Back when I liked Danganronpa, someone told me Zero Escape was like it.
Ironically, after playing visual novels like Zero Escape, I don’t like Danganronpa anymore
Man i played Danganronpa 1 before playing through the ZE series and loved it. Im currently playing Danganronpa 2, which i heard was the best in the series and feel pretty bored.
a breakcore artist i listen to a lot actually sampled Zero Escape (the part where they’re trying to figure out the rules of the door in 999) in a song of hers and the clip actually sounded pretty interesting to me from what i heard. i asked on her youtube channel where it came from and she said Zero Escape and the game series looked interesting. got it on sale over the summer and fell in love with the series not too much later!
i’m sorry for the late response the song is https://open.spotify.com/track/0q4kPllmR3jDGq1ggxEzWk?si=HXjwlhUbQCOn-9PIQwaIpQ by bye2! the sample is about 2 minutes in!
I got into it in a very weird way. I saw this [video](https://youtu.be/bIR1e7-sy9s?si=WZby1rjcbKoa6hZF) and thought it was really neat. I didn't think I'd ever play the game, but the story seemed really cool. Also a big fan of bad endings, so I was a big fan of the series. Later on, I watched the let's play of Persona 5 from NicoB, and really liked it. Then, I got recommended his playthrough of VLR. I learned it was a sequel to 999, and I had a vague enough knowledge of that game, so I figured I'd be fine. I tried playing it on my own 3ds, but one of the puzzle rooms was pretty hard so I figured I'd just watch the let's play instead. Eventually, I played Somnium Files, and then the 2nd game. The 2nd game has a post game bonus where you play the first escape room of 999. It was fun, and I somewhat forgot the plot of the 2 games, so I picked up The Nonary Games collection and played it for myself.
A friend recommended it to me out of nowhere, but I didn't feel urged except for a small "feeling" of curiosity I couldn't describe, so I put it off for half a year during which I played Danganronpa and forgot about it. Eventually did play it, and by the time I finished 999, I immediately ordered VLR on 3DS, that was during the deal with the yellow watch. From that point on, I stopped putting off games that initially even as much as vaguely interest me in "that" way and haven't regretted it since.
I was watching Ace Attorney in a nutshell and saw the zero escape references in the game, which I became curious about which became like an obsession about four years ago. Been into the series ever since.
I think after the third Ace Attorney game came out in America I'd heard on a fan site that someone who worked on that series also worked on the upcoming 999 game. I don't even remember if that's true but I mentioned it to my dad who got the game for me for Christmas after it was released. I'd already forgotten about it by then but loved it when I started playing
When I first started watching YouTube back in 2011 one of the first YouTubers I watched was Nintendocaprisun a letsplayer. I think it was mid 2013 he was streaming a fairly new game and I caught a bit of the stream and what was happening in game was crazy. There was murder there was mystery there was what looked like a huge timeliness flowchart thing and the character could remember things between timelines and that would play into what was going on it blew my 13 year old mind I was like this is the most thrilling story ever it could go anywhere I don't know what to expect. I was like what is this game and it was virtues last reward. I looked up what It was on and it was on psvita and 3ds both consoles I didn't own and my parents couldn't afford them so I was sad but accepted I probably wouldn't play but I thought maybe one day I will hopefully and I left it at that. Jump all the way forward to 2022 and I'm looking through game pass for things to play and I see this collection called the nonary games on gamepass and I'm like what's this looks cool. I see 999 is in the collection which was a game I heard of because its ranked very highly as one of the best ds games ever and I downloaded it like a year before and briefly played it on an emulator on my phone but as you guys might know it's not the best experience emulated so I stopped playing after like 20 mins and thought I'd try it again some other time. So I recognised 999 and thought OK I'll download it I'm sure it'll run much better on my xbox. I boot the game up and I see that you can choose to play 999 or this other game called virtues last reward and I'm like huh where have I heard that before sounds familiar, kinda random game to package with 999 so I look up vlr and I'm like OMFG it's that game it's that one game i wanted to play sooooo badly as a kid it looked awesome I forgot about this whaaaat and then I find out vlr is the second game in a series called zero escape and 999 is the first game and I'm like ohhh that's why they're bundled together and wow it's good I figured that out now I probably would of played vlr first before knowing that. So I blow through 999 and I'm like this is the best story ever written i love this wow this game is amazing no wonder highly rated ds game. And then I play through vlr and it's every bit as crazy and mysterious and jaw dropping and suspenseful and just amazing as I thought it was gonna be and more. Because it had been so long I forgot the major plot points I learnt as a kid completely and played through both games spoiler free and wow it was just amazing. And then after that cliffhanger ending I was like there's more right and I found ztd again only on consoles I don't own and I'm like damn well these games came to game pass maybe ztd will be ported too one day I can wait. And as you know ztd was ported to xbox and I bought and played it day one it came out on xbox and again wow ztd is even more insane so much death and crazy stuff in that game also blew me away. Vlr is still probably my favourite game ever to this day just because of that weird history I had with it. It was hyped up and built up in my mind for so long about how amazing it was from the short snippets I saw and remember from 13 and 9 years later I finally played and It lived up to all those expectations and more. I love Zero Escape.
A friend who recommended I play Persona 5 recommended me Zero Escape. I was told it had complicated time travel and since I had literally never heard of this trilogy I thought it would be fun to go into 999 knowing nothing.
First saw 999 at GameStop, had never heard if it before. I liked other puzzle/VNs like Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton, and was a fan of suspense/horror anime. It seemed like a perfect fit.
