I undertook a project to review 29 freeware visual novel localizations that were part of three “al|together festivals” that took place in 2005, 2006, and 2008. I published my first review in May 2021 and my final reviews in December 2023. I then capped off the review-stage of the project with three ranking evaluation pieces (which also covered the two novels I did not write full reviews for) in January 2024. But, while I completed my initial goal of reviewing all of the novels, the project lives on – for I not only have more to say about some of them, but I may also learn new information about some of the pieces. Today, I take a quick look at a user-friendly development for installing and running one of the 31 novels: Midsummer Haze. (Related: See my full review of Midsummer Haze.)
(Note: Feel free to skip ahead to the Midsummer Haze download news update.)
The Challenges of Finding and Running Midsummer Haze
I remember all of the novels fairly well because I not only read them, but also took the time to review them. But Midsummer Haze stands out from the rest for many reasons – some for better but many for not-so-better. Midsummer Haze was originally released in Japan as Manatsu no Kagerou in 2004. The English Midsummer Haze localization was one of the 16 visual novels contributed to al|together 2006. It immediately stands out from the al|together 2006 set for three reasons. Firstly, it is one of only three visual novels from al|together 2006 that only works under a Japanese language environment (a characteristic shared by two al|together 2005 releases). Secondly, it is one of only two al|together novels to be released as a patch rather than a stand-alone installable. By this I mean that the English translation patch has to be applied to the original Japanese Manatsu no Kagerou to be able to work. 29 of the 31 English al|together novels can be installed as is – but just Midsummer Haze and al|together 2005’s io [Christmas Eve] require the original Japanese novel to play the English novel.
I will submit for the record that it is a good thing that the vast majority of al|together releases are not patches. Requiring the original Japanese novel creates an additional point of failure for future playability purposes. This point of failure is especially dangerous when we are dealing with localizations of freeware Japanese visual novels released somewhere in the neighborhood of two decades ago. While some of the original al|together releases have issues (many of the original Windows ONScripter releases are unstable on Windows, almost all of the original Linux releases require using a different ONScripter-EN executable, and the MacOS releases do not run on ARM-based Macs, a problem that Insani is working on), none are too difficult to get up and running.
The patches were a different story.
The first patch-release, io [Christmas Eve] (“ioCE”), was based on a specific release of the Japanese game from 2005. The developer of ioCE released an update to the original Japanese game in 2006. The original Insani patch does not work on the update. This would have been a minor issue had the Japanese ioCE developer kept the 2005 release online. However, as I explained in my article, the 2006 ioCE release – which remains available for download from its original source– supplanted the 2005 build that Insani relied on. Fortunately, by the time I got around to reviewing ioCE for my project, a fix-patch had been released.
Midsummer Haze proved to be a greater challenge. The English patch, when run without the Japanese Manatsu no Kagerou, offers to download the Japanese novel from its original source. Unfortunately, the original source is no longer online – and it turned out I was not the only person who could not find Manatsu no Kagerou anywhere. As I explained in a full and detailed article, an interaction on former Twitter inspired me to dig into the issue after having put it off, lest my al|together project came up one review short of completion. I need not recount the entire story here since I wrote about it previously – but I got lucky in stumbling upon an old torrent which happened to have the old Manatsu no Kagerou executable. I was able to download the torrent and confirmed that it indeed contained the Manatsu no Kagerou we were looking for. My Twitter contact added the executable to a MEGA drive folder containing all of the Insani and al|together novels (including Insani’s demo localizations – which I did not review as part of the al|together project), and I was able to point readers of my Manatsu no Kagerou review to the MEGA drive.
