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Everything posted by kivandopulus
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It's going to be pretty much my first off-topic post, but I feel the need to inform on the matter why all the links are inaccessible. My free hosting (http://tigrimigri.com/) died on me on November 6th and I've been waiting for it to show up ever since. I can't do monthly overviews without it since I initially fill in data through the wiki. I don't really have any backups save for very early crude version so I felt reluctant searching for a new home. But it's finally the time and I've tried some free services only to find out that I need a paid hosting. First my requirements. I needed Semantic Mediawiki with a bandwith over 5gb. Here is my list of free services with evaluation why they did not work for me. 1) http://www.shoutwiki.com - they provide semantic mediawiki extension only on request, but I sent that request over a week ago and there's still no answer and ticket status directs at 404 error since the very beginning so I guess that's it. 2) http://referata.com/ - it returns error on the very basic create template choice so it looks abandoned for some time 3) https://www.gamepedia.com/ - has Semantic Mediawiki in its extensions but hosts only wikis on one certain game, not other around gaming wikis 4) https://byet.host - is actually the only service that I was able to comfortably test semantic mediawiki after the collapse, but it has quite strict policies and my fresh semantic mediawiki has been banned twice already - for load spikes (I ran shell scripts to upload pages from .csv files faster) and for some 2ch/4ch content (I guess links to vndb.org were considered as that since there is literally nothing else on that wiki). There are tonns of noname other free hosts who actually are byet resellers. They are easily identified by unlimited everything for free, the same signup pattern and nameservers actually looking at byet. 5) https://x10hosting.com/ - can't say much about it, since it says right away at signup that signups from my country are not allowed, unwise to try and violate that. 6) https://www.heliohost.org/ - i tried to register on both available servers and it's it's just unmanagable with very slop operating speed on a fresh installed mediawiki 7) https://viewen.com/ - they look legible, but they demand to like and share them every month on facebook and stay constantly in touch. Upon registration they provide a list of eight (!) segments where you need to give out pretty much all your personal data, vow to worship them as facebook god and some other sections that I did not read up to. Can't stand that much intimacy from a hosting. Their TOS is quite strict as well, so such site as vndb on semantic mediawiki could fall under child porn, scripts abuse and copyright infringement. 8 ) https://aws.amazon.com/ - they refused to accept my card information - guess it's because they are USA-centered. 9) https://www.000webhost.com - they're well known for leaking millions of private data records recently but even without noticing that there are some obvious shortcomings. There's an automated script only for wordpress site, otherwise manual uploading the site and configuring database needed. There's a lot of negative feedback about sudden violating the terms of service notices, so Semantic wiki with its background data update services would be in the vanguard of violation. 10) http://www.host-ed.net/ - company is an old one and there are a lot of issues piled up around it - the most pressing one for me is that PHP version is as low as 5.4 and only quite old mediawiki versions would be able to start here. 11) https://www.freewebhostingarea.com/ - php version is only 5.2.6 and most of pages go into 404 redirects 12) https://www.5gbfree.com/ - site's down for last few days, probably dead. In past I tried it and I remember some severe limitations like inability to have own domain name. 13) https://googiehost.com/ - actually a reliable choice, but I had my first Mediawiki there and once a month mediawiki was just dying with pages loading for 5 minutes/initiating an error. Support ticket improved the situation each time, but after several months of such torture I moved out afrom there. 14) https://www.atspace.com/ - has some real limitations on the MySQL database with just 30mb storage and only 15 tables allowed. That's actually it. All the others are the resellers or/and offer too little disc space (I need at least 300-400mb) or severe limitations on bandwidth/database. So far I've set up with one of the the cheapest possible web hosting (and I'll be making .xml exports of all pages periodically) and I really hope I would not ever need to make a 1$/month web hostings review after this free hostings review.
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Foreword: It's a C's Ware story game so I'm in. I have not read reviews prior to playing the game. I followed three different walkthroughs though - and still failed to get even a single happy ending. You can read about my torments below. Title: Vist Developer: C's Ware Date: 1999-12-02 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v6108 Length: 20 hours. Game type: Map selection ADV. Difficulty: Pretty insane. Some mazes are ridiculously difficult and twice I failed to find a way within an hour and had to precisely follow walkthrough. Another my huge disappointment is that I failed miserably to get any happy ending. So here how it was. I followed walkthrough accurately for the first time aiming for Rin ending. For some reason I got only a normal one no matter how many times I reloaded the last two battles. Then i dug two more walkthroughs and one said that simultaneous capture was possible so I flagged every heroine twice and saved before the final 3rd flagging... and no matter how many times I followed that choice to the end I still got only same normal ending. So my guess is that 1) simultaneous capturing is impossible and it's needed to strictly not flag any other girl 2) you probably need to make sure you win all the battles (it's very unclear in the game whether you actually got hit or made a successful counter-attack) 3) C's Ware turned into complete sadists after very very torturing Kazeoto, Chirin. There are a lot of choices and hundreds of map and items interaction so even with skipping whole playthrough for the heroines ending scene is going to take at least two hours (more like three). And there are EIGHT heroines! There's just one CG for this final scene so it's a very short one. After a full day of replaying trying to get good ending I just got so sick of the game that I don't the will to keep trying. Synopsis: Takuto, the protagonist, is a sickly highschool student with a heart disease. His father is a scientist and researcher who is traveling overseas. Even thought he is alone in home, his neighbor and university student Rin come visit him every day, and every night his father call him and they talk by phone. But one day, his father stops calling and they lost contact. Takuto wonders if something happened to him and contacts the laboratory where his father works. But the staff members dont' know anything. Takuto is worried, until one day a strange girl called Eryu appears in his house with a letter from his father. "I'm sorry ------" - Says the last words of his father. And something who don't look to be human starts to approach the hero, who little by little get caught in the case of the bizarre murders. Structure: There are 5 chapters each containing on average 8 days. Character Design rating: 8/10 Protagonist rating: 8/10 Story rating: 7/10 Game quality: 8/10 Overall rating: 8/10 Rating comments: I'm biased here since watching all the good endings could melt my heart a bit. But overall characters don't look too likable. Out of 8 heroines I liked Reiko the scientist woman the most and she's pretty much a standard office lady. So there aren't really likable characters. Protagonist is too weak at first and in the second half he fails to control himself repeatedly and looses memory of what happened more than once. Can't really say that he's moving the flow of the story. Game looks and feels quite cheap - mostly thanks to character design and only female cast voicing. Don't get me wrong - CG and interactive part are awesome. Game also has a number of very colorful enemies and side-characters... but they are males and thus not voiced. Story was a firm 9 up to the last fifth chapter where it suddenly changed the location and got too cryptic leaving a lot of loose ends behind. Protagonist The transformation from a weakling into superhuman was quite well done. He's beaten bloody for the first half of the game by other hooligan students and is only occasionally saved by girls who happen to be around. What differs him from other students is his high metabolism and ability to stay close to the infection fog without being infected. What I like about him is how he takes the beatings by the hooligans. He hardly says a word and just tolerates everything with the thoughts "If I do as they want the beatings will only get worse". Apart of that he hardly knows and does not have his own will - it might be for the best since it's easy to associate oneself with him. Characters: As I've mentioned there are a lot of cool bad guys in this game. Later game is based on fights, but there is only one capable of fighting heroine.Apart of the bad guys there is one very impressive "Scarred man" - he's basically of the same source as yourself and thus he just terminates his enemies. You hardly manage to fight one beast and then just walk and see rivers of blood and guts left behind that person. He showed up at different moments in the game and was a great guy to look up to. But again, last chapter prepared a hasty resolution for him as well and this trump card was poorly played. Since there are 8 heroines it's supposed to be a gal game? Well, absolutely not. Every girl has three flags and flagging is basically done by the end of 4th chapter. There are no girls in 5th chapter (well, almost), but after the final battle the girl suddenly appears and you see her ending with just one CG and some phrases. It can hardly be called a "route" and especially an "ending". It's a story game. What's nice in the heroines is that three of them are grown-up ladies in their 30's and the other half are of the same or close age to Takuto. So there is a childhood friend, a meganekko, a hooligan girlfriend, a mysterious girl who is sent to you from your father, a half-native african girl, scientific researcher, news reporter and some superstrong mysterious woman. Story: So for the story. The most stunning fact is that first two chapters last for 18 days and literally nothing happens during that time. You just go to school and go to sleep at home, that's it. What's that - a slice of life? Whenever I got slightly bored with it I just rewatched the cool opening and and kept on waiting. Chapter 3 is where girls start to show up and story finally starts to form. By the end of Chapter 4 the story is over and heroine route is finalized. I would actually prefer finishing the story there with maybe one additional fight. But it goes on in some forgotten African country laboratory. But it's actually Chapter 4 that gives us all the answers. Chapter 5 throws genetics, superhuman entity, clones and superficial myths together and only tells us the story of our father (and mother?). There are only couple locations here, development is hasty and there's little meaning in what's going on anymore, then it gets even more confusing and - bam - battles - battles - the end. Battles are done pretty well so you only choose the part of enemy to attack or the defend action for each turn. Enemy may choose to block one of these three parts and counter-attacks if you choose the same body part. Saving helps, but there are also some tricks involving using special items against special enemies. Some enemies attack animations are pictured clearly, but some can't be seen in advance. Some don't have attack animation and they retaliate every round. It's quite ok as it is. So my greatest complaints are to the story and especially this final chapter. Also the first four chapters were quite lively for the most part with frequent mysterious events happening. Chapter 5 has a totally different, decadent atmosphere - grim music, cold pictures and the hero who does not care about his survival, but needs this last chain to break. Ending is the most important part of the game and here it's just wrecked mercilessly which inevitably hurts the evaluation a lot. CG: Character designs are not too exciting, but CG truly are. Somehow HCG are especially beautiful. Sound: Only female voicing. BGM is fine, at times slightly irritating. Themes and symbols: As you might have already guessed, the story does not feel integral. There are a lot of actions and cool scenes, but there is not much talk behind them. And there is no afterthought either. The mind is blank and is helplessly trying to put the pieces together rather than think it over. Overall comments: It's a good C's Ware game and I'm in no way disappointed. The impression reminded me the one after most of Nitro+ earlier games - WTH was that just now? It's not a bad way, but it does not suit C's Ware. Previous games had a satisfying resolution, but here I got only main answers while the fates of the side-characters and even their true nature remained in the dark. A true route would really fit here well. So I'll try to remember Vist and a colorful breathtaking game with a vast amount of beauty and gore.
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Foreword: If you do not know of EVE:Burst Error, you better stop here right now and go watch video playthrough of that gorgeous game. EVE the Lost One is a direct sequel to that game and there will naturally be spoilers on the prequel content. That being settled - I did not pay much attention to the Lost One right away and did not review it properly while observing year 1998. Japanese reviews failed even to give an outline of the plot and were generally not too favorable. Only after playing it myself I found out the perfect answer "why" and that will be covered below. Title: EVE: The Lost One Developer: C's Ware Date: 1998-03-12 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v2708 Length: 21 hour. Game type: Command selection ADV. Difficulty: Easy but command bruteforcing required at times Synopsis: 3 years after EVE:Burst Error. Prisia is the new queen of Eldia but her rule is challenged by radical nationalists headed by archbishop. Marina retired from investigator duty to become newcomers instructor. Kyoko is the newcomer investigator just after severe course of training and her first task is investigating circumstances of death of a young scientist.. Snake is a mysterious figure who is blackmailed to find "memories" of former Eldia king to bring back to life sleeping EVE/Mayako Mido. Somehow everyone hunts for the "memories" and the truth lies in Eldia. Structure: Game takes place from June 2nd to June 6th, then from June 9th to June 10th with an epilogue on June 16th. Character Design rating: 9/10 Protagonist rating: 9/10 Story rating: 10/10 Game quality: 10/10 Overall rating: 10/10 Rating comments: I like it when the game is easy to evaluate. I try to find flaws whenever possible and now just can't find anything. It's not a flaw, but my tiny complaint is that protagonists aren't as fun as Kojiro/Marina pair. Those two were just insanely charismatic. Kyoko compared to Marina is quite a plain investigator young woman and her messy hair really hurt her image. Snake does some very ambiguous action, but overall is not a bad guy - still compared to the endlessly funny Kojiro Snake does not stand a chance. But there is one huge BUT. The japanese reviews are mostly based on the initial Sega Saturn version and game evaluation is average. But Sega Saturn and PC version have one HUGE difference - PC version has Marina route crammed in from June 4th to June 6th. This is a huge 3-hour story that gets all the loose ends together and not only that! Marina investigates together with Kojiro, so we're provided with loads of fun scenes and awesome comments. Marina route flips the table and gets the game from just a good straightforward adventure story category to the perfect sequel and eternal masterpiece one. Protagonist:Kyoko I already tackled on protagonists in rating comments so will elaborate a bit. Kyoko is ok, she is normal. She is a diligent investigator, but she does not mind quality girl-time going shopping and relaxing idly all day long.with a cup of coffee au lait. Her first case investigating the death of a young scientist gradually reveals that he was connected with the former Eldia mad king "memories" that everyone started searching. She's does not have that much sex appeal, so there are much less funny jokes and commentaries on the way compared to Marina in Eve:Burst Error. To the left of her is Yuji, a quiet student with a part-time work. He only wants a quiet life, but reluctantly helps her couple times and gets involved into a big game facing charges in crimes himself. For a good half of the game he gets to accompany Kyoko, so her side of the story gets a social boost and feels good. Protagonist:SNAKE This picture is the best view we get of him during the opening and I would not like to spoiler his identity which remains unknown up up to the middle of the game. The first minutes of his route show us how he places a bomb and blows up clothes boutique in a big trade center. How can this monster be protagonist?! But almost right after that we get to know that the instructions to create a hand-made bomb that were sent to him were deliberately diminished the effect with the listed amount. It was supposed to break one chair at maximum. So SNAKE was contacted via pc by some ADONIS who showed him the recording of him setting the bomb in the trade center and blackmailed him into getting "memories" of the Eldia former mad king. It's still very difficult to sympathize with this character since he continues to take some Characters: This is not a galge and there aren't character routes so there's little point in talking about characters individually. At first sight I thought they were overall less likable than those from Eve:Burst Error - it has very cute Mayako, libririan girl, young Himura, affectionate Yayoi, mysterious prime-minister Lloyd. Here there are less characters, but they are shown in development and gain lots of appeal as story unfolds - bartender student Mina, alcoholic Monica, Rena and her president mother, turned on dolphins Ayano, ever-young Natsumi - they are all a curious bunch. And of course the game shares a good number of common characters like Chief, Himura, Prisia, EVE, crazy ministry supervisor woman. They create a pretty cozy atmosphere. Story: That may be considered a spoiler, but I'm going to draw a very faint structure of the work since I failed to find it in japanese reviews. Game is roughly divided into two storylines. The first half is about finding "memories" and discovering why everyone needs them (there is more than one reason, actually). The second half is three days after first story is over. It's about the sudden spread of biological infection all over the world and the key points here are also Japan and Eldia. Both stories are closely connected and second story relies heavily on the events of the first half. And in PC version there is also Marina story which takes the last two days of the first "memories" story. Marina and Kojiro get to find the real culprit over the caused crimes and even investigate the studies that laid foundation for the events in second story. Without Marina story it would not be really a coherent narration and I can totally understand Japanese reviews based on Saturn version. CG: I've checked all the CG again and - surprisingly enough - there's ain't much to show since most of those 150 CG are for story related events or items rather than for characters to show off. Sound: Everything is voiced except for the acting at the moment protagonist. BGM is very good. Humor: Actually, there's not so bad humor in here not even counting Kojiro funny streak. Humor is event-based and this type of humor I find the best. So here are the three occasions that come to mind. Oh and I did not find not a single Bill Clinton joke here! That's an accomplishment in itself! (Those who played EVE:Burst Error will get what I mean). 1) At some point of the story Kyoko has to hide, but she's greatly disappointing by the fact that her friends drew a beard over the wanted posters. 2) There's a small serious meeting discussing the ADD project and how it gets into effect. Yuji who is not strong into genetics adds the bottom drawing and when he's asked what it means, he answers: "anus". It was very unexpected ease of tensions and that's why it was pretty great. 3) Only the dolphin saw the criminal and it's invented how to transform dolphin thought impulses into an image to the fax (PC-98 game My Eyes! nervously smokes in the back). Now the dolphin lies in the bathtub and here's what we get when he ask him to picture the event he recently seen. Just awesome! Themes and symbols: It's more of a straightforward game that tries to explain everything under the question so that there was no afterthought behind. - One of the strongest motives of the game is that of the sacrifice. Eldia is full of patriots, that's one thing that does not change. - There's a very nice developed theme of siblings separated in the early childhood. Overall comments: It's a surprisingly interesting game series full of vivid characters, animations and it's just a really twisted story with lots of deaths. If command selection gameplay looks troublesome - just watch my video walkthrough of the game. I'm really weak to good game series, so I'm getting to the bottom of it. The next stop is Eve:The Fatal Attraction. a
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I don't feel eligible to write a full review since I only listened to the voice parts of the game. And the reason for that is that the game is unhookable by any instruments. No threads are found at all. Still I'm confident enough on the grappled content to write my thoughts of it. First things first: game has very poor systems. 1) Full-screen only. My try to launch it in window-mode with Dxwnd succeeded, but menu top started to fly separately from the main windows and mouse cursor started being distorted in space so full-screen is the only comfortable way to play. 2) There is no skip function. The closest thing to it is CTRL which draws a full wall of text and you need to press CTRL separately for each such wall of text which amounts to thousands of hits of this key. 3) Sound volume is outrageous. Voice is way too low and sounds and bgm way too loud even when voice maxed up and other sounds minimized. I had to pull sound volume to the limit of speakers to hear voices well, but each time BGM stroke there was a shock feeling. BGM only sounds for one minute and calms down so that minute was the most painful time over and over again. Maybe it was different for win98 but no compatibility helps. By the way, installer only launches with win98 compatibility. 4) CG viewer is one of the worst I ever seen. Out of five heroines it shows CG of two first heroines fairly well and there's the beginning of 3rd heroine and there's no way see the rest with game means. That being covered you can probably guess my irritation with the game even though the game was not started yet. But there are some positive sides of the game: 1) Full voiced, including protagonist. 2) Beautiful clean graphics. 3) Good structure - 2 girls available from the start, then consecutively three more girls open up and then there's the true route. 4) Longevity - all six routes take about 40 hours of time to read properly. Let's touch the story a bit. Matsunaga Yoshihiro is a young man given the task of watching over a group of students from Touyou School on their summer break to a beach. One of the students, Morisawa Nao, has had sadness in her heart from her past - something Yoshihiro can relate to, having his own issues arrising during the trip. That's the rough synopsis with the only remark that it's for anime made the next year. Morisawa Nao is the main character only in anime. In the game she's just one of five ordinary heroines. She's one of the two started heroines, so I guess she's chosen for the main part in anime since first two days mostly focus on those two starter heroines in game while the path to the next ones is branched off much further. Morisawa Nao is a much better choice over the other starting heroine Iwasaki Chinatsu since the former one is much more attractive and has the most dramatic story among all the non-true heroines. I don't really feel like covering heroines or even the true route heroine since I like the anime short version much more than those routes. Conclusions. New Elf is different. Old Elf works were challenging and playful. This work is stripped of any playfulness and it's a mere imitation of other successful nakige with true route structure. Heroines routes are vastly meaningless and only true route has some meaning. The locked forced structure makes us play the same story for six times with the branching only done by the middle of it without a good skipping feature. This monotonous flow is extended to excessive 40 hours without any satisfying conclusion. Shizuka is the most bashful heroine, but her route included childhood memories scene of her sitting and covering the head with hands while other children get in a round-play and sing the exact "Kagome" song from Kazeoto, Chirin. I get that it's not C's Ware that invented the song, but it looked just like a shameless plagiarism to me. So one more faint question remains - why the hell this crap of a game is VN of the Month November 1999?! Well, with all the flaws of this work it's the modern type work with nice characters and true route. When I look at other November 1999 VNs there are even more irritation factors like SIM, bakage, hetare protagonist, H-focus, shortness or lack of info. Refrain Blue is the only one that's not defiled by those factors. And it's not that bad of a story, just overextended one and lacking in excitement. This is actually the 2nd case after Interlude (2003) where I liked anime version much more than the game. Interlude changed the plot to clear the mess of a setting and Refrain Blue just gathered the most interesting heroine path together with true route, cut everything else and set the table with a nice one hour long work. If you want to taste Refrain Blue, just watch the anime version, really.
