So lately I've been playing through one of my favorite childhood video games,
this Xbox game called Phantom Dust - maybe you've heard of it -
and while playing, I spotted something peculiar:
while walking into the in-game shop, just like I have hundreds of times before,
I happened to notice something I'd never seen before:
on one wall of the shop, pinned to a shelf,
is a very, very small photo
of a kitten.
This image – a sapia-toned, low-resolution Polaroid –
depicts this cat tilting its head inquisitively,
peeking out from behind...
...something.
Maybe the cat's resting its head on someone's shoulder,
or maybe it's peeking over the side of a couch.
With the photo being such a low resolution,
it's hard to say what's in this photo for sure,
other than... a cat.
But – below the photo, towards the bottom of the Polaroid,
there are two things written in red pen:
a handful of Japanese characters,
and then, in English,
the word love.
On first spotting this photo, I was immediately intrigued:
Who was this cat?
And also: whose cat was this cat?
Did this cat maybe belong to someone who worked on the game?
Maybe it belonged to Phantom Dust and Panzer Dragoon series creator, Yukio Futatsugi.
And maybe that's jumping the gun –
I mean, taking a step back:
does this cat even really exist at all?
Maybe this was just a cute piece of world–building;
a random stock photo of a cat that belonged to Mac the shopkeeper
within the fiction of Phantom Dust.
Sure, that was possible – perhaps even more likely
than this being some specific human being's cat.
But for some reason, I had a strong feeling that this was not the case.
For one, most of the other textures scattered around Phantom Dust are pretty innocuous:
a generic schedule for a shop's hours of operation here,
a sheet of paper with random English keyboard-mashing on it there;
and yeah, there are exceptions to that –
I found this really sick "Futatsugi Shipping Company" crate hidden offscreen
when I was no-clipping through the game while working on my documentary –
but by and large, it's just...
stuff.
Somehow, though, this photo of this cat – it seemed different to me.
It felt personal somehow;
more human, more specific than the other stuff in Phantom Dust.
And maybe I was wrong, but either way,
I knew that I wanted the answer.
Now, another question I had, and maybe it's one you have too, is:
how on earth had I never noticed this cat before?
I mean, yeah, it's a small photo,
but I've played this game on and off since I was literally 14 years old,
for hundreds, maybe thousands of hours by now –
and yet, somehow I'd never spotted this.
How is that possible?
That, it turned out, was the easy question to answer.
So right here we've got an original Xbox modded for HDMI output
running a disc image of the original Phantom Dust game as it existed in 2005.
'This is cracking me up –'
'So I got the original Xbox here.'
'Uh, here's what the cat photo looks like in the original game...'
(laughs) 'right here...'
'and even even looking for it purpose –'
'and keep in mind, this is like a modern computer monitor, not like a muddy CRT that I would've
played this on as a kid –'
'Um, if I angle the camera around, you still can like only barely make out any cat features
on that..
'...but I thought that was funny.'
As you can see, at the game's original Xbox resolution of 640 x 480,
the cat photo is virtually invisible
especially if you didn't know what you were looking for.
Also, keep in mind that most people playing this game back in 2005, myself included,
were playing the game on a CRT television –
not an ultra clear, pixel–perfect 4K display like you might find nowadays.
However, a few years back, Phantom Dust got a remaster:
a re-release of the entire game in 4K resolution,
available for free to anybody with an Xbox or a PC.
And while most of the actual content of the original 2004 game went untouched,
in part due to the fact that the source code had unfortunately been lost,
the original textures and assets had not.
Here's how Microsoft Studios creative director, Adam Isgreen explained it to me
at the time:
In other words, every asset in the 2017 re-release of Phantom Dust
is far crisper and far closer to the source material than you ever could have seen
on an Xbox back in the day.
...well, almost everything.
Let's go back to that writing on the cat photo for a second. While the 'love' part is easy
to read, the hiragana above it is not.
Because of the Japanese text's placement on the photo and the low resolution of the texture
overall,
the resulting handwriting appears muddy and hard to read, even to native Japanese speakers.
Also not helping things:
the fact that I can't read Japanese at all.
