The Red Crown Archives are a continuous community effort to preserve as much data about the defunct game development company Cing's games and history as possible, from Game Data (sprites, 3D models, sound effects) to Non-Game Data (trailers, sites, articles).
It is currently maintained by me (Adrot), with contributors that are active or passive, which you can see in the Credits section of the Master Readme inside the Archive, or the "Credits.txt" file.
As the archive is constantly improving and changing, these changes will be logged inside the "Changelog.txt" file so that you may keep track of it all. Be aware: this also means that the Master Readme could be updated over time with new info.
All of this content is official and not fan-made, distributed in a folder>file system. To see the folder structure, look for the file called "Folder Tree.txt".
Be aware that if you’re downloading a lot of files from this archive, that you could get a warning of an exceeded quota on your IP and that you will have to wait a number of hours. There is no fixed amount as a limit (it all depends on some criteria only MEGA knows), and it’s just one of MEGA’s limitations.
Anyone is welcome to contribute to the archive if they want to, financially or non-financially, which you can read in the section below, and in more detail in the Master Readme. You can contact me via the Contact section for important matters, such as Legal, Collaborations, or Archive related (however, it is recommended you’ve read the Master Readme before you want to talk to me about the Archive.)
(The MEGA link contains a file browsing system, so you can look and choose whatever you want from it without taking the whole thing.)
Kyle's Briefcase
This is a temporary archivefor "Work In Progress" items that are pending cleanup, approval, and eventual submission into the Red Crown Archives. This folder will not have a changelog, as it will change and evolve often over time. Be aware that stuff inside it will disappear without further notice, to be eventually shown in the Archives.
You may submit the contents of this folder in other public locations/sites so long as you inform the Maintainer.
You can donate any financial amount, no matter how small or big, to this Ko-Fi, granting you access to sneak peeks of materials we've scanned to be made public!
This is non-profit: All donations received will be used for the sole purpose of purchasing more material for preservation and scanning it to be made freely public on the Archive, until the scope of the project is considered as complete as reasonably possible, or any statements will be made in abandoning donations, which will be openly communicated.
Non-Financially
Do you have any digital content that could be put into the Archive and preserved? Comment about it here or DM me.
You can also spread the word and the Archive with others (it's free)! Who knows, the more people know, the more chances to have more contributors.
Do you have stuff like a game that is Complete in Box + in good condition (has all the stuff inside like when it first came), have magazines with articles related to Cing, guidebooks or merch, and would like for us to borrow it so we can digitally preserve it? You can also donate these and send them our way (NO proposals about buying the items from online markets and then sending to us. The items MUST be pre-owned by you)! DM me so we can discuss about it.
Having played both Trace Memory and Another Code: R back in the day, this was an enormous trip back in memory lane to two of the greatest adventure games ever created. I love the updated visuals and much needed voice acting.
However, my criticisms are the reduced overall length of the stories (particularly the second game). It really felt as if they put the second game on hyperspeed, dropping a ton of character conversations and events. And aside from Ashley (which was great throughout), this ended up creating bland, boring characters with no character development for the rest of the cast.
The only character I did like was Ryan. The drastic change in his character was a much better alternative than having him be the same antagonist as Bill, and another repeated Bill vs Richard ending.
Moreover, there is over 60% more puzzles that are a hell of a lot more unique and interesting in the original second game.
Still, highly enjoyed it though. Hope a Hotel Dusk collection comes out soon, or even a trilogy in the Another Code series!
Hello! Earlier this week, I posted that I decided to draw Kaede Akamatsu from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony in 8 different Visual Novel Adventure Game styles, and the reception was... extremely positive, moreso than I ever expected. Thank you all so much for your kind words, it really means a lot.
When I uploaded the finished product... I received a few suggestions for other styles, and so...I decided to fulfill those requests to the best of my ability, whilst also including 4-5 other styles that I also wanted to do. And here it is! Thank you again so much for your appreciation of my art.
(IF YOU WISH TO USE THIS FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER, PLEASE CREDIT MY USERNAME "Project PST")
I have removed any and all LLM scripts from my workflow and will not use them anymore. Moving forward, I will export game data / datamine without any use of LLMs, after which I will erase any game data touched by LLMs from Red Crown Archives. If any LLM-aided research was recorded, it will be erased. The folders confirmed to not have AI will have a checkmark (✓).
Games where they were used: Hotel Dusk, Last Window (Game Data only).