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The VN of the Month November 1999 is PARTS. The only really serious work. 1. Bunny na Hip バニーなヒップ [991105] Aquarium The porn bunny company group is going to expand its galaxy chain to the Earth. In order to investigate sexual orientation of the Earthlings, three girls are sent there. Main character is an ordinary unemployed man and he's chosen as a test object for a week. Every day main character needs to decide on the costume and the type of service to receive. There's really nothing but choosing costumes and type of service, just a nukige. 2. Cross Helix [991105] System Rose SDI, a giant global complex, builds a leisure facility for adults with a casino and deploys "dolls" that provide sexual services. At the same time the United Nations start a crackdown on prostitution. A human brain is found in the discarded doll. SDI denies any association and suggests to place a UN branch office in the playtown. Several years later. Main character visits playtown as a UN moral administrator and gets involved in huge conspiracy over braindolls... Game tries its best to be like cyberpunk works. And it really is such work, just without any novelty. The story ends right when the conspiracy over human brain in dolls is revealed. There's an abundance of H events and being done in 3D automatically makes it ugly. The lack of explanation hurts a lot as well. 3. In'yoku ~Youkoso Ingyaku no Hanazono e~ 淫慾 ~ようこそ淫虐の花園へ~ [991105] Benten An office worker Daimokuni Kenichi sees the women president Reiko getting in a taxi. He tracks her down to the SM club "Dorothy" where he enlists as well to see her humiliation. Just a SM nukige here, absolutely nothing to look at. 4. Izayoi ~Hime Miko Senka~ イザヨイ ~姫巫女選歌~ [991105] Force Main character is a young man who lives in the mountains as a hermit. One day two girls lost their way and got to hero's house. They insisted that they did not want to go home, and so they stayed in the mountains. On the night of that day main character felt a strange hypnotic impulse in his body and incredible lust force awakened in him. There's definitely some kind story behind it like mysterious power, supernatural forces etc etc, but it hardly changes the fact that the game remains a total nukige. 5. Nie Real 贄 リアル [991105] Hyperspace An alternative version of Nie with improved animations, voicing and in full color. Really it's the same Nie game. Those releases should be merged. 6. Ribbon 2 [991105] Bonbee! As winter changes autumn there is premonition of new changes and new acquaintances in the air. There are nine heroines and period is one October month. Capture is easy since the maps with the heroines are highlighted with ribbon image. There are some limited choices during conversations with heroines. Protagonist is a lumpy hetare who avoids heroines and in some routes he's just unintelligible. Each route has its own theme and main hero is forces into it. The flow is morning-school trip-lunch-after school-night. There's no real link with the prequel apart of the fact that they're both classic galge. Overall impression is good since routes vary from each other, there's a good atmosphere and there's a strong friendship theme. 7. Wana -Trap- 罠-TRAP [991105] Vision An artificial mental parasite "Gaist" is invented by the government to provide special abilities to humans. However, an incident happened during testing of the most powerful Gaist "Uroboros" ending up with main character infested. Now he can survive only by insulting women. A special unit of twelve women is dispatched to pacify main character. Game has lots of different modes and minigames... all to insult women in the end. The main part is using different items to set up traps on the map and lure girls in. 8. Essence Lost [991106] R.A.N Software One week before graduation from school the hero falls asleep at the part and upon waking up gets a feeling that he lost something. A hunger for love rises in him and he won't waste this week. Period is actually only four real days. Some heroines personify love of the past and some love of today. Hero does not have a personality at all and he changes drastically from one route to another. Game flow is quite usual, as a normal galge. There are devil scenarios as well with dark themes dominating. There are a lot of bugs and flags are just non-identifiable. The events and endings are exactly the same for the heroines, just CG differ. It's quite a short game. 9. Situation 2 しちゅえ~しょん2 [991109] Berserker 1 New volume includes girls of following occupations: swordsman, magical girl, investigator, fighter and bioroid. More ultimate torture items are added. No one will leave without full satisfaction! The second item in the nukige series is not much different. 10. Cosplay Idol Hajimemashita♪ こすぷれアイドルはじめました♪ [991112] Max Q Main character is a freshman at entertainment industry. His boss is worried about the lack of competent idols, so he asks main character to find an idol familiar with cosplay to satisfy any fan needs. Find an idol, dress up as willing and help her relax. A nukige again. 11. Gojuusou 五重奏 [991112] Noctovision St. Orpheus Institute of Music. The quintet aims to participate in a prestigious music festival and conquer it. For that it's important to refine the hearts to produce impressive melodies as well as get musical techniques and knowledge. The participants are young girls with their troubles, conflicts and reasons. They will need to have their anxieties of mind lifted in order to play in unison. Well, it's a SIM, although parameters aren't much emphasized as flags. Schedules on weekdays and free time on weekends. Skipping is difficult to use and one day takes very long, so even one playthrough is painful. Systems are primitive with nothing but save/load. 12. Maid ni Omakase!! メイドにおまかせ!! [991112] Triangle Main character is living alone in a messy room. He wants to live a nice private life in a clean house, but the prices of household agencies are too high. He sees two young maids are being scolded by the administrator and stands up for them. To thank him both girls agree to do the cleaning in his house for a week. If they fail at being maids, they'd return to their native town afterwards. Is it possible to imbue confidence in the girls as maids? Daamn... just clean the room yourself already, retard! It's a slapstick comedy with lots of erotic situations and events. Triangle is known for vivid cute drawing, and graphics here are in fool bloom. 13. Majokko Mariel'n 魔女っ娘マリエルン [991112] Escu:de Main character is a ronin student. If he fails to enter university this year he'll need to inherit his family ramen shop. One day he meet again with his junior high school first love Iori and reunites with her. However, on another day a girl comes down from the sky on a broom and she is followed by another girl. Hero is caught up in a dispute, and turned into a small animal (ferret) by the magic. The first girl escapes and second girl Mariel, remains. Mariel explains the circumstances - he has to live in this form for a while till she finds a way to dispel the magic. There are three heroines - Mariel, former girlfriend and Elma, another good witch. First half is comical, but second part is serous, so the overall balance is good. There are five chapters and there's a shooting game at the end of each chapter. Text is slow to draw and it contributes to monotonous feeling. There are around 10 flags so it's a bit difficult to grasp the right ones. Elma root is the best, but hardest to flag. 14. Nekketsu! ~Saikyou Bukatsu Sengen~ 熱血!~最強部活宣言~ [991112] Passion Shinto martial arts school "Shindo flow" is in pinch since the principal death. Main character and his fiancee Ikumi decide to establish a high school club to revive this techniquue that incorporates many sex moves. It's needed to collect cards to open new techniques and complete with other martial artists. Basically it looks like wrestling with sex moves bakage. 15. Darcrows DARCROWS -ダークロウズ- [991118] Alice Soft 1 Two large countries, Leben and Carnea, had been ruled by the kings who were men of character, and people in these countries had been living peacefully. However, Leben suddenly intruded into Carnea, and the two countries began to war. The even fights had continued for more than six months, but when the king of Carnea died of illness, gradually Leben got the better of Carnea. In these days, a man in a black suit visited Carnea. He had been a vice leader of the Carnea Knights, Claude, who had suddenly disappeared eight years before. His appearance had changed completely, and that made them suspicious. But when he said he had a plan to beat Leben, they gave their ears to him. He said that they would hire experienced mercenary solders, and that the queen and princesses would sell their bodies to earn money. The queen and her daughter accepted his plan, and they began to take his "lessons". There is an English review. 16. Guren 紅蓮 [991118] Zone 1 2 3 The events of the game take place in ancient Japan. Mysterious creatures known as "ghosts" appear in the villages, rampaging and killing innocent people. The general in charge of a military action against those creatures builds a special units called "Guren", which means "crimson lotus". The hero of the game, Lee Rekka (Li Liehuo), is a member of Guren whose task is to find other members (all female) in different villages and to discover the truth behind ghosts' attacks. But the first girl he encounters, the lovely and brave Tsukikage, is abducted by a horribly-looking demon... The game is an animé-style RPG with erotic elements. The player visits villages and their surroundings, fighting randomly appearing monsters in turn-based combat viewed from first-person perspective. Most of the monsters are female, and they disrobe when defeated. Characters don't gain experience from killing monsters, but from training. Training costs money, which is dropped by enemies or can be gained by doing part-time jobs. Unlike in most Japanese RPGs, the player can choose which attribute (strength, maximum HP, etc.) to raise when training. In the villages, it is also possible to interact with the female party members and influence the hero's relationship with them. There are English reviews. 17. Hanashizume no Matsuri 鎮花祭-はなしずめのまつり- [991118] Studio Air Main character comes from a shinto priest family. One day he encounters a strange girl in his dream, and from then on bizarre incidents started to happen around him - first a tremendous blood stain appears on the school building, then a series of girl violence and kidnapping cases start to happen. It's almost the time for an ancient festival held since ancient times to calm the disasters. Something is bound to happen. There are 8 good endings and much more bad endings. First half of the story is the same for all the girls. There are many inconsistencies in the scenario and some hints mentioned in the first half of the game are totally ignored in the second half. There are both comic scenes and dark scenes. Story leaves quite a good occult feeling, but the mediocre text and rough drawing don't let enjoy the game to the fullest. 18. Hoshi no Pierce 星のピアス [991119] Actress 2100 A.D. Main character studies in the space university on the Earth and comes to Mars' residential dome to prepare for the final exam. He is assigned to a group of the best students to help each other as the exam focuses on the importance of communication. How will this month pass in a company of beautiful girl student fellows? Every movement takes one hour from 12 hours in each day. There are some obligatory classes so just chasing girls is a no go. There's a distinct minigame for each heroine. Quite an ordinary work that's set in uncommon setting. Oh, and unlike first two works of "Actress" H-content is quite weak - it's a pure love game. 19. Lovemation ラブメーション [991119] I’s9 Hero recently graduated. He had a job offer waiting, but it was cancelled. He looks through job vacancies magazine and applies for an animation production company since the anime he watched in the past was quite fun. However anime production turns out to be a very severe exhausting process with running over eccentric weirdos all the days and having to rush everyone day and night and constantly being on the verge of deadline. However, there are also people of unique personality here. Whenever he relaxes after work there all kind of situations possible, even serious love development. Will animation be completed? Can you get the girl you like? Everything depends on you during these two months. Every morning hero goes to a company, receives instructions from seniors and decides the action for that day. The story begins from the state when the original production is almost finished, but there's a a lot of room for animation and production improvement. Girls can be pursued at any time in the story development, but neglecting the job can lead to poor results. There aren't any reviews on the game. 20. Tina wa Seirei Tsukai ティナは精霊使い [991119] Pinpai Rahel is a professional swordsman. He takes a job to hunt bandits since it's well paid and takes a female companion with him. He has to cooperate with the female group of bandit hunters "Arabian Knights". Setting is arabic-liketo world. There are five heroines. Operation is mouse only. It's a very simple RPG - no parameters, no items, no money, no random encounters. There are from 3 to 5 people in the party in battles, but final battle gets the number to 11. Story is quite fascinating. H element is above average. 21. Twinkle Revue トゥインクルレビュー [991119] Fairytale 1 You play the role of a active manager of a production company. One day your boss orders you to go out and find the "star of tomorrow." So you go to a talent development institution called Twinkle Actress School. Your job is to sneak into there undercover and find potential candidates. The only person there who knows your true identity is your ex-trainee Sanae who is now the dorm director. Besides her, there are 5 girls that catch your attention: Nozomi who is Sanae's niece, Mayu who is the sister of a really famous star, Hiziri whose voice can make her a famous singer, Shizuya who has a great potential to be a beautiful model, and Mamiko who is talented in voice acting. You will stay for 3 weeks, and during your stay you will take lessons with girls and communicate with them and get as much data as possible so you can report to your boss. There is an English review. 22. Wagamama Calamity わがままカラミティ [991119] Rune The goddess Karamichi spread chaos over the continent until buddhists from magical kingdom sealed her powers. With the destruction of that kingdom the competition over the Stone of Magic and thus continent hegemony has begun. Glenn gets hired by one of the sides and he leads his employer to the victory. Tactical strategy. There is a hexagone map with units to move by turns. There is a card minigame during the battles. There are seven countries overall, so six to compete with. Difficulty is easy and length is short. H element is above average due to spoils of war in conquered land. 23. Innocent [991125] Draconium 2078, Mega Tokyo City. The Metropolitan Police Department established a secret department for investigation of special crimes consisting of five android women. Androids are instructed to use woman body to get information that's usually not accessible by police. Main character is a detective who has his best friend charged with serial murders crime and awaiting death penalty in a week. With the cooperation of androids hero began investigating identity of the real criminal. It looked like a cyberpunk story... but actually it's not really about the story. Every day we set girls paroling one about 20 routes in Tokyo and with some luck patrolling ends with H event and some new information discovered. Something different might happen after 7 successful days, but it's not worth my time. 24. Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Tomoshibi ga Kienu Ma ni 探偵 神宮寺三郎 灯火が消えぬ間に [991125] Data East Corporation 1 2 An injured young man suddenly takes refuge at the detective agency. Investigation of two cases becomes complex as they are gradually woven together. There's an English review of the game. 25. Tokimeki Memorial 2 ときめきメモリアル2 [991125] Konami 1 2 3 4 Tokimeki Memorial 2 takes the basic story of the first game where you are playing a male student through his 3 years of high school but this time when you first play you start out as a kid who then later moves away. There are many English reviews. 26. True Love Story: Fan Disk トゥルー・ラブストーリー・ファンディスク [991125] ASCII Corporation In this fandisc, the protagonist has two little sisters who are twins. The player must choose the correct topics of conversation so he can win the heart of one (or even both!) of the twins. A fandisk... no ty. 27. Bousou! Justice 暴走!じゃすてぃす [991126] Outlaw A secret evil organization started to send combatants to a certain high school to make uproar. Main character together with some girls have formed "friends of justice" circle to fight that organization. The synopsis is actually even more bizarre, but all those crazy bakage are really difficult to understand. Anyway, it's kind of SIM and RPG mix which makes things even worse. There aren't Japanese reviews, so at least I'm not alone to skip all that mess altogether. 28. Folk Song フォークソング [991126] Arkham Products This is a story of three girls and three boys that attend the high school in a rural town. This is no place for emotions, but empathy will open hearts of these three pairs to each other. Game has a good atmosphere, mostly thanks to the artist Koike Sadaji who did ~The world is drawing to an W/end~ of Abogado Powers just lately. And same as that work there's a lot of charm and uniqueness in this work, but the lack of volume strikes it all out. Full length is just a few hours. Otherwise it's a harmonious, calming and touching story with an atmosphere as if from Miyazaki works. 29. Futari ふたり [991126] Uran A girl appears before the hero who just proposed to his fiance. She has come from the future as a volunteer in time travel experiment. Time machine gets damaged in the process cutting the way back to future. he time machine got wrecked and the girl lost his way to return to the future. Will the hero successfully marry his fiance or get interested in time traveler? Yet another work of Uran - 3rd one in two months already. It's obvious that there are two heroines here. Game is mostly a comedy with many deformed drawings. Engine is written on Visual basic and has no options. Text is not good, but tempo is great and length is sufficient, around 7 hours. 30. H Kenkyuukai H研究会 [991126] May-Be Soft Main character entered secret high school "H Research Group" as the first male member. Three girls & female teachers are eager to set multiple experiments regarding the object of study on daily basis. May-Be Soft is a very stable company... it keeps making the same shitty nukige with the same drawing over and over with very few details changed. 31. Kijin Soushi 鬼神草紙 [991126] Jade Kazuya Hyodo in Tokyo learns that his father is gruesomely killed. Without much confidence in police he starts looking for the killer himself. Kiyoshi Saki in Kyoto finally gets a permission from the boss to investigate a serious case - he is set to follow the series of bizarre murders. Two distant incidents get linked in one deadly dance. There are a lot of choices and wrong choices lead to numerous bad endings. Demons and esoteric rituals are the the main theme. The viewpoint between the characters changes forcibly. Story lacks depth. Voice acting is especially bad. 32. Large PonPon ら~じPonPon [991126] 0verflow 1 Our hero's girlfriend, Rurika, suddenly informs him that she is being transferred to Paris. However, after only a few months, she gives up her job and comes home; she is pregnant. Following an extremely hot argument, she leaves him without telling him where she is going. Our hero goes looking for her and learns that she has checked into an obstetrics ward. Here at the hospital, he accidentally runs into Yukari, an old girlfriend from school. He also starts up a hot relationship with a married woman named Momoka, who is staying in the next hospital room. His girlfriend really starts to get jealous of his other playmates. Will he fulfill his obligations to Rurika, or will he keep going after hot, new babes? A baka nukige where you can customize girls features to your desires. 33. Majokko Silk 魔女っ娘シルク [991126] Trabulance "Majokko Silk" is the story of Silk, a sexy witch from another dimension. One day, a witch named Silk suddenly visits Takashi Sakuragi's house...She's from another world! She has a beautiful face, gorgeous blonde hair, and a very attractive body with intriguing clothes. Takashi is astonished by her beauty, but it's only the beginning of his extra-ordinary life... Synopsis Scenario is worse than that of Majokko Mariel'n, but at least Silk route is ok. The routes of the other girls are too plain since everyone already in love with MC except for Silk. Genre is best described as light erotic comedy. 34. Nagaremono no Komoriuta 漂泊者の子守歌 [991126] Dennou Club Main character Joan leads a troupe of traveling performers. After sudden death of previous leader things have gone downhill, so now hero needs to refine skills of each troupe member to make as much money as possible. As you might have guessed, it's a training SIM. During daytime we teach to perform, during nighttime it's different kind of training. By filling specific request of customers it's possible to gain much more money. 35. Omochazuma おもちゃ妻 [991126] h.m.p Please ... do not stop! ! The innocent virgin wife turns into a sexual slave. No matter how much bullying continues, Saya remains loyal. Is she a nymphomaniac or there is a line that can not be crossed? Game's obscure, but luckily there are two Japanese reviews still available. Firs of all, it's a 3D polygon mess. At the beginning of the game main character is a president of the company, but also an impotent. By secret training sessions in the basement they try to overcome their problems. Saya is too shy to even kiss or touch at the start as well. And as usual, training saves the world. The end. 36. Outline アウトライン [991126] PetitX As a part of a "railway club" activity main character together with girl club members go on a photography trip. At the train a ghost of his elder sister appears before him. What will this trip be - a photo tour or a ghost hunt? It's a light sentimental story, but with a suspense touch. Since it's mostly a story driven game, not every character is paid enough attention - still two girls are quite well drawn. The are four routes overall. It's quite a decent charage with a quirk, but not of masterpiece level. 37. Parts PARTS ─パーツ─ [991126] Squadra D Main character Takahiro visits his home town during the spring break. By his father's recommendation he decides to take care of two girls at a religious organization's facility. Maki has a bright personality and Nami hardly talks at all. Hero will need to learn the private mystery behind girls lives. So this is a nakige. Story is touching and hard to read for an inexperienced reader. It could easily be another Kana, but ended up as an obscure gem. 38. Refrain Blue リフレインブルー [991126] Elf 1 Matsunaga Yoshihiro is a young man given the task of watching over a group of students from Touyou School on their summer break to a beach. One of the students, Morisawa Nao, has had sadness in her heart from her past - something Yoshihiro can relate to, having his own issues arising during the trip. Elf returned late for the party. I made a review myself. 39. Ryouki no Ori -Dai 3 Shou- 猟奇の檻 -第3章- [991126] Penguin Works In one local office of Mirai TV a few problems occurred over several weeks. The female news casters expression is too sexy and nasty during evening news. However the ratings skyrocketed with male viewers looking forward to continuation. Other media filed complaints and a serious investigation was launched. Hero is hired as a newcomer to soften the tension. What is the purpose of the crime?Who is the culprit? Only you can solve it .... Wow, the return of bizarre cage series after a big pause. Map choice ADV. Compared to previous two titles the colors and the atmosphere got darker as the killings continue. System is inherited from previous parts, but time limit sections are much less demanding. Two mistaken answers are needed for a bad ending spawn and there aren't many bad endings. Difficulty level is high. There are six heroines and they are cute. H content level is the highest in the series. 40. Shibatte Mitai no! 縛ってみたいの! [991126] Espresso Main character is into SM stuff, but his girlfriend is totally alienated by it. The goal is to work at part-time jobs and buy books and accessories with the money earned. With the right approach girlfriend will also evaluate his efforts. First half of the game is like a normal SIM, but from the second half turns into a hardcore SM game and stays this way. 41. Soukoku no Nocturne 蒼刻ノ夜想曲 [991126] PL+US Modern Tokyo. Hero attends music university and meets a girl who can neither talk nor remember anything on a street. He calls her Rumi and takes her home. One day vampire Sheri the Nosferatu appears before the hero, but she is driven off by female hunter Aisha. Rumi is linked to those two people and gets involved into conflict between them. Finally a story work. There are three heroines and Rumi is not seen as a main heroine since she is weak compared to her counterparts and has to rely one someone. Well there is True Ending only for Rumi. 42. Spell ~Maid no Sasayaki~ Spell ~メイドの囁き~ [991126] Serene One day a maid dressed girl suddenly falls down from the sky to hero's apartment! Her name is El. She is a magical girl who came from the land of maids. She is selected to participate in "Princess Selection Society" tournament as a princess candidate. For these few weeks she will serve main character to prepare for the challenge. I hardly care for yet another cohabitation with a maid, even with a magical maid from the land of maids... 43. Tennin Kyoushi 転任教師 [991126] Red Zone Koinuma Hitomi is new female teacher just transferred to the school. This is a school for delinquents, and she will have to establish her authority not only by words, but by weapons such as whip as well. Red Zone disappeared for two and a half years since Akiko Hard release. But this work is absolutely in Akiko spirit. Same clickable only map, same only girls voicing, same teacher heroine. This time the fetish is SM Queen and our teacher eagerly accepts this role. 44. Yaka no Shitone 夜華の褥 [991126] Spiral Early Showa period. The epoch of castles is gone, but memory is alive. In one of such castles there is now a SM club. Only girls with the huge debts are sold there. Main heroine is one such girl. There's no real story, just woman view on the prostitution. For me it's just a nukige. 45. Rescue Disk レスキューディスク [991126] B-STAFF Volume one is a story of a couple attacked during a date. What does the boy unable to protect his lover feel? What will the girl reply? Can she ever forgive him? Volume two is a story about dangerous relationship between teachers and students. What's beyond that? Happiness? Unhappiness? Ruin? Ancient doujin removed from dlsite 46. Prime Night ~Joshi Ana Hakusho~ プライムナイト ~女子アナ白書~ [991127] Telluru JBS channel popular caster Satoko Kondo is pursued by stalker lately. Pictures are sent to her office and home. She hires a detective who happens to be main character, but opponent cleverly escapes the traps. At the same time a female colleague of Satoko tries to seduce the detective. Can hero avoid the trap himself or is it possible to play the cards right to approach mystery revelation? It's actually not that easy to find a non-HCG, so I guess the detective played his cards right... with all the women he met multiple times. Can't really take a Telluru game seriously after so many half-baked failures. 47. Dorei Shimai Kyoukan 奴隷姉妹 兇姦 [9911] Soft Circle Courreges All three works of slave series together! Pretty girls and sisters are in trouble! The horror of pc-98 era is back. New doujin poop without any story or even a decent enough CG to put up. 48. Purupuru Magic ぷるぷるまじっく [9911] Usagi Club Falling blocks undressing puzzle game with short dialogues before the battles. It's hardly can be called a visual novel.
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Since there are so many reviews of it, there's no need in full review, so I'm just explaining my choice for this game to be the game of the month October 1999. The game is painful with a lot of text, characters, interaction with the scenery, puzzles and seemingly unrelated cases. Up to the middle of it I really struggled through painfully. Game is about five cases of a heinous crime unit 1. But what's cool about it is that it's not about finding and catching the culprit. Those are just stories that have a beginning and some resolution, mostly sad resolution, actually - pretty much failing the case. Case 1 is about a swat team being massacred by some legendary criminal Kamui and eventually finding this Kamui as a totally emotionless shell of a human. Case 2 suddenly shifts the focus to some homeless children who live in the shelters - one of the boys is lost and we discover the story about his disappearance. Case 3 is about two syndicates rivalry and kidnapping of one syndicate's director. Case 4 is about illegal surveillance and streaming of private moments of life of a pop idol. Case 5 returns us to the mystery behind Kamui and all the cases finally get connected into one satisfying resolution. The gist of the story is presented in a fairytale told by one of characters and since it has great importance and great charm I'm giving the direct dialogue: - You know, recently... some people say fantasy is like brainwashing. Giving kids sweet dreams for the purpose of controlling them. - When you put it that way, that sounds right. - Originally they were pretty messed up stories. - Like "messed up" how? - Realistic stories, without all the happy stuff. - Well, that sure sucks. - That's why they got turned into happier stories. - Is that all? - No. Here's where it starts. So anyways, when I was a kid, there was this fairytale I heard. It's an old folktale from my hometown, but... - Hm. - Once upon a time, there was a princess. A beautiful princess. A terrible giant serpent fell in love with her. The serpent ruled the land ... no, he had taken over the land. - He invaded it? - Yeah. The serpent turned the king into stone. The greedy serpent wanted the princess... So he took her away... - Pretty standard shit. Go on, go on. - Then came a band of heroes. To rescue the princess they ventured to the huge castle. - Well of course. I'd do the same thing. - The heroes combined their powers and fought the serpent. And then... - What happened? - They defeated it. - Fuck yeah!!! - Everything was fine and good. - Is that the end? - Well, mostly... - What the fuck? That's just a normal-ass fairytale. That sucked. - You liked it, right? - No, that's no good. There's no twist. - It's not over yet. - What? - Think of the story I just told you. It's been tweaked to make it nice. The realistic parts have been obfuscated. - Well then what the hell happens? - The princess was dead... - What the fuck?! What do you mean? - She was killed by the serpent. - Man, FUCK that serpent! The fuck kind of story is that? - And one more thing... There is no serpent. - No? Why not...? That stuff comes up in stories all the time. - Of course there isn't. There's no such thing as a "giant serpent" - Well. yeah... - It wasn't a serpent, but a human. The heroes were people, too. Humans killed another human, for revenge. - That's just a crime... - Yeah... Fairytales are crimes. The unrealistic fantasy that happens in real life is crime. Rereading this dialog after finishing the game actually bears a lot of sense, it's the shortened version of the game's theme and meaning. The game does not really tell much directly and there's still the need to think up the rest of it, just like in this dialogue. Let's get to the bad points. It's long (over 15 hours), slow-paced, low on events. It does not have voicing. It's mostly in sepia tone. Art is of specific and quite shy style. It's quite hard to guess who's talking since you just get the sentences appearing in one window one by one. It has a lot of interactivity. There's one hundred-questions spree with only 10 seconds for each answer and questions are mostly on history-sciences-media topics. Interface and controls are confusing. Dialogues are dodgy and make no sense. Characters treat each other poorly, trade in homophobic and sexist slurs. There are some puzzles. Game can be repetitive - at one case you need to search 80 separate and identical rooms in order to find five items. Now to the good ones. Game is great because it has cool charismatic characters each with distinguishing personality. Characters-like it reminds me the Unit from Ghost in the Shell the most. The atmosphere is quite like that as well. Heroes smoke, curse like hell and talk in a cryptic way. The dialogues are just awesome with constant verbal abuse towards each other. But as for the story twists and mystery it resembles Metal Gear Solid series the most, as for me. What makes a masterpiece for me is being memorable, no matter how many suffering it brings in the process - just need to treat them as trials. And there's no need to get tortured - there are a lot of great video let's plays of it without the commentaries. But in the end we get a mature, rich in details story that leaves much for the afterthought and lots of precious memories to cherish.