So I posted this image on Twitter and asked my followers to see if someone out there could
help.
Here's some of the responses I got.
One user said: "Kind of hard to see without the original texture, but I'm pretty sure
the first and last characters are 'ha' and 'n'."
Another:
"I believe it says Haya-kun. I would assume Haya-kun is the name of the cat."
A third respondent said they could say with some confidence that the first two characters
were "haya" and the last one was "n", but that they couldn't vouch for the characters
in between.
The more responses I got and the more people I showed this to, the more confused I felt.
Everybody seemed to have a slightly different take on what this image said,
and no one seemed especially confident in their answer.
At this point, I'm feeling pretty lost,
so I decide to turn to the one guy on the planet who I know will definitively have the
answer to my questions here:
Phantom Dust creator Yukio Futatsugi.
See, recently, while working on a video about why Phantom Dust is my favorite game of all
time,
I unexpectedly got the chance to speak to Futatsugi,
and between questions about the making of this masterpiece and the possibility of a
sequel someday, I knew I had to use this opportunity to sneak in a few questions about the really
important subject:
(laughs)
What's the deal with this cat?
'This is maybe the most specific possible question.'
'But in playing the high definition re-release on PC, I noticed something,
which is that if you go to Mac's shop, the item shop,
there's something that's visible now that was too blurry to see on the original Xbox,
which is
there's a photograph of a cat.'
'I am curious if Futatsugi-san knows anything about this cat that is in Phantom Dust.'
This was very funny to me.
I mean, to be honest, I'd gone into this interview feeling pretty cocky –
like, "oh man, here I am with this super-specific question, and I've got an interview lined
up with a guy who made the game – It's a slam dunk, I've got this one in the bag."
but it turns out...
it was not in the bag.
In fact...
the cat was very much out of the bag.
It turns out Yukio Futatsugi, the creator of Phantom Dust,
had never seen this cat image before until today.
For 16 years, this cat was just sitting in this game, and the games creator had no idea
it was even in there until I showed it to him.
At any rate, I show Yukio the photo of the cat...
'I've posted it in the chat here.'
He disappears from his webcam for a while,
and then, from off-camera, he says this:
'Hey, sorry to interrupt.
I feel like by this point in the video, you're probably wondering –
I'm editing the video right now, by the way –
and I feel like by this point in the video, you're probably wondering: why does he keep
bleeping the person's name out?
There's a really good reason for that –
uh, I don't have voiceover for it, but here's the explanation.'
'Just so I can write it down, what's the name of the, uh, background art designer that we
were just talking about?'
'It's all right. It's... it's a long time ago.'
Dude. "Sonic Staunchly Defends Freedom, Although Mostly Easygoing."
I needed to use a bunch of coupons that Buyee sent me and buy a bunch of stuff on like Japanese
auction sites like Yahoo, Japan, and Mercari and Rakuten.
What Buyee does is allows you to buy just all the Japanese stuff you need in one single
trip – it all gets sent to their headquarters, it gets boxed up like this, and then you mail
it all as one big box, which saves you like a ton of time and money and effort on shipping
internationally.
Literally, while North American copies of Phantom Dust were selling for 200 bucks, I
bought this for like 15 bucks on Buyee.
It's an N64 game...
That is the hardest N64 cartridge cover I've ever seen in my life.
All right, who's next? This is feeling poster-y...
This is a Domino's Pizza Japan branded piece of work.
Very rare to see like actual merchandise with the "Domino's featuring Hatsune Miku" app
logo on it.
Whew!
That was a lot of stuff.
That was a lot of objects, uh, I imported from Japan.
If you'd like to try out Buyee for yourself,
head to bit.ly/buyee-nickrobinson
and new users to buy who sign up there will get a coupon code for ¥2000 off their first
purchase.
At this point, I kind of just had to sit on my hands.
There was little more I could do but wait for a follow up from Yukio,
and that had me feeling a little restless.
Then again, we've now got an incredible force of nature behind our mission:
the man who created Phantom Dust,
and he has just vowed to help me solve, as he called it,
"the mystery of the cat."
