Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc



"Pull the trigger!"

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, known in Japan as Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair (ダンガンロンパ 希望の学園と絶望の高校生), is a Japanese visual novel game developed by Spike Chunsoft. It is the original main title in the Danganronpa series.

It was originally released in Japan on November 25th, 2010 for the PlayStation Portable, and later on October 10th, 2013 for the PlayStation Vita. The game was launched on February 11th, 2014 for North America, then a few days later on February 14th for Europe by NIS America for the PlayStation Vita. A port for Microsoft Windows was released on February 18th, 2016, followed by being ported to the PlayStation 4 alongside Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair on March 14th, 2017.

A promotional demo called Dangan Ronpa: Kibō no Gakuen to Zetsubō no Kōkōsei (Trial Version)'' was released exclusively in Japan on October 10th, 2010.

The game was later re-released with additional content as part of the Danganronpa 1.2 Reload collection on the PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and PC with Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. A port of this collection was launched for Android and iOS devices for Japan on August 20th, 2020, then worldwide on May 21st, 2020 as part of Danganronpa 10th Anniversary celebration. In June 15th, 2021, it was announced that Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc would be released on the Nintendo Switch as a physical-only bundle for Danganronpa Decadence, or individually in the Nintendo e-Shop.

Synopsis
"Hope's Peak Academy is home to Japan's best and brightest high school students — the beacons of hope for the future. But that hope suddenly dies when Makoto Naegi and his classmates find themselves imprisoned in the school, cut off from the outside world and subject to the whims of a strange, murderous little bear named Monokuma. He pits the students against each other, promising freedom to anyone who can murder a fellow classmate and get away with it. It's up to you to find out who Monokuma really is, and why you've been taken from the world you once knew. But be careful what you wish for — sometimes there's nothing more deadly than the truth..." - Official synopsis

Gameplay
In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, the player controls Makoto Naegi, a student at Hope's Peak who is forced into a killing game with other students. Each chapter is divided into two parts: School Life, in which the player can explore the academy and progress through the story, and the Class Trial, in which the player must deduce the culprit of a murder.



During School Life, the player can explore the school grounds in the first-person perspective. In certain locations, the player moves a crosshair cursor to converse with other characters and interact with various objects. Examining specific objects yields the player Monocoins, which can be redeemed for presents from The All-Mighty Monomono Machine located in the school's store. As the game progresses, more areas in the academy become available along with places that were sealed off in the previous chapter(s) on accessible floors.

School Life is separated into two sections: "Daily Life" and "Deadly Life". In Daily Life, the players converse with other characters and progress through the story. When speaking with other characters, some comments can be "reacted" to reveal new information. Daily Life also features "Free Time" segments, where the player can spend their time with other characters and give them presents, which in turn reveals more information about them and unlocks "skills", which aid the player in certain aspects of the Class Trial, and "skill points", which determine the number of skills that can be used.



Once a murder has occurred, the game transitions into Deadly Life, where the player must look for clues throughout the academy. Evidence and testimonies, or "Truth Bullets", are stored in the player's e-Handbook. After all possible Truth Bullets are found, the game shifts to the Class Trial.

In the Class Trial, the students must discuss among themselves who the killer is. The game’s logic difficulty will determine how the facts are shown, and determine how logical they are (the logic difficulty can be changed in the settings at almost anytime). The Class Trial consists of four main game modes: Nonstop Debate, Hangman's Gambit, Bullet Time Battle, and Closing Argument. The most common of these is the Nonstop Debate, in which characters will discuss their thoughts on the case. During these sections, the player is armed with "Truth Bullets", metaphorical bullets containing evidence relevant to the case. To break the debate, the player must find a lie or contradiction among the "weak points" - words highlighted in yellow - in the characters' arguments and shoot them with the correct truth bullet. In Hangman's Gambit, the player must shoot specific letters to spell out a clue. Bullet Time Battle is a one-on-one debate against another student featuring rhythm-style gameplay. As the opponent makes remarks, the player must press buttons in time to the beat to lock onto the remarks and shoot them down. To close out the case, Closing Argument is a puzzle in which the player pieces together a comic strip depicting how the murder went down.



Occasionally, the player must answer a multiple-choice question and present a shred of evidence to progress through the Class Trial. The player's "Influence" among the other students is represented by hearts, which is reduced whenever the player makes errors in shooting contradictions or presenting evidence and is slightly replenished once the player does otherwise. The game ends if the player loses all their Influence, or if they run out of time during a segment. At the end of a trial, the game ranks the player's performance and rewards them with Monocoins.