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The game of the October 1999 is Silver Jiken. I wanted to write in couple sentences why, but I failed at that miserably and I'd better post a non-structured review of it in order not to overburden this post. 1. Akuryou Gakuen Reiko 2 ~Himejima Tennyo Densetsu~ 悪霊学園レイコ・2 ~比目島天女伝説~ [991001] Trush Reiko Ashura is a girl born from psychic parents. For a long time Reiko has been using those powers to solve supernatural cases. The assignment given to Reiko this time is to infiltrate a private high school in a fishing village where there has been a streak of student disappearances denied by the school administration, but confirmed by the parents. This high school has a depressing atmosphere since it was build to isolate delinquents. Secret group meetings are held there at night... Poor Reiko, this is actually the third game devoted to the same psychic girl and her ambiguous erotic adventures. Creators don't even bother defend the novelty of their product just claiming that here there's a longer story and further deepening of inherited mystery. But really ... trying to sell pretty much the same story for the third time... 2. Days Innocent [991001] Inspire Mutsuki and Kaede are girl cousins who were very close at childhood friends but have not met for almost 10 years because Kaede illness and transfer. Now Kaede joins other girls in the study and her heart flies to tender their wounds. Somehow I feel that this game should stay in the list despite quite a big number of H yuri scenes. It's a game of special atmosphere. There is no main character and the story is told from 3rd person perspective. Well, there isn't a story, but rather a collection of event-stories. Map is show and time goes in real time and from time to time character icons show up and there's an even upon clicking. There are five girls. The main line is how weak and lonely Kaede joins the study with other girls and gets supportive with their problems. It's more of a nakige than a yuri work and can be immersive. One playthrough is about 4 hours. 3. Dokidoki Slot Panic ドキドキスロットパニック [991001] Melo Main character is a university student who is bored with his life. One day he sees an announcement of pachinko tournament with a nice sum of money as main prize. He reads the book with winning strategies and heads to the place of tournament. There are still 3 days before the competition, but cute girls willing to complete have already gathered at the place. It's a stripping pachinko without real story behind it. There are 5 pachinko automates to roll. 4. Gekkou 月光 [991001] Uran Hiroshi and Yukiko were going out at school. After graduation Hiroshi went on to university in Tokyo and found a new girlfriend. They meet again in seven years at alumni gathering can't get enough of each other. However Yukiko gets leukemia and gradually weakens day by day. The game was quite famous in Japan as some critics put it as the nakige of the year 1999 shamelessly pushing Kanon and Kana out. So first chapter is about junior school, second chapter is about new love Izumi and third chapter about Yukiko illness. It's a love triangle and medical nakige mix. I don't appreciate nakige, but medical sickness ones are the worst in my opinion. And only this third sickness story is voiced - that's cheap. There are choices, but they are totally ignored and story just goes in linear manner and it goes to quite crazy level - you may refuse to go to the meeting place with Izumi and you may refuse to date her, but game still would associate you as lovers. Hero is just an indecisive failure. It's probably another work that people either love or hate since evaluations vary from kusoge to kamige. 5. School Quest ~Heroine~ スクール・クエスト ~ヒロイン~ [991001] Hyperspace Let's fall in love with three heroines at school and around the town. School - part-time job and lots of schedule management. Raise the three parameters - money, strength, experience - and go on a date. Girls have two parameters - experience and the level they like you. Moving around town is as if came down from RPGmaker, totally ugly and by squares. There's no story besides making it with the girl, but since it's a SIM, it should stay. 6. Taiken Kokuhaku ~Kiite Hoshii no~ 体験告白 ~聞いて欲しいの~ [991001] Seal Staff Main character is an editor of magazine "S-teen" for young girls. Originally he collected confessions and summarized them to present for readers, but eventually decided to publish interviews entirely, because girls and confessions situations are so bright and unique. Ended up being a normal nukige very soon. 7. Tsumi to Batsu 罪と罰 [991001] Saga Planets A shocking sight witnessed by young elite judge Matsuoka Masayoshi .... It was a sacred court cellar and a girl was insulted in it. From this day his life went mad. Strange cases passed by mysterious man and sometimes even innocent girls awaiting insulting punishment. A nukige through and through. 8. Silver Jiken シルバー事件 [991007] 1 2 3 4 5 1999 - the "24 Wards". A string of mysterious serial killings plagues the city. The detectives of the 24 Wards Heinous Crimes Unit have their eyes on one man: Kamui Uehara, legendary serial killer and assassin of a number of government officials 20 years prior in the now-famous "Silver Case". However, nobody knows who - or what - Kamui really is. Has he really returned? Who is this infamous serial killer? Game is localized and has dozens of reviews. 9. Zoku Mikagura Shoujo Tanteidan ~Kanketsuhen~ 続・御神楽少女探偵団~完結編~ [991007] Human Club Zoku Mikagura Shoujo Tanteidan - Kanketsuhen is the sequel that finishes the story of Mikagura Shoujo Tanteidan. The game features some action sequences in which the player has to press a directional button or an action button to pass it and advance in the game, if the player fails he will have to repeat the action sequence again. The only new feature is mentioned in the synopsis. There quite a lot of interesting and fun cases here as well, but the impact is much smaller than that of the prequel. So if you like Taisho era atmospheric detective stories, nothing should stop you from playing it. Opening is pretty much the same as that of the prequel, just some eyes changed. 10. Doura 瞳裸 [991008] Cross Net Our guy got kicked out of the alchemist guild for trying to make life. Now that he has successfully made a girl, he wants to use her for revenge. To do that, he wants to get her into the emperor's harem. He needs backing from 3 people, who he will make items for. His girl is the perfect test subject for those items. Does he want love or fame? Another weird SIM that I'm not inclined to get familiar with. 11. Hagane no Oni ~Kidou Hohei vs Onna Ninja Gundan~ 鋼の鬼 ~機動歩兵VS女忍者軍団~ [991008] Studio Neko Punch A monarch died in a certain country of the Far East, and the young heir "Kikuyo Chiyo" took the seat. However, his uncle drafted a female ninja corps to assassinate Kikuyo. The Freedom Association dispatched a special robotic unit secretly to prevent the assassination. Over 50 ninja attacked the cemetery where assassination was decided, but Kikuyo was a decoy and a huge metal robot appeared before their sight instead. How will latest robotic unit fight against female ninja corps that make use of numerous secret techniques? Just wow. Clearly a bakage, but a memorable one since ninja wear swimsuits, bikini and in some cases just garterbelts. Most of choices relate to the way of fighting. But after the fight is one someone will need to interrogate the commander and noone would do it better than the hero of the battle. 12. Niji-iro Season Sarigenaku 虹色シーズン さりげなく [991008] Peach This is the world of sword and magic "Paiona". Three races occupy it. There is "sword and magic school" in Sao Paolo, the central city of Paonaa. It is a prestigious school where freshmen are only accepted once in three years. At this school "Red Moon Battle" is held every three years when the red moons rise. The winners are recognized as wizards. Four girls participate in the contest to become real witches. It's something like Sotsugyou ~Graduation~ but in fantasy world. Main hero is actually the teacher that's entrusted with teaching these four heroines. It's a very loose scenario with sudden H events and demon group appearing by the end just to be defeated instantly. The game is actually short and takes one hour to finish. Graphics is the only selling point of the game. 13. Sekai ga Kimi ni Yume Miteru 世界が君に夢みてる [991008] Studio Trips Main character has been recently fired. A strange rabbit ears girl appears before him and invites him to return to school days. At school he needs to use a lot of different cute talking items to make girls happier. It's really very difficult to understand what's going on here. Lots of chaotic talks, all those talking items show up one by one. And eventually it falls into H same chaotically. System is very poor and game holds somehow only on cute character design. 14. Silent Duel [991008] Scramble House Jinba high school is a prestigious school where political and business elite children study. A small passenger ship "Silent" is a place for a student party. Hero is preparing the party in the course of his part-time job. The next morning after the party a female teacher is discovered abused and killed. The crew hurried towards the ground, but other incidents happen one by one involving girls assaults. Hero is requested to help the investigation by the teachers. You move around the boat, get testimonies and investigate. One topic of conversation takes 10 minutes and time is limited. The theme of the work is "fight to protect" and not only against the criminals but also from self. There are five heroines. Graphics is ok and there's a solid feeling from the game, but it has specific content. 15. The Ren'ai Simulation ~Natsuiro Celebration~ THE 恋愛シュミレーション~夏色セレブレーション~ [991008] HuneX 1 You're a high school student enyoing summer with your best friend Kimi. One day of August, she receives a call from her father, telling her to go home in 21 days. You then start enjoying those last days together... There are 10 heroines. And you create them yourself... there are tools for it. Apart of that there are parameters and lots of actions to fill the schedule. So it's a very basic level SIM with ability to create own event situations. 16. Zero Jikan e... ゼロ時間へ・・・ [991008] Easy Mode A gigantic meteorite will fall on the Earth in 3 days destroying it forever. At this time one amateur astronomer's photo of the comet tail initiated a series of full-scale riots and mayhem. How will you live three last days in such a world? Another end of the world story. Command selection ADV, but creator tried to make it as user-friendly and speedy as possible. The is some gunpowder in some of heroines stories, but they are too short to have an impact. There are some 20 endings. Well, there is some unique atmosphere of lawless ruined Tokyo, so might be to someone's taste. 17. Furiman Bibou Hen 振まん 美貌編 [991013] Hyperspace Mahjong erotic game available in both battle mode and story mode where girls need to be defeated consequently. Game features screaming voices of girls. Every story mode does not strike me as visual novel, to be hones. 18. Genma Senki Lexion 幻魔戦記レクシオン [991014] Loze There used to be a fight between the king and the devil. That fight that split the sky and broke the ground, lasted 300 years. And there was a hero who tried to reconciliate the two rulers. He got both arms torn off, but the rules were so ashamed of themselves that they made peace and sent him their daughters as wives. Present time. Main character Akira inherited the power of that hero. On his 19th birthday that power awakened and he found himself in a bed with an angel girl and a devil girl. He's the only one who can withstand an invasion of monsters. Game's more of a visual novel than an RPG. You need to select location and trigger some scene, sometimes some monster shows up. There are three main heroines - the new brides and the sister he lives with. 19. Sta★Gra -Star Graduation- スタ★グラ -Star Graduation- [991014] Active 2027. Aliens came to the Earth and for a year a group of them will study as international students for a year. They aren't much different from humans apart of some features like wings and tails - and they have special abilities. Main hero is student council chairman and he needs to help them socialize. Another SIM. There is a set of parameters like curiosity, intelligence, physical strength. There are five heroines. Hero needs to organize his schedule for each week. On weekends the only option is to rest or to go on a part-time job. There are a lot of fixed events like sports tournaments or national holidays, so it gets repetitive on consequential playthroughs. Basically we only need to raise specific parameter so specific value and one of girls will automatically take the bait. Since heroines are aliens, they follow some archetype - cat, maid, angel, raccoon, fish. Otherwise nothing out of ordinary. 20. Hand Maid ハンドメイド [991015] Telluru Main character returns to a previous work in a Western-style mansion after a long absence. He recieves a challenge from his master's friend to train the best maid out of a usual woman. He takes up the challenge. There are three girls to train. The maid grand prix is held three times, so it's needed to win it three times in a row... Just a usual maid SIM. 21. Kasumi Yuugi かすみ遊戯 [991015] Purple 1 With the advancing technology, man is able to create realistic man-made humanoids. One variation of such is the virtual brothels, one of which is called Karma. Such places are so expensive that spending one night there costs a month's salary. You as the player of this game, luckily got a freebie guest pass to this virtual brothels. There you meet an overly cute robot called Kasumi, and she is who you will spend your night life with. However, your guest pass can only last for ten visits... Will you be able to stay with Kasumi forever? There's a good English review on the game. 22. Limit 168 [991015] Sun West 1 You have arrived on a mysterious island with no memories. Searching for something that helps you remember, you meet a group of lonely girls... There's an English review of this game. 23. Natsumatsuri 夏祭 [991015] Diskdream In summer main character decides to return to his native town. A nostalgic view, a comfortable air, a faint sound of river calm his mind. At the summer festival he meets his old acquaintance, and their memories start to shine anew. Can't understand nostalgic works, probably because I can't associate myself with the main character. So summer festival lasts for 3 days, and there are actually many women to meet during that time. Each character has several endings with the total number of endings being 16. Of course, it's not usually explained why all the women fall for main character. And 3 days is not nearly enough to develop a relationship, but who cares. 24. Omoide no Photograph 想い出のフォトグラフ [991015] Xuse Yuichiro Ino is a photographer who does not sell well. This time he has to take a job of photographer assistant to get the views of Kyoto. He rides the Shinkansen and gets to Kyoto where he meets four beautiful girls. ADV with mini-games. Taking pictures is also organized as a minigame. There's no text skip and message speed is not adjustable, so it's a very painful game. Second half is actually about how the hero gets involved in a murder, but the story is sloppy. Period is only three days so development is forced. Enjoy Kyoto views and the girls, quite average game. 25. Refrain Dream リフレイン・ドリーム [991015] Mu The main character is a graduating high school student. On Christmas Eve he confesses his feelings to his childhood friend. She passes him the ring saying that she will come to him when he remembers. In a dream a mysterious girl comes to him saying that he should get the paired ring in order to fulfill his hopes. Paired ring is divided into many pieces and scattered around the world and some pieces are hidden in the world of books. You can gain access to the world of each book by buying the needed book at the antique shop. Different girls need different books. You start with the ability to read three books overnight and that will increase with time. If you choose wrong books, you may fail to meet the girl. There are 8 heroines. So it's a SIM with multiple girls and endings. 26. Yarasero ~Fujiwara Saori no Baai~ 犯らせろ ~藤原沙織の場合~ [991015] Noise Main character can't take his eyes from Saori Fujiwara. He wants to make shameful pictures of her and then blackmail her into a relationship. Basically first it's making photos and with enough of embarrassing photos it's possible to force either true love or SM relationship. Nothing but 3D nukige here. 27. Daraku ~Kindan no Sound Novel~ 堕楽~禁断のサウンドノベル~ [991016] RATI Shinji is a second-grader who attends a private school since his best friend Satoshi attends it. Shinji can only gain sexual excitement in situations of insulting women, so he's always unhappy and unsatisfied. One day Satoshi tells him about a secret place where Shinji can freely do to women anything he desires... Very simple blainless nukige, just choose and scene and here you go. 28. Pocket Love ~if~ ポケットラブ ~if~ [991021] KID An alternative version of Pocket love with two new characters, money concept and new unique events introduced. The main change that there are semi-erotic events introduced, like kissing and massage. The period is longer - since Christmas to White Day. There are 6 heroines overall. 29. Fifth Fifth ~フィフス~ [991022] Rune A mage found a magical girl and decided to raise her. He trains her in Earth, Water, Fire and Air magic with some help. She has the potential to become an angel, demon, or even human. How his treats her will determine what she becomes. Yet another training SIM. Now the loli version. Actually it's much closer to ADV this time. In ten days there's a devil/angel branch and after 25 days game's over. There are a lot of events scattered around. The amount of text is small. There is no voicing. 30. %% ~Fuuin no Otome~ %% ~封印の乙女~ [991022] Infinity In the past a warlock put a curse on Haruma high school, and students became lazy and spent days in a corrupt manner. The school guardian Aoi sealed the warlock and returned peace to the high school. 50 years from that time the seal got weakened and the warlock broke free. However, he lacks the power and starts to use maiden girls to renew powers. Only main character can revive Aoi, but he also can't allow warlock full resurrection. To prevent that he must seal maiden girls with the power of sex. I can't stop surprising why inventing such elaborate settings for nukige. I guess it's because it's bakage as well. There are quite a lot of gags and the spirit of craziness governs here. By the way it's not explained anywhere why the title is double percentage. The main theme of the game is underwear fetish. 31. Harem Racer ~Koi no Regulation Matta Nashi~ ハーレムレーサー ~恋のレギュレーション待ったなし!~ [991022] Jam Hero is a racer of a Forumla 1 team. He needs to train every day before the races, but at leisure time he can also pursue love. A very ordinary SIM. Fill the daily schedule, plan events of weekends. Some girls are from your team, but most are just random girls to drag after. 32. Mizuiro no Chizu みずいろの地図 [991022] Janis Hero is a police officer. At his workplace he meets a variety of girls. Most of them have a mystery aura around them. He wants to protect them and to know more about them, so he leans to them... We're a cop on patrol and need to choose various spots on the map. There are a lot of girls and each girl has both good ending and bad endings. The period is short and the volume is small. 33. Promise Promise ~プロミス~ [991022] Cherry Soft A girl suddenly appears before the main character reminding him of the youth promise to marry her. Whether he accepts those feelings or gets drown in a whirlpool of temptations, is up to him. Cherry Soft is famous for its graphics. However, there is zero scenario. Just H. 34. Renegade Renegade レニゲード [991022] Uran Rail has a faint feeling for his childhood friend Tina. Tina gets mysterious power and is chosen as chief of the temple because of it. From that day Rail feels that there's impenetrable wall between them. One day Rail meets a woman Luana who is a messenger from the temple and who requests to cooperate to protect Tina against the new king who desires to eradicate the rival in the temple. Rail gathers a team to oppose the king. Game has no reviews and only after trying it I understood why. No skip. Speed is non-adjustable. Font of previous lines gets blurred all the time. Despite the synopsis there are no RPG elements here. There are a lot of choices, each of 2-3 lines. Battle is shown only to pick which girl to help. So it's an eroge with quite pleasant fantasy story, but horrible system with no options is a huge drawback. 35. Tsugunai ツグナヒ [991022] Blue Gale Main character lives with her sister Nana after their parents died in an accident. One day Nana got insulted by a group of rich men. Hero becomes a lecturer at a girls school where children of abusers study. Main character invites such girls to a remote villa for supplementary classes to have his revenge. Just an insult nukige. 36. Yakouchuu II ~Satsujin Kouro~ 夜光虫II〜殺人航路〜 [991022] Athena Main character is invited to the voyage on a luxury liner Dynasty. A huge explosion happens and the ship sinks. Hero is drifted on his lifeboat to a mysterious abandoned ship Pandora where he unwillingly has to land. The theme this time is murder. The structure is the same - after seeing the best ending of the story, the next story opens up. A worthy horror sound novel sequel. 37. Yuuin no Toriko ~Main no Utage yori~ 憂淫の虜~魔淫の宴より~ [991022] Black Package Try Takahiro Fujisawa is a not noticeable young man who secretly insults and tortures women. He has always been successful and avoided sentence. He is appointed by his uncle as an insurance doctor to a girls school. This is an ideal hunting ground for him. Ok, I should probably stop commenting obvious nukige already. 38. My Toy ~Ojou-sama no Choukyou Nikki~ マイトイ~お嬢様の調教日誌~ [991028] H・WORKS Main character is training girls to fit specific requests. His goal is not just produce a mindless doll, but to save individuality and feeling of shame. He considers it art. Yet another insulting training SIM. 39. Prismaticallization プリズマティカリゼーション [991028] Arc System Works 1 2 Prismaticallization is a dating sim, whose hero is a highschool senior named Shoji. He finds a strange object when he's invited to a summer resort by his classmate Akemi. The object causes him to repeat a day, but seems slightly different. The same day repeats over and over, but there are some decisions that you can make which affect the next day like the decision whether to keep or leave an item - somewhat like in YU-NO. It's more of an experimental work, but it has much charm about it. Several mysteries remain unsolved. Very few things are explained and players lack information all the time. 40. Revive... ~Sosei~ REVIVE... ~蘇生~ [991028] Data East Corporation 1 The protagonist of the game, a high-school student, finds himself and other characters (mostly female high school students) trapped in a marine research facility. Exploring the abandoned building, the hero discovers the research staff died under mysterious circumstances. Was this a murder committed by a human being, or some sort of an unknown evil force? The hero does not have much time to think, since whatever took the lives of the scientists also threatens to murder them... System is akin to prequel Doukoku Soshite with navigation on an isometric map with traps, puzzles and timed sequences. It's definitely much more difficult and fancy than the prequel. There's not much of the story and gameplay does not have fresh feeling anymore, so overall impression is worse than that of the prequel. 41. Harlem Beat: You're the One ハーレム ビート you're the one [991028] KonamiCorporation 1 Visual novel adaptation of the hit basketball manga. The player becomes the team's manager and engages in conversation with its players while also managing their plays. Otomege/Boys Love SIM 42. Angoru Moa ~Daiyogen no Ketsumatsu~ あんごるモア ~大予言の結末~ [991029] Authoring Heaven Hero was walking when he remembered not locking the door. When he came back, a girl was getting food from his fridge. She turned out to be Angolmois the Great King of Fear from the Great Prophecy! As he soon got to know, whenever girl got disappointed, large scale natural disasters started to happen, so he decided to keep the girl at home till she's taken away. He now has to live with her, make her happy and pray for long awaited pickup team to take Angolmois away. We get to save the Earth again! And again by making love... There are much more girls than just Angolmois, but at this point the game is already beyond redemption. 43. Devote [991029] 13cm Suddenly after school main character is called to the class with four girls. The girls asked to make love to them. At first main character thought it was a joke, but that was a serious request. And so began their after-classes experiences. Game turns into a nukige pretty much instantly. Whatever girl gets all the events depleted first, receives an ending. 44. Heart ni Hi o Tsukete... ハートに火をつけて… [991029] Fairytale A beautiful female fighter Ayaka Shimada appeared like a comet in the female fighting sports world and got a nickname "Fighting Goddess". She had a legendary trainer whom she owned her success. Two years later she finally stepped down from the pedestal. New stars show up with the feeling "I want to be as strong as Ayaka!" and it's coach job to fulfill those dreams. This game is quite ero-centered so I struggled a lot whether block it or not. Training is simplified and battles are fightings are done through cards. But there are quite many H-events in each of the six heroines routes. It's closer to the romance game than a raising SIM, to be honest. 45. Kaiun Sentai Miko Sanranger 開運戦隊 巫女サンレンジャー [991029] Aqua House 1 "Seifuku Meister" is an organization secretly stealing uniforms (seifuku) from all over the world. In fact, one of the top executives of the organization, Captain An-an, is forcefully taking uniforms from girls right this moment. How does one get the girls naked in the first place? The answer is simple: just do them. The dark plot of "Seifuku Meister" is nearly accomplished. The only uniform left is the shrine maiden uniform. One day, they receive information that there will be a "shrine maiden festival" held soon. On the very day of the festival, Captain An-an and his followers triumphantly attack the site. However, they're confronted by a group of mysterious but cute girls: The Miko-san Rangers! Captain An-an and his crew fail to accomplish their mission. Captain An-an comes up with new plan: Get the legendary shrine maiden uniform from one of the Miko-san Rangers! Now, the erotic battle between Captain An-an and the Miko-san Rangers begins... Just WTF... stupid nukige. 46. Koufuku no Katachi こうふくのカタチ [991029] E.G.O. The main hero discovers a strange long rabbit ears girl who got hurt in an accident. The girl does not understand human language, but is of cheerful personality. As their cohabitation begins, it gets known that the girl is the last descendant of the tribe that can make any wish come true. At nights main character starts to travel to some fantasy world filled with lots of exotic races. Cat ears, glasses, maids, wings, sickly sister - game goes for all kinds of fetishes it can come up with. 47. Magical Treasure ~Kanojo wa Maid 2~ マジカル★トレジャー ~彼女はメイド2~ [991029] Bell-Da Our guy became lord of a remote town inorder to find a cure for his childhood girl, a princess cursed into sleep at age 16 by a black dragon. He heard there are fairies around that town that can help him find a cure. This is a Simulation, Role Playing and Adventure game. Monday to Friday is Simluation part, where he manage his town and train himself. Saturday is the Role Playing part, where he go out with one of his fairy maids to explore and find items. Sunday, the Adventure part, he can take one of his fairies for a date or go meet other girls. Also on Sunday, he can mix and use his items collected on Saturday for fun. Main SIM genre got oversaturated... so let's do the same, but throw some RPG mix altogether and it will be ok! Not. 48. Maina ~Haja no Ketsumyaku~ 舞菜 ~破邪の血脈~ [991029] Kappadou Yoichiro comes from an old religious family, but he's unaware of his roots even though he has a potential. His parents worry about the decline of the clan and they decide to marry him on a talented spiritualist Mai even though he already has a fiance Yuko. The demon is aware of Yoichiro potential and he tempts Yoichiro through his classmate Taeko. Game is quite dense with H events and story does not really hold much. Even upon choosing an option leading to bad end you can go on from last decision. 49. Mochimono Kensa 持ち物検査 [991029] Zero Main character is a teacher in a strict girls school. It's forbidden to bring many items to the school. The pretext of thorough belongings inspections is often used here to insult girls. And if something forbidden is found - like a candy - a severe punishment ensues. Just a nukige. Usually we choose scenario and then are offered interactive choices. 50. Partner ~Sekai de Ichiban Taisetsu na Hito~ Partner ~世界でいちばんたいせつなひと~ [991029] Shape Shifter Main character is a teacher who gets to know one day that he is very popular among girls. Erika is anxious to astonish him with culinary skills. Natsuki keeps her grades up and involves teacher in serious talks about future career. Sakaki is an artist who feels joy after being praised by the teacher. This work marked the start of Tony legend as an artist. Apart of that game consists of two parts - in first one we choose a girl and set flags. And in the second part we're in relationship with the girl and - depending on the choices - can enter devil mode. 51. Psycho Rhythm [991029] Vision Soft Five scientists died in the explosion upon conducting an experiment. Among them were Samba Hiroshi's parents. He lost parents at the age of 12 and was taken in by the neighboring Imino family. He lost memory and only faintly remembers being in the laboratory just before the tragedy happened. After graduation we started working as assistant detective in the Imino family and the first job is Left Eye case. Over 60 victims were found with their left eye gouged. Imino family head found the clues to it and was killed while investigating abandoned port warehouse. Samba is set to reveal the conspiracy behind this case and secret ESP's organization that manipulates unknown power with unknown purpose. Game's based on a very weird engine. The battles in the game are done in turn-based mode with several parameters to take care of - stamina, soul and E.S.P. Each card has attack points, defense points. Upon some condition E.S.P. skills are allowed to use during the attack. As for plot... it's very trashy... I hope the chosen CG alone tells well to what extent. 52. Pure Mind ~Prelude to Harlemblade~ [991029] Giga 1 You play the role of Rian, who lost his memory and was taken care of by a mercenary called Will since 3 years ago. Since then Rian joined Will's mercenary group to work and got pretty popular, especially among girls. Now, Will orders Rian to help stop the war between 2 foreign countries, and through this journey Rian will gradually recover his memory. After Will gives you the task, you have the freedom to choose 1 of the 3 main heroines by finding them in your town. Later, a knight (female) who is one of the 2 warring countries will join you. There's an English review of this Giga game. 53. Yume Nikki ~Tooi Sora no Shita de~ yume nikki ~遠い空の下で~ [991029] Pride Main character gets a part-time job to tutor the daughter of a famous fashion designer. But his employer dies and arrangement is cancelled. However, he's approached by the second wife of the deceased man asking to insult and train deceased man's daughter in order to sell her to a wealthy house. It goes contrary to main character's ethics, but when he sees the innocent smile and gentle manners of the girl, he already knows the answer: "I'd like to insult a girl like this ..." The synopsis does not leave a slightest hope for a decent game - it's another insult nukige. 54. Yume no Tamakura 夢の手枕 [991029] DNA A collection of three stories: Spring love 「春よkoi?」 Ultra-happy wife 「超・おさな妻」 Strongest woman wife in history 「史上最強のおしかけ女房」 Can't stand multiple story antologies.
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Foreword: It's a C's Ware game and these guys have not let me down even once. Unlike Re-Leaf which has quite a clear synopsis and multiple endings, this work is much more mysterious. I thought I'd get just another rural slice of life with some side mystery, but what I got was an ancestor of Cross†Channel with a global anomaly and looped story. Title: Kazeoto, Chirin (I'd translate it as "Sound of bells in the wind") Developer: C's Ware Date: 1999-09-10 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v4332 Length: That's tricky. Some 5 hours for first playthrough, plus some 4 hours more to get other routes to the end. It actually took me more that 15 hours due to a complicated walkthrough and confusion of the true routes. Game type: Global mystery rural story. Difficulty: Medium when you get how it's organized. For me it was very high since even choosing locations in wrong order can lead to falling out of heroine route. Synopsis: Satoshi, the protagonist, and his best friend, are both college students who came back to their old town to spend their summer vacation. But residents suddenly start to disappear without any reason. The most optimistic versions are that people are being spirited away or aliens abduct humans or that an ogre comes down from the mountain or that yakuza sell people into slavery because of debts. Hero does not care till the closest people to him start disappearing as well. Structure: Game takes place for 8 days from July 31st to August 8th when the Obon festival is held. Character Design rating: 8/10 Protagonist rating: 7/10 Story rating: 9/10 Game quality: 8/10 Overall rating: 8/10 Rating comments: It's a good game with great atmosphere, main idea and nice events. But heroines aren't charming enough. Out of six heroines I liked only Ageha, because she's a diligent student, hard-working keeper of a boarding house, loving older sister of Kanako and tsundere-ish at the beginning and very reasonable later on. Protagonist is a university student, but he's quite passive and he does not care about disappearings till his friends get missing, so it's a minus for him. Game quality is high, but I had to undergo through a lot of repetitiveness since heroines don't have their own routes and the difference is mainly just in several choices. If you watch my video walkthrough, you won't see that repetitiveness since it's cut there, so I hope you get to like this game even better. Protagonist: Satoshi-san is your ordinary megane university student. As he admits himself, he just goes with the flow and never really gives attention to studies. When Ageha asks him to help with the university summer homework on maths, Satoshi says he's in humanitarian division and that he "avoided" math entrance exams to the university somehow. And he has amnesia and is trapped in the eternal loop of 8 days, so he has all kinds of memory flashes all the time which does not help to concentrate on something. To the left is Satoshi and to the right is his brother Bozo (such is name when he's called in game) which i ended up calling Boshi and synopsis writer on VNDB called him Takeshi. Bozo is more of a playful type. He's fast to know the news and always eager to help. Characters: I wanted to talk about heroines in bulk, but there's no good joint CG, so let's run through them separately. First of all, there are no separate character roots. Secondly, there are no romantic feelings at all here - all H events happen on August 6 out of desperation of two last people in the world. Six main heroines routs are paired by two: sisters Ageha+Kanako, sisters Satomi+Shihori, nurse Midori+patient Ayane. It's difficult to call even those branched routes separate ones since the flow is the same aside from several events and the people who get to disappear first. Ageha is a diligent university student, keeper of a boarding house and a kind sister to Kanako. She's depicted as an angry comic person in the beginning of the story since Satoshi has not payed for the stay for quite a long time, but she gets to be the most attractive character for me - responsible, intelligent, kind. Kanako is a school student, but she runs the soba dining hall almost by herself. She's cheerful and childlish. Ayane is the most mysterious person since unless we follow her route we get to see her just once occasionally. She visits the local doctor since she's having pains, but the doctor claims that those are psychological ones after the death of her husband. She's the oldest of characters and she has a complex about here age - she even calls herself obaasan. Well, but she's the most experienced one and she's actually quite a nymphomaniac. Midori is the nurse in the local hospital. Since she's the most typical character, the writer really tried to pull her out of her role giving her lots of very nice events (in the sunset etc) outside of her working clothes, in casual - at those times she's cheerful and likes to set pranks. Satomi is Satoshi's cousin. She's always together with Shihori and they have the coolest CG together. Again, the writer tried to give her traits discerning from her sister. So Satomi is cheerful, creative, and workaholic, but she's quite irrational. Shihori is Satoshi's cousin. The more rational of the two, but she hates cooking and working - more of a city girl. Together with sister they came for several days to rest and see their cousins and their theme is to get out of the town as soon as politeness allows. Hibiki is the joker of the game. She only appears on sunset before the end of the day to say some cryptic stuff about the time, the universe etc. Her route is the true route that opens up after clearing all the six heroines. A lot of questions are getting answered in it, so any additional information would be a spoiler. Story: Satoshi and Bozo don't have real plans. They just wander around the town that's very ordinary rural town without any discerning feature. There's an Inn, a Soba shob, a souvenir shop, a marketplace, a river bank, a bridge, a clinic, a shrine, a bus stop, a small square with a bronze statue and that's it. Then their cousin sisters arrive and they get a full-scale investigation of the time once more. Here and there there is information that some people get missing, but it's usually neglected as people might just go to hot springs or somewhere. Then their important person disappears (who - depends on route) and start searching around. Eventually everyone disappears but Satoshi and one girl by the day of the Bon festival and after visiting this spirit festival the world resets. That's the loop that keeps on repeating. Composition-wise Cross†Channel is better since the hero works towards getting out of the loop by trying to remember things or writing them down in the diary. Here Satoshi is the same each time - first he's pulled in some merry adventures and then he's on the brink of despair. Through next five routes it's monotonous gameplay since very few events change and there's a lot of movement on the map, so skipping is not fast. Hibiki route that comes with everyone cleared finally puts some dots and breaks the loop without any active actions from Satoshi side. Thus Cross†Channel wins by all the parameters - the charm of characters, the humor, the protagonist, but it is a perfect 10 by my standards, but it came four very saturated years later and had some predecessors - including this work - to fix its flaws. CG: Well, I loved its CG. Heroines are gorgeous there. Best to see for yourself. HCG: What I appreciated was that every heroine got only one H-event (with some exceptions) - in the end of her branch. Those events are short and involve mostly talking in the beginning and in the end so it's the best type. Sound: Full voicing except for Satoshi protagonist. Just as in Chiruhana the tunes in the first half of the game are absurdly merry, some sound like parade ones. And C's Ware still can't get sound volumes even since both BGM and Voice for different occasions differ a lot. Themes and Symbols: 1) Unfortunately there's nothing deep in the main theme of the game - that's just remembering the truth about his deceased mother and thus breaking the loop. Well, there is some cool twist in it, but I won't spoiler. 2) What's much cooler is the mystic atmosphere that's created. There are sounds of bells heard all of a sudden in this town - some say it's the air, some invent more fancy explanations like plazma. And at some point it gets clear that each time the bell rings a person disappears and then it gets scary. This goes very well wit the Obon festival theme - the most pagan and spiritual festival celebrated. There a lot of impact in spirits roundelay. And when your heroine gets sucked it in it's horrifying. 3) There is a bridge in the town. When Satoshi asks what's on the other side of it - noone can answer. Well, that's weird, but we get to forget about if till the situation with the disappearings gets critical. There's a great scene when Satoshi and Bozo set off through the bridge... and the bridge ends and beyond it there is nothingness. Just insane. What's happening? Is this world not real? AM I ALIVE? That's just a wonderful mindscrew. 4) But the deepest theme is quite unnoticeable. It's when doctor says that he wants this damned rural town to disappear with all of the inhabitants. This hate grew strengthened in him each day. He wanted to break free of it, but was forced by his parents to return after studying. He even had a girlfriend in Tokyo and they had to divorce because he needed to return to this dump. And this is scary, because it's a social reality. Japanese society in some places remains quite archaic. Oldest son has to inherit the house and even the profession of the father and devote his life to whatever miserable life his father had. Well, in case of this game it was not the Doctor who was the source of the disapperings and notes it himself - at first only outsiders and tourists started to disappear and if it was in his power the whole basis of the town should have rot with its core inhabitants. Overall comments: This game is very good. It has very nice characters, great global mystery and unique strong atmosphere. It's not an S-class work like Eve:Burst Error, but this little cursed game is definitely a masterpiece for me, something that has an ability create memories.