I realize if I'm actually gonna get to the bottom of this mystery and ID this kitten,
it's hard to imagine a better guy in my corner than the dude who oversaw the entire game's
development
and knew the names of every single person involved.
So I wait... and wait...
and then, suddenly, one of the best sentences I've ever read in my life materializes in
my Gmail inbox.
It's another email from Yukio, and it reads, quote:
(laughter)
...I forgot how good this was...
"Nick-san.
I understand the mystery of cats.
This was drawn by Zyoko-san, who created the background for this shop.
I heard from a game designer who worked with her at the time.
She has a cat, and I think this is a picture of the cat at that time.
I don't know Zyoko's contact information, so I can't confirm it,
but I confirmed it with multiple people, so I think this answer is correct.
Yukio Futatsugi.
'Zyoko'. We have a name.
So, then: who is 'Zyoko-san'?
That's where it gets a little bit blurry.
In researching for this video, I watched the entire credits of Phantom Dust over and over,
looking for any name that even remotely resembled Zyoko...
but found nothing.
I even, no exaggeration, did a deep dive on every single name
credited as a contributing artist on Phantom Dust:
Yamamoto Takehiko, Yoshida Kayo, Mimori Junko, and...
...nada.
None of these people have ever gone by the name Zyoko, or are associated with the name
Zyoko.
And while this is far from the conclusive answer I'd wanted –
we still weren't able to learn the cat's name, for example –
this is better than nothin'.
I mean, even if we weren't destined to learn this cat's name,
at least we know it was owned by somebody who, I guess, went by Zyoko.
I sent Futatsugi-san a "thank you" email,
gently suggesting that I wished we knew just a little bit more,
and then I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind.
And in the time since sending that email, I've been trying to talk myself into
believing that this was closure – that this was a good enough answer.
And, y'know, maybe it is.
I mean, look:
was every little question I have about this cat
totally answered to my satisfaction? Maybe not.
But at the end of the day, I...
...hang on.
Whoa, what?!
"Excuse me."
"Addi..." (laughter)
"Additional research by team members revealed that the cat mystery is different."
Just as I think I'm done with this story, I get a third and final, totally unexpected
email from Yukio.
And I just about jumped out of my chair when I saw it.
He continues:
"This is Mimori–san's cat, who was the art lead of the background team."
On reading this, I pause and cross-check the credits,
and there she is:
"Junko Mimori, 3D art lead."
This explanation made sense, and even fit perfectly with what Yukio told me in our initial
interview:
It makes perfect sense that Mimori-san was the person who would've had the chance to
sneak this image in.
But there was still one gnawing mystery left:
the cat's name.
I wanted, now more than ever, to finally identify this cat.
So I continued reading.
Quote:
"This is Mimori-san's cat, who was the art lead of the background team...
and the name...
is...
Hyanyan."
I wish you could have been there when I first got this email,
but trust me when I say,
I was overjoyed.
"Hyanyan."
Somehow, despite all the guesses from friends and strangers,
and all the translation attempts we'd fielded,
not one single person had actually correctly read this name:
"Hyanyan."
Briefly, I take a moment to savor this victory.
At the very start of this process, I'd set out to answer three questions:
whether this cat really existed,
who it belonged to,
and what its name was.
When this process began, solving even one of these mysteries had felt like a complete
longshot –
and yet, thanks to the help of one of my video game heroes, Yukio Futatsugi,
we'd managed to uncover the answers to all three.
I continue reading.
Quote: "The text also says 'Hyanyan love.'
This was also confirmed directly by Mimori.
This is the truth.
However...
the cat Hyanyan died two years ago.
–Yukio Futatsugi."
Look, on some deep, subconscious level,
I think we all must have known this would be the outcome.
This image was buried in a game that was released in 2005,
and was probably put in the game even earlier – and that's 16 plus years ago now.
So realistically, logically...
of course this was the case.
Despite that, the logic of it didn't make this news easier to swallow.
It didn't make solving this mystery any less bittersweet.
Now, normally when working on a story like this,
I would want to reach out to everybody involved and talk to them,
but ultimately, I decided not to reach out to Mimori to interview her about this... easter
egg, I guess.
