Fatal Frame

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Video game fandom
NameFatal Frame
Japanese name零～zero～
Developer(s)Koei Tecmo
Nintendo
Publisher(s)Koei Tecmo
Nintendo
Release dateDecember 13 2001
Platform(s)PS2, Xbox, Wii, Wii U, Switch, Steam, Xbox One, PS4, PS5
Genre(s)Survival Horror
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Fatal Frame, called 零 or Zero in Japan and Project Zero in Europe, is a series of Japanese survival horror video games primarily developed by Tecmo (now Koei Tecmo). The first game came out in 2001, and the most recent new release in the main series was the fifth game, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, in 2014. Since then there have been two remasters of existing games, the latest being the remaster of Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse in March 2023. The series also has a tie-in movie, a manga, two light novels, and a spin-off 3DS game, Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir.

The Fatal Frame series is known for its largely female cast of characters, its psychological and atmospheric approach to horror, and its traditional Japanese settings, with stories that draw heavily on themes from Japanese folklore.

Canon

Each of the Fatal Frame games has a largely standalone story in which the protagonists investigate a haunted location to learn how it became cursed. The player's only weapon against hostile spirits is the Camera Obscura, an antique camera with the supernatural power to exorcise ghosts.

  • Fatal Frame (2001) - Miku Hinasaki goes to search for her missing brother in an isolated mansion.
  • Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (2003) - Twin sisters Mio and Mayu stray into the Lost Village, which vanished many years ago on the night of a festival.
  • Fatal Frame III: The Tormented (2005) - Rei Kurosawa, a photographer, starts having strange dreams about an old manor in the snow, after an image of her dead fiance mysteriously appears in a photo she took.
  • Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (2008) - Ruka Minazuki and Misaki Aso return to the island where they were once kidnapped in search of their lost memories.
  • Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water (2014) - Yuri Kozukata goes in search of her missing mentor on Mt. Hikami, an infamous suicide spot.

Fandom History

For much of the fandom's history, activity was focused on fan-hosted forums and fansites. The earliest discussions were hosted on official Tecmo game forums, and moved from there to fan-run forums when the official ones were shut down. The first major Fatal Frame forums were FatalForums on Lord Himuro's site threatonline.com, but the largest and most lasting English Fatal Frame fan community was Beyond the Camera's Lens. Popular fansites/forums in other languages included Project Sae and YoruZero (Spanish) and Akaichou.de (German). Of these, only Project Sae survives in its original form; Beyond the Camera's Lens and Akaichou.de are no longer online, and YoruZero has moved to Facebook. Currently most fan discussion takes place on Discord, though there are also communities on Reddit and Tumblr. While the series has always been niche, it has maintained a steady level of activity over the years, with a core of devoted fans maintaining long-term community spaces where fans can congregate, respond to news, and share fanworks. There is a small but active speedrunning community, with the first game considered easiest to speedrun.

In Japanese fandom in the 2000s, image boards were popular, and many fans had personal sites where they posted fanworks. Finding these scattered sites was made easier by the fandom's dedicated fansite search engine, ZERO Search (archive link). ZERO Search went offline in 2013, and fan activity has largely moved to Pixiv and Twitter since then. Though the fandom is small, Japanese artists and writers have regularly organised doujinshi anthologies to celebrate game release anniversaries.

As is the case with many older game series, lack of easy access to the canon has been a growing problem, especially in English-speaking fandom. Before 2008, all existing games in the series were widely accessible to players, as all were released globally and were available on the PlayStation 2, an enormously popular console. However, this began to change when Koei Tecmo entered into a development partnership with Nintendo. The fourth game in the series, Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, was a Wii exclusive which was not officially released outside Japan. When it became clear no release was imminent, programmer Tempus began work on a Fan Translation using on-the-fly game patcher Riivolution. The project was completed in 2010, with help from fellow coders Chabi and Mr. Mongoose, and crowdsourced translations and testing from the Fatal Frame fan community. One of the main translators went on to create her own fan translation site, FFTranslations, translating supplemental material for Fatal Frame and other small video game canons.

Inconsistent localisaton continued. The 2012 remake of Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly was also Wii-exclusive and never released in the US, though it did get an official release in Europe and Australia. The fifth game, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, was released in 2014 exclusively on the Wii U, and while it did receive a global release, it was only available as a digital download, which was too large to fit on the standard 8GB version of the console. These problems made it difficult for any but the most hardcore fans to keep up with the latest releases, and the fandom's activity levels have declined compared to its heyday in the mid-2000s. The perceived neglect of international players led to the creation of Operation Zero, a campaign group which aimed to pressure Koei Tecmo and Nintendo to release the games more widely.

Currently, thanks to multi-platform remasters released internationally in 2021 and 2023 respectively, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water and Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse have become the easiest games in the series to access, while the three original games are not readily available through official channels. Many new players who are able to choose to emulate the earlier games. Let's Plays and streams are also common ways to access them.

Characters and Pairings

Because of the limited availability of later games in the series until recently, the existing fanworks skew old and the most popular characters and ships are from the first three games, although some characters/ships from Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water are rising in popularity. Gen fics currently outnumber shipfic overall. While there are more popular ships (relatively speaking; a popular ship by Fatal Frame standards is one with more than ten fics), shipping content in the fandom is varied, without any obvious juggernauts. Yuri and incest ships are quite common, as the canon offers an abundance of subtext (and some text) for both.

Characters

Pairings

Additionally, Misaki Aso/Madoka Tsukimori, Yo Haibara/Sakuya Haibara and Choshiro Kirishima/Yo Haibara (from Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse) are very popular in Japanese fandom, though not well-represented in English spaces.

Fanworks

Fan Animation

Communities

Resources

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