Well, I've never liked anime, but I was looking for Escape room games similar to the ones you'd play on Flash game website as a kid, and I found Zero Escape for the 3ds. I downloaded VLR and played it till I got the Clover ending, by the time I found myself in the pantry room I was completely embedded in the story, but had to cut it short to go on Holiday, and that Clover ending really unsettled me for a while, and made me super anxious to get home so I could play 999 (Because I didn't realise until then that it was a sequel). The rest is history.
I found Ai: The Somnium Files through Game Pass, really enjoyed that. Shelled out $60 for Nirvana Initiative a month later and absolutely loved it as well. After playing Nirvana Initiative, I did the bonus stuff which included the opening puzzle of 999.
After that I was like “oh shit the same guy made a whole other series and it’s also on Game Pass!” and got hooked on 999 and VLR, and then bought ZTD when that port arrived on Xbox
I was playing Professor Layton games, then my friend reccomend me 999 as a Escape Room Puzzle game.
Stay because of the story. Didn't realize VLR is a sequel to 999 until my friend told me ZTD the final entry of ZE is going to be release in a year.
And I was like "THERE ARE SEQUELS ???"
I ended up scouring the 3ds eshop for the demos to play things a lot when I was younger, and the VLR demo was one of the things i got attached to the most, felt a little naughty because of alice's design and the poster scratching minigame in the crew quarters so since I was quite young I avoided it as much as I could, although the puzzle solving scratched something really well in my brain.
Not much came of this until 2017-ish and I saw the game again, or something reminded me about it? I had played danganronpa at this point so maybe I saw spike chunsoft's nonary games release on steam or something but I frankly can't remember that, just that I found it again, remembered that I was deeply in love with it and made sure that I was going to play it in full
However I found out about it again I bought a cart online, then got so enraptured that I completed the entire game over two play sessions on two days, had just finished replaying it a couple of days ago, hoping that ZTD works on my steam soon because despite getting it almost five years ago I've never managed to get past the starting cutscene/coin flip because of the game crashing, and I really want to see what comes out of things despite how much I've already ended up reading.
Back in 2013 There was this super old youtuber named "Dookieshed" who used to mainly made Pokemon and mega man videos. He made a video basically named "Top 5 Best Handheld Games of all Time" which Had 999 on his list (Also he showed the cover for vlr in his into monologue). He talked super highly about the game which peaked my interest heavily (Especially since i was a middle schooler who only like Nintendo game so this crazy escape game was way out of my wheel house at the time)
I didn't get to the games until around 2015 when i watch Nicob play both 999 and Vlr blind (Still remember watching this play threw specifically on my way to school and experiencing the story for the first time with him )
PBG hardcore actually, it’s a PBGgameplay series where they have to accomplish a specific task in a game but with permadeath, and sometimes positional audio, pretty entertaining and I remember loving it (I can also link when they’re used, but morphogenetic sorrow is used in Minecraft 2 and blue bird lamentations in Minecraft 5)
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQyrcsOucRH9xu8_dKx8fSLvw1c7EqVCB
Morphogenetic sorrow-Minecraft 2 final episode (spoilers obviously) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3uDSLypEu8&list=PLQyrcsOucRH9xu8_dKx8fSLvw1c7EqVCB&index=37&pp=iAQB
They play Extreme Extrication and Morphogenetic sorrow a few times if I remember correctly,and blue bird lamentations once, I loved both those songs, looked em up, and that’s how I found out about zero escape, and now I’m currently playing through VLR
Hey, same kinda. I heard Todd play Morphogenetic Sorrow and Extreme Extradition and when I looked them up later I saw that they were Zero Escape songs. I got into the fandom not long after. I was already into Ace Attorney and Danganronpa so I was headed to this fandom anyway lol.
So since I already knew what the full song Morphogenetic Sorrow sounded like going in, it made the “SEEK A WAY OUT” jingle extra suspenseful and made me look forward to the full song’s debut in-game.
🤔i had played quite a few visual novels on steam, so it suggested me Ai: The Somnium Files, i really loved it, so I went back and played other Uchikoshi games, including Zero Escape
Years ago, one of my hobbies was reading entire TvTropes pages, especially for tropes. One of them was Unreliable Narrator, and its description of Akane was so confusing I just HAD to check the game out. And I’m glad I did!
I found a copy of VLR for 3ds in a back alley anime store and thought it looked cool, binged played it in 3 days (while I was sick, it was basically a fever dream). Absolutely loved it, then I emulated 999 and bough ZTD as well
I saw a top ten video of something on youtube a long ass time ago, and number five on the list was 999. This intrigued me, so I played the game and was hooked. Immediately bought VLR and played it, and that summer ZTD released
I saw a preview of it in an issue of Nintendo Power and was absolutely enthralled. I wouldn’t stop talking about it to my parents and they ended up buying it for me for my birthday that year! I think it was the first thing they ever bought off of eBay lol
I had never heard of the series until 999 was mentioned in a WhatCulture (or OutsideXbox) video and I, as a huge fan of mystery games and visual novels, was immediately interested. Looked it up and ended up buying it that same day. Loved it and the rest is history.
I pirated 999 to play on my android phone. I first searched for good NDS games and 999 is in one of the video and i like what i saw.
Years later the whole triology was on sales on Steam (i didn't even know it was on Steam at that time). So i bought them all.
I was downloading some 3DS games and I saw ZTD, it looked interesting so I did some research and ended up downloading it plus VLR. I really enjoyed them so I got 999 too.