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For me the best VN of September 1999 is Kazeoto, Chirin. There's such well known game as Memories Off as well, but a I place a good midscrew over a good slice of life in most of cases. 1. Love Lesson ラブレッスン [990902] Melody When our guy ask a girl to be his steady, he found out that she loves someone else. While drunk from depression, he made a mess of helping his new neighbor. It turned out that his new neighbor is his new homeroom teacher. What fun, now he can chase after his teacher or the girl that rejected him. There is one pure love and an one insult route. The romantic route is quite thorough, but the picture quality is rough. 2. Tomoyo Venture Episode1 知世べんちゃー Episode1 [990902] Atelier Kurimami Main character comes to Chi-chan's house to play. It all starts with laughing and cuddling, but can take young people far. Doujin H-tilt crap 3. Escape ~Akizora no Roof Garden~ エスケープ ~秋空のルーフガーデン~ [990903] Telluru October, before the school festival. Main character painfully recovers from his lover's death. At school rooftop he decides to move on and pay attention to school girls. Genre is sentimental novel. Basically it's chasing school girls at the pauses between lessons and at free time. Guess just sentiments and rooftop is not enough for auditory already - game got zero reviews. 4. Fushidara Fu・shi・da・ra [990903] Mink Our girl is one of those people who can't even think of H stuff. When she start to have exciting thoughts about her boyfriend(our guy), she has to seek counselling. What she got were some tapes and a bottle of perfume. While watching the tapes and inhaling a drop or two of that perfume, she has fun dreams with her boyfriend, guided by one of her friends. After a few sessions, she just might gain enough experience to live a happy life with our guy. There are three girls apart of main heroine. Most of H events are happening only on the tape. But the reality H events are interactive touch ones. Length is insufficient. 5. L L-エル- [990903] TopCat The story takes place in the two weeks right after the protagonist graduates from university. There's nothing to add to the synopsis. The guy studied so hard that he never seen the city he was studying at and only after graduation went breaking bad. There are eight characters overall. Capturing one heroine takes some hour while not accustomed to the system and some 20 minutes afterwards, so there is a feeling that the content is thin. 6. Be-reave Primary Be-reave Primary [990910] Unison Shift 1 A collection of short unrelated H-AVG stories, each drawn by different artists. You start out with 3 stories to choose from. More stories may be unlocked as you complete the stories first available to you. Though the length of each story is pretty short, there are many crossroads to be made that do have an impact on the flow of the story, unlocking various events and scenes and perhaps even multiple endings. There is more to each story than meets the eye. After you complete each story, a green bar will show how much of that story you have covered, giving you an indicator of something you may have missed. There is an English review. 7. Be-reave Secondary Be-reave Secondary [990910] Unison Shift There are four mini games in this part. In Blueeyes/graymaN, a guy got his wish of seeing a girl he met long ago, but might have some trouble keeping her. In Sora, a terminally ill guy might get saved by someone who love him. In Instant Spir, a guy can help out some special people. In Gyu, with two magical girl's help, a girl can't go wrong, or can she? Again, there are extra endings if you played all four mini games, but you might need to get the bug fix file to see them. The structure is the same as first game, so can generally refer to that game review. 8. Five Card ファイブカード [990910] Cross Net Main character is a new teacher in a private high school. There are five girls that stand out among the class and rival for teacher's attention. Will new teacher be able to do a good job in such circumstances. What is the mysterious prostitution organization dwelling in the shadows of the school? All the choices have two variants with one variant usually being H-scene and game over and the second moving forward, so basically it's a one-road scenario. Graphics are really cute and form the main appeal point. But in the end it's just a nukige, that's why there is a hentai anime of it as well. 9. Inda 2 淫打2 [990910] Hyperspace The second bullet in erotic keyboard lessons with strengthened erotic aspect. This time successes and failures are not only accompanied by voice, but by animation as well. Native English speakers read English sentences, so it's a good way to brush up English skills. Animation during typing is poor with several paranoid pieces cycled. Text drawing is too slow and can't be adjusted. Content is really low quality, even in H sequences. 10. Kairai no Hazukashime o Kimi ni 傀儡の辱めを君に [990910] Fuuro Hero is given the power to manipulate girls after meeting girl Sarah. It's not a complete control power, so needs to be mastered on daily basis. Multiple branch scenario. There are other girls but Sarah as well. But do you really expect an interesting story from the game that has "humiliation puppet" in the title? 11. Kazeoto, Chirin かぜおと、ちりん [990910] C's Ware 1 Satoshi, the protagonist, and Takashi his best friend, are both college students who came back to their old town to spend their summer vacation. In their village, Satoshi came back to his small house that is now an inn since his mother died. But there was some event going on there. "People will disappear" - a strange woman says to him. Residents suddenly start to disappear without any reason. The most optimistics came with the opinion that many people are being spirited away. And no one can avoid that. The hero decide to look into the matter. "Do not try to solve this case without us" - said his friend Takashi to the half-hearted hero. I've actually already written a full review of this work 12. Megami no Haka 女神の破瓜 [990910] Speed Goddess of Salvation is spreading chaos, devastation, conspiracy, rebellion in the fantasy world and it's not clear whether it's for destruction or creation. Carmine controlled by the spirit of the goddess is looking for a shrine maiden holding "the beads of gods". The player takes role of an inquisition officer who aims to eradicate the rebellion spreading around the country and to suppress those who receive the trust of the heretic Goddess of Salvation. Game's is noticeable for a heavy dark fantasy atmosphere. There's quite a lot of infodumping. In the first half main character moves the story but later on he just moves with the flow. There is no good ending. It may be quite close to being an eroge, but it's impossible to know since the game's is very rare. 13. Smile for Me [990910] [K]rimzon Fake Main character suddenly becomes an adventurer. But he does not know any magic or how to use a sword. But there are so many pretty girls around to drag about - he needs to try his best! There are 8 girls with different personalities and strategies. Game is mostly about collecting items and that triggers new events. 14. Sweet Palace [990910] Zero Hero got a job as summer hotel manager. The staff and guests will keep him busy! We need to choose locations and meet girls/trigger events. Graphics are rough. It's all packed with H events through and through. 15. Tokyo Nyoshuu Shuukanjo 東京女囚収監所 [990910] M' Main character is a man of great wealth and power. His new quirk is taking prisoners and training them as slaves. There are five prisoners to train. Depending on the means of training there are different endings. 16. V.G. Max [990910] Giga 1 A game in which the V.G. waitresses are rendered as super deformed (chibi) style characters. Includes the original six V.G. contestants, as well as Satomi Yajima from Advanced V.G., Tamao Mitsurugi from Advanced V.G. 2, Yumiko Watanuki from V.G. II and new character Masako Houjouin. It's the franchise that comes from the pre-windows era and it's at least the third title in the V.G. fighting series (not visual novel fighting, but real fighting fighting), but it must the first one with substantial ADV part. It's the first such mix with very active fighting action gameplay. There are H insult scenes present. V.G. MAX is said to be of better quality than the predecessors and holding a new interesting character, but overall a very average passable game. 17. Zetsubou ~Aoi Kajitsu no Sanka~ 絶望 ~青い果実の散花~ [990910] Studio Mebius 1 A guy got killed because of what he did. Since he still wants more, he is back as a ghost to get some. His servant(ghosts too) found him a place and a brain dead guy that he can take control to get more girls. As for how many more, how about 28 girls total, plus some side shows. This time, he can even take over a girl's life or do whatever he likes. There is an English review. 18. Tokyo Mermaid TOKYO魔迷奴 [990911] Ryuujinsha Tokyo survived a massive earthquake, and the ruins of it turned into an illegal zone. Langhao and her sister Mika, a cosplay masochistic young lady, encounter a mysterious cat girl creature. The three people start to travel together and notice the shadow of a mysterious organization. Nonstop erotic survival battle develops in Tokyo set into ruins. What is the true identity of a cat girl? And what is the conspiracy behind the mysterious organization? So you think game's crazy already? The reality is even more severe. Add to that the fact that it's possible to save only at the end of each chapter, poor graphics and very poor voicing. There's no thing as description in the game - only dialogues and often even in form of manga strips to add action. The story is crazy by itself. 19. Kimi no Kimochi, Boku no Kokoro 君の気持ち、僕のこころ [990914] Takara Main hero is a high school student adept in sorcery. He's got the power to possess other people & even animals bodies. You don't really possess others as you can't control them - you just peep from their eyes. There are three main heroines, but you can haunt pretty much anyone at any time, so it's very tiresome to try out all the combinations and see if it works. There was no manual released at that time so it was a game of guesses. Difficulty is skyhigh because of that. There are also some technical questions like a very long load time. Heroines aren't attractive enough and it's not clear what's the target auditory of the game. 20. Eve Haze ~Biyaku no Ou-sama~ eve haze~媚薬の王様~ [990917] Brownie A plague fell upon a village killing most of inhabitants including both pharmacists. Only the son of pharmacists Diano survived. He found an old book about aphrodisiacs and started his study. At the same time something strange happened to monsters of this country... Hero needs to prepare recipes to solve individual troubles or make monster bosses surrender. The main part of the game is collecting different herbs on a map and brewing potions which does not make it much different from Little Witch series. What's different here is card battles with the monster bosses. 21. Joousama to Oyobi! 女王様とお呼び! [990917] Side-B Main character is a devil king. He has lots of servants from different races. One day he is brought a noble human girl. The devil king is going to make her a queen. For that she must undergo a thorough training. A training SIM with fantasy entourage as the only prominent feature. There aren't any reviews to peek at end content around. 22. Paradise ee [990917] Hyperspace Main character is a member of resort club and is sent to a remote island called paradise ee. There are four angels working here as guides during day time and giving private service during night time. Game itself ends in less than an hour. Picture is rough and backgrounds are very extorted. 23. Saikidou ~Shiawase na Ashita no Mukaekata~ 彩季憧 ~幸せな明日の迎え方~ [990917] iMAGE CLUB Main character lives alone and prepares for entrance exams to the university. One day he dies by accident. Just before his death he regrets about not having fun during school years, and a miracle happens - he gets resurrected from the second year in high school. This time he's going to have a happy school time! You need to choose a club to attend. Each club corresponds to one girl, each having an ending. Drawing is rough and rendered real time photos are mostly used as backgrounds. 24. With You Toybox うぃずゆーTOYBOX [990917] 1 2 This is a side-item to With You with lots of wallpaper and mini games inside. Mini-games include: W-Sisters CD Player Naori no Hyper Udon Manami-chan no NekoNeko Panic EBC News Scramble Special Edition Mini Adventure/Side Stories Fortune Telling Manami's Stereo Haneru! Keiji Gotouda - The Worst 3 Days in the History of S.P.S MoeMoeNoeNoe Quiz The Legendary Archangels - Card Survivor There is an English review. 25. Court no Naka no Tenshi-tachi コートの中の天使達 [990921] Pinpai Two sisters manage to get our guy out of his depression of pass glories to train his team of girl volleyball. In mode 1, he has no choice but to use the girls for revenge against the volleyball league. But in mode 2, if he can complete mode 1, he can find a girl to love. Basically it's a raising SIM training several people at the same time for three months. Best use walkthrough since consequences of choices aren't evident in the short run but may already doom your team without your knowing. 26. BOYS BE... 2nd Season [990922] Kodansha 1 Based on the second manga under the BOYS BE... name. 2nd season of some SIM 27. Little Witch Reinette ~Swan no Namida Rhapsody~ リトル・ウィッチ レネット 〜スワンの涙ラプソディ〜 [990923] It starts with a magical competition mentioned in original Little Witch Parfait. Now from Reinette point of view. It's been just five months since releasing the original. So, did you even wanted to be a magical girl and create wondrous recipes? Well, I did not. 28. Maboroshi Tsukiyo まぼろし月夜 [990923] The player takes the role of Takashi Tanaka who one summer night meets a ghost of a girl in the park, and this ghost starts living with him in his apartment. The ghost can enter other people's bodies too... Usual trigger events on the map system. The period is two months. The appeal point of the game is the background of the ghost heroine. She died in Taisho era and is a typical Yamato Nadeshiko. There's a huge culture gap that's the scene for many jokes. There are a lot of colorful characters who are interested in this ghost for various reasons. You can easily shift to one of them, but you need to exorcise Ayame spirit for that, then it's an ordinary galge. But if you pursue Ayame, there's more of the story and as many as two endings prepared. 29. Toriaezu Air Plants! とりあえず えあぷらんちゅ! [990923] Air Plants Fan disk contains short stories on games Dearest Vampire and Fluorite ~Hotaruishi~, demo versions of both games as well as CG, deskop accessory, minigame, music tracks, staff and new works information. Since it's a fandisc, gg. 30. Album no Naka no Hohoemi アルバムの中の微笑み [990924] Curecube 1 You as male main character returns to japan after completing your Europe ART studies. As a rich man's son you were allowed to travel around to seek education around the globe. Now that you have completed your quest its time to return to japan... and marry Satsuki, your preset bride to be. There is a problem, you have got a maid that's been following you most of your life. She likes you. After arriving in Japan, you soon became the art teacher of an all girls school. Now 3 more girls join the wagon and they all want a piece of you alright. Who would you chose? There is an English review of this work. 31. Berries ~Kagayaku Kisetsu ga Owaru Mae ni...~ Berries ~輝く季節が終わる前に…~ [990924] Pocket Summer. Yuusuke Sugihara runs with a father a family restaurant "BERRIES". One day Yuusuke wakes up and finds a letter on the desk saying that his father went surfing and that Yuusuke should be store manager in his absence. What kind of memories will he gather by the autumn? Pocket tried to get into the pocket of gamers and put such high price for this usual setting game - 9,000 yen - that there is still not a single proper review of the game. What's known is that the game has terrible systems, but quite normal content. Still, it' feels more like a doujinshi in a box rather than a professional work. 32. Costume こすちゅ~む [990924] Optim One day hero helps a strange looking girl. He allows her to change clothes at this home, but as soon as Sarah rose hands to change clothes she was covered in a whirlpool of white light appearing in a nurse suit. Thus, a strange cohabiting with Sarah began. But Sarah's younger sister Kira came to pick her up and made a fuss about it. A cosplay nukige. 33. EA Mind [990924] LiLiM Near future. Private Maritime Academy is governed by students and its head is student council which consist only of women. All the male students study in oppression there. Main character deliberately transfers to this school in order to set male dominance there. Frankly speaking, only first part is about domination since in the second part he chooses one of girls' paths. You move around the map and trigger events and fights. Fighting is led till you embarrass opponent enough winning in hit/block game for five rounds. There are five girls to capture. Atmosphere is light and there are enough funny moments. Game period is 10 days and play time is around 5 hoursg. 34. Entrance ENTRANCE [990924] TinkerBell Tomoya Kamijo returns to his hometown after 12 years. He has no clear aim and during university course "Learning ways to create a future" he learns his due course. There are four heroines. All the characters are linked to the psychology department and this game was supposed to be as close to reality as possible, it's written in a manner of a book. That's all that's known and I bet the price of 8,800 yen has played an important role in that. Pretty soon Tinkerbell will drop all those psychology movements and will only be making hardcore eroge. 35. Guardian [990924] Aaru Our guy woke up in a dungeon without his memory. What will you have him do? Live life unknown, or go to town and find out who he is? This may sound like a role playing game, but it is a pick your choice adventure game with 90 different endings. Oh well this kind of games again. 90 endings and stories are ultra short (some 5 minutes) and follow some typical pattern. It's enough to entertain, but not for everyone. 36. Kaiki! Drill Otoko no Kyoufu 怪奇!ドリル男の恐怖 [990924] Tetratech 1 2 3 4 Three schoolgirls are wandering in the forest, looking for the pension, where they planned to spend the night. However they are stumbling upon a seemingly empty mansion in the middle of the forest instead. Since the sun is about to go down and it's raining anyway, they decide to spend the night there. However, the Drill Man appears soon after and tries to hunt them down. Will they be able to find out the secret of the mansion? Will they make it out alive? Or will they be captured and kept as playthings for the mysterious inhabitants of the mansion? Game is localized and has English reviews. 37. LOE ~Legend of Enomoto~ [990924] Aaru Our guy received an invitation to enter a contest to win a very rich man's inheritance. The contest consist of quizs and games. Other contestants will compete with him. He can either do it alone or with someone's help. Forget about the story here. There is more to the synopsis in here, but the story does not lead anywhere. It's puzzles + H events and since it's reported that the quantity of H-events is ordinary, I'll leave it be for now. 38. Mania na Onna 2 まにあなおんな2 [990924] Foster 1 The game is set in modern Tokyo, and is divided on chapters. On the first chapter, you are a college girl and in 5 days you find out why your boyfriend is cheating on you. On the way you pick up a lot of new characters and at the end of that if done right you will have sex with your boyfriend. On each chapter, the protagonist is different but all the characters know each other. There is an English review. 39. Rapture [990924] Gondola You start on a floating island, grappling pillars and pushing buttons till the bottom of the cave turns to grass. After that you get to know that your girlfriend is cheating on you. You're going through her memories to get to the bottom of it. It's almost as if the developers had been playing LSD Dream Emulator making this weird 3D maze with tons of pre-rendered horrible 3D H videos. 40. Snow White ~The Veil of My Heart~ [990924] Eden A small town between the sea and the mountains. The last school year passes by and main hero has time before Christmas to settle his feelings. Hero suffered from consequences of his parents divorce and only partly recovered from that by the last year of school. There are 8 girls. There's a month of time. Both pure love and devil mode are available for the girls. 41. Tenshi no Wana 天使の罠 [990924] MBS Truth Main character was leading a normal school life till an angel visited him depriving him of virginity. After that things start to change around him - men and women start masturbating and having sex everywhere. Nothing to see here, just MBS Truth keeps making weird nukige with enormous speed. 42. Tousatsu Mania Act 1 TV Kyoku 盗撮マニア ACT1・テレビ局 [990924] Waffle I want to see... even if I commit a crime... I want to know more about this child ... her real face that can't be seen on TV... I want to make private photos of her and to take her belongings... This is a story of one young man who stepped on an evil path of voyeur. Nothing good can come out of a game titled "Voyeur mania". The purpose of the game is walk around TV station without being caught by guards, set surveillance equipment and hide in waiting. 43. Waru Gaiden ~Akumu no Rush Hour~ 悪っ外伝 ~悪夢のラッシュアワー~ [990924] Interheart 1 The legendary mischief master Honda is released from prison. He thinks of finishing with molesting, but he sees a seducing dancer and goes breaking bad. At the same time the railway company hires two new girl staff memebers - morality countermeasures expert Shinomiya and national idol Hayakawa. Can they pose a challenge to Honda? An improved version of Waru!! ~Itazura~ with two new characters. There's even an English review. 44. Yuuhei 幽閉 [990924] Deep Zone 1 "I will teach you a way to sneak into Women's Dormitory." One day, such flier get into main character's house. The phone number on it belongs to a girl who lives in the same dormitory. For 30,000 yen she tells all the secrets of this building. As it turns out, hero was chosen not by chance - the fate of all dormitory women greatly depends on his behavior. I'm very disappointed with previous D'z works and this one is just a nukige as well. 45. Blow ~Michita Tsuki, Kaketa Tsuki~ Blow ~満ちた月、欠けた月~ [990930] Rock Climber Main character is a normal high school student. During the preparation week for the culture festival a series of rapes happens right at the school campus. Who is the culprit? What are his motives? Can you get to the truth? Basically hero investigates the victim girls, befriends them and can find love with one of them. One of such "good" endings finishes with cannibalism. There's also the True ending. A heavy work of very bad aftertaste, mostly because of how realistic it is. 46. Hushaby Baby [990930] Alice Soft 1 In this game you had a girlfriend who died in a train accident about a month ago. One day, when you are going back to your home, you found her waiting at the door! The story starts from there and last for several days as you accompany her through the last days before the 49th day after she died... There is an English review. 47. Memories Off メモリーズオフ [990930] KID 1 2 3 4 5 6 It's a surprisingly bittersweet tale about a guy named Tomoya Mikami who actually was dating the girl of his dreams, Ayaka Hizuki, for a long time...only to have her die tragically a good while before the game starts. The game even begins with Tomoya having a flashback about Ayaka whilst walking to the train station to get to school. On the train, as usual, is Yue Imasaka - a close friend of Tomoya and Ayaka who pretty much grew up with them. The gist of the story is that Tomoya feels that he's spent enough time grieving over the loss of Ayaka and is ready to try his hand at love again and hopefully find another wonderful girl to make beautiful memories with. Game has English reviews.
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There's not much to talk about this month. Tsui no Sora and L no Kisetsu: A piece of memories are the masterpieces of August 1999. My heart is totally with Tsui no Sora. 1. Baito e Ikou! バイトへ行こう! [990805] Bags 1 You as main character, gets a winter vacation that you will not forget. Living somewhere on the world, with your parents on vacation, a period of around 2 weeks of solitude is given to you. During this time you will be able to roam around your area and meet new girls. Game has an English review. 2. Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo 3: Seiryuu Densetsu Satsujin Jiken 金田一少年の事件簿 3:青龍伝説殺人事件 [990805] Digital Frontier In this case Kindaichi & Mijuki go to an island and they are in the Seiryu Hotel and when they are in the reception a murdered happened in the elevator, Kindaichi & Mijuri helped police inspector Kenmochi solving the case. The game featured 4 different cases in the Seiryu Hotel. The third case of our boy detective. After reading that my attention got completely lost. 3. Kita e. Photo Memories 北へ。Photo Memories [990805] Hudson Soft This fandisc includes additional content and a sequel story. This story has you returning to Hokkaido in the summer following your special kiss from the White Illumination festival. There are actually eight separate adventures, one for each girl. You start off by selecting the character with whom you'd like to share your upcoming exploits, and when you arrive back at the Hokkaido airport, she greets you. You travel off through Hokkaido, with the girl conversing with you and showing you around. As you travel, you can surprise the girl by taking a picture of her with the snap of a button, and this picture can be saved to the VMU and viewed later in a photo album. Say no to fandisks. 4. L no Kisetsu: A piece of memories Lの季節 A piece of memories [990805] Tonkin House Main character works for school newspaper. One morning a student falls unconscious and after that the number of victims of the strange illness increases. The newspaper staff decide to start own investigation and find out what causes the illness. Despite the synopsis it's a fantasy or rather both fantasy and reality since there are two plot lines with different heroes that move separately in each world, but are heavily connected. Somewhat like in Guity Exodus. Difficulty degree is not high, but to reach the best ending it's important to keep affection level of characters high and for that to use proper lines. There are four main heroines and some sub-heroinies. There are questions to those sub-heroines routes, but main heroines routs are great. There are multiple endings and first playthrough is going to be a bad end, just accept it. There's a lot of animation and just an awesome opening. So it's a high quality galge with a good plot - that alone makes it a masterpiece since most of its competitors settle with ordinary plots and focus only on relations. 5. Pinocchia no Miru Yume ピノッチアのみる夢 [990805] Takara You can choose between a male and female protagonist, and play as a doll/puppet maker who's about to starve to death on Chirstmas Eve due to the inability to make a "pinocchia", a doll that looks and acts like a real human being (but isn't truly alive), and make enough money to feed yourself. As you slip into unconsciousness, you plead to any higher being that's listening to grant you a pinocchia, willing to give your life in exchange.... and wake up the next morning, with a "new-born" pinocchia in your hands. A raising SIM. Gender is decided at the age of 5 and one of three personality types is determined at the age of 14. Romancing only allowed in the very end if you raise her/him good. There are 12 different endings (6 for each gender, good/bad for each personality). There are some mind-blowing fantasy events and some minigames to diffuse the raising process. 6. Maria 2: Jutai Kokuchi no Nazo マリア2 受胎告知の謎 [990805] Break 1 The protagonist of the story is Maria Kunitomo, a rookie journalist working for Sakura TV station. One day she follows an interview with a renowned biologist, Dr. Amon, which captures her interest. Later that evening the news report that Dr. Amon has been killed in his laboratory, and his assistant, Jun Kageyama, whom Maria have met during the interview, is the prime suspect. While on a search for the truth behind Amon's murder, she stumbles on a conspiracy of a huge proportions. It has been two years since the events in Maria: Kimitachi ga Umareta Wake, and while the setting is the same as well as some recurring characters, the stories are anything but connected. The gameplay is similar to its predecessor, using text-only during dialogue with characters while emphasizing key scenes with voice-acting and pre-rendered CG videos. Aside from direct dialogues in a visual novel style, Maria can use her computer and check emails to gather information. The game features three different endings available during first playthrough, after which the save game can be used to start new game which will open additional scenario routes and unlock two more attainable endings. Theme is heavier this time, but it becomes a loose combination of mini-games with disappointing text. 7. BMP: Go Go West! BMP・GO GO WEST! [990806] Telluru A country of women supremacy. Takanobu Takami, a high priest monk, went on a journey with a precious scripture that is supposed to contain the secret how to return the power to men. Main heroine who used to be a man in the past, stumbles upon this monk and agrees to accompany him. But the rumor of the threat from the scripture spreads out and travelers are being hunted by aggressive women. Card battle system is not intuitive and based on roulette, so did not get through it. As characters get lower on hp, they lose clothes. 8. Dawn Slave 2 ~Aka no Setsuna Shiro no Toki~ DAWN*SLAVE2 ~紅の刹那・純白の刻~ [990806] Ume Soft Our guy's foster father brought him a mother and daughter team to train. He has to make them into fit toys. In his house are also two maids. If he can successfully train the mother and daughter in three months, he might also be able to find a girl to love. Another training SIM. Russian aristocracy and 1930s years in Manchuria should probably be the appeal points here. 9. Jelly Jelly ~ゼリー~ [990806] Image Craft Main character is a student council president at school. One day there is an accident with a girl student suddenly collapsing. Jelly jumped out of her claiming that alien invader "Parasitic Rave" started to plant eggs in the girls' dorm for breeding. Main character is chosen to rescue mankind and stand up to the challenge. Settings of nukige are getting more and more weird. But in the end it's just transparent main character in the dorm. This time graphics are cute and there's a lot of animations used both for H events and eye/mouth moves. 10. Kanojo no Kimochi 彼女のキモチ [990806] Wedding Cake Main character is a high school student who is good at basketball and who has a girlfriend. But as graduation approaches he gets fatigued of his girlfriend. Older memories call him and he is going to pay a visit to his other acquaintances. There are three heroines. Hero is difficult to sympathize with. Events are depicted very unrealistically. 11. Maid to Maze ~Anata no Soba ni~ メイドトゥメイズ~あなたのそばに~ [990806] Gesakuza This country is full of dungeons. Main character is a prince how is suddenly announced that in a year he will need to inherit this kingdom. In order to gain public support he sets off to exploring a dungeon, but appears to be too weak for the task. In order not to look weak he asks a maid who is superior to warriors to accompany him on this task as a bride candidate. There is a raising SIM part and rpg part with battles and so on. 12. The Hokenshitsu THE保健室 [990806] Logg In this story, you play as a girl named Mariko. Her best friend is Moe, the one with the large breasts in the picture. Moe has anemia, so Mariko ends up taking her to the infirmary pretty often. Mariko also has a boyfriend, Kenji, who starts to develop feelings for Moe. Mariko decides to get revenge on them. How? Kinky S&M Antics. How else? At least all the heroines are voiced. 13. Wangan Dream 湾岸DREAM [990806] Dreams It's such a nice feeling to cut the wind at full speed. A new youth challenge for the title of fastest racer begins now! It's actually the second game to try to merge racing and eroge. And I'm not good at racing. 14. Yuujo Gakuen 遊女学園 [990806] Aqua House Hero is going to become a priest. Once he breaks a statue of a "God" and the spirit of a girl appears from it. She asks to catch the spirit that dwells in the school building in exchange for lots of earthly pleasures. Nukige with not so appealing drawing, especially for standing sprites. 15. Furiman Nie Hen 振まん贄編 [990807] Hyperspace During predecessor rule a riot occurred, and most of the disciples went elsewhere. Main character is the most experienced person among the remaining ones. He takes control and continues study and practices with new vigor. Game is ridiculously rare and most probably ridiculously shitty. 16. Hajimete no Otsukai ~First Adventure of Little Witch~ はじめてのおつかい ~first adventure of little witch~ [990807] Force Main character is a black cat Georges who lives with a witch in the forest house. One day master brought a little human girl Apple. 100 years passed and master decided that Apple should see the world. The cat was sent with her to bodyguard and counsel her. And so they set off. Cat can not talk to the girl so he uses cries and gestures, but he's perfectly understood. There are five stories that take the period of another 10 years. In one of them prince is met and helped so in a sense it might be called a romance story with the prince. Total length is only about two hours. Story lacks integrity since we just wondering around and then it's the end. The feature of this game is that H-events are seen from a point of view of woman. 17. Kaleidoscope ~Mangekyou~ カレイドスコープ ~万華鏡~ [990807] Ange Shogo decided to spend university summer vacations doing a part-time job. He gets a job in Kodoin family mansion where a doll-like girl with emotions closed to the world lives. Shogo manages to gradually return here to senses and gets involved into a plot to claim family's heritage. At the same time Shogo's girlfriend visits the same mansion as tutor. How will Shogo settle all that? Multiple endings story (without bad ones). Gameplay is fully decisions driven. And it looks quite stupid that according to the decision events start to happen instantly without any context built up. There is a decadent atmosphere of madness inside the mansion and some disturbing events are happening there. 