Not long before I started working on this video, my family lost a pet too –
a dog named Lainey who we'd spent over a decade with.
And when I look back on our time with Lainey now,
and think about things like the way she'd smile,
the way she would sigh,
the way she looks almost exactly like Jamie Hyneman from MythBusters –
I treasure those memories, but they're a little bittersweet, and I'm not sure they're the
type of thing
I'd want to be interrogated about by a stranger from halfway across the planet.
Instead, I think the right thing to do is to just stick with what we already know.
We might never know the specific details of Mimori and Hyanyan's life together – I
think that's best left between Mimori and Hyanyan –
But here's what we do know:
Hyanyan lived a long, full life, well above the average for a housecat.
Hyanyan was loved,
strongly loved,
by her owner Mimori:
so much so that Mimori chose to commemorate her affection for Hyanyan
by immortalizing a precious moment from their life together inside this weird cult Japanese
video game for eternity.
If you ask me, that's a really beautiful memorial,
and one that gives this image a whole lot more meaning.
It's funny: this game Phantom Dust has been a part of my life since I was a kid.
I've set foot in Mac's Shop hundreds of times over the years.
But now, having solved as Futatsugi puts it, 'the mystery of cats'...
...entering Mac's Shop today feels a little different.
Of course, nothing's actually changed:
the music is still just as goofy and jazzy as ever,
and the shopkeeper Mac's jovial dance still makes me smile when I look at it.
But these days, it's hard to walk in there and not think of it as something else:
as a small shrine to Hyanyan.
See, when I first noticed the cat photo, I spotted just that:
a single photo of this cat.
But while working on this video, I realized something:
this photo of Hyanyan isn't just in one place...
it's everywhere.
Mimori didn't just tuck this easter egg away in one tiny corner of Mac's Shop –
she plastered the 'Hyanyan LOVE' Polaroid everywhere:
on walls and counters, hanging from strings and shelves.
Load up the game and take a look for yourself:
This photo is all over the place, and I think that's pretty touching.
So, with the help of the game's original creator, a painstaking HD remaster, and confirmation
from the cat's owner herself,
we were able to learn the hidden significance of this one little texture
over a decade and a half later.
This year, a whole hell of a lot of you guys have downloaded and played this game.
And while most of my time spent talking about Phantom Dust on this channel has focused on
a few specific aspects of it –
the impeccable game design, or the multiplayer, or the untapped potential for a sequel –
I've barely had a chance to talk about the single-player campaign.
And that's a shame, because Phantom Dust's single player is a work of art:
a moody, beautiful, nihilistic masterpiece,
and a singular video game experience that I really think everyone watching this ought
to try for themselves.
All that to say this:
if you do decide to download Phantom Dust –
again, pretty easy, since it's totally free on PC and on Xbox –
in the process of playing through the campaign,
when you walk into Mac's Shop for the first time,
I hope you pause for just a moment,
look at that photo of Hyanyan,
and maybe think about a pet that you and your family have loved.
If you enjoyed this video, here's something else you might like:
I've got a mini-video I've created about solving another mystery about a texture in Phantom
Dust – Here's a little clip from that:
"I have this print Hanging on my wall at home."
"Are you kidding me?"
"Wait, wait, but hold on –
It's in...
Look. Why is this in Japanese though?
Okay. This is getting interesting..!"
I created that video as a way to say thanks to all of the channel members on the channel,
all of whose names you see before you as we speak – you guys make this possible.
You make it so I can spend months on end working on one single video and put it out when it's
ready.
I'm really grateful to have that privilege on this website.
If you want access to that video, plus all the years of bonus content I've been uploading
to this channel,
you can click the join button underneath this video –
that'll give you access to all that stuff,
and it's the best way to directly support the channel
and support me making more videos like this one.
Either way, though:
thank you to my channel members.
Thank you to Buyee, of course, for sponsoring this video.
And thanks to all of you who watch and share these videos.
It's really rewarding making videos like this for an audience
who seems to enjoy stuff like this.
So, thank you again and I'll see you next time.