FairyTale's 1992 zombie adventure Dead of the Brain is out on Steam. Its store page lists a 30 October 2026 release, with FairyTale as developer and FAKKU as publisher. That puts it out the day before Halloween.
Time Extension, in an update to its story on Saturday 31 October, called this the first official English localisation of the game. AUTOMATON WEST had already reported, when the Steam page went up, that it was getting English support for the first time.
What's in the box
The Steam listing calls Dead of the Brain a cult classic Japanese PC-98 horror adventure from 1992. The setup is pure B-movie. Cole gets a call from his friend Dr. Cooger, a mad scientist who has invented a "resurrection serum". It works, sort of. The dead come back with no trace of who they were and a terrible hunger for brains, and the town is soon overrun.
The store page describes the game as a mix of point-and-click adventure, visual novel and survival quick-time events. AUTOMATON WEST adds detail on how that works. Dialogue scenes alternate with sections where you use commands such as Look, Use and Get to explore. The quick-time events have you click on a threat's hit box before it eats you. The site also reports that the game was conceived as a homage to 1980s American splatter films such as The Evil Dead and Re-Animator, with character designs by Ryuichi Makino.
FAKKU's version keeps the original pixel art, upscaled, and the FM soundtrack, which is also sold separately as a soundtrack DLC. It adds a few optional modern touches. According to the store page, you can turn on hover hints and visible hit boxes. If you die, you can restart at the beginning of the current scene instead of going back to your last save. The listing is also upfront about the rest. It says the re-release replicates the 30-year-old UI and mechanics, which "may seem clunky by modern standards".
The developer's content description warns of scenes of violence and death, crude language and mild sexual references, and recommends the game for mature audiences.
Price, platforms and a demo
On the Australian Steam store, Dead of the Brain lists at A$28.50, with a 34% introductory discount to A$18.81 until 6 November. It runs on Windows, macOS and SteamOS/Linux, has English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese text, and has a free demo on the same page.
How a horror game came out of an eroge studio
The history behind it is stranger than the plot. AUTOMATON WEST reports that Dead of the Brain was FairyTale's first move into horror after the company had built its business on adult games. The pivot came after a widely publicised 1991 case in which a middle schooler shoplifted one of its more extreme titles, Saori. Time Extension writes that the incident led to an investigation of FairyTale and to the formation of the ratings body EOCS. FairyTale then made a run of horror adventures before going back to adult games.
According to Time Extension, Dead of the Brain was followed by Dead of the Brain 2 and Marine Philt, both in 1993, and the games were ported to other Japanese platforms, including the PC Engine CD and MSX 2. Time Extension also calls this release the first in FairyTale's "Nightmare Collection".
What comes next
AUTOMATON WEST reports that this release is part of FAKKU's acquisition of publishing rights to FairyTale's catalogue. It adds that FAKKU's announcement of the deal teased English releases of Dead of the Brain 2 and FairyTale's other horror games. Time Extension says FAKKU also plans to localise more PC-98 games from the era, naming Dengeki Nurse, Necronomicon and Dracula Hakushaku. No release dates have been confirmed for any of them.
Ollie's take: The PC-98 is a big gap in a lot of Western players' game history: a machine with a huge, weird library that mostly stayed in Japan. Official, playable English releases do more to fill that gap than any number of emulator screenshots. Dead of the Brain is a gory, slightly ridiculous way in, and the store page's honest warning that it may feel clunky is a good sign about how FAKKU is handling the rest of the run.
Reporting notes