Fatal Frame 4 was a good enough game. Better than FF3, but worse than FF1 and 2. Though I have no idea why it was put on the Wii. The motion controls were awkward (though not nearly as bad as IGN claimed) and the RE4-style camera angles took away from most of the scares.
Let's face it, the market for Wii horror games just isn't there. If it HAD been released in the West, would it have sold well? I very much doubt it. Heck, it didn't even sell all that well in Japan. IIRC it didn't even reach 90,000 sales. I'd argue that it would have done slightly better on the PS3 or 360, if only because there are more horror fans who own those consoles and because the HD graphics really would have added to the scares. (I don't want to rag on the Wii, because I love my Wii to pieces, but the graphical imitations were really noticeable with this game. The haunted mansion was beautiful and the hospital was particularly creepy, but the ghosts and character models looked slightly anime-ish, and in motion they looked even sillier. It's hard to be scared of a ghost when you can see the jaggies around their character models.)
Of course, it would have needed A LOT of advertising to sell well AT ALL in the West. Most of the gaming world doesn't even seem to realize this series exists :-/
Midnight Crossroads said:
None of the names really make sense. Unless zero has connotations of ghosts, spirits, or death, or the ring signifies the ring in the camera, I'm at a loss. It is, however, pronounced rei, which is the name of the protagonist in the third game. Still, I doubt it was some nod to the future as Miku tends to be the most significant character. Although, it could be a play on words if rei is a homophone like damn and dam. Or the creator could have just been a fan of dadaism. I can't speak Japanese, so I'm at a loss.
Rei also means "spirit" in Japanese.
Yuurei means ghost, specifically the pale-faced/black-haired ghosts that appear in many Asian horrors.
There's actually a pretty interesting article about the yuurei superstition on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%ABrei