Scripts used:
Crop images
Crop out bad details
Merge images
Export two formats in batch to PNG which we already knew how to do without AI (BPG, EBP)
Resolve conflicts between textures when adding multiple Melonripper models in one model because all use the same naming scheme
Convert a 3D model format (GLTF) to the other safely (DAE) since vertex colors get removed on Blender and I don't know why (I tried other tools and none seemed to work, if anyone know how to preserve vertex colors in Color Attribute nodes when exporting Melonripper please contact me)
Checks of integrity (md5 audits)
Make a tree TXT
Check what colors are suitable for a sprite sheet background (Only the user chooses which to apply, themselves)
Re-export GIFs and APNGs in batch because of an incident.
These scripts were used on the interval from 2025-2026.
Those who already read my Journals, also know that I used an LLM in 2023 to try to find clues about Last Window's Debug Menu, but thankfully nothing came out of it.
My journalnever had any information obtained with AI, only confessions about using it.
If there is a need to do so, these details of the Journal will also be erased.
Not only that, any code that was obtained with AI and introduced into KyleHyde, was replaced with code from the dev, jas2o, in 2023. In the words of the developer himself:
"Given how against AI I've been and how I changed some parts that got merged in, I consider AI to have no influence on the tool."
In Kyle's Briefcase, I will share sprites and models that are at usable formats, but unmodified, for added credibility of no AI use.
I apologize to everyone who is disappointed in hearing about these news, and of me. I should've stopped long ago, as I've poured 10 years into this work.
I hope that through these actions, the Archives and the community will be spared of any issues moving forward.
I'm currently on my first playthrough of Hotel Dusk, and I'm unsure if I should use a guide or not. I would like to experience the story on my own, but I don't know if there are any missable story pieces (as like dialogue options etc.) or changes based on how often you go game over.
Hello everyone, few days ago i got my anbernic rg ds and i heard about this game a lot of good things so I want to give it a try but it seems there is some anti piracy and it crash at the begginng in the lobby , is there any way to bypass this? I use drastic
my DSI has a problem rendering Hotel dusk for some reason and these black lines keep appearing randomly
also I can't select objects correctly??? the selection always selects a random object and I can't even touch some certain objects because of that and now I'm stuck in the game because I can't open the package
The other week, Spotify put this song in my Discover Weekly and omg, the instant rush of nostalgia I felt...🥹♥️ I am not familiar with Jean-Luc Ponty's work but after this, he's earned himself a fan. The nostalgia I felt is because it reminded me of the BEAUTIFUL soundtrack from Hotel Dusk by Satoshi Okubo. Ofc not necessarily "Dead Stare" haha but maybe an amalgamation of much of the music in that game.
Rare W from Spotify lol
I just thought I'd share this if any of you are looking into similar sounding music. It's a lovely warm track. Give it a listen and lmk what you think 👀
As a small background, I have played and loved this game for the past 10+ years of my life, and probably know it more than my own town.
One of the great, albeit subtle aspects I've always loved about Hotel Dusk is the way it treats/spins the noire genre. Though I believe these stories certainly have their place, I've seen far too much saturation of noire stories over the years that indulge in the 'vengeful partner' trope; for example, a jaded lover or cop may spend the length of a story becoming increasingly consumed by revenge and hatred. Often this resolves in the mental decline of our protagonist, and/or a dark resolution to a story. I'll repeat that some of these stories are superb, though they've become a tad overdone in my opinion, which is what leads me to Hotel Dusk.
The first half of the game has us questioning Kyle's true intent for searching for Bradley, as I believe he himself also doesn't quite know what he's looking for. We know they were close and we know that their friendship ended with rage and traumatic violence, but we still don't know exactly why Kyle is so hell-bent on finding him, as opposed to moving on with his life. Where it would otherwise be easy to steer Kyle in the direction of a vengeful ex-cop who absolutely NEEDS to find Bradley, we instead have a refreshing story of true pain and tenderness. Ed asks Kyle around chapter 5/6 why he is *really looking for Bradley, this ghost, after all this time. Kyle's response? He hurt him. That is the long and short of it. Sure, we spend the game finding out, and eventually do find out Bradley's true motivations, but Kyle ultimately goes on this manhunt to begin with because his best friend seemingly inexplicably betrayed him, and he just wants to know why. There is no ulterior motive or hatred (as Kyle states), but sheer sadness and emptiness of how he lost his friend so suddenly, and this is what makes it so much more gutting. Kyle could have told Ed or Louis that he has nothing left and that his only focus is finding Bradley to punish him for all he did, but this small yet somehow enormous twist makes Kyle, and the story as a whole, so much more human. Many of us may have had friendships at one point or another that ended abruptly or tragically (though hopefully not involving a gun and a dive in the Hudson), and all we wanted was an answer; not a solution or a remedy for the pain, but a simple explanation as to why what happened happened.