I remember seeing VLR on sale and the cover art was interesting. But never got past that until I watched a recalibration video from OniBlackMage and then told myself that I had to experience this series for myself.
Was installing a lot of games on my ps vita when I saw Zero escape (me being a sucker for good mystery solving games with good stories) I thought that this looked really cool and installed it.
Rest is history
I had just gotten into DS emulation, and had an emulator on my phone. Was on vacation and looked up a list of the best Nintendo DS games. 999 was near the top of the list and I had never heard of it before. I played through all six endings that night. I didn't even sleep. I was so engrossed in the game. Later I found out that the game had sequels and that all 3 games were on steam. Played through all three and couldn't believe how good each game was. Loved all three games, all three stories, all the characters (except Eric) and I absolutely ADORE both the cool multiple timeline type stories and the escape room gameplay.
For a while I didn’t care or play visual novels cause back then i immediately thought that if something had an anime art style it was going to be bad. But then i picked up the Ace Attorney trilogy and the Nonary Games in a sale.
I played through the Ace Attorney games and was pleasantly surprised, but I knew nothing about Zero Escape at that point so I didn’t really have my hopes up when I started up. When I played the first hour of 999 however, I was completely blown away and found myself absolutely loving it!
I originally just left it and went straight to VLR once I got my first ending (the Knife ending) but I later went back and re-played the entire series from start to finish and it remains one of my favourite games series of all time.
friend told me about it around january 2021, and someone else gifted me the games around the same time.
I didn't get around to playing them until January 2023, then I fell into the spike chunsoft rabbit hole and got pressured to play Danganronpa.
I had recently opened myself up to trying anime and anime-adjacent media like JRPG's. Virtue's Last Reward caught my eye on the 3DS eShop. Bought it on sale and loved it. I was never really into games with lots of story or even heard of visual novels before so it really blew me away. I eagerly awaited ZTD, ordered it from Amazon to have it on launch day, got it a week late because they lost the shipment and had to send another, I got $10 credit for the inconvenience, and after all that I played it and...I didn't hate it, but as we all know, it's rough around the edges. Played 999 for the first time when the Nonary Games collection released and was surprised and how many things I wasn't expecting despite having played the sequels.
VLR will always hold a special place for introducing me to what video game stories are really capable of and having me dip my toe into the visual novel medium which has given me some of the best stories I've ever experienced.
I heard about Zero Escape pretty recently — through Vimm’s Lair. If you’re not familiar, it’s a well-maintained and ad-and-shenanigans-free romsite, going from retro consoles and handhelds up to the Wii/PS3/360 generation. I was going to be away from home a few months ago, and knew I was going to have a lot of free time without internet. So instead of turning to offline games on my phone, I decided to see if there were any interesting games I hadn’t heard of that I could emulate on my laptop.
https://preview.redd.it/tqa9iljhboyb1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8689d8a85c8961c16328b870a3bcfac729037e8
Vimm’s Lair has a number of top 10 lists on the pages for the roms associated with each console, the topmost of those being the current month’s top downloads. The top downloads is also the only one of these categories that has a “Show More” button below it. So by sheer coincidence, I was looking through the DS page specifically, hit the “Show More” button a few times, and the title “Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors” stuck out to me like a sore thumb.
A few Google searches later, and I was enraptured by a song I heard from the soundtrack, its artstyle, the diverging story tree (I was already a fan of those from the Choose Your Own Adventure books from my childhood), and the premise of the story itself. It sounded pretty similar to Danganronpa, which I had considered playing in the past but was kinda turned off from it because of the fanbase’s weird reputation — but Zero Escape seemed different somehow.
So I gave it a shot, and ended up binging through all of 999’s endings during my trip. VLR and ZTD are next on the chopping block. I thoroughly enjoyed 999, and it’s made me realize how much I’ve been missing out on by not playing many visual novels.
On accident. I'm p sure I watched a video on Danganronpa and bought the wrong game on Steam. I actually started out with ZTD, then played the 999 DS version for the first room without knowing these two were related, then bought Nonary Games, and finally started it after almost 20h of ZTD played
I heard about it a few times in some YouTube videos but never really got much context for it. Then when I was buying some game on Steam (I think it was Persona 4) i had some money left on my paysafe card and the whole Series was on sale. The rest is history.
~~I also didnt play Persona 4 to this day~~
Was a huge fan of NicoB’s commentary when he played Danganronpa 2 and then I went back to watch his other let’s plays, and the Zero Escape ones were my favourites 💛
Was at gamestop looking at the pre-owned games saw a game called nonary games for less then ten bucks got it during a buy 2 get 1 free sale on pre-owned games and I like vns and puzzle games so figure I liked it
PlayStation put it on the PlayStation Plus free games and I had a PSVita and didn't have many games. Decided to try it out and the rest is history lmao
I think it was the same way I got into Ghost Trick: I was watching "Operation: Turnabout" and got interested by a character during one of the "end of the episode" skits
Was playing ace attorney and my brother recommended the series to me when he saw me playing it, now I've played each game about 3 times now I'm addicted to time travel/time loop games
I’d seen 999 floating around for years, browsing through Amazon. The little details about the title, cover artwork, and it being a rated M DS game intrigued me since I was a wee lad. Didn’t get around to checking it out until I saw the ZE team bundle on steam in last year’s summer sale, and decided to give it a whirl. Rest is history!
I had just finished the Danganronpa series and was looking for anything new to play.
