions that after the Titanic sunk, the ship that was sent in to collect
the bodies of the dead also found a curious wooden coffin. They soon found that unlike
the frozen bodies in the water, hers did not melt, and they soon called her All-Ice, and
eventually Alice, but one day her coffin mysteriously disappeared. It reappeared one day in a New
York Auction where it was bought by the same man who eventually bought the Gigantic, and
thus Seven believes Alice is on this ship. Junpei finds it matches up to the story of
the frozen mummy June told him earlier, but doesn't know what to make of it.
Clover begins to fear Snake might be dead and her next, so Junpei decides to cheer her
up by giving her the 4-leaf clover bookmark he was handed earlier and after he encourages
her to not give up hope and look forward with faith and love, she begins to soften and warm
up again. She then begins to tell him about what happened on this ship 9 year ago, as
she was part of this experiment to help discover psychic powers that can communicate through
unseen fields. She then mention a few philosophical paradoxes, such as Locke's socks or the Ship
of Theseus, which begs the question, how much of an original thing can be replaced before
it ceases to the be the original thing? If you take a boat and replace old parts, is
it the same boat when all the old parts are eventually replaced? Or, if you built a new
boat with those old parts, which boat is actually the original? She is about to continue on
what this has to do with the experiment, when Seven interrupts them and reminds them to
focus on escaping.
As the two groups reconvene in the hospital, events play out similarly again until the
group must then choose between the 1, 2 and 6 doors. Junpei almost gets caught with his
cheating trick by Santa, but chooses Door 1 this time. So, its Junpei, Clover, and Ace
through door 1 and Seven, Santa, June, and Lotus through door 6. Junpei finds himself
in the ship's chart and wheel room, and then the Captain's room, where he remember's Zero
claiming to be the captain of this ship. Within they are shocked to find a man in captain's
garb dead on the floor with a bloody axe beside him and wearing a bracelet with the number
0 on it. It all seems a little too convenient to Junpei, and he doubts this is actually
Zero. Examining the body, Junpei compares the condition of this corpse to the one they
found Snake in, though in describing the brutality, Clover pauses him and realizes the man dead
behind Door 3 couldn't be Snake because Snake had a fake left arm, unlike the dead body
they found. She weeps in relief that her brother is alive, but hearing Santa was the one who
gave Junpei the clover bookmark he gave her for hope, she realizes Santa was another test
subject like herself and Snake 9 years ago. She stops herself from confusing Junpei further
and explains from the top.
9 years ago, herself in a group of 9 were subjects in a previous Nonary game in order
to test the theory of morphogenetic fields, namely telepathy. She's about to reveal the
name of a girl who died during the previous game when Ace interrupts again. Finding a
red book, they open it to reveal All-Ice's name on it, and a key card indicating something
beyond the library on this ship. Junpei explains what he's learned about Alice, and as they
leave he notes Clover has put something large in her pocket. The two groups then reconvene,
with the second group excitedly reporting they found the number 9 door, though he's
surprised to find two 9 doors in the room they bring him to. The realization that all
7 of them getting through even both doors is impossible and thoughts now exchange on
what to do next.
Santa then makes the the bold order that himself, June, Ace, and Lotus will leave, and suddenly
and maliciously pulls a gun on June to ensure everyone one else complies. Junpei surrenders
and complies with Santa, and urges Ace and Lotus to cooperate for now. As they are left
behind, Junpei, Seven and Clover wonder what to do now. They now hear the sound of knocking
on the coffin within the altar room, and see its locked. Junpei suddenly experiences a
flash and hears a voice instructing him how to figure out the combination, and is even
more surprised to see it works. Snake now emerges, alive and well much to the joy of
Clover, though with his clothes changed. They catch Snake up on the events so far, and Snake
explains he's been unconscious since the hospital room when someone gassed him, and he only
just now woke up. More importantly, with Snake, they now can all enter the other 9 door, and
do so. Junpei now confronts Clover about taking the 0 bracelet and she confesses, but when
they test it out, it turns out that despite displaying a 0, the bracelet actually registers
as a 6. This then begs the question of what number June actually is since its unlikely
there are duplicate numbers, and Snake theorizes her bracelet is just upside down and she's
actually been 9 this entire time. Clover points out that doesn't add up for the groups and
numbers she's been in, but Seven points out one more thing, that Santa has conveniently
been in every room June has since beginning to end, forcefully in some cases, so its possible
Santa's number is not only false, but is liklely a zero. It still means there are some duplicate
numbers (both Santa and June could be a 0 for example) but it definitely means that
something is strange with Santa and June.