When the player completes a chapter, a screen with outlines of every student's silhouette appears. Text at the top of the screen displays "Surviving Students" - though moments later, the casualties' sprite colours change to show their status change from alive to deceased as the number on the bottom changes accordingly to the number of surviving students.

DISTRUST
DISTRUST was visual novel devised by writer-director Kazutaka Kodaka. The general premise was "15 teenagers killing time or our 7 days survival war" (15少年少女殺戮期 もしくはボクらの7日間生存戦争), and was co-developed by Kodaka alongside Spike Chunsoft (then Spike) producer Yoshinori Terasawa and character designer Rui Komatsuzaki between 2007 and 2009. The game featured realistic blood in a gritty, industrial, post-apocalyptic environment inside the school building, and a subdued colour palette. During development, it was determined that the gruesome aesthetic of this prototype, along with the small market share of the niche PlayStation Portable console, made the game potentially unmarketable and the game's development was ultimately scrapped. Despite the cancellation, the game was reworked by the team into what later became Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, which shares many similarities with it's cancelled predecessor, with many character names, designs, and the overall premise of the story being carried forward.

Critical Reception
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc Has received favourable reviews in Japanese game media and was awarded a pre-release rating of 36/40 by Famitsu. The English localization of the game has earned a Metacritic review aggregate score of 80 for the PS Vita release and a score of 82 for the PC port, indicating generally favourable reviews.

The English adaptation won several awards, including Game Informer's "Best Vita Exclusive of 2014" and "Best Adventure of 2014", RPGFan's "Best Story of 2014" and "Best Graphic Adventure of 2014", Hardcore Gamer's "Best New Character of 2014" (Monokuma) and the Metro's #14 in their "Top 20 Games of 2014".

Review Scores
Review scores for the original PS Vita release in English on February 11, 2014.

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Sales
It was released to PSP on November 25, 2010, and on August 25, 2012, it was later made available for iOS and Android OS in Japan. The game was released on January 13, 2014, in Taiwan, February 11, 2014, in North America, and Europe and Australia on February 14, 2014. It sold 25,564 copies in Japan in its first week, debuting in 8th place in the weekly game sales charts, and three months of sales sold over 85,000 copies.

Anime
Danganronpa: The Animation (ダンガンロンパ: The Animation) was a faithful but abridged 13-episode adaptation of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc produced by animation studio Lerche, which featured the original Japanese voice cast of the game returning to voice their characters. The series debuted on July 4, 2013, and was simulcast with English subtitles by Funimation on their streaming platform. Later, fully translated dubbed versions of the series were released in English by Funimation on November 9, 2015, and in German by FilmConfect from August 26, 2016. The series has also been subtitled in German, French, Italian, and Spanish.

Because the adaptation was subtitled by Funimation at the same time as the game was being translated by NIS America, both the English subbed and dubbed versions of the anime have a separate canon from the game in terms of certain terminology, most notably character talents being literally translated as "Super High School Level" rather than "Ultimate", and character names such as Mondo Owada being romanized as Mondo Ohwada. Despite criticism from some fans for its diversion from the games, the localisation style was maintained into the anime series' 2016 sequel Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School for consistency reasons.

Stage Plays
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has been adapted into a stage play in Japan by theatre production company Cornflakes. There have been two separate productions of this play, once in 2014 and again in 2016.

Sequel
A sequel titled Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair was released in 2012 by Spike for the PlayStation Portable. Danganronpa 2 features more variety of gameplay in both the main story and additional content to its predecessor. A bundle titled Danganronpa 1.2 Reload which features the first two games was released on 2013 for the PlayStation Vita.

Trivia

 * The series' title, Danganronpa, is compounded from the words "bullet" (弾丸 dangan) and "refutation" (論破 ronpa).
 * As a game defined in part by its bold aesthetics, Danganronpa was originally supposed to have a monochrome colour palette of purely black and white, but with the original pink blood which was later decided to be starkly red-coloured blood to make instances of death stick out, similar to the hyper-violent Sega game MadWorld. Even after the colour scheme was reworked to be more conventional, the blood was stylistically coloured back to bright pink to create the same visual effect.
 * Danganronpa_1_To_Be_Continued_Beta.png the "To Be Continued" screen between chapters, the silhouettes are early beta designs of each character. Although these images are otherwise never seen in-game, they can still be found using data mining tools, as they were used as placeholders during development and can be seen in some in-development screenshots. These same images are visible in the character profiles which can be unlocked in the gallery.

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