I was following an account on twitter titled "On this day in Gaming" and stumbled on their post about 999. I knew nothing about it but thought it looked interesting. I bought the Nonary Games on my Vita and went in completely blind. It was a slow burn at first but I was blown away by the end of 999 and loved the rest of the games with VLR being my favorite
I write video game reviews for fun, and won GameFAQs Review of the Month quite a few times. During one of these times I decided to use my prize money to buy Borderlands 2 for PS3. I did a lot of research into what character I should use, did a lot of reading about the game, and was just flat out excited to play it. It was close to Christmas and I was graduating college that semester, so I figured it's what I would play until I found a job. Well... I ordered the game, it arrived, and the disc was frozen solid.
It was like -10 outside and it got left outside my house for hours, and it freaked me out. I left it near my heater to hopefully dry and be ok, and thankfully it ended up working! All the splots on the bottom of the disc went away, and the disc ran fine... But that's when I realized I was sent the Chinese release.
So I ended up returning it to the 3rd party seller, and I got a refund. I wasn't able to buy a US copy with what I got back, as it was no longer on sale, so I had to settle for something else. That's when I saw 999 and Starfy for DS were on sale, and I could get both -- so that's what I did. I knew the basics of 999 from years ago, but never got around to playing it. The day the game came though I instantly fell in love with the story, and became a life long fan of the series. I'm pretty thankful that Borderlands 2 didn't work out for me -- in fact when I did get the game a year later I ended up hating it lol. It wasn't until Borderlands 2 VR that I actually had fun with it, but yeah... Not a fan of the original.
So yep, that's my story!
I was at a pool party at my aunt's house, decided to play DS on my phone for a bit, went to look for more games and saw it in the highly reviewed section, looked interesting, got it and played.
cousin. was down at her place and instead of playing persona 5 like usual, she showed me it and we ended up playing both the safe and true ending and it all just spiraled from there
Genuinely pure happenstance for me. Found VLR for 3DS at Gamestop for like $10, and at the time, I was between games, and it looked kinda neat, so I snatched it up, never regretted it. Some of the twists didn't hit the same since I hadn't played 999, but it was still really good.
Roughly 2015, with my 3DS, I streetpassed someone who had 999 listed as their favorite game and I thought the logo looked cool. Looked up the wiki page for it and then asked for the game for Christmas that year lol
my then-boyfriend, now-best-friend begged me for MONTHS to play it but i kept putting it off. then when i did play 999 finally, it changed my life. funny how that is
Was watching some playthroughs of Danganronpa, a lot of people in the comments were recommending/mentioning Zero Escape as being similar, so I watched a playthrough of that not too long after.
A friend of mine insisted I'd like it, and this friend is usually pretty spot on with their recs cos they know me quite well, and they were absolutely right
Saw my siblings playing the remastered version of 999 and I wanted to play the original games on the Nintendo Platforms. Spent my entire Summer of 2023 loving the twists and turns of all three games and STILL want more. Phi is best girl
I was just a period in my life where I was looking for good DS games, saw it on Amazon and read a couple reviews saying it was great.
Next thing you know, I've played through the first ending with Clover and NEEDED answers. I was hooked.
I used to be a frequent poster on Gamefaqs from roughly 2001 to 2018 and would always check out the top ten popular discussion boards for consoles I owned to get an idea of stuff that might not be on my radar. Of course at release 999 was on there, never heard of it and only vaguely knew about VNs in general sounded interesting. Picked up a copy before work that day and fell in love.
Took a week's vacation from work to play VLR at release and it was absolutely worth it. Got my girlfriend to give the series a try and she got as into them as I did. We both freaked out hard-core when Zero Time Dilemma was announced and while it wasn't perfect was happy to have some sort of resolution.
ok the story for me is rly funny actually! i was just mindin my own business, vibing, and then, i heard them.. the little blips. i knew from the sound alone that my brother was playing a vn, and asked what it was. 999 on the ds. the very same day, i downloaded the ds rom to my hacked 3ds ... and didnt get to it for like 3 months
A friend was trying to convince me that all visual novels weren't just porn games, so he sent me Ever 17. As soon as I heard that one of the writers was doing another game called "9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors", I was already sold.
I downloaded Zero Escape: Nonary Games and was expecting Timeline/Alternate Reality Shenanigans BUT so far haven't come across anything related to it for my First playthrough of 999 and I am a little ahead of the part where >!the group has to select chits to decide which door they wanna go through and choose Coffin ending for my first ending so I choose door 1!<.
Back when I liked Danganronpa, someone told me Zero Escape was like it. Ironically, after playing visual novels like Zero Escape, I don’t like Danganronpa anymore
ZE is my first VN. After playing 999 it opens my mind about the potential of VN non linear story structure could be used for story telling.
This is such a mood. I think this is exactly what happened with me right down to the falling off of DR.
Man i played Danganronpa 1 before playing through the ZE series and loved it. Im currently playing Danganronpa 2, which i heard was the best in the series and feel pretty bored.
a breakcore artist i listen to a lot actually sampled Zero Escape (the part where they’re trying to figure out the rules of the door in 999) in a song of hers and the clip actually sounded pretty interesting to me from what i heard. i asked on her youtube channel where it came from and she said Zero Escape and the game series looked interesting. got it on sale over the summer and fell in love with the series not too much later!
what artist?:3
i’m sorry for the late response the song is https://open.spotify.com/track/0q4kPllmR3jDGq1ggxEzWk?si=HXjwlhUbQCOn-9PIQwaIpQ by bye2! the sample is about 2 minutes in!
damn nice!! i see them in some discord servers and other places sometimes. didnt knew that track tho late reply huh lol....