18. English 淫グリッシュ [990813] Hyperspace There are about 1500 conversations prepared and recorded. Answer fast and correctly - and you'll both brush up your English skills and get to watch naked beautiful girls. Pretty much the same style as Inda series, just quiz instead of typing. Game quality is low and system is very poor and non-customizable. 19. Justice Slave ~Hoshi to Nare!! Akusoshiki~ ジャスティス・スレイブ ~星となれ!!悪組織~ [990813] JAST Co., Ltd. Nishikawa is an apostle of an evil organization. He goes to the pyramids to collect three mysterious keys and conquer the world with their help. Nishikawa gets wounded and his body gets possessed by mental parasite Raul. Together they insult the saint guardian girls who block their way! Game's a bakage and it's synopsis is really complex. But the contents is rather simple - insult one by one lots of saint guardian girls. It's sad to see the last game of Jast this way 20. Kyouki 2 狂気 2 [990813] Gondola Mikoshima Reika is a former actress and now a detective assistant. Together with a partner they tail a requested person, but get in a storm, and the car gets stuck. And then they witness a strange house and a family in it worshiping the devil. There's a reason this series is called madness, after all. Game is full of multiple bad endings, but the good ending solving all the mysteries is single. The 3D graphics is still horrible, and only still images of it used. 21. Magical Kanan - Magical Fantasy Box まじかるカナン MAGICAL FANTASY BOX [990813] Terios Among other goodies game includes a quiz and a story mini-game with timed choices "The exciting time bomb". Fandisc 22. Sakanaya-san さかな屋さん [990813] Mayugeya It's not shameful. It's beautiful. Little Natsuki-chan entrusts herself fully to the will of the master. Doujn crap 23. Silence ~Namida o Fuite~ Silence~涙をふいて~ [990815] Circle Mebius Brother and sister escape their abuser and try to recover from the dark past. They support each other and live a happy life. But eventually a crisis happens in the life of brother... A free doujin game with forced development 24. Duette Duette~デュエット~ [990815] Stage-nana A doujin game based on Key's "Kanon", with Sayuri Kurata as main character. Can use the original game's BGM if its disc is played at the same time. Could not care less for doujin. 25. Itsuka, Kasanariau Ashita e いつか、重なりあう未来へ [990826] Sony Music Entertainment 1 The 'Vector Rider Series', launched simultaneously, "Shirou Hen" with the male protagonist and "Sayuri Hen" with the female protagonist. A self-raising style simulation game depicting the main characters first year after entering the military academy. The system and game balance is a little hard, however the world building is very detailed and the story has many serious developments. Shirou Hen has gal game and shounen-ai elements. Sayuri Hen has otome and shoujo-ai elements. Can't get the appeal of raising SIMs. 26. M.E.M. ~Yogosareta Junketsu~ M.E.M. ~汚された純潔~ [990826] Ail Inside a private hospital, a scientist is transforming females into sex slaves. A training SIM... again. And from well known perverts Ail. Story is pretty much non-existent here. 27. Boku wa Kohitsuji?! 僕は子羊?! [990827] May-Be Soft Saint Emanuel Academy is a missionary-based dormitory system high school with the motto "Love for all things". However, it has one dark tradition. Once a year a "carnival festival" is held there. Seven new students are selected as targets and have to do anything the teachers desire. Main character is selected as the last of the seven people. Without knowing that he confesses to his classmate. It depends on the player's choice whether main character has to go through the trap or find love with the classmate in two weeks time. May-Be Soft has been true to itself and presented yet another nukige. First HCG appears just seconds from the start. 28. In'ei ~Frame no Naka no Tenshi~ 淫影 ~フレームの中の天使~ [990827] Penguin Works Main character is an up-standing photographer who takes up a job to provide a photo session for a lingerie shop. The three models are all cute girls, and there is also an astonishing shop owner. The sales of a new lingerie shop depend on how much girl charm you can draw with the photos. A nukige with SIM elements in form of items usage. 29. Maid Gakuen Kyousoukyoku メイド学園狂騒局 [990827] Ralf Main character suddenly got a part-time job of personnel manager of four lovely candidates to maids. The goal is to train them into fabulous maids and win the "All Japan Maid Championship" in two months time. More raising SIMs. At least this time no fancy synopsis. 30. Mujintou Monogatari XXX 無人島物語XXX [990827] Pinpai Hero has worked in a laboratory on a solitary island for a long time learning how to overcome harsh weather conditions and emergency situations. However, encounter with a woman changes his peaceful life. Everything he believed true turned out to be false due to his memory remodeling. Hero decides to escape the laboratory and regain the true self. Oh, I already said farewell to the series, but there's another part. So... unlike all the previous games it starts not on an island ... but in the huge two-store laboratory. So you don't even make it to the island from such a huge laboratory. The feature of the game is the time that's always ticking. There are only 30 days given to escape the laboratory. So I see this game as yet another experiment that went in a different direction than main games of the series. 31. Reijou Caster Mariko 隷嬢キャスター真璃子 [990827] Guilty Akira Riko is a beautiful newscaster. However, GUIL-TV station is a nest for a huge underground prostitution organization. Its directors feel the need to increase sex appeal of newscasters and that's why they use casters as sex slaves. Game is even more hardcore than the hentai anime made after it. 32. Tatakae! Princess たたかえ!プリンセス [990827] Triangle Hero is a boy who likes inventing just as his genius parents who live abroad. One day a mysterious capsule with a girl inside it falls from the sky. She is a princess of some star in the Universe. In her royal family there's a habit of practice as a servant on other stars, but she failed the first attempt and came to train to the Earth where invasion level was low. Still doubtful, hero allows her to stay with him in the mansion and he's got no complaints with her cooking and cleaning. She even starts to visit the same school as his cousin. Then one day a shady figure shows up at the mansion... Play time is around 5 hours. The number of episodes is 5. The system and the flow is totally the same as the earlier two works of Triangle - Angel and Cowboy babe. H element is quite high, but it's a gag bakage comedy first of all. 33. Tsui no Sora 終ノ空 [990827] KeroQ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Our guy got waked up by his childhood girl for school. Once they got to their classroom, they found out that a girl classmate jumped from their school roof yesterday. Soon, people started talking about end of the world on day 20th. Some even went crazy, lead by one guy. You get to see the events first through our guy's eyes, then his childhood girl's and two more people. There are full reviews including mine. 34. Violet Plan ~Kansei no Reijo~ Violet Plan ~陥穽の隷女~ [990827] Rave Satomi works as a lecturer in a law school. She has a girlfriend among the students. Kazuki offers himself as a partner to Satomi, but is rejected, and his pride suffers greatly. Kazuki lays out numerous traps to insult and shame Satomi. After success, he delivers the same scheme for other girls. That plan gets a name "Violet plan". SM insulting visual novel. The purpose is to set traps to various girls and enslave them. There are 8 endings altogether. A really plain nukige. 35. WAM xxxnovel-wetandmessy.com [990827] Flying Shine There are four scenarios linked my the same theme of soaked clothes. New scenario only opens up after previous one is completed. It's possible to change perspective between characters, but those perspectives often vary only slightly. 36. X Change 2 [990827] Crowd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Take on the role of Takuya Aihara, the unlucky chemistry student at Miyanomori High School, who has a tendency to get caught in bizarre chemistry accidents that cause him many problems. When a strange chemical turned him into a girl last year, he had a bizarre string of experiences as he learned "how the other gender lived." Now, one year later, he is enjoying his high school life with Asuka, his steady girlfriend. But unhappy days are around the corner, as chemistry club member Chisato uses him as a guinea pig for a new experiment, which changes him into a girl once again! As a girl, he will find himself much more popular than before, but with practically everyone around him (both male and female) yearning to have sex with him. Meet the old familiar faces, as well as many new characters and erotic plot lines. The shy boy Kouji, whose virginity Takuya took last year on the roof of the school, bides his time waiting for his chance. Then there's Mr. Sano, the teacher known for his interest in his female students, and he's got his eyes set on Takuya. What will he do when he encounters Maiko-chan, a girl whose confusion about men has led her to prefer girls? What about the shy Megumi, who confesses that she's in love with Takuya's male self? And while all this is going on, Takuya's trying to keep his tenuous relationship with Asuka intact, which isn't easy, to say the least. The biggest danger is that the changes to his body will become permanent if he doesn't change back soon -- but how can he find a way to become a man again? There are many English reviews. 37. Gal Get You!! ぎゃるゲッチュウ!! [990830] Fancy Main character is the captain of 13 units of "Yakuinba" that are in human trafficking business for three months before Christmas. Get cheaper insult tools and train gals in high quality slaves, making lots of profit. Basically it's about training girls 6 days out of 7 every week for 3 months. Parameters are dependent on location and means of training. Gross. Free version is SFW while paid one is NSFW. 38. Ningyou no Kizuato 人形の傷跡 [9908] Child Dream 1 It is the end of the year in December. Asumi has lost complete contact with her elder sister who goes to a graduate school in Tokyo. Worried for her sister's safety, Asumi travels alone to Tokyo to find her– but no trace of her could be found. Her sister wasn't in the laboratory where she had been assigned to, nor at her apartment. Asumi is at loss as for what to do… What has happened to her sister…? Asumi is determined to find out. What she doesn't know, however, is that she is in imminent danger… and there are frightening facts awaiting her. Game is localized and has English reviews.
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VN of the Month July 1999 - Mamatoto ~a record of war~
kivandopulus commented on kivandopulus's blog entry in Vndbreview
Of course Kimi ga Itsetsu is much better known as 2011 title. And 1999 version and 2011 are actually very different in that 1999 involves a lot of map movement and has different characters and routes structure while 2011 one is kind of brushed to the contemporary standards. There's a nice article on the changes. But I just follow VNDB whether it has versions smashed together like this one or separated like YU-NO or Ruriiro no Yuki or Ryouki no Ori, so I won't be returning to Kimi ga Itsetsu. -
VN of the Month July 1999 - Mamatoto ~a record of war~
kivandopulus posted a blog entry in Vndbreview
Wow, there's a mortal combat between such titans as Team Baldrhead, Alice Soft and Studio e.go this month. Well, Men at Work is the first RPG offspring of Studio e.go and it's just too simplistic to compete yet. Baldrhead is also the first part in the series and suffers from some technical problems and short duration. Mamatoto ~a record of war~ on the other hand is quite a polished RPG that even has English patch and it is the VN of the Month July 1999. 1. Gakuen Hyouryuu Senki 学園漂流戦記 [990701] Alice Soft April 2005. Main character is a high school student on a voyage trip with a lot of his girl classmates. He's been in love with his classmate Suzuki Kaori for a long time and now is a perfect opportunity to finally confess. But after an incident Main character wakes up alone at a beach shore. What will he do now? Game's a small addition to the main package of Alice CD. There's horrible command selection part and interaction with some items.... well... I did not care to make it through that. 2. Maid no Susume メイドのススメ [990701] Alice Soft Hero is a nobility heir. He lives in a mansion with three maids. An important exam is approaching. Maids will assist him in preparation for the exam. Another cheap addition to Alice CD. After a short introduction there's lots and lots of quizzes. Of course I never went through any of them. 3. Mamatoto ~A Record of War~ ママトト ~a record of war~ [990701] Alice Soft 1 You (Nanasu) are the prince of Mamatoto. You go out and conquer other nations in order to conquer the world. There is stability/stalemate, so none of the nations can actually take over the world because if they start a war with another country, a third one might have an advantage. Mamatoto is different it has zero territory to worry about. The problem is, it doesn't have much of a population either. So you don't really have an army, thus for many years, Mamatoto, the moving fortress, has been hiding in the monster lands. You, Nanasu, who has studied magic really hard has recently invented magic to create these magical soldiers. These soldiers are made via cards which you can obtain via battles. So the more battles you fight, the more cards you collect, and the more troops you have in reserve. So now, Mamatoto, the fastest moving fortress in the world, started its move to conquer the world. Mamatoto's goal isn't to get territory - it's to take out governments. Game's localized - there's an English and a Polish review. 4. Inagawa Junji: Kyoufu no Yashiki 稲川淳二 恐怖の屋敷 [990701] Billiken Soft Inagawa Junji - Kyoufu no Yashiki is a horror adventure game that stars japanese actor Inagawa Junji (contemporary master storyteller of Japanese ghost tales). Game begins when player enters a haunted mansion. As soon as he arrives, he finds a TV where Inagawa Junji appears and introduced different ghosts stories. Horror sound novels have its fans, but I'm not included. 5. Baldrhead ~Busou Kin'yuu Gaiden~ BALDRHEAD~武装金融外伝~ [990702] Team Baldrhead 1 2 3 4 5 It's the future where the technology is being over-used and at the same time conflicts between countries and religion occur which causes a loss in theory and technology. The world is now in corrupted towns with ruins of ancient technology everywhere. The story takes place in future Japan,and the hero of the game is an ex-mercenary called Bloody Baldy who earns his living by being an armament banker... Baldrhead is a linear adventure game with 2D action-shooter elements. There is an English review of this game. 6. Ballerina ~Haitoku no Kurumi Wari Ningyou~ バレリーナ ~背徳のくるみ割り人形~ [990702] Zero Main heroine is a ballet trainer. She gives lessons to several girls, but her lessons tend to become to intimate. What a trashy nukige. There are some 6-7 girls to harass. 7. Hyper Broken ~Tamashii no Chikara~ Hyper Broken ~魂のチカラ~ [990702] Escu:de The protagonist thinks that he is the strongest fighter around his school, until he got totally trashed by a new rival. If that wasn't bad enough, his sister got murdered and he was left for dead in his burning house. He got saved and found out that he has the potential to become the strongest person on earth. Will his girlfriend and other friends be able to keep him from the revenge-driven dark side of his power? Poor Escu:de - it started with a very plain romance work and now fills the shoes of another visual novel fighting. What differs it from Crazy Knuckle 2 is very high production values and engaging and moderately difficult battles. Hero is very colorful and is voiced which creates a very solid atmosphere. Game uses songs very efficiently at crucial moments. Considered the limitations of the genre Escu:de managed to produced a paragon visual novel fighting. 8. Dokidoki Summer Lesson ~Kyoukasho wa Oshiete Kurenai~ どきどきサマーレッスン ~教科書は教えてくれないっ~ [990707] Megami It's summer break, our guy is bored. He decided to find work as a tutor, his way of meeting girls and get paid for it. His student turned out to be his neighbor's sister. What will he teach her? And will he go after one sister or both, you decide. There are only two heroines, so it's more serious than an average eroge. Text is surprisingly good. No wonder game got a full voice re-release 4 years later. H scenes are quite dark no the other hand. So game's almost as nice as Off Memories series, but much more tilt towards H. 9. Be With! [990708] Jewel Hero has not had his hair cut for three years due to fear of having ears cut off. When his sister finally managed to cut his hair, girls in the school started to look at him with interest. What kind of future will he choose? Game is quite short, but it's fully voiced (apart of protagonist) and quite funny. There are five heroines and they are strong willed and quite nicely outlined. Through several choices you choose a girl/several girls and there's an ending. Graphics is quite unusual. But the most disappointment is in the systems. There aren't options at all and BGM is deafening with all those beats. BGM is like 10 times louder than voices so it's quite difficult to discern phrases while it trumpets. 10. 7 Days Girl [990709] Pocket Hero knew girl Hime when he was a child. She had a soft old-fashioned character. Now he meets her in Tokyo and she's totally different. It turns out that Hime suffers from personality disorder and each day of week she's a different person - seven in total. Hero asks gets a permission to look after Hime for a month to try to heal the distortion. Can he change Hime in just 4 weeks of living together? All that is left to the hero. Well, the personality that gets the most favorability wins. The conditions for the True End are very strict. Game systems is bad in the way that the speed is very slow. A well balanced work with a fresh concept. 11. Koi no Sweet Tart wa Ikaga? 恋のスイートタルトはいかが? [990709] Love Gun There is a coffee shop "Gerbera" on the bank of a beautiful lake in Tokyo. Cute girls are serving as waitresses and establishment is famous for its homemade cakes. Hero is a university student who works here part-time as a waiter. This summer will be most entertaining! The biggest difference of this game from other cafe games is that the number of characters is very small - just four heroines. At least it allows to build up a lot of unique events and advancements for each heroine. Branching starts right after welcome party and even dialogues change with increased favorability. Yayoi is the main heroine and she has the longest route of all. There is a good and a bad ending for each heroine as well as a lonely ending. 12. Kurumi-chan A-so-bo くるみちゃん あ・そ・ぼ [990709] Studio Neko Punch Main character has just entered a university. He finally fled from his parents house and started to live on his own in a boarding house. There he met another inhabitant Kurumi-chan. They started to spend a lot of time together on a daily basis and soon became good friends... but is being just friends enough? Game's some kind of SIM and I feel week in my tummy when I see such a huge number of all kinds of windows. 13. Labrum ~Yasashii Kizu~ Labrum ~優しい傷~ [990709] Tetratech Hero is attacked by unknown person and is put into a hospital with a mortal wound. His childhood friend Mina saves his life by turning him into a vampire.He has to drink women's blood to live. At day time he is a student and advances relations with his classmates. At night time he insults heroines and sucks their blood. He needs to keep the balance for 30 days and develop a sincere links with some girl. Well, that's weird. Pure love and very nasty H with the same girls daily just does not make much sense to me. I only see that game's just for those weird H scenes. We need to move to some spot and if there's the heroine - make some choice, so gameplay is not really good as well. 14. Sorceress Empire ~Teiritsu Mahouin~ ソーサレス・エンパイア ~帝立魔法院~ [990709] Blue Bell The era when magic declines gradually and is about to be replaced by science and technology. But there are still "demon" race monsters living on the outskirts of the empire and organizing skirmishes at border guards. Hero is a battle magician responsible for three failure students. They have personal conditions that prevent them from learning normally. You have a year to train them into excellent witches. There's a good dozen of parameters to track. As girls grow, they can summon a powerful monster that can participate in battles. Difficulty is easy and it's ok to train all three girls simultaneously. Despite the emphasized personal drama of each girl, the training method is almost identical, the difference is only in ADV sequences. It's a very good attempt to revitalize boring raising SIMs. 15. Towa no Yakata 永遠の館 [990709] For 19th century. Main character studies at a university abroad, but now for the first returns home for spring vacation. There he stumbles at his mother's diary saying among other things about a mysterious man "There is no way I can keep doing this ..." Scenario is single road and once it's finished, a new one opens up and so on. H events are mostly of dark nature. Basically all the mysteries are known for the start, so it's not really good as a suspense story. 16. Sei Inma ~Ijimete Inku-chan~ 聖☆淫魔 ~いじめてインクちゃん~ [990714] Desire Takahiro is a novice teacher. A demon suddenly appears before him saying that she's half angel and half demon and she does not qualify to enter either faction because of that. The strange cohabitation and rigorous training begins. Will she grow into an angel or a demon? A raising SIM. Both angle and demon ways are possible. Game's strange that it does not have time limit. Otherwise a normal training SIM with parameters and play time around 3 hours. 17. Dearest Vampire [990715] Air Plants Our guy is 1/8 vampire. His grandfather asked him to take care of a dead friend's family, which include four sisters and one brother. So now, in the first two months, he can chase after those four sisters, his maid, childhood girl, rival's sister or another vampire. The chasing is easy since he can check a location to see who is there before going, one advantage of a vampire I guess. In the later two months, he has to find a way to tell the girl he loves that he is a vampire and has to go through some obstacles to win her. Game play is not good as it follows the same pattern: Good morning → Map move → Event → Date management screen → repeat from the next day . The whole game period of four months is divided into the first half (until harvest festival dance) and the second half which is actually division into general route and choosing a heroine and heroine routes. There are also mini-games. Clear is difficult since there is a random element in events generation and in order to capture a girl the whole chain of events must be triggered. The work is centered around love obstacles - hero has an evident race difference and girls have their own themed obstacles. There are six main heroines and two sub-heroines. 18. Lilienthal リリエンタール [990715] Dollhouse The city of the Valley of Dragons... Lilienthal. The stories of three protagonists start here. Brad is a boy who lives with his pet animal Lulu in a secluded castle. Chris is a male student of a medieval university who is sexually harassed by the girls around him. Claris is a daughter of the king and is in search of medicine to cure the king. You can start with either protagonist story, but it soon turns into moving North/South/Eash/West and exploring the town in every story. There are several commands of interaction with the world and there seem to be items as well. Should I even say that I had no patience to go any further? 19. Girl Doll Toy 2 ~Shisha~ Girl Doll Toy 2 ~使者~ [990716] Uran For five years since the events of the prequel Erica has been living peacefully with Satoru. Satoru left the laboratory shortly after creating Erica. Following his notes the laboratory was able to create Erica Version 2, but the result was poor and director proceeded to illegal means. Meteor shower was launched to mount Fuji and at the same time Erica started to suffer from brain disorder. What caused the illness? Will Satoru be able to find the cure? Well, there are zero reviews for this game, but it's basically the third game in the franchise with totally the same heroine, so I guess everyone got tired of it by the third game. The suggested mystery is not appealing at all to check it out. 20. Heisa Byoutou no Megami-tachi ~Goddess of Close Ward~ 閉鎖病棟の女神たち ~Goddess of Close Ward~ [990716] Archive Our guy wakes up in a hospital without remembering anything. It seems he fell from a pedestrian overpass to the street. He is now in a hospital ward with 3 nurses and a female doctor. Can he remember his past and does he even want to? It's a very confusing scenario. The theme is madness. There are many memory pieces flashes, but it does not get into integral story. Even in the ending there is no impact. The degree of H is medium. 21. Mahjong Mokushiroku Digital Novel まあじゃん黙視録デジタルノベル [990716] West Gate Main character continues to live peacefully. But new threat arises. "Black shadow" company claims to be rightful successors of power. Once again protagonist rises to protect justice and freedom of common folk. There is not much information on the game... because noone really cares for this exciting mahjong adventure. 22. Amnesia no Hanataba o ~Parallel Story~ アムネジアの花束を ~PARALLEL STORY~ [990717] Red star A secret is hidden in the holy barrier. A devastating epic nightmare is caused by a devil curse. This is the third part of the series of an evil spiritual disaster after Dawn The True Night and Cladlius' Beak. Dark wizard Nike is searching for traces of magic between the three cities. On his way he will need to confront a holy knight and meet a mysterious girl who lost her memory. Game's totally obscure and comes from a virtually unknown developer. Moreover, previous two parts of the series are even more obscure. So, I stumbled upon a maze in my first 5 minutes of gameplay and just stopped there since could neither turn back, nor pass through it in another 5 minutes. 23. Enema 2 えねま2 [990722] Manbou Goya Ema is a student council president, nominated by former student council and her very close friend president Seira. Main heroine Shibuki together other council members Ema and and Kimidori sets to explore the old school building to uncover the school ghost legend. There girls fall down through the rotten floor and appear in a room with unusual drawings. There they have strange visions and develop new experiences as a result. The next day an angel appears before Shibuki. The angel claims that the world is in huge danger - sex demon starts to possess humans. In order to prevent possession the belly should be cleaned from all the poop. And that task is mounted on the shoulders of Shibuki. It's just Yuri+Enema. Really weird stuff, but character design and CG aren't bad. 24. Bagubee ばぐべー [990723] Zenos Choose among 10 girls with different difficulty degree ranging form A to E. Clearing a falling bricks stage opens up CG. This is NOT a visual novel. It has zero text apart of description of each girl blood type etc. Genre is puzzle/quiz. 25. Chooita ~Subarashiki Chounouryoku Jinsei~ ちょ~イタ ~素晴らしき超能力人生~ [990723] 1 The story is about a guy that had an accident and from that got x ray vision. After having this supernatural power, unusual events start occuring. There is an English review. 26. Deep [990723] Selen Main hero is a bartender on a luxurious liner. He drugs girls with beverages and takes them to his torture chamber. Doujin poop. 27. Doll ~Denshou no Chikara~ Doll ~伝承の力~ [990723] Forester Princess Fiona, who is trying to take back the throne, visits the church ruined by a secret strategy. There she was met by the betrayal of her own men and falls into a dilemma. Fiona is ready to die. However, a man who travels by the Noel accidentally kills all the knights in a blink of the eye. Fiona who see's this requests his help to reclaim her castle with various rewards. Although, Noel replies, "I am not interested and I got everything I wanted ..." Even though it was a faint, Noel becomes interested when Fiona revels the tradition of the royal family. It is said in an underground labyrinth of the castle sleeps "the power of tradition", that can make any wish come true. With this information in tow Noel asks Fiona, "Do you believe such a stupid story? ... ... interesting, I will lend you my power." First part is full of movie cuts and is quite intriguing to watch and occasionally interact with some objects. But the second gameplay part is horrible and short. Players were really unsatisfied with the small amount of erotic scenes which is a ripoff for the huge price of 9600 yen. 28. Drive Me Crazy!! ~The School of Pain~ ドライブ・ミー・クレイジー!! ~The School of Pain~ [990723] PIL Main character is a delinquent who is sent to a SM school by the father of his fiancée. With his bully personality he is using beautiful girls as teaching materials there and letting students act casually towards them ... SM game where actions are decided by roulette. There are 3 levels of sadistic lessons to get to graduation exam. 29. Floreal ~Suki Suki Daisuki~ フロレアール ~すきすきだいすき~ [990723] 13cm Jean Rotard is a lighthouse guard. He lives with a maid girl Merne for many years now. But Merne heart would spreads fracture by fracture with each day - should she involve Jean to heal her heart wound? Story is written by a different author than the previous game, so they actually have next to nothing in common. First part of the game lacks excitement and the second part suddenly becomes SF and totally chaotic. The charm of the characters is not fully utilized. 30. Heroine [990723] Cherry Soft Our guy transferred to a new school. He is just in time to save the school theater club from being canceled. He gets to pick his heroine out of 3 girls for their next play. He also has to set schedule for set building, customs making, and practicing. Well, no matter, he still has time to chase the 5 club girls and 2 others. We need to pass preliminary theatrical competition and then participate in the main event and for that need the right choices. Parameters and schedule are still here, so there's a lot of work to do. Three obligatory parameters must reach 100% by the contest or it's game over. The story is orthodox and very thin. There are a lot of events to try and fix that. There is a huge number of choices - each between three lines - even on the most trivial matters, so clearing is difficult. 31. Kimi ga Ita Kisetsu ~Primary~ 君がいた季節 ~Primary~ [990723] Age 1 2 3 Masaki has 4 childhood friends – Yayoi, Michiru, Marika and Akira who are all sisters, they let him stay in one of their family’s apartments since he doesn’t live with his family. Masaki’s hobby is photography and one day, he meets a famous photographer who lets Masaki become his apprentice. Time passes, and Masaki also gets a girlfriend too and life couldn’t be any happier for him. However, one day he is asked to go to America to work in the huge photography business over there but he thinks that having a long distance relationship would be incredibly hard. He now has a life-changing decision to make – does he follow his dream or does he stay with the person who he loves most in this world? There is an English review of this game. 32. Kyoukan ~Eien no Inochi o Motome~ 兇館~永遠の命を求め~ [990723] Infinity In order to gain eternal life a young man made contract with a woman spirit to insult and train four girls in just 7 days time. True ending if commit all four girls in 7 days, if fail there is a bad ending. There are also several normal endings. Short nukige SIM. 33. Utagoe 淫声 ~うたごえ~ [990723] Apple Pie Main character is a president of an idol studio. Now he needs to choose one of the girls to debut as an idol. Soon the whole world will know about her! Half of the game is actually H lessons for the idol girl, so it's kind of a baka nukige, but... with singing... and often singing while... doing H and with mouth full. Really nice eleven songs and good voicing. This is one of those games that gave a strong push to the voicing of visual novels. 34. Utsusemi うつせみ ~空蝉~ [990723] Black Package Our guy trains with a famous author. As a test for him, he is sent to gather info from a performance group, with the author's daughter tagging alone. There seem to be rumors about how this group gets their donations. If he can chase one girl per chapter, he will find out what this all has to do with a big fire 18 years ago. Taisho era. The flow is like this: first movement → lunch break (information exchange with the teacher) → second movement → evening automatic event → night. There are many H scenes with different characters, but romance relations are only possible with one heroine which is set right from the first chapter. One playthrough is less than 10 hours and all the mysteries are only poured in the last chapter that lasts about 30 minutes. There are multiple endings, including a bad one. But generally it's a one-way road with couple opportunities for mistakes. There is no distinguishing feature to call it a masterpiece, but overall a very solid work with beautiful CG centered on Tasho era. 35. Nise Taxi 偽タクシー [990727] Vision Main character runs a fake taxi that is specially equipped to insult the passengers. Nukige, and since it's from Vision it's with animations. 36. Find Love EX ~Mind Blowing~ Find Love EX ~マインドブローイング~ [990730] Lyceen Ninosaki Kanosuke is a private detective in Tokyo. One day he gets a request from the hospital to find the missing nurse Ai. Now the number of missing women has increased. One of the accidentally found girls in semi-naked state told about being kidnapped by a stalker. As the investigation proceeds, the existence of a huge criminal organization becomes evident. Find Love was quite a notable title thanks to console versions, so now's the time to reap that success on a rape/insult nukige. It hardly has anything to do with original Find Love apart of title and somewhat same looking girls. 37. Gen'ei Choukyou Club 2 幻影調教倶楽部2 [990730] J-Box Main character is an upcoming musician. He is asked to produce a song for a Japanese opera "Neo Imagine". But his beautiful partner suddenly dies, and main character looses the will not just to create, but to live. He got drowned into alcohol and drugs causing an incident in SM club. His friend advised him to join a secret club "Love & Peace" where it might be possible to share new experiences and find a true partner. Why... why this horrible game even got a continuation? 38. Gen'ei Gaiden: Shinkinkan 幻影外伝 親近感 [990730] Omni-sha "Love & Peace" secret SM club for people with abnormal sexuality. Hero dives in the world sensual pleasures. However, he's not satisfied with the action... This time it's a SIM. The synopsis and the release date is the same with the Gen'ei Choukyou Club 2 are the same and this title is nowhere to be found, so it's all very confusing. 38. Hakanai Omoi ~Anemone~ 儚想 ~あねもね~ [990730] Pearl Soft The city where the old and the new live together. Hero lost parents early and last year his grandmother also died. Since then he moved to distant relatives. Occasionally a mysterious memory of a girl crosses his head and the level of confusion gradually rises... Play time is around 8 hours. Everyday scenes are substitute by the need to say something funny and those pseudo fun sequences last for a very long time, just to eat up players time. Then it gets only more confusing and ends with a fluke. Characters are totally unmemorable. Protagonist is one big hetare with amnesia. Even in the end he can't decide anything ... "because all the friends are precious to me". And it's a linear game with choices only for additional CG, so you can't decide on anything. A surprisingly tiresome story without any appeal points. 39. Men at Work! メンアットワーク! [990730] Studio e.go! 1 2 The game takes place in a Middle-Age western European town. At the daytime it is a very active and joyous town. However at night it's another story. After sun sets, monsters will lurk all around town which raises concern about the safety of the townspeople. As a result the town has set up a guild of hunters who go around at night and kill these monsters. Most of these hunters are doing so for money, and they rarely reveal their true identity to anyone. The player takes on the role of Wil, who in daytime is a geeky part-time history teacher, but at night is a strong hunter. There's an English and a Russian review. 40. Triangle Heart 2 ~Sazanami Joshiryou~ とらいあんぐるハート2 ~さざなみ女子寮~ [990730] Janis Makihara Kosuke works as a substitute janitor of woman dormitory, “Sazanami So”, while the regular janitor, who is his aunt, travels abroad. The contract term is almost over, but he has one thing worried about. Among the member of the dormitory, only Jinnai Mio doesn’t open out to him and doesn’t try to eat his dishes. Then, he makes the former janitor’s favorite dish to let her eat. Moege. There is map movement to trigger events. Characters are cute and atmosphere is relaxed. But there are 12 heroines and the number of CG for each is small. Period is one year and intervals between the events are quite large. Play time is some 5 hours for first time and about 2 hours with skip for the next ones. The impact is less than the previous work. Nothing really stands out and such games are soon to be forgotten. 41. Graduation ~ Sotsugyou グラデュエーション~卒業 [990731] Joinac Corporation Graduation...for all of us it's something we experience once and from which we go to a new path in life. It marks a turning point in life, from which our lives will set out on a new moment. It's also at the same time the point where we break up with people who are important in our lives. Somewhere in Tokyo, at Seiran Academy is our hero, second year student Shuntaro Hidaka. He's anticipating his upcoming graduation next year. Will Shuntaro confess his feelings of love? I've no comments for doujin Yaoi. -
