Vr Kanojo Developer
Hilda Bagnoli
Set in the end of March 2011, the player takes the role of a college student, a boy named Naoki Kousaka (or a girl named Rina Makimura), who was riding a high-speed bus to Central Island, in the hopes of starting a new life there the coming April. While travelling through a connecting undersea tunnel, his (or her) bus is hit with violent shaking, causing it to overturn and render them unconscious. The player would then awaken several hours later to the grim result of the accident, realizing they are in the midst of an earthquake.
Unlike Raw Danger!'s protagonists, the storylines of Kousaka and Makimura will not intersect with each other. Instead, players will go through the same general plot after choosing either student, although they both have their own unique interactions with characters, collectible compasses and costumes, and, upon a second playthrough, epilogues. Players could change the protagonists' names before starting, but their new names, along with attached honorifics (on every occasion) or sentence particles (when introducing themselves), will be clipped or muted from dialogue.
Replacing the Thirst and Body Temperature gameplay systems from the previous games is a Stress (ST) meter, which will increase from the protagonist experiencing various tragic or bleak situations, such as finding dead bodies, inhaling smoke/gas, getting hit by water or fire, fall damage and so on. Stress will gradually peg itself to the Health (HP) meter over time, which will eventually prevent the player from running, along with obscuring their field of vision and for them to easily die.
The player can recover their HP through First Aid Kits, food and sitting at benches, the last option granting full recovery, in addition to acting as save points. Also, stress can be reduced by drinking, seeing hopeful/comforting events, or listening to songs, among other methods, although none of these will restore HP.
During the story, the player will find two other female survivors, Saki and Ayami, to interact and build relationships with, affecting the ending. At the end of the story, Ayami will fall off the roof of a tall building towards the sea. The player can try to save her or let her die. Letting her die will lead to a normal bad end. Trying to save her will also lead to a bad end if the player has negative or neutral relationships with both girls, the player dying along with Ayami. Saving her with a positive relationship will lead to the both of them being rescued by helicopter or boat, depending on which girl they have a better relationship with. There are also bad endings where the player can choose to leave the island early alone, or sacrifice themselves to let their companions escape.
From the second playthrough onwards (i.e. beginning from Clear Data, not an empty slot[1]), the game will show an epilogue after the end credits, provided that the player has finished the story; this could either depict their protagonist receiving an e-mail (from Saki only) or a letter (from Saki or Ayami) if they escaped the island. Otherwise, the epilogue will be of Saki reading out a post on her blog.
A nurse who retired to pursue her dream of becoming a musician. First trapped in the tunnel when the earthquake hits, she becomes the protagonist's primary companion, who can not only be interacted with frequently, but also serves as the source of the game's songs. The player can check how well their relationship with her is from how she sits with the protagonist on benches.
A geologist who was publicly denounced by Hazuki and Morita for trying to warn others of the island's environmental flaws during its development. He tries to lead victims on Central Island to safety, along with keep them under control, until rescue can arrive.
First seen in a tunnel leaving a car crash, he is the Chairman of the Morita Group, another developer of Central Island. He is soon found dead in the company's office with Hikawa standing over his body.
A tunnel linking Central Island with the Japanese mainland. The protagonist is forced to get out of the tunnel alone after the bus he/she is on crashes, leaving everyone else on board dead. Here, they later catch a glimpse of Morita, as well as save Saki, leaving just as the tunnel begins to flood.
The refugees chase the protagonist's party into this collapsing building, where rescue helicopters would eventually arrive. Buildings surrounding the place are shown to still be standing when the groups enter the building, but afterwards, in the ending movies where the player is adrift, they have all sunken into the sea.
The game contains several bugs, ranging from slightly odd to downright fatal, with its most officially recognized bugs being listed as follows, as well as a few defects. It should be noted that the bugs that prevented game progress and the ending count defect were fixed in the game's downloadable re-release.
If the player did not call out to Ayami before going towards the staircase, then shout for the ladder to be moved later on, Saki will stand in place turning about herself instead of helping the player to move the ladder, preventing game progress. They thus will have to switch to a save from earlier on in the game, or restart altogether.
The game runs the risk of crashing as the player goes down from 2F to 1F, regardless of what, if anything, they picked up. After freezing for a short time, the game console will switch off. The bug could be detected from the character's (bare) hand glitching out. It is the most infamous bug for having no confirmed fix or clear way to avoid it.
Upon entering the building, the player will need a rope to climb down a deep hole. While the rope is normally obtained by knocking it down from some rubble, examining the rope ahead of the hole may disallow the player from ramming the rubble, preventing game progress.
The booklet that came with the physical copy of the game mentioned that the player would be able to obtain a Zettai Zetsumei Grip Compass, but no such collectible can be found. As would be discovered later, this compass was cut during the game's production, and the booklet could not be rectified in time to address this change. Subsequently, a public apology was issued on the official website for the discrepancy.
The game keeps a total tally of 9 endings across both Kousaka and Makimura, but the one where they escape on their own (by boarding the helicopter at Aoi Residences) will not be counted as part of the ending record[2].
Neither Agetec nor 505 Games showed interest in, let alone acknowledgement of, localizing ZZT3 for the West, presumably in light of Raw Danger!'s poor sales numbers, along with growing contempt of Westernization, which had become characteristic to the Disaster Report series up to that point. As such, ZZT3 would turn into a highly sought-after import title for niche gaming fans and DR fans alike, with the anticipation that it might be officially localized, but this prospect would be for naught. Later on, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami would hit in March 2011, causing Irem to cancel almost all of its video games in development on top of an erasure of all its ZZT-related documentation[3], virtually diminishing its relevance to the Western gaming market.
A group of dedicated ZZT/DR fans would start an effort to translate ZZT3 into English in March 2013[4]. Due to the translation team meeting with various technical challenges however, the most notable of which was being unable to insert the English script for a long time, the patch would only be completed almost a decade later in July 2022, retitling the game, "Disaster Report 3: A Fading City and Her Song".
Similar to Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories, the patch would retain the game's Japanese setting, in addition to the original Japanese audio, but with a few key differences in the translation:
The patch also includes several improvements, such as applying fixes for the aforementioned defects, and a built-in fix to allow the game to be played on PSP emulators, PPSSPP and Adrenaline, past character selection[5].
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