I found a piece on gamesetwatch talking about this post on D3's (makers of Onechanbara and other quality titles such as Zombie vs. Ambulance) latest new gaming opus,
The Tairyou Jigoku, which loosely translates as "The Overwhelming Hell," puts the player in the shoes of high school student Erika Mizusaki, who at the game's outset has lost her cell phone and has returned to her school to retrieve it. Unfortunately for her, it's not where she left it, and it turns out that a very Carrollesque white rabbit has swiped it. Erika, of course, gives chase, through several nightmarish environments, covering (roughly) four stages.
These stages are infested with all manner of creepy-crawlies, from insects to arthropods to rats to rather more supernatural creatures. It seems that they must like Erika's choice of perfume, because they have a tendency to swarm her whenever she moves near them. When she's being swarmed, Erika panics and can't move until she's shaken off all the critters. Shaking enemies off stuns them for a few seconds, giving Erika a chance to run away. But proximity to any given biomass causes Erika to be panicked, as represented by an onscreen meter consisting of the Japanese words "zowa zowa," onomatopoeia for the chills running down poor Erika's spine. If the creepy lettering reaches across the screen without being lowered, Erika will simply collapse and die of fright. The more bugs she's being swarmed by, the faster the meter will rise.
Thankfully, she can take preemptive action against the beasties: there are sporting goods and household tools scattered around the levels, bats and brooms and golf glubs and more, can be used to smack around the swarming masses if the player is skillful.
http://namakoteam.com/news.php?id=150
Like most Simple 2000 games, the quality doesn't look great, but the fright gage is something different.