Buu plays 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors aka 999 - Completed

The previously seen ending, where the game ends when Santa uses a gun to force June, Ace and Lotus through one of the [9] doors, finished with Junpei, Clover and Seven standing over a coffin with what sounded like someone trapped inside.  I was fully expecting it to be Snake, as his [2] bracelet would allow the four of them to pass through a [9] door, but the game simply ended before any attempt could be made to open the coffin.

I actually thought the following text had spoiled me somewhat, because the ending stated "unfortunately, that's the wrong answer.  Actually... I'm Santa."  Therefore, I spent play through no 2 convinced that Santa and Zero were one and the same.  Now though, I don't believe that to be the case, I think it was referring to the ending I've just seen, hinting at something more to come.

Basically, Once the [6] door had been opened Junpei, Ace, Santa and June found a golden gun, the same one Santa had used in the previous ending, only this time they all agree to leave it where it is, a gun being too dangerous for a game where the stakes are so high.  With the room completed, they meet up with Seven and Lotus, only Clover's no where to be found.  They go looking for her, and Junpei visits the [3] door, allegedly containing the body of Snake.  I already knew from the first play through that it wasn't actually Snake, as Clover confirmed his left arm was prosthetic and the corpse was described as having bone sticking out of his left arm, but in this play-through it took Junpei a second guess to establish this fact.  As he leaves, he runs into Seven, looking frantic.  They've found Clover.  But she's been murdered.

Cue a couple of simple puzzles, and Jinpei opening a safe in the [5] room that had been locked during your passage through it earlier, and deciphering a note that fingered Ace as a guilty party.  Junpei then tricks him into confessing that he suffers from a condition that means he cannot tell human faces apart from one another, asking him who he is.  When Ace tells him, "you're Junpei", Junpei responds with... "unfortunately, that's the wrong answer.  Actually... I'm Santa."  And that's the line from the previous ending.  Ace had been tricked into killing someone dressed like Snake (he couldn't tell it wasn't Snake), and he had killed Clover to keep her quiet.  He then revealed he also has taken possession of the 9th Man's [9]bracelet, as well as being the one responsible for the 9th Man's actions at the start of the game, tricking him into believing one person could pass through the numbered doors alone, contrary to Zero's rules.  Ace, now confirmed as CEO of a pharmaceutical company and a man who had previously run a Nonary Game himself, pulled the gun on Lotus, forcing her to come with him to allow him passage through a [9] door.

As Ace leaves, June faints again, and Junpei and Seven go after Ace whilst Santa looks after June.  In the room with two [9] doors, the conffin starts knocking again, only this time Junpei and Seven manage to open it with the code they used to open the safe.  Sure enough, Snake is inside.  Seven has the [0] bracelet taken from the dead captain in his route through the game, and they establish the [0] bracelet actually has a [6] value, meaning they can use it to open the other [9] door.  Snake crushes his  ownprosthetic arm, allowing him to remove his bracelet and follow Junpei and Seven.

They stumble across Ace and Lotus in an incinerator, standing in front of a third (and final?) [9] door, where Ace reveals to Snake that he killed Clover, Junpei and Seven having kept quiet about this for fear of upsetting Snake.  Snake charges Ace, being shot multiple times, which allows Lotus to free herself from Ace's grasp, and Snake holds down Ace while Lotus, Seven and Jinpei escape the incinerator moments before it fires into life, burning a badly-wounded Snake, and Ace, to ash.  Junpei insists that Seven and Lotus wait for him whilst he looks for Santa and June, yet he cannot find them.  At least, at first.  He finds June collapsed on the floor in the room with the two [9] doors, where Snake was kept in the coffin.  She's really weak, and a Junpei tells her he'll get them both out, he hears Zero speaking to him, telling him the game is over, and that he (zero himself) has lost.  Junpie cannot tell where the voice is coming from, but hears a door opn, and races through it, trying to catch Zero.  Alas, the corridor on the other side is empty.  He turns back, but June has vanished in the few seconds his focus was elsewhere.  Junpei screams in anger, and then the room fills with gas...

The fact that there are two [9] doors effectively means that every single player of the game would be able to escape.  At least as long as the team hasn't sabotaged itself, say by killing each other at least.  It's a pretty nice twist for this sort of thing, playing on the cast's expectancy that only a few of them would be able to survive and forcing them to play a little selfishly.  I'm sure there's a comment in there somewhere about human nature itself - Santa pulling a gun on June, basically condemning Junpei, Seven and Clover to die in order to save himself in my first play though, and Ace confirmed as a manipulative killer in the second - but I thought it an interesting observation on Junpei's part.