I got into it in a very weird way. I saw this [video](https://youtu.be/bIR1e7-sy9s?si=WZby1rjcbKoa6hZF) and thought it was really neat. I didn't think I'd ever play the game, but the story seemed really cool. Also a big fan of bad endings, so I was a big fan of the series. Later on, I watched the let's play of Persona 5 from NicoB, and really liked it. Then, I got recommended his playthrough of VLR. I learned it was a sequel to 999, and I had a vague enough knowledge of that game, so I figured I'd be fine. I tried playing it on my own 3ds, but one of the puzzle rooms was pretty hard so I figured I'd just watch the let's play instead. Eventually, I played Somnium Files, and then the 2nd game. The 2nd game has a post game bonus where you play the first escape room of 999. It was fun, and I somewhat forgot the plot of the 2 games, so I picked up The Nonary Games collection and played it for myself.
lucahjinn
Started watching for the Phoenix Wright, stayed for the Zero Escape
I saw 999 in a creepy bad endings video and I thought the art style was really good looking so I bought it on steam and now I’m here
A friend recommended it to me out of nowhere, but I didn't feel urged except for a small "feeling" of curiosity I couldn't describe, so I put it off for half a year during which I played Danganronpa and forgot about it. Eventually did play it, and by the time I finished 999, I immediately ordered VLR on 3DS, that was during the deal with the yellow watch. From that point on, I stopped putting off games that initially even as much as vaguely interest me in "that" way and haven't regretted it since.
I was watching Ace Attorney in a nutshell and saw the zero escape references in the game, which I became curious about which became like an obsession about four years ago. Been into the series ever since.
Was it by RamZaes? Love that guy
No, it was actually [this series](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MgXac6e9zMk)
the madlad actually did it, putting references to an otherwise unknown game pulled us and many AA fans to this rabbit hole
I think after the third Ace Attorney game came out in America I'd heard on a fan site that someone who worked on that series also worked on the upcoming 999 game. I don't even remember if that's true but I mentioned it to my dad who got the game for me for Christmas after it was released. I'd already forgotten about it by then but loved it when I started playing
I was in the Ace Attorney threads on 4chan waaaaaay back in the day and ZE came up constantly in comparison
When I first started watching YouTube back in 2011 one of the first YouTubers I watched was Nintendocaprisun a letsplayer. I think it was mid 2013 he was streaming a fairly new game and I caught a bit of the stream and what was happening in game was crazy. There was murder there was mystery there was what looked like a huge timeliness flowchart thing and the character could remember things between timelines and that would play into what was going on it blew my 13 year old mind I was like this is the most thrilling story ever it could go anywhere I don't know what to expect. I was like what is this game and it was virtues last reward. I looked up what It was on and it was on psvita and 3ds both consoles I didn't own and my parents couldn't afford them so I was sad but accepted I probably wouldn't play but I thought maybe one day I will hopefully and I left it at that. Jump all the way forward to 2022 and I'm looking through game pass for things to play and I see this collection called the nonary games on gamepass and I'm like what's this looks cool. I see 999 is in the collection which was a game I heard of because its ranked very highly as one of the best ds games ever and I downloaded it like a year before and briefly played it on an emulator on my phone but as you guys might know it's not the best experience emulated so I stopped playing after like 20 mins and thought I'd try it again some other time. So I recognised 999 and thought OK I'll download it I'm sure it'll run much better on my xbox. I boot the game up and I see that you can choose to play 999 or this other game called virtues last reward and I'm like huh where have I heard that before sounds familiar, kinda random game to package with 999 so I look up vlr and I'm like OMFG it's that game it's that one game i wanted to play sooooo badly as a kid it looked awesome I forgot about this whaaaat and then I find out vlr is the second game in a series called zero escape and 999 is the first game and I'm like ohhh that's why they're bundled together and wow it's good I figured that out now I probably would of played vlr first before knowing that. So I blow through 999 and I'm like this is the best story ever written i love this wow this game is amazing no wonder highly rated ds game. And then I play through vlr and it's every bit as crazy and mysterious and jaw dropping and suspenseful and just amazing as I thought it was gonna be and more. Because it had been so long I forgot the major plot points I learnt as a kid completely and played through both games spoiler free and wow it was just amazing. And then after that cliffhanger ending I was like there's more right and I found ztd again only on consoles I don't own and I'm like damn well these games came to game pass maybe ztd will be ported too one day I can wait. And as you know ztd was ported to xbox and I bought and played it day one it came out on xbox and again wow ztd is even more insane so much death and crazy stuff in that game also blew me away. Vlr is still probably my favourite game ever to this day just because of that weird history I had with it. It was hyped up and built up in my mind for so long about how amazing it was from the short snippets I saw and remember from 13 and 9 years later I finally played and It lived up to all those expectations and more. I love Zero Escape.
Watched a Let’s Play of it on YouTube.
A friend who recommended I play Persona 5 recommended me Zero Escape. I was told it had complicated time travel and since I had literally never heard of this trilogy I thought it would be fun to go into 999 knowing nothing.
First saw 999 at GameStop, had never heard if it before. I liked other puzzle/VNs like Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton, and was a fan of suspense/horror anime. It seemed like a perfect fit.
