Himuro Mansion (Fatal Frame)
The haunted house in Tecmo's video game Fatal Frame, which Tecmo marketed in North America in 2002 as drawn from a true story.
Tecmo's press release of 27 February 2002 announced that the PlayStation 2 game Fatal Frame had shipped to retailers. The release billed the game as drawn from a true story and said Electronic Gaming Monthly editor James Mielke had called it the scariest game ever. The player follows Miku as she searches the haunted Himuro Mansion for her missing brother.
IGN's Aaron Boulding reported in 2002 that the mansion draws loosely on a legend about a real house outside Tokyo, one people believe is full of restless spirits. None of these sources identifies a house.
English Wikipedia says the North American release had been confirmed for 8 March but came out on 27 February, and that the true-story marketing "was not true in itself". It adds that parts of the story drew on local Japanese legends and on real places said to be haunted.
Makoto Shibata wrote on the PlayStation Blog in 2013 that the team picked horror partly because it suited his own interests. He says he sometimes sees things himself, things that were not really there or odd things around him, and he wanted to build those fears into the game on top of its adventure play.
"The game's release for North America was confirmed in January 2002 to be March 8, but the title was instead made available on February 27.[24][25] The title was marketed in North America as being based on a true story. While this was not true in itself, elements of the story were based on real haunted locations and local Japanese legends."
- Tecmo ships Fatal Frame for PlayStation 2 (press release, 27 Feb 2002), Tecmo, Inc. (2002), via Internet Archive Wayback Machine
- Finding Fatal Frame, Aaron Boulding, IGN (2002)
- Fatal Frame: Behind the Lens of the PS2 Horror Classic, Makoto Shibata, PlayStation Blog (2013)