Akagawa Jirou no Yuurei Ressha is VN of the February 1991 by default - Prontis is too much of a half-baked game.
1. Akagawa Jirou no Yuurei Ressha 赤川次郎の幽霊列車 [910208] Mighty Craft 1 2
Based on detective novel. Eight people have vanished and rumors state that they were carried away by ghost train. The key to these events lies in a remote village.
It is famicom game so it inherits its disadvantages. As in every famicom d
There are no masterpieces in January and Dragon Eyes becomes the winner by default since it's the closest thing to a normal visual novel.
1. Dragon Eyes ドラゴンアイズ [910123] Fairytale 1
Dragon Eyes is a "space opera" kind of story, focusing on a young girl named Ines, who lives on the planet Miu of the Phi Sun. She grew up together with a space agent named Klind, to whom she refers as "brother". One day, her superior from the planet Garudor
My masterpieces list:1. Can Can Bunny Superior2. De-Ja3. Illumina!4. Misty Blue5. Sekai de Ichiban Kimi ga Suki!6. Slope 7. Suijaku Sakusen 2 Moeyo Dragon8. The 4th Unit - Merry Go Round9. Toushin Toshi10. Yami no Ketsuzoku11. Urotsukidouji12. Urusei Yatsura: Stay With You 1990 is the year of RPG. Their number and diversity put interactive adventures VNs to shame. 1990 is a revolutionary year in many aspects. First doujin works, first nsfw covers, first explicit sex scenes, first lgbt game, firs
Foreword: I've wanted to play this game for a long time. I've always considered it to be the grandfather of all adventure visual novels, but only found time for it while doing year 1990 coverage. So this is Elf's first grand work and the first Elf work to have Hiruda as story writer. Game is amazing but at the same time there aren't that many japanese reviews and as many as zero English ones. How can that even be possible?! I've no answers. My best guess is that work is prior to internet era and
Year 1989 masterpieces:1. Burning Point2. Dororo ~Jigoku Emaki no Shou~3. Dual Targets - The 4th Unit Act.34. Paragon Sexa Doll5. Tawhid6. 38 Man Kilo no Kokuu7. Dragon Knight8. Twilight Zone 3 Nagakute Amai Yoru9. Hare Nochi Oosawagi!10. Imitation wa Aisenai11. Nishimura Kyoutarou Mystery: Blue Train Satsujin Jiken12. Asoko no Koufuku13. Psychic Detective Series Vol. 1: Invitation - Kage kara no Shoutaijou14. Psychic Detective Series Vol. 2: Memories The two main candidates for VN of the year f
In 1988 there are even more games, but I have only selected 9 as masterpieces:1. Soft de Hard na Monogatari2. Chatty3. Famicom Tantei Club: Kieta Koukeisha4. Lipstick. ADV5. Onryou Senki6. Psy-O-Blade7. Angelus ~Akuma no Fukuin~8. Snatcher9. Akira Year 1988 is the year when PC-98 won. In 1987 there were only couple games with pc-98 versions. Occasional games start to have animation and sometimes even certain phrases voiced. In 1988 there's a very big share of visual novels made deliberately for
The number of visual novels in 1987 increased greatly, but the number of masterpieces is relatively the same:1. Amazons no Hihou2. Urusei Yatsura3. DNA4. Koroshi no Dress5. Hadou no Hyouteki6. Jesus7. Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School8. Hiatari Ryoukou!9. The 4th Unit1987 has become a great breakthrough for visual novels. Text parser has been made obsolete by command selection and quite many games that amplify text over gameplay or graphics have showed up (even though the graphics have evolu
The masterpieces of the year 1986:1. Shiro to Kuro no Densetsu ~Rinne Tensei Hen~2. Wingman 2: Kitakura no Fukkatsu3. Boukenshatachi Kenja no Yuigon4. Alpha5. Hokuto no Ken: Violence Gekiga Adventure6. J.B. Harold no Jikenbo #1 - Final Mystery - Murder Club7. Casablanca ni Ai o Satsujinsha wa Jikuu o Koete8. Gall Force - Eternal Story9. Maison Ikkoku ~Omoide no Photograph~10. Suishou no Dragon11. Little Princess12. Toki no Tabibito13. 1000-nen Oukoku
So there are very few VNs in 1985 and even fewer account for masterpieces. Karuizawa Yuukai Annai was obviously a favorite after Horii Yuji won the previous two years, but the game lacks the mystery and fills it with lots of fanservice. El Dorado Denki gets a pretty devastating review. Tenshi-tachi no Gogo is an eroge that I would strike out if it weren't in the 80s. Abyss II and Dezeni World still use text parser. So why not Shiro to Kuro no Densetsu first title? The story is fresh and serious.
The masterpieces of the year are:1. Miko to Akemi no Jungle Adventures ,2. Salad no Kuni no Tomato-hime ,3. Eiyuu Densetsu Saga4. Again5. Jigoku no Renshuu Mondai6. Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin: Ohotsk ni Kiyu7. Corridor8. Wingman9. Time Tunnel10. ZarthFirst of all, Death Trap is not included in the masterpieces list because it does not feel exciting to me. But we're still left with as many as 10 masterpieces on our hands! Lots of novelties and good stories this year, but the VN of the year 1984 is H
The masterpieces of the year are:1. Joshi Ryou Panic,2. Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken,3. Star Arthur Densetsu I ~Wakusei Mephius~,4. Mio no Mystery Adventure,5. Dezeni Land.The VN of the year 1983 is Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken, because it introduced command selection that was used for many years to come. It's a huge step from text parser. There was another revolutionary game Star Arthur Densetsu that introduced point-and-click elements for the first time, but the main part remained with t
I used to like VNs rated. To such extent that whenever I could not find an english localized VN review with a rating, I wanted to make a review with a rating myself. And usual vote ratings aren't reliable since anyone can vote for any rate, even having dumped the actual VN. As of late my opinion on this matter changed drastically. What a review actually needs instead of being structured one (like this my old review) is just to transfer impressions, VN core, noticeable flaws and afterthoughts. Th
Blog purpose
Well, I've been around VNs for about 15 years. As far as I can remember, my first game was MS-DOS Three Sisters Story, what we know now as San Shimai. At that time such games were the first erotic games along with Snake games and Poker ones and were referred as forbidden fruit. That game was a shock - what should have been a light experience turned out to be a really difficult story. All the characters were so nice that I really did not want to blackmail their father and lo