Entering the 9 door for now, they find more locked celestial doors, as well as a large
library. Within Snake comes clean about the experiments to Junpei, despite an early warning
from Zero earlier not to talk about it to anyone. 9 years ago there were experiments
around the morphogenetic field that took place at the same time, one location being a ship,
and the other a building in Nevada. The whole experiment was backed by Cradle Pharmaceutical,
who wanted to test how to control human minds through resonant events, and after screening
children to see who had the psychic potential for accessing this field, they kidnapped 9
pairs of siblings for the experiement. One set of siblings meant for transmitting information
was put in the Nevada facility, and the other group meant for receiving information, was
put on the ship Gigantic. He said that there was one pair of siblings in which the girl
had actually died, the brother Aoi and the sister Akane. Junpei wondered if it was the
same Akane he saw now as June but dismissed it as impossible.
Moving past the library and another locked room, they find a photo of the 4 founders
of the Nonary games, and Junpei recognizes the mustached man as the one murdered in the
captain's room and the scientist in the picture was the 9th man who died in the beginning
of the game. In addition, the man in the hat was actually Ace, but somehow, Junpei felt
he already knew that despite learning it for the first time here. Seeing the picture suddenly
clears up Seven's amnesia as well, as he recalls he's actually an independant investigator,
who was chasing the case of the missing children 9 years ago. He was caught tailing the crew
loading the children onto Gigantic and found himself inside a ship cell. Escaping through
a grate, he heard the voices of children in panic, especially after hearing the countdown
announcement for an incinerator, and finds them locked in an incinerator below. Leaving
and then coming back, he sees less children than before, and they explain a group of them
left through the 9 door already, so he makes do with rescuing the few remaining. He then
hears a man yell about the sudden disappearance of the kids. The man enters and its the CEO
of Cradle, the man called Ace, enraged at the interruption. He gives chase, and eventually
snatches Akane back and throws her back into the incinerator. Seven couldn't rescue her
in time, and the girl ended up getting burned alive.
Returning to the present, Seven recognizes Snake as the boy he saved from the experiment,
and reveals the last name of the girl who died to be Kurashiki. Junpei is stunned, and
his mind flashes again, as this means the girl who died 9 years ago had the same exact
name as the Akane with them now. He then reveals Santa's name to be Aoi Kurashiki and was Akane's
brother, and they further conclude the 3 mysterious men dead on the ship so far are the other
3 founders of the Nonary game. Junpei also somehow knows Santa is not Zero or at least
is not killing the founders, though it seems logical the next person to be targeted is
the final founder, Ace. They follow their route until they come across an incinerator
and within they find Santa and June knocked to the side, and Ace has taken Lotus hostage.
Seven confronts Ace on being the Cradle CEO and co founder of the Nonary Games, and Junpei
confronts him on his prosopagnosia, which again, he somehow just knows. Ace forces them
away and scans his own, Lotus's and the 9th man's bracelet in, but to his shock the door
does not open. Seven takes the opportunity to close the gap and knock down Ace and save
Lotus, and Junpei confronts Ace on killing the other 3 founders of the game, with the
clues he found out recently and also somehow knew suddenly. He confirms purposefully killing
the 9th man, and accidentally but still intentionally killing his assistant that was dressed as
Snake. Lastly, since he knew the solution to every puzzle, Ace was able to get into
the captain's quarters and murder the last cofounder before Junpei and Clover were able
to investigate there. Ace admits this and explains the reason for the last murder is
because the man there was also to serve as a living witness to the offer Zero privately
made to Ace to confess to his crimes in the past publically. Because of his prosopagnosia,
he could not recognize the faces of his former associates, and killed them due to circumstance.