Manatsu no Kagerou Link Added to apothes.is al|together 2006 Mirror
While the MEGA drive is a perfectly fine solution for obtaining Manatsu no Kagerou (as well as a one-stop-shop for getting all of the al|together novels), I would prefer for readers to have the option of downloading the Japanese novel in the same way they can download all of the other al|together novels – from an original torrent or simple direct download link. For example, for the al|together 2006 set, I have been directing readers to a mirror of the original al|together 2006 website (sadly the original al|together 2006 site went the way of the original Manatsu no Kagerou site – the 2005 and 2008 sites are more happily maintained by Insani). I learned in an email exchange that the admin of the al|together 2006 mirror had, like me and my Twitter contact originally, been unable to find the Manatsu no Kagerou executable. Upon finding my writing – the admin not only added a administrator’s note with a link to the direct download of Manatsu no Kagerou, but also kindly credited yours truly for doing the research to find it (my article also credits the admin of the MEGA drive for making my discovery available). With this, it is now possible to download Manatsu no Kagerou and the Midsummer Haze patch from the al|together 2006 mirror that I have been pointing readers to for this entire project. Talk about great news.
The Darker Reason Midsummer Haze is Memorable
I did say there are three reasons that Midsummer Haze is memorable.
The first two have to do with my researching how to run it at all. I dare say that my discovery of the original Manatsu no Kagerou executable may be my best contribution to preserving al|together.
The third reason is the game itself. Midsummer Haze looks unassuming at first, but it has the potential to be a nightmare. It has four endings. Two of the four endings, along with post-completion extra content, are locked behind a random trigger mechanic. In short, the player has to keep doing one of the two immediately accessible endings until the third ending randomly happens to occur instead of the game looping back to the title screen. I do not know what the odds are – but I will submit that I needed 43 tries to make it happen on my first run, and 19, 30, 28 on my next three. There was a point when I did this the first time – perhaps as it dawned on me that I was skipping the same dialogue for the 30th time – where I wondered if I had found something I was not supposed to. Perhaps this was my punishment. Maybe some things are not meant to be discovered.
(See my new companion article for proof that it is possible to have much better luck with Midsummer Haze’s trigger.)
Midsummr Haze was so traumatic that it has thus far inspired two additional articles on repetitive video game tasks (my article on a certain fight in Persona 3 FES and on catching a Dragonair in Pokémon Yellow) – and I have some other similar articles in the pipeline.
But nothing is truly comparable to Midsummer Haze.
I was charitable in writing my al|together reviews. This is not to say all the novels needed charity – many of them are genuinely good pieces separate and apart from crediting them for their humble beginnings and unique place in Japanese-to-English visual novel localization history – see for example my 10 favorite al|together pieces. But to be sure, there were some I did not much care for. Midsummer Haze unsurprisingly came in last place – 31 out of 31 – on my final al|together ranking. This ranking was not for its story or art style – both of which were inoffensive. Now to be sure, it would have been in the bottom third of my ranking even had its structural quirk been more reasonable, but it would not have been last. It is last on my ranking entirely because (A) the random trigger mechanic is insane in practice, and (B) the novel itself does not justify the suffering required to reach the conclusion. While still being nice, I felt it was necessary to ensure that anyone who went through the trouble of jumping through multiple hoops to run Midsummer Haze (recall it requires a Japanese language environment and, for Linux users like me, also requires WINE) at least knew what they were getting into. (The other two Japanese environment games from al|together 2006, Collage and Summer, Cicadas, and the Girl are very much worth the effort to set up and run.)
Thanks to the admin of the al|together 2006 mirror, I dare say Midsummer Haze is now easier to install than at any point in the last 15-or-so years. But should you install it? That is a different question. I can only recommend Midsummer Haze for people who have a specific and particular interest in doujin visual novels from the era or who want to experience the random trigger for themselves and see how many tries it takes to unlock the third ending. In theory – with great luck, Midsummer Haze only takes about 15-20 minutes to read to completion. In reality, I would block off some more time than that. For those of you who would prefer a fun, non-commercial, entirely free, classic visual novel localization that does not run the risk of making you want to break whatever you are reading it on, I recommend going through my ranking articles and reading my reviews to find some that may interest you.
(PS: If anyone who can decompile a KiriKiri visual novel is reading this, I would love to know how the random trigger actually works.)
