A poetic Nintendo visual novel, released only on Satellaview. A hard to access rarity, worth discovering for its melancholy.
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Category
Visual Novel1 player12+
Description
Atmospheric visual novel in which a child explores a mysterious forest populated by creatures. Published by Nintendo, released in Japan in 1998 via Nintendo Power. Click-through narrative with illustrations, fantastical tale atmosphere and multiple endings. Rare visual novel distributed via Nintendo Power on Super Famicom.
Famicom Bunko - Hajimari no Mori review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
3/5
Music
★★★★★
"Memorable"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
Distributed by download at the end of the machine's life, this tale of a summer in the countryside bets everything on illustration: wooden houses, rice fields, forest paths, insects, late afternoon skies. The colours stay soft and slightly faded, like a holiday photograph, and the characters are drawn without the slightest exaggeration.
A boy sent to spend the summer with distant relatives discovers a village where something is not right, without the game ever tipping fully into the fantastical. The story advances through observation, conversation and silence, and its real subject is less the mystery than the way a child learns to look at adults.
Complete: box, manual and disc/cart very clean. Lightly handled.
Q1 damagedQ6 completeQ10 new
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Collector interest
Visual novel published by Nintendo in 1998 exclusively on a Nintendo Power flash cartridge, with no masked pressing at all, making it one of the console's rare games that never existed as a standard cartridge. Its fairy-tale atmosphere and multiple endings earned it cult status among Super Famicom visual-novel enthusiasts. Desirability rests on this purely dematerialised existence of a Nintendo title become a sought-after object.
Is Famicom Bunko - Hajimari no Mori still worth playing in 2026?
A Nintendo visual novel distributed late and digitally on Super Famicom, Hajimari no Mori follows a child exploring a mysterious forest filled with creatures. The narration relies on clicks and illustrations, in a melancholy fairy-tale atmosphere heightened by multiple endings. It is a hard-to-find rarity with little ludic challenge but a strange gentleness. Worth discovering for fans of contemplative visual novels willing to use a translation, more for the mood than the interaction.