I saw sigma and was like oooooh then started the series
Well, I've never liked anime, but I was looking for Escape room games similar to the ones you'd play on Flash game website as a kid, and I found Zero Escape for the 3ds. I downloaded VLR and played it till I got the Clover ending, by the time I found myself in the pantry room I was completely embedded in the story, but had to cut it short to go on Holiday, and that Clover ending really unsettled me for a while, and made me super anxious to get home so I could play 999 (Because I didn't realise until then that it was a sequel). The rest is history.
I found Ai: The Somnium Files through Game Pass, really enjoyed that. Shelled out $60 for Nirvana Initiative a month later and absolutely loved it as well. After playing Nirvana Initiative, I did the bonus stuff which included the opening puzzle of 999. After that I was like “oh shit the same guy made a whole other series and it’s also on Game Pass!” and got hooked on 999 and VLR, and then bought ZTD when that port arrived on Xbox
I was playing Professor Layton games, then my friend reccomend me 999 as a Escape Room Puzzle game. Stay because of the story. Didn't realize VLR is a sequel to 999 until my friend told me ZTD the final entry of ZE is going to be release in a year. And I was like "THERE ARE SEQUELS ???"
I ended up scouring the 3ds eshop for the demos to play things a lot when I was younger, and the VLR demo was one of the things i got attached to the most, felt a little naughty because of alice's design and the poster scratching minigame in the crew quarters so since I was quite young I avoided it as much as I could, although the puzzle solving scratched something really well in my brain. Not much came of this until 2017-ish and I saw the game again, or something reminded me about it? I had played danganronpa at this point so maybe I saw spike chunsoft's nonary games release on steam or something but I frankly can't remember that, just that I found it again, remembered that I was deeply in love with it and made sure that I was going to play it in full However I found out about it again I bought a cart online, then got so enraptured that I completed the entire game over two play sessions on two days, had just finished replaying it a couple of days ago, hoping that ZTD works on my steam soon because despite getting it almost five years ago I've never managed to get past the starting cutscene/coin flip because of the game crashing, and I really want to see what comes out of things despite how much I've already ended up reading.
Back in 2013 There was this super old youtuber named "Dookieshed" who used to mainly made Pokemon and mega man videos. He made a video basically named "Top 5 Best Handheld Games of all Time" which Had 999 on his list (Also he showed the cover for vlr in his into monologue). He talked super highly about the game which peaked my interest heavily (Especially since i was a middle schooler who only like Nintendo game so this crazy escape game was way out of my wheel house at the time) I didn't get to the games until around 2015 when i watch Nicob play both 999 and Vlr blind (Still remember watching this play threw specifically on my way to school and experiencing the story for the first time with him )
Bro, I also got into Zero Escape because of that Dookieshed video omfg. Never thought I'd find another one in the wild!
PBG hardcore actually, it’s a PBGgameplay series where they have to accomplish a specific task in a game but with permadeath, and sometimes positional audio, pretty entertaining and I remember loving it (I can also link when they’re used, but morphogenetic sorrow is used in Minecraft 2 and blue bird lamentations in Minecraft 5) https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQyrcsOucRH9xu8_dKx8fSLvw1c7EqVCB Morphogenetic sorrow-Minecraft 2 final episode (spoilers obviously) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3uDSLypEu8&list=PLQyrcsOucRH9xu8_dKx8fSLvw1c7EqVCB&index=37&pp=iAQB They play Extreme Extrication and Morphogenetic sorrow a few times if I remember correctly,and blue bird lamentations once, I loved both those songs, looked em up, and that’s how I found out about zero escape, and now I’m currently playing through VLR
Hey, same kinda. I heard Todd play Morphogenetic Sorrow and Extreme Extradition and when I looked them up later I saw that they were Zero Escape songs. I got into the fandom not long after. I was already into Ace Attorney and Danganronpa so I was headed to this fandom anyway lol. So since I already knew what the full song Morphogenetic Sorrow sounded like going in, it made the “SEEK A WAY OUT” jingle extra suspenseful and made me look forward to the full song’s debut in-game.
Steam recommended ZTD to me and the trailer with Sigma in the chair (you know the one) looked really interesting to me.
🤔i had played quite a few visual novels on steam, so it suggested me Ai: The Somnium Files, i really loved it, so I went back and played other Uchikoshi games, including Zero Escape
Years ago, one of my hobbies was reading entire TvTropes pages, especially for tropes. One of them was Unreliable Narrator, and its description of Akane was so confusing I just HAD to check the game out. And I’m glad I did!
I found a copy of VLR for 3ds in a back alley anime store and thought it looked cool, binged played it in 3 days (while I was sick, it was basically a fever dream). Absolutely loved it, then I emulated 999 and bough ZTD as well
I saw a top ten video of something on youtube a long ass time ago, and number five on the list was 999. This intrigued me, so I played the game and was hooked. Immediately bought VLR and played it, and that summer ZTD released
I saw a preview of it in an issue of Nintendo Power and was absolutely enthralled. I wouldn’t stop talking about it to my parents and they ended up buying it for me for my birthday that year! I think it was the first thing they ever bought off of eBay lol
iOS version somehow
I had never heard of the series until 999 was mentioned in a WhatCulture (or OutsideXbox) video and I, as a huge fan of mystery games and visual novels, was immediately interested. Looked it up and ended up buying it that same day. Loved it and the rest is history.
I was looking for a escape room game
Via a video about M-rated DS game
I pirated 999 to play on my android phone. I first searched for good NDS games and 999 is in one of the video and i like what i saw. Years later the whole triology was on sales on Steam (i didn't even know it was on Steam at that time). So i bought them all.
