Gakkou de atta Kowai Hanashi

It featured improved graphics, full motion video, and an expanded story. The game was developed by Pandora Box (game developer), a studio founded by game designer and scenario writer Takeo Iijima. The characters and setting would later be used in the Apathy franchise of Visual and Sound Novel games.

• Title — Gakkou de atta Kowai Hanashi • Developer — Pandora Box • Publisher — Banpresto • Released — Super FamicomAugust 4, 1995PlayStationJuly 19, 1996 • Genre — Visual novel • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — Super Famicom, PlayStation

In the game you play as a reporter for the school paper, writing a story about the 7 School Mysteries. Each mystery is told to you by one of 6 possible other students. As you make your way through each scenario, you are given choices which will change the outcome of the story and therefore your progression through the game. Including hidden stories, there are more than 50 possible scenarios in the game.

• Shuichi Sakagami (坂上 修一 Sakagami Shuichi) • Emi Kurata (倉田 恵美 Kurata Emi) • Mayumi Taguchi (田口 真由美 Taguchi Mayumi)

• Makoto Shindou (新堂 誠 Shindou Makoto) • Shouji Arai (荒井 昭二 Arai Shouji) • Nozomu Kazama (風間 望 Kazama Nozomu) • Tomoharu Hosoda (細田 友晴 Hosoda Tomaharu) • Akemi Iwashita (岩下 明美 Iwahita Akemi) • Reiko Fukuzawa (福沢 玲子 Fukuzawa Reiko)

• Sadao Hino (日野 貞夫 Hino Sadao) • Sanae Motoki (元木 早苗 Motoki Sanae) • Kuroki (黒木 Kuroki)

An anthology manga called Comic Hen Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi was made to promote the game, featuring popular horror mangaka of the time. The contents have little to do with the game. A sister game, Tsukikomori, was released on the Super Famicom in 1996, using the same gameplay and art style. In 2007, a visual novel remake of the game, Apathy - Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi ~Visual Novel Version~, was released. Under a new studio name, Nana Korobi Hachi Korogari, Apathy would become its own franchise of visual novels. Since 2007, a number of novels and two volumes of a manga have been released in the Gakkou de Atta franchise.

Gakkou de atta Kowai Hanashi was released in Japan for the Super Famicom on August 4, 1995. On release, Famicom Tsūshin reviewers were mixed on whether the stories were appropriately scary or not, with one reviewer saying only the faces of the people in the game were scary. One reviewer said it was inferior to Chunsoft's Otogirisō (1992) and Banshee's Last Cry (1994) while and another said they wished the developers had focused more on the games sound effects. The game was ported to the PlayStation in Japan and released on July 19, 1996 as Gakkou de atta Kowai Hanashi S. This version of the game had additional narrative paths and allows the player to choose the gender of the main character.

The Super Famicom version of the game was later released on the Virtual Console service for the Wii and Wii U in Japan on August 5, 2008, and on August 27, 2014. The PlayStation version was also re-released on the PlayStation Network.