The VN of June 1999 is Kanon. Not because it's well known - that's irrelevant. But because I've found a route in it that I totally liked. I'm talking about Mai route, the demon hunter. The main funny part coupled with night school hunt were a cool mix. The three-sided friendship of Mai-Sayuri-Yuuichi was just perfect, because the bonds between the girls were so firm and that they understood each other completely compared to Yuuichi who doubted them often. There are night evil spirits fights, lots of swordplay, cool and always right Mai - what's not to like here? I did not notice forced drama or sleazy relations there. Well, the last hour of Mai route was horrible, because nothing happens apart of childhood memories and desperate attempts to squeeze a tear by endless repeats of the same things. I safely ignored the last hour and thus saved only good memories about Mai route. I'm not going to explore other heroines routes since I'm not ok with their personalities and/or mental health. So hip hip hooray to Kanon, the great devil hunter story or at least so I remember it for. I'm absolutely assured that the main power of Key is in creating very enjoyable drama-free general routes and heroines routes and especially endings fall into being forced nakige. 1. Akogare 憧れ [990604] Foster The last summer of school life approaches. The building gets empty. Oyukawa Shuichi never took studies seriously, but yesterday he went to an almost empty school with a serious intention. That's because he can finally convey his feelings to the teacher. All the five heroines are teachers. And since it's Foster, there's not much of a story, just H. 2. Chuu Shite... チューして… [990604] Kur-Mar-Ter Kiss? Yup. It means draw one month close to another month. Why people kiss? I do not know, but ... I tried it yesterday Does it tickle? Yup. My mouth was licked as if it was going to be eaten Fuwa ... So, let's try it. Yup… - And that girl pulled her lips towards me and closed her eyes. ADV with map choice. There are five heroines. It's quite ero tilt. Routes scenarios are bad as if they come from a bad Hollywood movie. It's light themed but leaves an irritated feel. 3. Ikinari Mujintou!? いきなり無人島!? [990604] iMAGE CLUB Uninhabited island. Blue sky, coral sea and white sand beach. Our ship sunk and we were drifted to it. All we can do is wait for help. But just waiting is boring. There is even a girl who always wanted to live like this once. Anyway, our uninhabited island life begins. Mujintou Monogatari fame does not let competitors sleep soundly. Here's another work with survival element reduced to minimum and love element increased shamelessly. The routine is done by command selection and there's a lot of routine early on. The number of game events is small. As for H-events, there's only one per heroine who are five overall. Length is small and the aim "to wait" is not the best motivation. Very ordinary game, though a lively one. 4. Kanon [990604] Key 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Yuuichi Aizawa, a high school student, returns to a town that he last visited 7 years previously to live with his aunt and cousin. For a reason he’s not quite sure of, he can hardly remember anything about his last visit, but initially this doesn’t seem to worry him too much. The day after he arrives he goes into town where he (literally) bumps into a girl named Ayu Tsukimiya, and Yuuichi’s memories slowly begin to return. Game is localized and has many reviews. 5. Success 性癖 ~サクセス~ [990604] Hyperspace Main character is a girls' school dorm administrator. It might be that his wishes and wishes of those five girls come together. Another Hyperspace nukige. Same bad system, rough graphics and uneven character designs. The fetish this time is different unusual objects for self-satisfaction. 6. Taisen Mahjong Yarujan 対戦麻雀 やる雀 [990604] Waffle A strip mahjong against a single opponent (chosen out of many girls) with only handful of dialogue lines between the matches. This is not really a visual novel. There is no story mode. But girls say just couple lines between the matches - should that really be enough to qualify? Noone cares about mahjong anyway. 7. Yuuhi no Naka de Kimi wa 夕陽の中で君は [990604] Saba 1 The games story starts when YOU the main character, Male, goes into a town for a vacation. During the Vacation wild things started to happen and from it you find the person that you loved for soo long. There is an English review. 8. Ganrou ~Omoi no Mama ni~ 玩弄 ~思いのままに~ [990611] Optim Hero wakes up in a hospital after he is hit by a truck on a road. He feels well now and is very interested in nurses garments. Surprisingly, he can now emit sound waves that makes nurses itch with lust. Nukige. Not sure I can add anything constructive here. 9. Mighty [990611] Hyperspace Main character arrives to a huge space station on his small space ship and is warmly greeted by five female member crew. But the peace of the station gets disturbed by a tentacle monster attack. So now Hyperspace is going to defile even SF theme. Game's on same shitty hyperspace engine and is not hookable. I played it once to an end, and it actually seems like it's main character who grows tentacles and attacks girls, or it's just a huge coincidence that after a normal H event there's tentacle entrance on the stage. Game's not voiced, poorly done and really short to care. 10. Shanghai Maid Monogatari 上海侍女物語 [990611] Light Plan Our guy's father's Will order him to train 5 maids under his secretary's supervision. He has to work them day and night. All 5 maids love him, but will he be able to forget his lost lover (maid shot in street riot) and love them back? Typical training SIM. It's possible to get to any girl's ending after getting confidence with her over 80 points and watching all her events. 11. Stay With... ~Karen ga Kureta Kisetsu~ Stay With… ~カレンがくれた季節~ [990611] Tenshindou Kazuya steals an android girl that was going to be disposed of. In couple days android suddenly starts to move and talk - so they start living together. However, android Karen 's secret is is concealed in the depths of a mysterious organization. Jeez, synopsis copied entirely from Girl Doll Toy ~Tamashii o Kudasai~ from 1997. Music and drawing are beautiful and full voicing is luxurious. But voice sound level is unstable and story is too short and weak. This work is of very low price segment. 3D backgrounds are used. 12. Lost Mind ~Yuganda Sekai~ LOST MIND ~歪んだ世界~ [990617] Active You're Mina, a housemaid. You've lost your memory and serve at a household together with other maids. Which is SLG part, as you need to clean up the house, wash etc. trying to keep everything below a certain dirtyness level (100) without exhausting yourself. The other maids aren't necessarily your friends and with lots of woman around there are plenty of chances for yuri action (but it's not limited to that). Needless to say there is also a secret to uncover... Events vary according to parameters. Player sees the story from the viewpoint of main heroine. Only the ending is going to explain the meaning behind "irregular world" in the title. Game is divided by chapter and chapters names vary by the decisions made, so there is some replay value. So there is some intrigue in the story, but high difficulty level and monotonous gameplay stand in the way. 13. Adam: The Double Factor [990618] C's Ware 1 2 3 Marina and Kojiroh have returned! Kojiroh's Scenario- A woman, who introduces herself as the President's Secretary, appeared in Kojiroh's office as a client. The woman's request was to have Kojiroh as her boss's bodyguard, whose life is in danger. Kojiroh took the case and went to meet President Ando... And the daughters Mika and Miki. Kojiroh asks Ando why his life is in danger, but Ando refuses to answer... Kojiroh has been dragged into the problem without knowing the reason. Marina's Scenario- Marina, who has been reinstated with the Cabinet of Investigation, took the case of investigating the successive murders in Japan by Chief Kono's request. As the investigation goes along, Marina finds a sole survivor, who is the daughter of one of the victims, and went to see her. Her name is Yuka. Throughout Marina's investigations, the time to decide to help Yuka or not to will come... All the while serving to protect Yuka... Game is localized and has English reviews. If everything goes ok, I'll prepare reviews for the full series of Eve games except for the original well known Burst error. 14. Eclipse -Shingetsukan no Musume- エクリプス -新月館の娘- [990618] Front Hook Main character just graduated from the university and went to work to a flower shop. While delivering a flower bouquet to one very rich household he's requested by the owner to teach his daughter Yuka sex in order for her to become a skillful spy. Nukige. Of course it does not end with Yuka repeated sessions and grows into intersection with all the women of the house. 15. Fresh! ~Teens Memory~ [990618] Bell-Da 1 You play the role of Narusawa Daisuke who is now living with your grandfather and just got transferred to a new high school and meets new people. From time to time you will switch perspectives from Daisuke to the girls so you can understand what they are thinking and more importantly how they are feeling deep inside their hearts. This means that not only will you make decisions for Daisuke but occasionally for the girls also. There is an English review of the game. 16. Maid Hakusho メイド白書 [990618] Sweet All Japan Maid Championship will be held in 3 months and you need to choose your champion out of four candidates and train her into the best maid Japan ever seen. Aww, another maid SIM. You set maid's schedule and train them in various maid specialties like cleaning and cooking or more exotic ones like dancing and English conversation. But other three rivals are strong and in the nighttime you also need to obstruct other three maids using variety of attacks killing their motivation to compete. This maid obsession is getting kind of nuts. 17. Toriko Jisshaban 虜 実写版 [990618] Toriko Alternative version of Toriko with real life photos. Not cool. Nukige. System is the same as in Toriko. 18. White Pants ホワイトパンツ [990618] Segue Laboratory Futaba has just moved to a new place with her brother. Her kitten ran away and Futuaba got lost. She was found out by seller of pants Rika and delivered to the brother. Choices determine in which direction the story goes from there on. Daaamn, seller of pants Rika again? Well, Rika has grown up quite a lot since last time. The structure basically stays the same - every choice is branching to see different development and ending. Very short stories. 19. You & I [990618] JAST Hero was absent at school due to traffic incident. Now with a new semester he finally comes to school and starts to feel interest from girls in his class. A new feeling is being born. There are six girls. All of them are school students, so it is normal school love story. Last galge of JAST. 20. Present Play プレゼントプレイ [990624] Digi Anime In this game, you pick a costume and an actress, then a story starts. In the beginning, there is only one girl and few costumes. In stories, you can fine two other girls and more costumes. If you make it far enough in a story, you will see an animation of the girl getting rid of her costume. Kanno Hiroyuki is at the lead, so it's fairly entertaining to try and get girls far in the story, but in the end it's not an integrative work. 21. Room with Lina ルームウィズリナ [990624] Episode Lina Kanzaki helped main hero when he was got drunk under the rain. She continues to live in his house with some purpose. By becoming friends he will know the secret of Lina. Some innovative SIM that introduces lots of excessive instruments like all kinds of schedulers, address books, notepads etc. 22. Twins Story: Kimi ni Tsutaetakute... ツインズストーリー きみにつたえたくて・・・ [990624] Fujitsu Sixteen years age is an unforgettable time of school life full of chatting with friends and searching for love. At such time hero has to start living with his annoying twin sister while parents stay abroad. The best year of life begins now! System-wise quite a typical D-SIM, but with PS1 title animation charm. There are 12 heroines to capture which is a LOT. In addition to usual parameters there are internal parameters that change according to conversations. So clearing is very difficult. At least there is not BAD END and even if you fail miserably you're forced into ending with Nami girl. One playthrough is slightly over 10 hours. Twin sister is the main attraction of the game but her story is not really special. 23. Ren'ai Kouza Real Age 恋愛講座 Real Age [990624] Imagineer Co., Ltd. 1 Game is about going around the town to meet different girls and after that use the phone to date them. Reaction to each player choice is shown with a different sound - a small sound for the right choice, a stronger one for a so-so one, and loud sound for bad choice... Nanpa SIM 24. Amai Kankei 甘い奸計 [990625] Logg Hero is given an envelope by a mysterious woman in front of school. Inside is a handgun ... He is surprised and hides the gun for the time being. If there is a gun involved, it's destined to shoot sometime... Basically this is further degraded variation of Heart Work Symphony of Destruction. Same gun involvement, same short scenarios with same multiple ends. The major difference is that Logg work is weaker in H department. 25. Chikan Kenkyuushitsu 痴漢研究室 [990625] Pinpai 4th year university student Takashi Okita is given a special task by professor to do at vacations. The task is to research the psychology of pervert and the method must be field work based on actual experience. Being a diligent student, with the help of internet main character narrowed down his targets to six virgins suffering from some sexual trauma. He steps into the labyrinth of distorted desire and can no longer turn back. Finally a science project in visual novels... but a really bad topic is picked up. 26. Escalation ~Aoi Houyou~ ESCALATION ~蒼い抱擁~ [990625] Melody Our girl is a student at a private girls school. Day dreaming about the girl she loves during class isn't too wise. During a special lesson, she found out that there are pets in this school and she is invited to be one. Well, if she gets friendly with the girl she loves and her room mate, she will be fine, maybe even be happy. Ok... pass... 27. Genjuuya 幻獣屋 [990625] Pinky Soft One year after events of Dragon no Tiara. The Highlandy Republic is a democratic country blessed with mountains and forests and as such desired by its neighbors. It managed to retain its form, but the chaos of phantom beasts outburts around its borders influenced it a lot. "Fighters" guilds spread to undertake various works for states and individuals. "Hunters" guilds specialize in hunting phantom beasts for bounties. And "Gentelmen's shop" trains phantom beasts to satisfy sexual needs of population. Main character becomes administrator of one of such shops. Why do this training SIMs need so elaborate synopsis? Anyway, there are 70 days to establish a prosperous enterprise. The feature of the work is that phantom beasts morph and evolve. 28. Hyakka Ryouran 百花繚乱 [990625] Nihon Plantech Hero was about to live the last months before graduation peacefully when he was forced to transfer to all-girls school where his father was a chairman. What will happen to the only male student in all-girl school? A hundred flowers... quite a shouting title. There are only four heroines though, each with 2-3 endings. This is a comedy with strange not really funny jokes. The characters are very eccentric. Hero is an imbecile whose hobby is to sleep and whose super ability is to sleep anywhere with any circumstances. Oh, and he's mega rich. Game's short - 2 hours for first playthrough. 29. Jii ~Nozoki no Houshuu~ 自慰 ~覗きの報酬~ [990625] Candy Soft Junya Akechi is a student who tutors girls preparing for entrance exams. He invites five such girls to study at his uncle's cottage for a week. There are 28 rooms in the building. The gameplay is looking for girls, picking up items and triggering events. 30. Kana ~Imouto~ 加奈~いもうと~ [990625] D.O. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 You have a sister by the name of Kana, who is 2 years younger than you are. You are an important figure to her; you have always watched over her. You have always taken care of her and loved her. Kana is also an important figure to you. It's not love or like, but it's something special. You care about her a lot and you feel that you have to protect her. You wish for her eternal happiness, but you just don't know how you feel about Kana. Yet. . . Game is localized and it got a large number of reviews. 31. Love Works らぶ★わ~くす [990625] Sizz Main character is in intimate relations with five girls at once. He needs a month to figure out which one satisfies him the most. I know, it does not look like a nukige, but it its one. Prologue briefly introduces each girl and how she got acquainted to main character. Then it's just a straight month of choosing which girl to comfort each particular day. Some new modes open up occasionally. So it's game just for H, nothing else. 32. Maid Gari メイド狩り [990625] Evolution Main character wins the main prize of "Maid mania" challenge and gets 100 hours together with cute maids in a mansion. is living in a mansion with four maids. But his attitude was so cruel that maids tried to escape the mansion. He caught them, locked in a room and continued his play. The game is about insulting, beating and torturing maids. The main parameter to maintain is physical strength since if it expires there's game over. So frequent rests in his room are must have. 33. Seek 2 -Sadistic Babylon- SEEK2-SADISTIC BABYLON- [990625] PIL Kitahara Masayuki is a photographer of a third-rate SM magazine. One day he got contacted by his sister-in-law Marion saying that his mother died. While attending the funeeral, Marion was kidnapped. Kidnappers demand either the masterpiece painting of his mother's deceased husband or 100 million yen. A woman calling herself Li Lang appears in front of him and promises to fund him 100 million yen if he agrees to train some women... Is it the last SEEK game already? Finally. There are five girls ... and lots of traditional perverted stuff. 34. Shanghai Gensoutan ~Teito Kitan Gaiden~ 上海幻想譚 ~帝都奇譚外伝~ [990625] Janis Several months after events of Teito Kitan ~Doushi Tantei no Jiken Memo~. Kudo was staying at Iwasaki residence in Shanghai with Aya when they were assaulted and Aya kidnapped. Iwasaki tells Kudo that the attack was done by members of "The Legion Party", a secret society that appeared in Shanghai lately. Kudo takes maid Masha as assistant and starts investigation. This work is same obscure as its prequel. There are three scenarios plus a bonus one after all cleared. Game system is same bad as of the prequel. Memory leak noticed. Game was made as a result of the call to create more beautiful works with beautiful music about Taisho era - aesthetic side dominates here. Story lacks excitement, but atmosphere of Shanghai before the Second World War is quite lovely depicted. 35. Shimai Ijiri ~Chiru Hana, Nirin~ 姉妹いじり ~散ル花、二輪~ [990625] Nikukyuu Our guy is ordered to train two sisters for high price sale. Training them is easy as giving them experience, but will he fall in love with one or both while doing it? Can't wait till the training SIM games period is over. Yes, another weird nukige SIM. 36. Teasobi 手戯 ~てあそび~ [990625] Mink A collection of screensavers, CG, sound files, BGM and a mahjong game. Mahjong game only technically can be considered a visual novel due to just several lines of dialogue between the matches. But for me it's absolutely not enough to be called a visual novel. Boo. 37. Warning! [990625] Telluru Turning on pc as usual. Some strange man appears on the scree. "My name is Desktop Master. Please accept the challenge". The next thing I notice is that I'm at school at night and need to find the password parts to return to original world as soon as possible. Only three hours are given. Seven girls run around the school and hero needs to catch and insult them so that they give away the parts of a password. 38. Soreike Majokko Serika それいけまじょっこセリカ [990627] Multies ToHeart doujin game focusing on one of its heroines Serika as if she were a full-scale witch. Doujin
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Vampirdzhija Vjedogonia
kivandopulus commented on fun2novel's blog entry in fun2novel's Funtime Hour
Nitroplus was my first love since it presented a very different view from the mainstream. It looks like I've seen most of 2000s works of it, but I deliberately targeted cyberpunk works. Somehow I did not find any deep themes in those works and Vampirdzhija Vjedogonia can be called the summary of its earlier years - bright action trash. It's traumatic for me to touch Nitroplus games, so every review is appreciated. And something tells me that even Tokyo Necro won't heal those wounds. -
There should be no two opinions about this, Comic party rocked May 1999. It's very difficult for a SIM to gain my approval, but all the elements fit here perfectly. So far there have not been more than a couple of doujin games released, but this game has woken the devil of 2000s. 1. Girl Doll Toy Gaiden Azami Girl Doll Toy 外伝 AZAMI [990514] Uran Protagonist is a Treasure Hunter who comes to a foreign land to get Miron 's treasure, but is reported and arrested by archaeologist Yuki. Hero agrees to cooperate and gets released - together with Yuki they get on an adventure. Story is good, but system is troublesome so it can't be really recommended. You need to move around the map yourself with a keyboard and check every square. Uran got turned on Doll Toy and he's getting the third game in this franchise just in July 1999. That's all that's known about this game and it's a pain to get, actually. In order to run it needs both data cd and the diskette with execuatable file - the latter one especially rare. 2. Gogatsu no Koro 5月の頃 [990514] Hyperspace One hot May afternoon hero has some free time after school to flirt with girls inside school or outside of it. Game's on a really horrible engine akin to macromedia flash. I did not find a way to adjust speed or skip, so it's been very painful for me. The first BGM contains a song which was very nice. Game tries to create animation effect by changing perspective a bit. But after all it's just a nukige. 3. Otona no Omochaya-san 大人のおもちゃ屋さん [990514] Desire Hero's uncle got hospitalized uncle asking his nephew to change him at the adult store. Hero got unemployed and kicked out of the apartment recently and thus needs money, so can not turn such offer down. Various types of women visit the shop and ask consultation regarding their sexual problems. Now what's hero going to do? There are three heroines each with own ending. Just talking is not enough, it's most important to choose the right instrument for the woman in need. Anyway, it's a HCG game through and through. 4. Venus Revolution ヴィーナスレヴォリューション [990514] Art-Club Once per several hundred years the Gods summon a human to their domain for eight days to study human nature. Main character is such a summoned man. Different Gods represent different elements and main character is given cards representing different elements to use wisely in conversations. It's plain horrible. It's just a hundred megabytes in size, ugly, with only mouse control, no skipping or even instant text drawing and with zero options at all... After small introduction you're thrown on a map where you can visit different Gods and use conversation cards... That's basically it, with clever use of cards and diligence you should gain any God's trust. 5. Marionette Company マリオネットカンパニー [990520] Micro Cabin 1 In Marionette Company your character happens to come across a broken android girl (called "marionettes" in the game) weakly crying for your help inside a cardboard box abandoned in dark alleyway. You of course decide to pick the poor thing up and repair her to the best of your ability. However there's still much work to be done on her to make her as "human" as possible. There's an English review of this game. 6. Nureginu ぬれぎぬ [990520] Take Two years ago there was a series of killings with rape going on for two months, but police never found the culprit. Main character witnessed at that time how a middle-aged man was violating his acquaintance, but was paralyzed with fear and could not do anything and that woman was found dead. Nowadays the killings have started again. Hero wants to protect everyone he knows, but will he be able to do that? Game does not have reviews, just one impression that it's an ordinary suspense game with bad save system and BGM disappearing at random. Indeed, you choose the save slot only once when you start and there's not menu to call during the game, so I guess it's just one save which really harms the replayability. There are about 10 choices to make and I only played it to the end once and in the end just died from... something since did not do the right things to prevent future crimes, I guess. Game system is really not nice. Only operation with mouse possible and if you press skip - it goes all the way to the next choice selection without the ability to manually stop where you want. It takes some time for the line to draw and I could not find speed adjustment. So it's a really nice game, but game mechanics killed any motivation to explore in anyone, I guess. 7. Collector コレクター [990521] Noise A few years after the big breakthrough in space navigation a gorgeous space cruise ship was hit by space pirate ship "Ganymede". Their purpose was to insult the beautiful women until they got bored and to store girls in frozen capsules. It seemed like collecting beautiful butterflies. Among the frozen hostages was Queen Julia... Main character special agent Kazu infiltrates the pirate ship to put an end to pirates dealings. Game's a mix of everything so that it looked like a movie - opening, fighting scenes, shooting minigame, maze of the ship, four girls to rescue sequentially and of course lots of H events scattered everywhere. 8. Cowboy Baby カウボーイベイベー [990521] Triangle US wild west. Billy Hickok got into debts and is offered to work as a bouncer at the bar till he repays his debt. Game's a bakage, but a really funny one and with a good tempo. Difficulty is low and even if you happen to trigger a game over, there's an option to replay just from the last choice or battle. There are also blackjack and poker mini-games, but those are mostly useful after initial game clearance, since after that bonus undressing card game appears. Only main heroine Etta gets an ending, but it slightly changes depending on how relations with her advanced so far. All girls are voiced. First playthrough takes 5-6 hours, but in order to see all the CGs multiple playthroughs are needed. 9. Hikari no Naka de Dakishimete ひかりの中で抱きしめて [990521] Sepia Hero happens to be in a bullet train that's just been hijacked. He manages to disarm one of hijackers in the toilet takes his mask and weapon. But he's tempted by the situation as he can freely harass any passengers now... Insult SIM... which is especially funny since the title and the cover are absolutely fitting for a pure love game. There are about 10 characters for capture. 10. Me for You [990521] Aquarium Software development studio. Main character Hayama Seiichi was appointed to control the department where all the losers are sent and no results are expected at all. Now that there is a person with actual experience in software development things have got lively, but most of personnel lack the skills for serious work. Are hero's efforts wasted in the end? Basically it's a SIM and it's needed both to build relations with each team member and work towards the end goal - game release. Palette of the game is quite dim and character designs are not pretty, just as in previous Aquarium games. Not my type of a game and no reviews to check the ending content. 11. Sakura Biyori さくら日和 [990521] May-Be Soft Ronji Mizushima failed to pass entrance exams and moved to Sakura Heights boarding house to study as ronin. He chose this place because the rent was cheap and landlord was a beautiful woman. It turned out that it was inhabited only by women and thus his life in an apartment full of women begins. It's mostly remembered by the description on the box "How much ecchi can SLG contain"? And the answer is a LOT. Even though it's a raising SIM, all the girls are nymphomaniacs. Still it's most unusual for such boring genre as a raising SIM to be H-oriented, so I'll let it slip for now. There are some 8 heroines and also guests who make only occasional appearance. We take care of hero's weekly schedule for 11 months. There are four parameters to worry about. 12. Seikon ~Inbou Uzumaku Byoutou de Tadareta Soukanzu~ 性痕 ~淫謀うずまく病棟で爛れた相関図~ [990521] T・STAFF Software Hospital is engulfed in conspiracy. Chairman and director parties oppose each other. Main character is a new doctor, so he soon becomes an object of fierce confrontation with the use of even prohibited means of competition. Pretty bad quality and inevitably H tilt. 13. Corridor ~Meikairou~ Corridor ~迷回廊~ [990527] Picori Main character lived with his mother till she died. Having no place to, he came to his mysterious father in search of shelter. He was allowed to get inside. But this family has a lot of dark secrets that he will have to face now. Basically it's a nukige. There are at least several endings, but endings mostly mean a different H event path. No voicing. Dim palette. 14. Onegai! Maid☆Roid おねがい! メイド☆ロイド [990527] Neon In the future mankind succeeded to develop independent type androids, Maid☆Roid as new workers in place of human servants. The family of main character bought one such android as a maid. Actually I failed to launch the game on any system till read in the only review that game does not launch without official patch. Hero gradually gets in love with android maid in the first half of the game and goes all out in the second one. But there are also lots of other maid girls with full voiced H scenes. Hero's a rich spoiled brat and he can afford going every day to a strip club for some special service. Anyway, game's just for H and maid fetish. 15. Akatsuki no Ganshou 暁の岩礁 [990528] Ume Soft Main character is a teacher at a private girls' school. One day he and his students set off on excursion to Yokohama port and then by luxurious liner "Ingleb" to Hong Kong. However, they fall into a trap set by someone just before departure. Can they safely survive? There are nine girls and each has her own unique survival route to follow even though they all start off the same prologue. One route takes roughly one hour. There are a lot of time limit events with bad end prepared. Some routes involve mini-games. The gags are surprisingly mature and best fit for the age of 30s. So it's very difficult to stuff something more than a suspense action scenario and a hasty H-event in one-hour route and that's exactly what this game is. 16. Comic Party こみっくパーティー [990528] Leaf 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Early April, Kazuki Sendō is invited by his friend, Taishi Kuhonbutsu, to come with him to Tokyo Big Sight. He is surprised to see thousands of people waiting in line to get in. Apparently they're at Comic Party, a giant dōjinshi convention. Once inside, Kazuki meets some of the dōjinshi artists and is surprised to find himself enjoying their work. Taishi convinces Kazuki to draw dōjinshi after their visit because he recognizes Kazuki's skill as an artist, but Kazuki's childhood friend Mizuki tries to talk him out of it because she believes otakus are smelly, dirty, and disgusting. Her reasoning doesn't help because Kazuki already made up his mind and begins to draw his first dōjinshi. Game has lots of English reviews. 