Michigan: Report from Hell

Michigan: Report from Hell is a video game—alternately described as adventure in Japan, and survival horror in Western reports—where players take on the role of a television crew cameraman. The game is split into levels dubbed "Scenarios", with the player able to save between each scenario. The player, as the cameraman, is limited in interaction to moving through the city streets and building interiors, focusing the camera on different in-game elements, giving instructions to the reporter, solving puzzles found during exploration, and kicking objects such as doors. Some enemies can be killed by solving an environmental puzzle, while others must be avoided by sending warnings to the reporter.

The reporter can die during a level, which skips a section of the game and replaces them with one of seven other reporters. The cameraman has a limited amount of film for each level, which is used to capture different elements or scenes. These scenes fills up different points related to "Suspense", "Erotic" and "Immoral", with the final point total for each altering the ending. The game ends if the cameraman is killed, or the camera runs out of film, forcing the player to restart from the beginning of a scenario.

After a plane crashes into Lake Michigan, a fog covers the nearby city of Chicago. Media company ZakaTV sends in a crew to cover the incident; lead reporter Pamela Martel, a rookie cameraman, and sound engineer Brisco. Upon arrival, the crew is attacked by monstrous creatures that have killed most of the city's population. Pamela is soon killed and reanimated as a monster.

Joined by a new reporter, the crew learns that the fog and monsters were created by a virus designed by unhinged scientist Dr. O'Conner. Intended as a weapon against enemies of the United States, and developed in collusion with ZakaTV, the virus escaped containment following the plane crash and infected the city's population. The group finds O'Conner, who transforms willingly after revealing the existence of a vaccine in the city.

Michigan was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, then known for their work on The Silver Case and Flower, Sun, and Rain. During the early 2000s, Grasshopper Manufacture undertook contract work for other publishers to stay solvent during a difficult period, with Michigan being one of those projects. Spike's president Mitsutoshi Sakurai contacted company founder Goichi Suda about working together on a game project. Suda created a game concept around the theme of "mist", taking inspiration from Stephen King's The Mist.

Initially planned to be a game where players explored a mist-covered Chicago and with the mist itself being the threat, the team were unable to make it work, and during a meeting Suda and Sakurai reworked the design. This reworking resulted in the inclusion of monsters to make the game more frightening, and the mechanic of guiding a female reporter as a cameraman.

During 2004, Michigan: Report from Hell was among the top five hundred best-selling titles in Japan according to Media Create, selling more than 31,600 copies. Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu gave it a score of 30 points out of 40. The game received "mixed or average" reviews, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic, with a score of 53 points out of 100 based on four reviews.

Justin Speer, writing for Xplay, noted its unconventional mechanics and presentation, but felt uncomfortable with its erotic elements and either poor implementation of its mechanics or points when the control is taken from the player without warning. In an import playtest for IGN, Anoop Gantayat echoed these complaints, and did not recommend the game despite being interested in the concept. In a hands-on preview article, British magazine Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine noted the unusual premise, but failed both the gameplay experience and the lack of advertised erotic elements, summing it up as "a watered-down" survival horror with "ropey" voice-acting and a "terrible" plot.