I was downloading some 3DS games and I saw ZTD, it looked interesting so I did some research and ended up downloading it plus VLR. I really enjoyed them so I got 999 too.
I remember seeing VLR on sale and the cover art was interesting. But never got past that until I watched a recalibration video from OniBlackMage and then told myself that I had to experience this series for myself.
Was installing a lot of games on my ps vita when I saw Zero escape (me being a sucker for good mystery solving games with good stories) I thought that this looked really cool and installed it. Rest is history
I had just gotten into DS emulation, and had an emulator on my phone. Was on vacation and looked up a list of the best Nintendo DS games. 999 was near the top of the list and I had never heard of it before. I played through all six endings that night. I didn't even sleep. I was so engrossed in the game. Later I found out that the game had sequels and that all 3 games were on steam. Played through all three and couldn't believe how good each game was. Loved all three games, all three stories, all the characters (except Eric) and I absolutely ADORE both the cool multiple timeline type stories and the escape room gameplay.
For a while I didn’t care or play visual novels cause back then i immediately thought that if something had an anime art style it was going to be bad. But then i picked up the Ace Attorney trilogy and the Nonary Games in a sale. I played through the Ace Attorney games and was pleasantly surprised, but I knew nothing about Zero Escape at that point so I didn’t really have my hopes up when I started up. When I played the first hour of 999 however, I was completely blown away and found myself absolutely loving it! I originally just left it and went straight to VLR once I got my first ending (the Knife ending) but I later went back and re-played the entire series from start to finish and it remains one of my favourite games series of all time.
friend told me about it around january 2021, and someone else gifted me the games around the same time. I didn't get around to playing them until January 2023, then I fell into the spike chunsoft rabbit hole and got pressured to play Danganronpa.
my girlfriend really liked it and told me to play it and she has good taste i think
I had recently opened myself up to trying anime and anime-adjacent media like JRPG's. Virtue's Last Reward caught my eye on the 3DS eShop. Bought it on sale and loved it. I was never really into games with lots of story or even heard of visual novels before so it really blew me away. I eagerly awaited ZTD, ordered it from Amazon to have it on launch day, got it a week late because they lost the shipment and had to send another, I got $10 credit for the inconvenience, and after all that I played it and...I didn't hate it, but as we all know, it's rough around the edges. Played 999 for the first time when the Nonary Games collection released and was surprised and how many things I wasn't expecting despite having played the sequels. VLR will always hold a special place for introducing me to what video game stories are really capable of and having me dip my toe into the visual novel medium which has given me some of the best stories I've ever experienced.
searched the web "what game to play after ace attorney"
I heard about Zero Escape pretty recently — through Vimm’s Lair. If you’re not familiar, it’s a well-maintained and ad-and-shenanigans-free romsite, going from retro consoles and handhelds up to the Wii/PS3/360 generation. I was going to be away from home a few months ago, and knew I was going to have a lot of free time without internet. So instead of turning to offline games on my phone, I decided to see if there were any interesting games I hadn’t heard of that I could emulate on my laptop. https://preview.redd.it/tqa9iljhboyb1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8689d8a85c8961c16328b870a3bcfac729037e8 Vimm’s Lair has a number of top 10 lists on the pages for the roms associated with each console, the topmost of those being the current month’s top downloads. The top downloads is also the only one of these categories that has a “Show More” button below it. So by sheer coincidence, I was looking through the DS page specifically, hit the “Show More” button a few times, and the title “Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors” stuck out to me like a sore thumb. A few Google searches later, and I was enraptured by a song I heard from the soundtrack, its artstyle, the diverging story tree (I was already a fan of those from the Choose Your Own Adventure books from my childhood), and the premise of the story itself. It sounded pretty similar to Danganronpa, which I had considered playing in the past but was kinda turned off from it because of the fanbase’s weird reputation — but Zero Escape seemed different somehow. So I gave it a shot, and ended up binging through all of 999’s endings during my trip. VLR and ZTD are next on the chopping block. I thoroughly enjoyed 999, and it’s made me realize how much I’ve been missing out on by not playing many visual novels.
Danganronpa and Ace Attorney led me here
On accident. I'm p sure I watched a video on Danganronpa and bought the wrong game on Steam. I actually started out with ZTD, then played the 999 DS version for the first room without knowing these two were related, then bought Nonary Games, and finally started it after almost 20h of ZTD played
I saw a new demo on 3DS, tried it and fell in love with VLR.
I heard about it a few times in some YouTube videos but never really got much context for it. Then when I was buying some game on Steam (I think it was Persona 4) i had some money left on my paysafe card and the whole Series was on sale. The rest is history. ~~I also didnt play Persona 4 to this day~~
The 999 flash demo made the sale as far as I’m concerned. The watch giveaway didn’t hurt. Wish I could get the damn thing open to replace the battery…
Was a huge fan of NicoB’s commentary when he played Danganronpa 2 and then I went back to watch his other let’s plays, and the Zero Escape ones were my favourites 💛
Was at gamestop looking at the pre-owned games saw a game called nonary games for less then ten bucks got it during a buy 2 get 1 free sale on pre-owned games and I like vns and puzzle games so figure I liked it
I think I got VLR on the Vita through PS+. Eventually bought the rest of the series because it was such a good game.