17. Flora Festa FLORA Festa [990528] Outou Shobou In Side A collection of thee erotic manga strips and three mazes corresponding different girls. Every corner in the maze triggers an erotic scene. This can barely be called a visual novel, only technically. No story, nothing. Each event is either HCG or H event with text only describing H event. It's more like art gallery, but that unlocks only gradually, not all at once. Engine is horrible macromedia flash, operation mouse only. 18. Galfro ~Gal's Frontier~ ぎゃるふろ ~Gal's Frontier~ [990528] Pias Protagonist is a magazine photographer tasked with taking erotic photos of girls. Yet another nukige. Choose location, choose one of the directions for search - find girl - ask three questions - BAM - H event - repeat. No story whatsoever, but 39 heroines to see HCG. 19. Hana no Shizuku 華の滴 [990528] MBS Truth Main character lost parents early, but recently his brother died as well leaving him pension house to manage. Hero has always been in love with his sister-in-law who later became his brother's wife. A famous novelist was staying at the pension house and he asked main character for inspiration for his new lustful story. Main character persuades his sister-in-law to comply, and the pension house turns into lust feast. I did not expect anything good out of MBS Truth from the start, but that kind of synopsis does not even try to look like a decent game anymore. Full-scale nukige. 20. Ichibatsu Hyakkai ~Onimaru Mahjong Hyakki Yakou~ 一罰百快 ~鬼丸麻雀百鬼夜行~ [990528] Otemoto Youkai attack girls at school, but in order to draw the beast from a possessed body it's required to defeat the spirit in a mahjong game. A month is not complete without another strip mahjong game. The quota is filled, moving on. 21. Innai Kansen 2 淫内感染2 [990528] ZyX From #1, our doctor has collected a bunch of pets, including the hospital manager's daughter. To gain control of the hospital, he still has to deal with the assistant manager and a rival doctor. To do that, he needs to collect more pets. Strange that some of the girls actually love him. This is a better known nukige, but nukige nevertheless. And this time it's getting even creepier. 22. Jigsaw no Machi ジグソーの街 [990528] Sakura Soft Hero works as a private detective. One night while investigating a yakuza case he notices a girl he knows from somewhere. He saw her in a mysterious dream. He feels like his past also changed after the meeting. The Jigsaw puzzle started to collect together. To unveil the secret he needs a month. Hero and that girl shared a dream six years ago. Now hero chooses to live a new life in a dream. And with the last piece of Jigsaw puzzle set in place, a new town appears in front of him. Don't ask. Someone smoked the wrong weed. No new town appears, at least it's indiscernible from the old one. But detective gets to meet more and more girls followed by H events. There are no reviews or even impressions, but the only walkthrough around says there are two routes. The one I got ended with some Yakuza armed conflict and happy end with main heroine. Game's not voiced. Character design is rough. Almost every girl wears glasses - there are two true meganekko and others wear glasses only occasionally. So there just aren't enough appeal points to even try to get to know what's happening with the poor detective. 23. Mujintou Monogatari RR 無人島物語RR [990528] KSS Inc. Events take place on an uninhabited island around Hawaii. There is electricity and basic facilities ready. Resort love story begins now! Game's gone pretty far from its origins. There is no superficial element of prequels and there is basically everything ready and it's even a resort... really... it's survival game series, not a vacation rabu-rabu, for god's sake! Battle gets really like jrpg. This is one of the last games in the series and I think everyone got tired reinventing the same setting for the 10th time. 24. Pile Driver PILE・DRIVER [990528] Blue Gale 1 Walking to school in the morning with his childhood girl, our guy isn't feeling too great because lack of sleep. Fainting at the morning meeting and falling into the hands of the school nurse cheered him up some. He now has courage and experience to go after 9 girls. This is mostly a story game, with few choices but will get you to some pretty nice endings. There is an English review. 25. Pythian ピュティア [990528] Studio e.go! The world collapsed, before that, people would actively researching Psionics. In the new era, people who with psionics power became decadent aristocracy and dominate the continent for years. Rebellion broken out and took over, soon neighbouring country took the chance to invade. Protagonist suffered amnesia, believing that artefacts have a link to his memory recovery, come to the capital to investigate surrounding ruins amid the chaos. SRPG. There are 15 chapters, each with 0 to 3 battles. Game balance is not the best. Story is very difficult to grasp - it's not integral enough and some plot twists look really random. Game features special undressing system. 26. Seisen Ren'ai Yuugi 聖戦 恋愛遊戯 [990528] Rare Frontier planet "XIAN" far from the Earth. There are no planetary governments and the two major conglomerates of Ron and Zoroa dominate and prosper by free trade. Ryuta graduated from the military academy and came to Shan, the land of memories of his deceased father. He was welcomed by Ron Ron, the general commander of the army, and was invited to the Mayfa Corps Base, which is the headquarters. In the meantime president Ray Long suddenly dies. At the same time unknown identity enemies attack the base. Ryuta picks up three young ace pilot girls and tries to organize defense. From now on they are being swallowed by the war... Tactic strategy mix. Only one girl pilots the mecha and it depends on favorability. In battle there are three types of robots: proximity type, middle range type, and long range type. Enemy turns take quite a long time. When girl attacks, you gain favorability, when she suffers damage or you're far from her, you lose favorability. One playthrough is about 8 hours. 27. Suzu ga Utau Hi 鈴がうたう日 [990528] Tactics A small town along the sea. A slight tide smell in the air ... in such a town I met a girl. Girl's name is Suzu. That small incident changed the boring summer and turned it into an irreplaceable season that I won't be able to forget till the rest of my life... Split with Key was devastating for Tactics. Their new game has the same systems as "One". The text is quite bad, but some gags are ok. You need to choose places on a the map and check if it triggers some event, so it's not really fun. Game period is 20 days. One playthrough is just 3 hours. There's no voicing. Characters are... I don't know, but anything but cute. Only Suzu route has some meaning in it, but it's not good either. A very plain and much more inferior game than "One". 28. Yashoku 夜食 [990528] Telluru Hiroyuki is the second year ronin now. He starts to lose faith in himself and gets drunk with drink regularly. One such night he descends from the last train at an unknown station and meets a mysterious woman next to a cafe. She invited him to work here as a part-time-job, and hero could not say no to working with lots of pretty girls. Now which one of the will warm his heart? Game's bright, funny at places and has very cool voicing. But in the end it's just chasing girls H oriented game. At least some girls are interesting enough to actually get to an end. 29. Zoku Gekka Bijin ~Ouka no Koro~ 続月花美人 ~桜花の頃~ [990528] 1 Town in the mountains Totamachi. There is a mountain named Sakura that holds a shrine with the same name. One day wife of shrine caretaker found a child crying at the shrine. She issued a report about the lost child to the police, but child's parents were not found. That child was called "Akito" and later adopted. But after three years caretaker's wife gave birth to a child herself. From that day Akito became a threat for the shrine owner who wanted his own child to inherit from him. And animosity between two men grew fiercer with each passing day... There is one short review, but it tackles all the main points all right. There is daytime AVG part and night time training SIM part, but the latter one is not really necessary.
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Love Forever and Lipstick Adv.EX are the masterpieces of the month, but I prefer Lipstick Adv.EX 1. Élan エラン [990401] Visco A plan to migrate humanity to the planet "Elan" is created, the Elan Project. In order to select suitable people to join the project many boys and girls with great mental ability are gathered in the research city Alpha. The protagonist is one of the best candidates, and while acquiring training they interact with the other candidates. While conversing with the other candidates there aren't just the usual conversation options. It is also possible to choose Happy/Normal/Sad/Mad emotional type responses. Well, it's half an otome game since you can choose either gender, but I'll only tackle galge part ofc. Dating SIM with intensive SIM part. Game part is tedious, events are commonplace. Characters are too many and too underdeveloped. 2. Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series Vol. 3: Tabidachi no Uta ときめきメモリアルドラマシリーズ Vol.3 旅立ちの詩 [990401] Konami 1 2 Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series vol.3 Tabidachi no Uta ("Poem of Journeys") features both Shiori Fujisaki and Miharu Tatebayashi sharing a similar story about the player running a marathon just before graduation that branches off into different directions depending on which girl you choose to pursue. Game takes 10 days before graduation. Unlike first two volumes this game has hero parameters that a raised by winning main marathon and other mini-games, including even guitar mini-games from second volume. Game feels inferior to first two volumes due to short period and lack of side characters. It was supposed to be the final game in series, thus the graduation poetic atmosphere, but as we know now the claim to be the final game in the series was GREATLY exaggerated. 3. Power Pro Kun Pocket パワプロクンポケット [990401] Konami Spin-off of Konami's baseball game series Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu. Unlike the main series, it focuses on story and dating sim components. SIM 4. Another World 穴座悪奴~Another World~ [990402] G-Crazy The smallest independent country in the Atlantic Ocean, the Republic of Samaria. It's a peaceful city, but fire breaks out, gunfire is heard and people are evacuated from the streets. Something dreadful approaches and you're a part of public safety forces to oppose it... Just 3D dungeon exploration similar to Blood Seed 2, but we're the good guys here. Our enemies are some mutants. It's hardly a visual novel, but there's not a single review to even observe it as an RPG. Fights are not just turn based ones, but there's time gauge required to make actions which looks life FF series games. 5. Mahou Shoujo Meruru ~Kamigami no Shihou o Motomete~ 魔法少女メルル~神々の至宝を求めて~ [990402] Akatonbo Meruru is sent on a journey to collect 3 jewels for master wizard. But she's so light-minded that she forgot to take map with her. Young sorcerer Nicola catches up with her bringing the map and joins her on this journey. Story is single road with mingames that use some form of roulette. On minigame failure the situation deteriorates and we usually get so see some H scene, but it's still impossible to lose - after several failures Meruru recovers herself. But those mingames and choices determine the game outcome - whether protagonist Nicolas plays a proactive role or becomes an errand boy for Meruru. There's a lot of animation and game's nice to watch. 6. Nie 贄 NIE [990402] Hyperspace Hero is a prosperous company owner. There are three families on the brink of collapse who desperately need assistance and offer girls for hero to marry. Hero does not mind accepting such sacrifice, but he needs to select the most enduring one of them to satisfy his personal needs. The start of disgusting Nie series. It's of SM type and features only traditional japanese women in yakata. 7. Night Face ~Haitoku no Kikoushi~ NIGHT FACE ~背徳の貴公子~ [990402] Infinity Hero used to work in a host club, but left it after his girlfriend dumped him for a more successful host. Now hero starts his own host enterprise. At this time the lover of his former girlfriend shows up and offers a challenge between them since there can be only one king of the night in the city. What good can come out of competition of two men to seduce as many women as possible? I found nothing special in the game. 8. Kyozou Teien ~Shoujo no Chiru Basho~ 虚像庭園 ~少女の散る場所~ [990408] Black Package Try A guy got lost and ran out of gas. He ended up at a mansion where a girl and her maid lives. He is invited to stay until their guardian's monthly visit. When she arrived, he found out that this girl is the one that his brother died to save from a car accident. Thinking that she likes him only as his brother, he decided to make them into pets. Will he live happy or master? Since it's Black package, it's inevitably a nukige. The good things about the game is that you can always see the chart and thus the branching and the endings. There is also voicing. 9. Angel Court [990409] R.A.N Software Richard Baguel is a young businessman and a competent architecture designer. By a twist of fate he gets to the heavens and with a divide intervention he gets to change his destiny. Story is quite loose. There is full voicing. It's basically a pure love story and the degree of H-events is not very high. There are very few choices. Protagonist is quite good - kind of charming playboy businessman, and he's voiced as well. 10. Binetsu Jounetsu 微熱・情熱 [990409] Cat's Pro. Yoshio Kusunoki was drinking with an old man at the bar. He was told that a mansion not far from the town has only girls as workers and now is recruiting. The next morning that old man died of heart attack in an alley and Yoshio looked at his last words about the mansion as a testament and set off for the mansion. Cat's Pro is a notable game brand from PC-98 era and it returns after 5 years of slumber. Game period is five months including three months of a trial period. Each day consists of morning and evening with a rest time between them. If you do not work, you get mansion destruction point and with three points it's game over. But losing characters sympathy is even worse. There are six heroines to win attention of. So it's quite a boring game that's saved only by its small volume of about 4 hours altogether. 11. Datenshi Bokujou ~Fallen Angel~ 堕天使牧場 ~Fallen Angel~ [990409] M' There is a world where only women are born. Occasionally a man is sent from the sky to maintain population. Here is such man who has no memory of previous life. Unlike earlier sent men he's not a crude person. He wants to get memories back. There are six heroines to capture. There are BAD ENDs as well. Some heroines routs open up only after clearing other heroines routes. Volume is around 2 hours. 12. Deep Purple ディープパープル [990409] Studio Neko Punch In a small village on the North Pole witches live. They are forever young and beautiful magic wielders. But first of all they are girls. They feel the need for love, friendship, thrill, suspense, violence, laugh just like everyone else. One of witches starts an investigation to learn the truth about her best friend's death during magical experiment. This is a debut work of Studio Nekopunch. First of all, this is a Yuri work. Volume is small, around 2 hours. There are only several choices. Prologue is serious, but it's a comedy work for the rest of the game. Operation is mouse only, no skip function. 13. Ryakudatsu Kinbaku no Yakata Kanketsu Hen 略奪 緊縛の館 完結編 [990409] Xyz The owner of a mansion invites his cousin as a guest. But that cousin deprives the mansion owner full authority over the building. Cousin proposes a game of girls training during two months. It's for the girls to decide who stays as the owner of the mansion after two months. Yet another training SIM. Player can choose either the role of mansion owner of the vengeful cousin. Six days for training and one holiday for conversation. Nothing special. 14. Shuumatsu no Sugoshikata ~The World is Drawing to an W/end.~ 終末の過ごし方 ~The world is drawing to an W/end.~ [990409] Abogado Powers 1 In a week the human race will perish. In this situation the hero keeps going to school while everyone gives up. What is there ahead? Abogado Powers are back from PC-98 stumber and I'm excited about it! The game has awesome styled graphics, sound and text. But it lacks greatly in the story department and is short, just 2 hours long. Everyone accepted the defeat and there is decadent atmosphere everywhere. Story is told from the 3rd person view instead of that of the hero. Too little volume, too underdeveloped characters, too few days to matter. One of the most mysterious features of the game is that everyone wears glasses save for one character who wears contacts. 15. Surface Zone サーフェイスゾーン [990409] Motion Hero and heroine get to a different dimension - "surface zone". They need to explore the surroundings and find the way out of here. A bad 3D polygon game. Operation is possible with mouse only and it's a torture to bypass all the obstacles. It's possible to choose among three protagonists from the start, each of them having different characters and sexual preferences. By advancing the game H events are triggered with 2D normal CG. There are also animated sequences. 16. Boy x Boy ~Shiritsu Kouryou Gakuin Seishinryou~ サーフェイスゾーン [990409] King Records The player becomes the main character, Akira Hayasaka, in the second grade of Koryo Gakuin Senior High School. Boys Love 17. Crank Up ga Matenakute クランクアップが待てなくて [990414] Seal Staff Fujimi is a third grade school student who attends school cinema club and dreams of shooting a film. Finally he gets such opportunity. Now he needs to appoint the roles and find the main heroine for the film out of many worthy beautiful girl candidates. Setting is late 80s so it's a nice retro feeling. There are very few choices. There are three heroines. The volume is quite small, around 2 hours. 18. Love Forever LOVE FOREVER [990415] Bunny Pro. 1 The year is 1999, and in Tokyo, there is a scientist. To fulfill his ambitions, he performs magical rituals in his lab basement. Meanwhile, you play the role of Masato, a regular high school student but very good at martial arts and kendo. After winning the national kendo tournament and defeating your best friend Ukyo (who is the son of this scientist as well as your finals opponent), you go to a cute girl called Sayaka, who you fell in love with, and state your confession. Surprisingly, Sayaka also have feelings for you so the 2 of you come along together very well. This all happens on June 1st, 1999. It all goes well and peaceful for 2 weeks until the absurd comes when serious of weird things and suspicious people start to evolve around you both. To make things short, the two of you run away to your room to "escape" all of these happenings, but unexpectedly a familiar shadow pops up in the darkness....this is just the prologue of a tragedy and a nightmare. There is an English review. The length was astonishing for the time. Very modern work in that sense - it also has voicing and different routes for each heroine. Fighting minigame is reasonably easy. 19. Nurse Story ナース物語 (ストーリー) [990415] MYCOM 1 The protagonist of the story is hospitalized and needs to stay for three months in a hospital. What to do during all that time, worry about getting better? Nope, walk all over the hospital and try to woo the nurses and hospital staff. First part of the game centers on your trying to win the heart of the woman of your choice in a typical love simulation style. Second part then turns into a romantic visual novel story. Game period is 3 months. You spend hearts to move around the hospital up to four times a day and replenish them as you visit the doctor. Talking to characters increases or decreases their mood depending on answers. If you don't meet anyone, that's a day wasted, so harsh use of save and load is needed. The second parameter is money... well, it's self-descriptory. Each month he gets 10,000 yen and can also participate in lotteries. It's random, but save/load can make you a millionaire or close to that. There are eight heroines and they include everyone who has a skirt - nurses, doctors, patients... Despite tedious gameplay, characters and dramatic parts are alright. 20. Space Ofera Agga Ruter ~Kyoufu no Uchuu Majo~ Space Ofera アッガ・ルター ~恐怖の宇宙魔女~ [990415] Menu Continuation of the anime story. Tayo is 15 years old and he's the owner of the ship that along with the six female crew is flying to explore ancient ruins. Fifteen years ago Tayo's family got attacked by pirate ship and he was the only one to survive in escape pod. The pod drifted to the Agga Ruter spaceship and Tayo was raised by its central system K3. But at the same time at the other side of the universe the ruler of female alien civilization got tired playing with her subordinates and she set off into space as soon as her radar spotted a man she can play with - and that turned out to be Tayo. Setting is nice since it's based on the anime. Characters are quite funny as well. Genre can be best described as gag comedy. But game's not long enough and card battle sequences are a pain to go through. Another good feature is that everyone including protagonist is voiced and by the same seiyu as in anime version. So quite a good work, but largely overlooked one since that anime is not well known. 21. Genei Sentai Misty Knights 幻影戦隊 MISTY-KNIGHTS [990416] Fuuro Hero is the general of an army who has finally succeeded in capturing all four misty knights girls. Now it's the time to get every single secret from them, with force if needed. Disgusting torture game. There are four girl prisoners and there's nothing to do each day except for wandering around the station and visiting poor prisoners. 22. Nanami Wonderland NA・NA・MIワンダーランド [990416] Archive A collection of 15 short erotic sketches about Nanami eventful life or fantasies. There's no story and there's very little text, just HCG gallery with some voicing and some text lines coming along. H only. 23. Seven セブン [990416] Types As resurrection of an evil god draws near, a goddess sends a team of seven young people - two men and five women - to fight the apostles and prevent evil god's resurrection. Card battles are so exhausting in this game that it drives out any motivation to go on. 24. Bibou Vintage Real ~Kaikan 3~ 美貌ヴィンテージ・REAL ~kaikan3~ [990420] Hyperspace A remastered version of Bibou Vintage Kaikan 2 The differences include: - opening - multiple endings - new side-story - animated scenes It's the same game, so I won't waste my breath - it will be probably soon get merged with the previous title on vndb anyway. 25. 30 Days [990422] Kurage Club Hero is an ordinary high school student who used to be a national level kendo sportsman till his father abandoned him in junior school. He has hated his father ever since. He was adopted by another family but he does not feel at home there. One day a news of his father's death arrives and it's going to change everything in his life... Multi-end ADV with four endings, one for each girl. They are mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law and a classmate. Game is linear with the only significant choice determining girl of interest. There is much animation used and Kurage Club takes roots from the same Umitsuki Production company that the famous full-animated works brand Jellyfish. A series of incidents breaks out with his hero father's death, but romance is developing at the same time and those two lines look alien to each other. But generally speaking it's the story of pessimistic boy who gets over his hatred towards father with the warmth of family members or a classmate. And that grows into knowing the will of his father and accomplishing it. That kind of story. 26. Ryouko no Oshaberi Room 涼子のおしゃべりルーム [990422] Datam Polystar Fandisc to the Inoue Ryouko series. Includes four modes: Chat mode: Talk about different subjects with Ryouko. Her responses change depending on the time. Memory album: View CGs and illustrations from the various games. Quiz mode: Ryouko quizzes you about things. What day is it today?: Ryouko tells you what holiday it is today. I can't stand fandisks. 27. Girl Friends Girl Friends [990423] Libido Eight girls went on a beach trip. Our guy, as one girl's classmate, tag along to take some pictures. To get their topless picture, he has to do something interesting. To get their nude picture, they have to love him a bit at least. Will he be able to find a girlfriend after their 3 day trip? Yet another tasteless Libido game. I guess we should praise they finally go away from yuri or smth? Who cares, trash remains trash. 28. Ingoku no Gakuen Biseito Choukyou 淫獄の学園 美聖徒調教 [990423] Guilty A prestigious girls high school where strict teachers maintain high disciplinary standards. But it's hard to imagine what dark secrets dwell under the surface... Very simple story with choices, almost all the time is devoted to H. 29. Lipstick Adv.EX [990423] Fairytale 1 2 The story starts as a usual day of Detective Ichijou Megumi and his assistant, Hidaka Koume. Like many detective games, this detective has not gotten any case for a long time. As a result, he just wonders aimlessly around the town flirting with a female in public library and helps Koume's Detective Club out to find the culprit of stealing her classmate's clothes. While these two events seemed irrelevant, it is a slow pavement behind a big evil (?!) scheme hidden in the city. In this game, you will be switching between perspectives of the detective and his assistant. Game has an English review. It's your only chance to pick up a part of Lipstick ADV legacy on Windows. 30. Natsu no Owari ni... 夏の終わりに… [990423] Dark Knight Hero is taking tutorship in order to enter a special prestigious school. His childhood friend was supposed to tutor him during summer, but hero's mother forced the decision to hire several women tutors on various science subjects. How far will he progress by the end of the studies with studies and relations? Each day of the week save for days off there is its own tutor with his science attending. Hero is middle school student and thus does not invoke much sympathy. Heroines character design is not good and those huge melons might even rival those from minori. This is a SIM game with parameters so the tempo is not good either. 31. Nature Trip ねいちゃあトリップ [990423] Xuse Hero was staying under the tree hesitating whether to approach the girl he liked for a long time or not when the tree was struck by the lightning. As his vision cleared he saw a cave with an altar and a beautiful woman looking at him anxiously. And she looked almost like the girl of his interest! Where is he? Is this a fantasy world? What will happen to him? The different world is populated only by women and that fact kills the whole synopsis intrigue - just another convenient environment. There is a happy ending for each heroine around, but only three of them have routes and side-characters have a H-event and game over. It's a light solid work, but far from masterpiece. 32. Oni Coach!! ~Shouri e no Ryoujoku~ 鬼コーチ!! ~勝利への凌辱~ [990423] Apple Pie Onimaya Gomon has gathered 10 girls for his sport team. He demands absolute obedience on his training sessions. He is absolutely sure that virginity is a hindrance during the training and must be cast away as soon as possible. Purely H game, there's hardly even any talk in-between. 33. Oniichan to Issho おにいちゃんといっしょ [990423] Fish Cafe Toyoda Shinji lives with his father, a teacher at school. Shinji was enjoying his school life till one of his classmates became his sister-in-law. She started to live under the same roof and from that day peaceful life went awry... There are four heroines and there is a rival heroine in each branch so can switch to rival heroine. It's definitely not an onii-chan game, but rather school romance one - it's just very weird that classmates call the hero onii-chan. Girl routes are pretty much the same, so there's little point in aiming to clear all. 34. Senbatsu Keibitai 選抜警備隊 [990423] Outlaw You are a guard and your current duty is to guard a lone princess with other guards disguised as princess friends and relatives in accordance with the last order of the king. It's an RPG mix game. Game progresses by minutes and sleep takes only three hours. The leftover time is spent moving around, getting information and protecting the princess, of course. You need to protect her for 30 days and constantly defend against attackers at night and in the forest. Story is not very good and its developments only make feel uncomfortable. Battles are no fun at all. Damage is random. Overall it's a painful game without even any clear aim. 35. Tokyo Kowloon 東京九龍 [990423] Janis Near future. After a huge catastrophe befallen upon Tokyo, a large part of it has turned into slums. At such area hero is doing slave business raising girls and selling them to rich people outside the city. Usually there is a specific request, but the means of training are up to hero to decide. Yet another training SIM. There are 5 girls, 30 days, 6 parameters and freedom to choose the means of training. Number of events is very small, so gameplay is boring. Let's go on already. 36. Viper-F50 ~Mirai Tokusou Bureiban~ VIPER-F50 ~未来特捜ブレイバン~ [990423] Sogna 1 The sequel to the "Future Investigator Bravan" story told in VIPER-V12, VIPER-F50 continues the tale of Bravan and his partner Anri as they fight against the forces of Donarghe and its army of mutants. Colonel Gel returns with a plot to defeat Bravan by capturing Anri and fellow investigator Shine. However, Gel's plot for world domination unknowingly hinges on the faith and abilities of her young protégé, Mari. There is an English review, but I'll try to make mine as well when the time allows to. 37. Yume Tenshi ~Takujou Dennou Inmu Yuugi~ 夢・天・使 ~卓上電脳淫夢遊戯~ [990423] Triangle Two girls greet you in an entertainment place. They explain the place to you and ask you to pick one of 12 girls to play a virtual situation. To finish each situation, you need to win four majong games or rich-man card games with the girl. If you manage to get all 12 girls, those two will challenge you. I can't say anything good about an ordinary stripping card game, so I'd better say nothing. 38. Nekopara ~Nekosogi Paradise~ ねこぱら ~ねこそぎ・ぱらダイス~ [990424] Mink Boys school suddenly gets merged with girls school. Hero is secretly in love with one girl from there and he has only one year till graduation to confess his feelings. This is a board game with the use of dice etc. You trigger events and accumulate service points through replays opening more heroines and more CG. There are five heroines each with its own rival. 39. Sweet Love Concerto スイートラブコンチェルト [990424] Ange Gentle-minded angel apprentice Michael (black hair, black skin) and strong-willed devil apprentice Rose (blonde hair, white skin) are in love relationship. Together they need to come through a number of life situations. In the first episode a human male appears who can pose a threat to this love link. Ugh, I don't even know where to start. No voicing. Ugly drawing. Poor story. Lots of H. There are bad endings as well. 40. Keibiin 警備員 [990428] Interheart Kousuke Ninomiya is a security guard at a all-around department store, who blackmails female shoppers who shoplift for sexual favors in return of not turning them in to the police. Game is quite known, but I guess it's thanks to hentai anime. Just think of this game as Interheart's alternative to Elf's *saku series. 41. Little Witch Parfait リトルウィッチ パルフェ [990428] Kuroneko-san Team Parfait Sucreal is a young witch, who is yet in training and full of clumsiness in raising a potion shop called Black Cat Market run by her mother and Parfait's black cat, Sakemas, who can amazingly talk. A year ago from the time this game was set, her mother had died from an illness - her father was a famous wizard who died from saving the kingdom when Parfait was young. At the beginning, Parfait introduces herself and tells the player that she is almost at the risk of losing her beloved shop (the only remains of her mother), for Parfait has to pay the debt of 1,000,000G (gold) by 12 months to keep the shop running. As a normal shop, there seems no hope for raising the Black Cat Market's fame. Game has an English review. 42. My Friends [990428] Euphony Production Toru just graduated from school and entered university when he received a letter from old friend Sanae that invited him to visit her boarding house. The same invitations were passed to many hero's girl acquaintances as well. It was the beginning of summer drama. First half is ADV at university and second one is SIM at the boarding house that looks very similar to previous game Happening Journey. Two heroines are just taken from Graffiti of Petit - shameless as that. Hero is deliberately put into a harem situation and he does not need to put much effort at all. It's different from other games in that all the heroines are students and thus are grown-ups. Game has pleasant graphics and calming atmosphere. Play time is around 5 hours. 43. Kokoro no Kakera 心のかけら [990430] Foster Our guy's father is leaving on a trip for two weeks and he has to take care of the house maids. That means he can chase after the 5 maids and 1 girlfriend. If he manages to catch a girl, his father won't be too happy but he will be extremely happy. There are 5 maids for capture. One playthrough is between 1 and 2 hours. The work is for HCG only. 44. Marionette -Kugutsu- マリオネット-傀儡- [990430] Saga Planets Hero exists as a ghost without a body. He succeeds in hijacking his alive older brother's body and gets access to all of the girls' dorm rooms since his brother was an administrator there. It's only needed to find weaknesses and it's easy to force oneself on each girl. Girls temporarily loose memory after drinking hero's body fluids, so it's a very convenient setting to just go on with all of the girls. It's one road story just for H. 45. Mosquito ~Mosquito no Inbou~ MOSQUITO ~モスキートの陰謀~ [990430] Mesa Hero works as a bartender, but recently a special mosquito has appeared in his life. He can control that mosquito and see from his eyes. Now he uses that ability to spy on the bar clients from very bold angles. So many nukige this month that I decided to stop giving comments on nukige starting with year 2000. But for now... boo for peeping mosquito! 46. Trouble Travel [990430] Telluru Five classmates - two boys and three girls go on a trip to a resort town. You play as one of boys and can go on multiple of dates with the girls you like. Game's fully voiced (except for protagonist) and quite lively. It's not hookable and launches only on Win2K and lower. There are some gags. But overall it's just dates and H, nothing special. Found only one impression on the game and it's of below medium scores.
