Part 13: Silent Hill: The Orphan

Silent Hill: The Orphan



Today in this bonus episode, we'll be taking a peek at the US adaptation of the first Silent Hill Mobile game, released under the title "Silent Hill: The Orphan". The version I'm using in particular was designed towards the Motorola RAZR V3 phone, one of the more designer 9-key phones to be made in the pre-smart phone era. From information I have looked up, it appears that different phones had small differences in the changes from the original European version. I'll try to explain them as I go. However, right off the bat we see that the creepy doll is gone from the title screen for some reason.



As you can see, the main layout is squished in to give you a full view of the room without any panning. In this particular version, a frame appears at the bottom where the pause/menu button sits. I've seen images of other versions that add a border to the top as well. The rooms are still relatively the same as before, with most of the interactions intact. However, as a major change, you'll notice the map and painting are missing from this version. That is because you already start with the map. The compass is missing entirely from the game for reasons we'll see shortly. If anyone in the thread has a room from the game they would like to see, I can go back and easily get a shot of it. As it is, I am going to save time and space, and have this update be image-light. Now, when we go out into the hallway, something curious happens.



As you can see, we're booted straight to the now pared down map. The hallways simply do not exist in this version. You click on a room, and you'll either zap straight to it, or else if there's a puzzle on the door, its dialogue will pop up while still on the map. As some of the dialogue between characters also happens in the hallway, it too will occur on the map screens. This also means that the clock puzzles and the hall-based enemy encounters no longer exist either. In my opinion, this eliminates both half the difficulty and half the run-time of the game.

A small detail of difference, the two unlocked stalls in the regular world bathroom are already open, this just skips a step in getting the tongs basically. Also, though you can't interact with it, Moon's homework is already lying in the second dorm when Ben explores it. When you transport to the Otherworld, you'll discover that the lighter mechanic does not work for the dorm rooms, because the dorm rooms are already lit up. Also it fixes the wording of the otherworld classroom door by saying it's locked from the inside instead of simply stuck, making it more obvious that it unlocks when Moon finishes the homework assignment.



The battles are basically the same, except I believe the monsters have far more generous hit-boxes. Also, when you fire a hit, instead of hearing a gunshot noise, the spider-things make an unpleasant squealing noise. When you get hit, the whole screen flashes for a moment. The Wikipedia page for this game claims that the spiders get replaced by hanging blobs of flesh in the US version, but I can find zero photographic proof of this, so it may be misinformation. The article sites a scan of the August 2008 issue of Playstation Magazine, which also no longer has scans online of that particular article.

When Moon enters the otherworld dining hall, she gets a quick line of dialogue off before the fight.


Also, speaking of the dining rooms, the regular world one no longer has a first aid kit in the cabinet, preventing that from bugging your inventory numbers, though the trick of raiding the dorms before nabbing the past inventory still works. Also, continuing Moon's fetch-quest, the graphics in the otherworld dorms are...weird.



Blankets do not work that way!

Also, the maps for the otherworld are a little weirder to make it clear things are different.




I have no idea what's going on in the kitchen. Maybe it's to tell you about the door puzzle with the sun and moon stones? Anyways, the last big difference I noticed was how some details seem to be greatly reduced. The chalk is now an obvious big white rectangle on the teacher's desk, and the close-up puzzles have suffered greatly.



Compared to the detail in the previous version, that's just sad. But other than that, pretty much we're looking at the same game. It has an identical translation to the original, so there's that. However, there doesn't seem to be rhyme nor reason for why some things were changed or cut. I've yet to hear an explanation myself. It should be obvious why I prefer to play the European version; the American version feels like, and literally is just half a game.