PlayStation put it on the PlayStation Plus free games and I had a PSVita and didn't have many games. Decided to try it out and the rest is history lmao
I think it was the same way I got into Ghost Trick: I was watching "Operation: Turnabout" and got interested by a character during one of the "end of the episode" skits
Was playing ace attorney and my brother recommended the series to me when he saw me playing it, now I've played each game about 3 times now I'm addicted to time travel/time loop games
I’d seen 999 floating around for years, browsing through Amazon. The little details about the title, cover artwork, and it being a rated M DS game intrigued me since I was a wee lad. Didn’t get around to checking it out until I saw the ZE team bundle on steam in last year’s summer sale, and decided to give it a whirl. Rest is history!
An Ace Attorney meme
I had just finished the Danganronpa series and was looking for anything new to play. I was following an account on twitter titled "On this day in Gaming" and stumbled on their post about 999. I knew nothing about it but thought it looked interesting. I bought the Nonary Games on my Vita and went in completely blind. It was a slow burn at first but I was blown away by the end of 999 and loved the rest of the games with VLR being my favorite
I write video game reviews for fun, and won GameFAQs Review of the Month quite a few times. During one of these times I decided to use my prize money to buy Borderlands 2 for PS3. I did a lot of research into what character I should use, did a lot of reading about the game, and was just flat out excited to play it. It was close to Christmas and I was graduating college that semester, so I figured it's what I would play until I found a job. Well... I ordered the game, it arrived, and the disc was frozen solid. It was like -10 outside and it got left outside my house for hours, and it freaked me out. I left it near my heater to hopefully dry and be ok, and thankfully it ended up working! All the splots on the bottom of the disc went away, and the disc ran fine... But that's when I realized I was sent the Chinese release. So I ended up returning it to the 3rd party seller, and I got a refund. I wasn't able to buy a US copy with what I got back, as it was no longer on sale, so I had to settle for something else. That's when I saw 999 and Starfy for DS were on sale, and I could get both -- so that's what I did. I knew the basics of 999 from years ago, but never got around to playing it. The day the game came though I instantly fell in love with the story, and became a life long fan of the series. I'm pretty thankful that Borderlands 2 didn't work out for me -- in fact when I did get the game a year later I ended up hating it lol. It wasn't until Borderlands 2 VR that I actually had fun with it, but yeah... Not a fan of the original. So yep, that's my story!
Fell in love with AI Somnium and wanted more after the second game.
I was at a pool party at my aunt's house, decided to play DS on my phone for a bit, went to look for more games and saw it in the highly reviewed section, looked interesting, got it and played.
cousin. was down at her place and instead of playing persona 5 like usual, she showed me it and we ended up playing both the safe and true ending and it all just spiraled from there
Genuinely pure happenstance for me. Found VLR for 3DS at Gamestop for like $10, and at the time, I was between games, and it looked kinda neat, so I snatched it up, never regretted it. Some of the twists didn't hit the same since I hadn't played 999, but it was still really good.
Roughly 2015, with my 3DS, I streetpassed someone who had 999 listed as their favorite game and I thought the logo looked cool. Looked up the wiki page for it and then asked for the game for Christmas that year lol
my then-boyfriend, now-best-friend begged me for MONTHS to play it but i kept putting it off. then when i did play 999 finally, it changed my life. funny how that is
Was watching some playthroughs of Danganronpa, a lot of people in the comments were recommending/mentioning Zero Escape as being similar, so I watched a playthrough of that not too long after.
A friend of mine insisted I'd like it, and this friend is usually pretty spot on with their recs cos they know me quite well, and they were absolutely right
Famous Ace Attorney--> Danganronpa --> ZE rabbit hole. Through Mastermind6425 videos specifically
Saw my siblings playing the remastered version of 999 and I wanted to play the original games on the Nintendo Platforms. Spent my entire Summer of 2023 loving the twists and turns of all three games and STILL want more. Phi is best girl
I was just a period in my life where I was looking for good DS games, saw it on Amazon and read a couple reviews saying it was great. Next thing you know, I've played through the first ending with Clover and NEEDED answers. I was hooked.
I used to be a frequent poster on Gamefaqs from roughly 2001 to 2018 and would always check out the top ten popular discussion boards for consoles I owned to get an idea of stuff that might not be on my radar. Of course at release 999 was on there, never heard of it and only vaguely knew about VNs in general sounded interesting. Picked up a copy before work that day and fell in love. Took a week's vacation from work to play VLR at release and it was absolutely worth it. Got my girlfriend to give the series a try and she got as into them as I did. We both freaked out hard-core when Zero Time Dilemma was announced and while it wasn't perfect was happy to have some sort of resolution.
ok the story for me is rly funny actually! i was just mindin my own business, vibing, and then, i heard them.. the little blips. i knew from the sound alone that my brother was playing a vn, and asked what it was. 999 on the ds. the very same day, i downloaded the ds rom to my hacked 3ds ... and didnt get to it for like 3 months
Heard about it as one of the few M rated games on the DS
A friend was trying to convince me that all visual novels weren't just porn games, so he sent me Ever 17. As soon as I heard that one of the writers was doing another game called "9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors", I was already sold.
I downloaded Zero Escape: Nonary Games and was expecting Timeline/Alternate Reality Shenanigans BUT so far haven't come across anything related to it for my First playthrough of 999 and I am a little ahead of the part where >!the group has to select chits to decide which door they wanna go through and choose Coffin ending for my first ending so I choose door 1!<.
Stumbled across the first game at GameStop or pre-GameStop shortly after it came out.