Junpei hears a voice in his head giving him the information from the ending where he opened the safe, confronted and outed Ace, and opened the coffin with Snake in.

Of course, the coffin opens.  Yet Junpei cannot explain in-game how he knows the combination because he never opened the safe in this play-through.  Also, I never twigged on the first play through that the dead guy in the captain's quarters had the [0] bracelet, which was discovered to have a value of six.  

Well, fuck me, consider my mind blown.

I think the game is designed around the morphogenic fields various characters have been talking about, and Junpei knows about the safe/coffin code because he's getting that memory from his alternate self that knew the code.  Also, "cap" had the [0] bracelet with the value of 6, and June likely actually has a [9] bracelet. Why?  Right now, I'm guessing that Zero and June are one and the same.  The one person who has been beyond suspicion the whole game because she's a known quantity from Junpei's past and he trusts her, therefore we've trusted her implicitly.  Junpei's aim has been to keep her save, he's been white-knighting the whole game and she's been utterly off-the-radar, especially as I (and all the characters in-game) kept referring to Zero as "he".

The only question is... why?

Snake believes that Santa is Zero, contrary to my own initial belief. However, in the library when Junpei gets the full story out of him, he also mentions brother and sister pairs were used in the previous experiments and that the name of the girl who died in the first games was Akane, June's real name. Coincidence? I doubt it. I strongly suspect Akane/June and Santa are actually brother and sister and they're both Zero.

Just need to get out of this bloody library now.

Seven got his memories back by looking at a photo of the pharmaceutical company executives responsible for the Nonary Project, all of whom Ace has already killed. Also got a flashback of Seven saving the kids from that game, including Santa mentioning his kid-sister (I hate that figure of speech, it's just not something anyone other than an American would say) Akane, who is revealed to be a very young looking June. Ha, called that one then.

Thing is, if Akane dies in the incinerator, who the hell is the girl running around in Junpei's Nonary game? If, as I suspect, June is Zero, did she not actually die and just faked her death all these years? I'm not convinced with that explanation. What the hell is going on?

The Nonary game was designed to test the theory of morphogenetic fields, of placing two teams of people in identical situations and forcing them, by means of mortal peril, to access these fields and find the answers required.

To prevent her own fiery death, Akane/June uses her powers to pull information from the future and survive the game. The only catch is that in order for that future to ever happen in the first place, she must arrange and manipulate the second Nonary game herself. If she doesn't or if something goes awry, then June starts feeling faint, or - as in the safe ending - she actually vanishes from the timeline entirely thanks to the time paradox.

There are typically two types of people, transmitters and receivers, yes? However, Akane - and Junpei to some extent - must be able to do both; in the True ending, they're actually conversing through time itself, meaning that Akane is likely far more gifted than anyone ever thought possible.

Is Akane a sympathetic character? On the one hand, she's a young girl put into an awful game whereby she dies horribly. On the other, she's a young girl who has to put other people in awful situations to ensure she herself survives. Personally, I couldn't see her as the bad guy. It may be Junpei's own bias, but he clearly loves her dearly and even at the end of the game all I wanted to do was give her a big hug. Everything she did was necessary for the future she saw to come to pass. Ace is the bad guy; he's the one that started the ball rolling, he's the one that admits to taking pleasure in killing, he's the one that killed the other execs in the second game.

Oh, and the hitchhiker at the very end of the game was Alice, yes? Troll harder, 999!

that Junpei and Akane never see each other again after the events of 999.  Despite the fact they clearly have very genuine feelings for each other, Junpei allegedly was stated to have looked for her but never found her.  After the ordeal they've both been through (and yes, I'm firmly in the camp that thinks of Akane as a victim rather than being a cold-blooded killer), don't they deserve a little happiness?

I know it's uncommon in Japanese games, but I want Junpei to have a happy ending, goddammit.

The DS upper screen during the finale shows Junpei aged 21, taking part in the second Nonary Games  The lower screen shows Akane, age 12 taking part in the first.

Think back to the start of the game though.  Through the whole game, you assume you're on a ship, right?  The game explicitly shows you a ship at the very start, exploding as it details Junpei waking up.  However there was no ship in the second Nonary Game, so the ship shown is the one Akane is on.  At frequent points during the game, especially the "escape the room" areas, the same thing happens.  You'll see events from two points-of-view.  I'll be the first to admit, I thought it was a pointless gimmick showing the same thing on both screens.  However, that's clearly not the case.  The upper screen is still Junpei, but the lower screen is Akane's POV from the first Nonary games, and the reason they look the same is because that's the whole point.  They're sharing the experience via the morphogenetic field.