Of course, this was all per design of Zero, and Junpei and Seven now out Santa, aka Aoi
Kurashiki as Zero.
Santa admits he is Aoi from the experiment 9 years ago, but states he's not Zero but
rather, Zero's assistant. He also corrects their claim that this is all for revenge.
It partly is, but this Nonary game is actually set up to save Akane, though when they turn
to face June, she has seemingly disappeared into thin air. Santa explains the Nonary game
was set up to test morphogenetic fields, or, the ability to transmit and recieve information
through an invisible medium. There were two facilities set up, one was on the Gigantic,
and the other was in Building Q, a warehouse in Nevada built to precisely mirror the interior
of the Gigantic. Within, the Nonary game was played by a group of transmitters, and they
were meant to send the puzzle solutions to the receivers on the ship. However, a mistake
was made and Akane, who was a transmitter, was accidently put on the ship with the other
receivers. Santa then looks Junpei dead in the eye and says he knows that Junpei knows
things he shouldn't and couldn't, and how? Through a morphogenetic field, of course,
and with that, Santa picks up the dropped gun, aims it at Ace, and forces them both
through the door, which now opens for them, and leaves the rest of the group in the incinerator.
We then see the true observer to the whole scenario, who reveals themself to be the true
Zero, or at least the person who will become Zero, who has observed this Junpei and others,
and sent information to him through the morphogenetic field across time itself, and this is young
Akane herself. As it turns out, like Akane, Junpei is actually an esper, able to remember
information from different timelines. In truth, the Akane of 9 years ago suddenly resonated
with Junpei 9 years in the future, who was a boy she has a deep bond with, and as she
survived with the encouragement of hope from a boy named Light who would eventually become
Snake, the group of 9 children solved all the puzzles and made it the end when they
were then trapped in the incinerator. Events played out as Seven had described, so when
it was just Akane then trapped in the incinerator, just as Junpei is now, a computer panel displaying
a sudoku puzzle now appears before both of them. In her timeline, Akane now reaches out
to Junpei in the current timeline, and he now hears her, and is able to communicate
back for the first time. It now all makes sense to Junpei. All of this, the current
Nonary games, was set up by Akane who was really Zero. From the past she is tapping
into a future timeline in which she survives, sets up this death game as Zero, and influences
a version of Junpei that eventually solves this exact puzzle in order to save her past
self 9 years ago, so she can survive and actualize this timeline. So far, she has experienced
multiple timelines linked with multiple Junpei, all ending in failure, until finding this
one where he succeeds.
Solving the sudoku and saving Akane in the past, all seems well for Junpei as he is able
to also deliver the current group safely from the incinerator. Akane is reunited with her
brother, and Seven in the past is able to save all the kids from the sinking Gigantic.
However, Akane knows to herself this is only the beginning for her as she must now put
in motion a future in which Junpei saves her. Meanwhile, Junpei, Lotus, Seven, Clover and
Snake escape upwards and emerge out, to find themselves in Building Q in Nevada. As their
bracelets fall off, they see their's in particular never actually had detonators in them, and
what more, someone conveniently left them an SUV outside with plenty of supplies and
fuel to leave the desert, and Ace tied and bound in the trunk. They see a fresh pair
of tire tracks ahead and conclude Aoi and Akane must have left before them, and now
race to catch up. They ask Ace why he helped make the Nonary game, and he said that for
himself, it was meant to help him past his prosopagnosia if he were able to understand
how other people process faces, though there were other reasons. Junpei then asks if Alice
was real, and Ace explains there never was an Alice, as 9 year ago, he found and opened
the hidden coffin, but all there was inside was a special type of mandragora plant, that
eventually he made into his highly profitable Soporil anesthetic.
As the game ends, they find a strange woman in Egyptian clothing hitchhiking in the road,
and while Junpei finds it awfully suspicious, he soon realizes who she is.
999 has enjoyed the success of selling over 350 thousand copies worldwide.
This RECAPitation was chosen by Nick Soto. Thank you So much for supporting the show
as a patron, If you would like to support the show yourself, please follow the patreon
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