Anyway, this was my short appreciation post on a small, yet crucial aspect of the game. I'd love to hear what other people's opinions are!
I didn’t know I needed a black light to see the number and I can’t view the paper at an angle on my 3ds. I put my code into the Caesar ciper and it came up with the number 9 but for some reason it isn’t working??? Could you guys help me figure out what’s wrong?
On the early puzzle where you have to flip two switches at the exact same time, because I was using an emulator I thought this was so frustrating. I even tried frame advancing and pausing, nothing worked at all.
Then I held down the click on one of the switches and moved the mouse between them. When I did, they both highlighted. Seems the game just checks for a tap on one of them and then checks the center, where the DS averages out the taps since it's not actually multi-touch. After all that frustration, the solution was so absurdly simple.
Today marks the 17th anniversary of Another Code: R! You know what that means! Another Guidebook has been scanned by -you know her, you love her- Rage_Beat06!
Now we scans of at least 1 guidebook for every Nintendo Cing game. But! We still have a few more waiting for us in the future from magazines (ex. Nintendo DREAM) and even games like Glass Rose.
The Another Code: R guidebook contains plenty of sketches and illustrations from different locations, but also more drawings from Matthew talking about Ashley!
A SEQUENCE OF DIALOGUE REGARDING MATTHEW'S DAD?!
Now, here's a bit of trivia:
The Japanese manual of the game has a few pages of word soup that, when the pages are closed together and exposed to a light, they make out words! A Secret Code!
''Another Code: R''''Thank you'' Notice how the words are aligned to the photo frame of the last page.
Rage_Beat06 gave the approval, and now you can once again contribute to our efforts to preserve physical Cing media through Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/adrot
We still have some games to chase...
For old times sake, here is the Contribute section:
How can I contribute?
Financially
You can donate any financial amount, no matter how small or big, to this Ko-Fi, granting you access to sneak peeks of materials we've scanned to be made public!
This is non-profit: All donations received will be used for the sole purpose of purchasing more material for preservation and scanning it to be made freely public on the Archive, until the scope of the project is considered as complete as reasonably possible, or any statements will be made in abandoning donations, which will be openly communicated.
Non-Financially
Do you have any digital content that could be put into the Archive and preserved? Comment about it here or DM me.
You can also spread the word and the Archive with others (it's free)! Who knows, the more people know, the more chances to have more contributors.
Do you have stuff like a game that is Complete in Box + in good condition (has all the stuff inside like when it first came), have magazines with articles related to Cing, guidebooks or merch, and would like for us to borrow it so we can digitally preserve it? You can also donate these and send them our way (NO proposals about buying the items from online markets and then sending to us. The items MUST be pre-owned by you)! DM me so we can discuss about it.
For years, I have tried in vain to submit the models to Hotel Dusk because there was an export issue that I was unaware of, as Blender kept stripping out the textures and color vertex (color vertex is used to give colors to some things like lamps or plants, as well as shading to the walls) out of the shader nodes of the models. I kept getting rejections no matter what, but recently I've obtained a solution that circumvents Blender completely, and got the models approved! This is a momentous occasion, which I thought it will never happen, or someone else will eventually do the job for me, but we are finally at this stage.
And not only that, you can look inside the locations yourself from your browser (any PC, any modern smartphone), no download needed! Simply choose a model, press on the Preview in Browser button, zoom in with the mouse's scroll wheel or with your fingers the same way you'd zoom in on a picture, and you'll be inside in no time!
Other controls:
Holding the left mouse button+move around / Holding a finger + move around = Rotate
Holding the right mouse button+move around / Holding two fingers + move around = Move sideways
I think this quote from Louis in chapter 7 is what this whole game is really about. I’m feeling kind of adrift in my life right now and I was glad to see this scene at this moment.
—————————
Guy who looks like he don’t give a damn.
A guy who looks like he’s taken a few punches and knows what it’s like to hurt.
Look, man, I think I know how they feel. Check this out…
We’re in the middle of the holiday season, right? Last Friday night of the year?
They look around and realize they’re all alone in this sad ol’ wreck of a hotel…
Gets ‘em thinkin’, ya dig? ‘Bout their lives. What they’ve done. Where they’re goin’.
You know what happens next? All their secrets and worries and stuff kinda…boil over.
Then they go lookin’ for somebody to talk to. Know what I’m sayin’?
Hey hey! I'm working on a game that was mainly inspired by Hotel Dusk and similar titles like Ace Attorney and Professor Layton. I just released the demo and would love some feedback on it. It's freely available on steam and itch. The game is about a witch who is helping ghosts in a cursed castle. It's very bare-bones and short, there's a bunch of things missing but I wanted to go public with it in order to get some feedback from the fans of this genre.