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Captain Love is the only masterpiece of the month 1. 19:03 Ueno Hatsu Yakou Ressha 19時03分 上野発夜光列車 [990304] Visit A freelance photographer and a middle school teacher take the night train that goes from Tokyo's Ueno to Sapporo, but what started as a normal train trip soon will become a little more complicated since they will be involved in murders, assassinations and other dangerous situations. Depending on the player's choices his character may or may not survive the trip. Well, it's actually a sequel to the more or less same system game and has many links to it. Previous work centered on occult topic - this time it's monster movies and panic movies, so it's more thrilling. There are several protagonists so actions can be observed from several perspectives. Not necessarily a bad game, but rather a story-less one. The point of the game is to get its numerous endings (including bad ones). 2. Nukinobe ぬきのべ [990304] Isabella Three stories about three different girls lust adventures. Very low quality game and just for H. 3. Love Producer [990305] C's Ware Our guy's sister/cousin asked him to be a director for her small adult video company. He has two weeks to learn while training a new star, who happens to be a girl from his home town. Lucky, he will go from virgin to director pretty quickly at the rate he is going. There are also three other H girls that he can go after if you prefer. That's not really C's Ware that I'd like to know. Poor graphics, bad balance, no skipping, cheap system and low number of CG (80, but many are only slightly different). The good part is full voicing, somewhat unexpected situations and some good quality CG. 4. On Air [990305] Brownie Hero gets a part-time job at a television station. It's a very rigorous job and he's yelled by the boss all the time. However, with time he becomes friends with five female casters, each with her own goals, and he gets motivated to learn more about the place and its workers. Period is three months. We move on the map and trigger events. Apart of 5 female casters there are other 10 girls in the neighborhood that are available for some romance. Every moving takes some time and characters move around all the time, so capturing is very very tiresome unless you hunt just for one girl (it's claimed by manufacturer that up to 14 girls captures can be done simultaneously in a perfect situation). There are 6 endings with five being for female casters and one is hidden for an idol girl. 5. Tenshi ni Chijoku no Senrei o… 天使に恥辱の洗礼を… [990305] Vision Hero almost got run over by a car when he was saved by the goddess of fate Ercione. He becomes an angel and is told to do good deeds, but he actually decided only to make pretty girls feel good by using possessing power he acquired. Like other Vision games, this one uses some animation, which is kind of sloppy and in form of scrolling, though. There are seven girls to choose from. One playtime is roughly one hour. Hero moves around the map and enters buildings triggering events with girls. Game's for H events only. 6. Touch Me ~Koi no Okusuri~ Touch me ~恋のおくすり~ [990306] Mink 1 The player is in the medical major. Under the threat of your father, you go to an all-girls high school and spent a month there as a doctor at the health department. Of course, a male doctor in an all-girls school is pretty odd and rare. Basically, during your month of stay, you will meet a total of 5 girls, each having their own personality and problems/troubles in love. So, as a school doctor, you have to somehow see to their hearts, help them somehow and make them feel happy. Maybe you will end up having a relationship with them too... You and everybody else go to school on weekdays as well as saturday morning. You will have a chance to walk around school before school starts, lunch break, and after school. Each break has a different time limit, and during that time limit you can walk around school and by chance you may be able to meet girls, chat with them, have lunch with them, etc. As you do things or say good things to them, their impression will increase, and certain events will appear only if the impression gets to a certain point. On Sundays, you can choose to go out with a girl for a date, or you can choose to loiter in school. There is an English review for this game. 7. Captain Love キャプテン・ラヴ [990311] Toshiba EMI In Captain Love the player's controls a high school student boy that will meet different kind of girls and have to improve his relationships with them to increase his love power. The love power will be used when he got to fight some of the enemies of the evil organization that will try to defeat him. So it's an ADV when meeting girls and battle with enemies - in battle you need to find the attack that would be effective through command selection. Battles are especially fun for the voice abuse that's used. Plot-wise it's a bakage. This work's problem is that main heroine is not attractive no matter how you look at her and she got a very weird voice on top of that. Well, there are all kinds of attractive sub heroines instead. So it's a masterpiece game as long as one can tolerate bakage style games. 8. Sougaku Toshi Osaka 奏(騒)楽都市OSAKA [990311] Tenky 1 Osaka, the year is 1998. As the BABEL communication tower nears completion, students battle to gain the right to use it. Another SIM 9. Yakusoku no Kizuna 約束の絆 [990312] Koei Main character becomes high school student and looks forward to getting a girlfriend. Nine years ago he met a mysterious girl and made promise with her, but he does not remember her face clearly anymore. At school he meets eight girls who seem to be connected with that fateful encounter nine years ago... Of course, another SIM 10. I Ghost アイ・ゴースト [990312] Saint Hero is killed by someone and he is going through Hell and Heaven to find salvation and reveal the truth about his death. Game is full of bugs and freezes upon selecting wrong choice usually. Message skipping is also poorly realized. The flow of the game is normal, but game system flaws are crucial here. 11. Little My Maid リトルMyメイド [990312] Sweet Basil 1 2 3 4 5 6 You are Ouji Kamogawa, age 19, a bright student with a bright future. However, your dreams of going to a top-ranked university suddenly come crashing down when you fail your entrance exams -- and lose your beloved Yukari at the same time. Now six months later, you're wandering a lonely beach, bitter about all that you've lost. Suddenly, you hear a sweet voice, crying out for help. It's a beautiful girl -- a young maid -- about to be subjected to a terrible fate at the hands of a band of hoodlums. Thinking fast, you are able to save her virtue. "My name is Mari," she says, through her tears. "I work as a maid at a nearby mansion. Please...let me repay your kindness." She takes you to the house she works at, Sea Dragon Mansion. There you encounter her two sisters: the proud and capable Hina and the delightfully cute Mayu-chan. You also meet the mysterious mistress of the mansion, Hime, and the cold trainer-of-maids, Aya. Welcomed as a guest, you choose to stay for a time in Sea Dragon Mansion. Aya coldly explains the rules of the house: you are the guest, and that means that the three maids will strive for your every pleasure. Ring one of the three bells to call any one of the three maids, and you can use them any way you like. Game has many English reviews. 12. Mugen ~Kyojitsu to Shinjitsu~ 夢幻~虚実と真実~ [990312] Purple Hero is being forced to kill 12 warrior girls in order to reincarnate old Christianity goddess Lilith. Will he fulfill his fate or come under favor of other goddess? This is an RPG and it has 12 chapters with each chapter to have ADV beginning and then a battle. There are 8 girls to capture, each with her own mutually exclusive conditions. There are a lot of questions to the systems. In order to launch the game it's needed to create directory in Program Files and install anew. There is message skip function but it's very painful to use. The way hero just accepts his fate is not explained and looks stupid. 13. Pon'z: The Hunt for S.D.W. Pon'z: The Hunt for S.D.W. [990312] Lyceen In January 1998 cloning technology produced DNA manipulating virus capable of completely suppressing sexual ability, and it started to be used as a weapon. Three clones with this ability landed in Japan causing nation-wide economic crisis. The government formed a unit to counter this threat and managed to capture one of those three species. After several months of continuous disaster portable machines for capturing SDW were invented and one more SDW species was caught shortly. And now it has become known that the last one is hiding inside a certain high school. Hero is requested to infiltrate the school, identify and neutralize the threat. And all that synopsis just for a tetris-like game. There's really nothing more. Such a scam. 14. W ~Chinurareta Hanayome~ W ~血塗られた花嫁~ [990312] Desire Wedding ceremony is the happy event and noone thought it would be the start of a big tragedy. Everything starts with a minor injury incident to the bride and then one by one people close to Junya are attacked and killed. The dark past strikes back and Junya with Natsumi need to act and find out the truth behind the incidents. Hero cooperated with Kyoto police as boy detective in the past and now past comes back to him. This is a borderline eroge work with a unique style. 15. Space Sniper Maya スペーススナイパー・マヤ [990313] Gondola Year 2XXX. A certain start is in the middle of the crisis of possible invasion. In order to protect her universe space sniper Maya got a mission to infiltrate enemy lines and assassinate the leader. Game features 10 minutes of 3D animated intro ... just to throw you to the worst 3D first person shooter game you've ever played. Just imagine Daikatana, but a hundred times worse in terms of graphics and system. Absolutely pathetic. 16. Kiss yori... KISSより… [990318] KID 1 Aspiring novelist Masato met the voluptuous Chihiro on a beach one summer. They developed a relationship, but waned when they had to split up for work in the spring. Here Masato was tempted to take other relationships...but Chihiro wasn't giving this one up. Game's really torturing to play, because it's a SIM with high difficulty level - following walkthrough is must have. It's not enough to raise love level with a certain girl, you also need to play out the debt in full and fulfill other conditions to reach some girl's ending. 17. Kita e. White Illumination 北へ。White Illumination [990318] Hudson Soft The player, a second-year high school student (17 years old), travels from Tokyo to Sapporo in Hokkaidō (hence the basic title of the game Kita E - To The North). There, he encounters eight different girls, including the lead character Kotori Haruno, whose family he stays with during his time up north. In the game, the player explores the island, plays video games, does karaoke, goes shopping -- and most of all, tries to find that special someone to share his heart with. There are English reviews. 18. Kurenai KURENAI ~紅~ [990319] Mugen Hero who is a writer on travels and arts receives a message saying that Ukyo, a longtime friend, gone missing. In a couple of days, a letter comes from Ukraine with the same content and demand to come to a certain Western-style hotel. He steps in the hotel and gets in a whirlpool of events. Finally a card game that's not a strip poker and not a strip mahjong. Instead of choices we choose cards and the same card can not be used more than once so it feels fresh. There are five types of cards reflecting emotions (pushy, soft, etc). There is no skip function so the chances that one replays it to see another ending are slim. Story is basically a bakage (since there is so much unrealistic stuff) with sudden sexual fantasies. There are six girls to capture each with 5 HCG. Flags are very difficult to recognize. 19. Sayonara no Hohoemi さよならの微笑み [990319] K'Night! Our guy received a plane ticket to a resort island in the mail. What good is that when he has no money to spend there? Luckily, his boss want him to go to that island to do some work. There, he need to work to make money to go places and chase one of 8 girls, including his childhood girl that followed after him. Can he say goodbye to a girl with a smile after three weeks or so? The SIM with the exact synopsis that I've seen at least twice already. You need to determine schedule for morning/noon/evening each day and chase some girls. Bo-oring. 20. Sweet Stuff スウィートスタッフ [990319] Rave For fifty years humankind has been migrating all over the universe. Ricks visits training school as a candidate for captain of a space ship. And with time and encounters he begins to touch the hearts of pilot candidate girls... This is a Dating SIM. There are 18 days and 6 girls. That's pretty much all that's known, there's not a single comment anywhere apart from walk-through which already tells a lot by itself. 21. Silent Chaser Kagami サイレントチェイサー狩神 [990321] Bunny Pro. Tokyo today. The ghost of a horny young woman starts to attack men and suck all the energy from them resulting in death. To deal with this threat the paranormal activity unit led by Kagami is dispatched. Game's quite difficult to find, but CG resemble anime version very closely. 22. Mamorigami-sama 守り神様 [990325] Alice Soft 1 2 This is a traditional four-person family: a working dad, a housewife, an older sister and a younger brother (and a cat). One day dad has to go out to work for a week, so the house is left with three helpless souls. Of course those little star-shaped akumas (devils) are coming to take advantage, and you, as the mamorigami (protection god) will have to make sure they have a peaceful life before dad comes back. There is an English review of this game. 23. Aisa no Namida アイサの涙 [990326] Pinpai Hero and his six friends come to play to a solitary island. There they meet a girl named Lara. She and other local girls get to sing traditional songs which are a key to the mystery of the island and to the legend of a sleeping mermaid. There are three routes - adventure (centered on exploring the cave) and horror (centered on murder) ones are available from the start and after clearing fantasy route appears that reveals all the mysteries. Genre is point and click adventure. The relevance between the scenarios is small and the volume is insufficient to enjoy it, around 2 hours. 24. Cross ~Koi no Hizashi~ CROSS ~恋の陽射~ [990326] Speed While carrying his friends' luggage to their hotel room, our guy met three beautiful girls. Later, he and his two friends meet the three girls and he can choose one to chase. In 7 days on this paradise island resort, he can chase one girl. If he fails to catch anyone, he gets the consolation prize of being a father. Basically a nanpa game with some minigames. Game looks rough and not integral. One good part is that you have a male friend who servers as a rival, but also as a great buddy and it's nice to have him around. There are four endings - one for each of three girls and one if keep pestering some old man. 25. Negai ねがい [990326] Ram The main character becomes a new chief priest of a shrine after his father's death. He needs to employ some Miko for a summer festival taken place in a month. But all the six Miko whom he employed have totally different personalities and he gets into trouble. Deal with troubles and feel their "Heart". Will he be able to organize a summer festival successfully? Story branches only late in the game, but if you flag one girl, you won't be able to see other girls events in this play-through, so freshness is maintained. It's a comedy for the most part so the flow is nice. Girls are quite charming. It's a light galge without much fancy. 26. Silver Moon [990326] R.A.N Software Hero was brought up in the institution for gifted children "Geo". He lives a normal life and attends college. One day a mysterious woman V.A. appears before him and tells him that he is bound to die in 15 days. Who is this woman? What's the secret behind his physical condition? How will he live these 15 days? This is probably the second work after "One" that inherited the richness of colors and close to contemporary beautiful drawing. And it really looks like this game tries to imitate "One" as much as possible - in romance, in gags, in graphics. There are four heroines and heroine is decided on the 10th day and after that it's just heroine route without any choices. So common route is full of gags and heroine routes are dramatic. Game is not voiced. There are some bugs and typos that are removed with the patch. What's really weird is that in all the routes protagonist's thoughts, descriptions and words are the same or almost the same and only environment and girl changes - girls are lively and great, but from 2nd playthrough there's a very weird feeling because of that. 26. Sanjuusou 三重奏 [990331] Hon-Pro Main character does not take classes seriously and skips them from time to time. In result he gets supplementary classes for three days at winter vacations. But during these days he meets three girls that make his heart beat faster. Doujin
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VN of the Month February 1999 - Campus ~Sakura no Mau Naka de~
kivandopulus posted a blog entry in Vndbreview
There aren't masterpieces this month, but Campus ~Sakura no Mau Naka de~ is the only title worthy of being game of the month. 1. Hakidame 吐溜 [990205] Zero Main character needs to choose among three girls and insult the girl of his choice. Game is very short and has nothing but insult scenes. Sound might be the best feature here. Praise it all you want, but game won't stop being trash because of that. 2. Hakoiri Musume 箱入り娘 [990205] Deep Zone Believe it or not, our protagonist is actually bored of his over fun loving girlfriend. A new transfer student, Nishizaki Satomi, seems just what he needs: a fresh love. She turned out to be a poor rich girl raised in her home not knowing anything about the real world. He can take advantage of that or try to help her. All Deep zone games look like each other so far. Specific style, animation and heavy emphasis on H, usually of NTR type. This one is no exception. Things turn H ultra fast and stay that way till the end. 3. Sweet Happiness [990206] For The protagonist is a lingerie salesman. Six months after graduating from college, he is finally getting used to his work. Can he find a good woman to marry? By weird logic working at a lingerie shop automatically means that all the girls there are easily accessible and protagonist is a pervert. Each day consists of morning and afternoon and it's possible to either work or go around each time triggering various events. Scenario is not monotonous at least. 4. Inda 淫打 [990210] Characters of Lady Lady God-damn Night show up and promise an unforgettable experience if the player gets through the numerous keyboard practice exercises. The best feature of this work is... practicing English! After the phrase is correctly typed, it's being pronounced as a whole. Unlike following games of the series there is only one HCG as a reward after a pack of exercises which feels insufficient. As for real typing skills, software is not so good, especially irritating are panting sounds on errors and even on correct letters typing. 5. Seduce seduce 誘惑 -セデュース- [990210] Actress There is a choice between two heroes at the start. Choosing Shigeru brings up a gentle story about forbidden relations with his sister and mother-in-law. Choosing Kenichi starts a dark story about Kenichi trying to take over an enterprise through blackmail and insults of family members of its head. Both stories are short and absolutely ordinary with H-events at the top. What only somewhat rehabilitates the game is unprecedented cuteness of characters. 6. The Guts! Theガッツ! [990210] Authoring Heaven Hero gets a part-time job at a construction site. And if he still has energy after a working day he can flirt with one of the construction site girls or even with a gorilla-like section chief woman Minako Takahara. The start of muscular woman and shotacon genre. There is also a mini-game to click mouse multiple times to imitate work - somehow I failed to fill my job quota no matter how intensive I clicked. Content-wise, it's an erotic bakage as other May-be Soft games. 7. Active Ren'ai Houteishiki アクティブ恋愛方程式 [990211] Active A collection of special materials for Active's pure love games. This game includes: - Data collection - Mini ADV game - Ren'ai Houteishiki Encyclopedia Game starts on a train and the choice of the mini-story depends of where he's going to descend. Each story touches a different game of Active. 8. Satomi ~Yami no Kyouzou~ SATOMI ~闇の鏡像~ [990212] Otemoto The main character is a detective who is asked to bodygurad a girl named Satomi. Someone is sending her letters with threats of suicide. Client decides to stay incognito and sends a big sum of money for the task. Something's fishy... Hero infiltrates girls' school to guard Satomi and investigate the threats case. Suspense mystery story. First flowerpot falls on the head of Satomi, then her medicine gets swapped with drugs. There are three girls routes and Satomi route is the most shocking one since she has a split personality. Game freezes on XP and only runs on Win98 normally. 9. Bure ぶれ ~BURE~ [990214] Megami Our guy has special powers, which 1 person out of 30,000 in his world has. For his sufferings, he wants revenge on the world, but some girls will try to stop him. He can either capture and train the girls for revenge or not capture and chase them for love. If he wants love, he better watch out for his missing half. Game is all about H-events and unlocking different endings of different girls. Lots of endings are very disturbing. 10. Den'ei Shoujo Virtual Girl Lun 電影少女 Virtual Girl Lun [990214] Banpresto Inspired by the hit manga by Masakazu Katsura. The player is able to pursue eight different girls, including the new original character Lun. Fan-oriented work 11. Aegi no Yakata あえぎの館 [990215] Aquarius Main character is successful and has a good family, but something is missing in his life. In a bar some gentleman passes him an envelope with an invitation to a mansion. Upon arrival hero is asked to train three girls obedience and in case of refusal they would be trained by a real brute. After some hesitation the training starts. Yet another kusoge. The graphics are so similar to Pumpie kusoge maker that it seems to be rebranding with another name. 12. Kegarenaki Kimi o 穢れなき君を [990218] Vanilla Hero is an exorcist. In the middle of one exorcist act the evil spirit possesses his wife who bears three unborn triplets and it's impossible to know who of the children got possessed... Picture is rough. Story is short and there's only enough time to reveal the mystery. There is no voicing. Game looks like a shortened and degraded version of Kizuato by Leaf. 13. Geimu 芸夢 -GEIMU- [990219] Kaiz In the near future the human genome has been completely analyzed and the production of artificial life forms, chimeras, started. Main character Alf is a cat type human who is a professional trainer. He is tasked to train cat girl Jasmine in order to make her an obedient and skillful maid. Gameplay is very tedious and is all about torture with only the same events happening in between. Game does not take much advantage of the setting with the hero chimera type, but there are some more chimera girls to train later on - bunny girl, mermaid girl etc. Ending is very blank and discouraging to start again. 14. Mirai no Milk ~Usagimusume no Mureru Yoru~ 未来のミルク ~兎娘の群れる夜~ [990219] Nichiyou Ishi Technology has made a huge breakthrough over the past few years with the invention of nano-machines that affect the mind of the target after getting into his blood. Police, security and insurance companies in each country collaborated to deal with the situation and established a secret ASTCIS (Anti Silent Technological Crime Invisible Shields) organization. Hero has just uncovered plot of "Blue bloomers" female band to infect the minds of high school girls by selling them bloomers from a special fibers. His next task is to discover the secret Spiral Institute that is located somewhere in a hotel of an isolated island. So starts his exploration. Another erotic bakage, but now with gigantic sized breasts. Game uses old-school interface and command selection as the main means of advancing the story. 15. Shitsuren しつれん [990219] acute In the beginning of the game the hero is dumped by his girlfriend he was dating and he's devastated since he did not even kiss her. He asks her to name logical reasons to break relationship. Where will his broken heart lead him? So you basically wander around and try to heal your heart wounds with other girls. It's the same company that made Yume no Saka that I totally could not stand. This game inherits many of those flaws - difficultly composed sentences with lots of punctuation and weird dialogues that look more like monologues. Graphics is same weird and girls look ugly to me. The number of CG is minuscule. The fact that these games are also very difficult to launch does not add appeal either. 16. Aiiro no Kankei 愛色の関係 [990220] Nihon Plantech One day main character's dad suddenly dies in a traffic accident leaving only his young widow Mika behind. Sandwiched between step-mother, childhood friend and teacher, what will protagonist do? Game belongs to lust incest series, so it's hard to expect much of it. 17. Meguri Aishite めぐり愛して [990225] Sony Music Entertainment Our protagonist goes back to the city of his childhood as a high school transfer student. For one year and a half, he'll live an ordinary school life full of friendship, meetings and love. The game is presented as a collection of memories between the protagonist and the heroine of his choosing, who remember their high school years after graduation. Quite a classic dating SIM with increasing stats and pursuing events on weekends. Probably the most memorable thing about this work is that it has eight different minigames. That alone says how ordinary the work is. There are some 10 heroines and their characters aren't developed much. 18. P.S. 2 ~Shinjitsu no Tobira~ P.S.2 ~真実の扉~ [990225] Uran Five years after events of the prequel Hiroyuki is teaching at the college while also serving as administrator of the homepage "The Net" that recruits sex slave volunteers to give them humiliating orders by the internet. One day he receives an email coming from the woman who created the old P.S. website inviting him to administer a new P.S.2 website. The story starts from here. It's just the time when the Internet became wide-spread, but fantasizing went full speed already. Difficulty level is high and it's game over when you send a wrong email to someone. System is bulky, only operational through mouse and crashing on keyboard input. 19. Rise RISE ~ライズ~ [990225] RISE Hero will live with robot girl Nanako for a month with a goal to win MISCON. Raising SIM. There are other girls than Nanako: Ayame, Totomi, Ryoko. There are some 10 endings and true ending is only available if you flag each heroine and win MISCON with Nanako. There are both serious parts and gag parts. There is not so much text and raising part takes the most time. Replay-ability is close to zero as seeing the same text is even more boring. Still, if one likes its humor and gets true end, evaluation might be quite high. 20. Works Doll WoRKs DoLL [990225] TopCat Dolls become a common occurrence in human world. Their purpose is to calm and heal humans hearts. As technologies evolved new type of dolls got constructed - "sub-dolls" who make the owner feel a wide range of emotions. You're the person who creates and trains dolls. A raising SIM. Quite difficult system with text mostly in H-events since the training is done with animation alone. It takes much time to get to an ending and H-events are absolutely unsatisfactory. The uncommon setting and the young looking dolls are the only appeal points of the game. 21. Kouyasai 後夜祭 [990225] Astrovision 1 The protagonist sets up his school's festival with the help of his classmates. He's able to get closer to them, and will obtain eventually a love ending (if it's with a girl) or a friendship ending (if it's with a boy). Games for both gender auditorium never turned out anything good. 22. Acid Ware [990226] C's Ware C'sware fandisk, contains side story of Re-leaf, a couple of short novels, desktop accessories and pictures collection. There are scenes for several Re-leaf character. The main merit is that art style has not changed much and is same gorgeous. 23. Campus ~Sakura no Mau Naka de~ Campus 〜桜の舞う中で〜 [990226] Ather 1 A dream of the past and an improbable future... Night after night, Takakage's dreams take him away to another life long ago. A life of love and sorrow. A single passionate night in the arms of the beautiful priestess Ayame and the painful death that separated them forever. But that was all just a dream... When Takakage goes to a festival on campus with his friends, a fortune teller describes his immediate future madly in love with a woman... and his distant past exactly how he dreamed it! Could his re-occurring dreams of Ayame have been flashes of a real past life? When gorgeous Chisato crosses his path on campus, Takakage begins to believe that Chisato might just be the woman of his fortune. But is she the woman of his dreams? There are 6 heroines and 14 endings. But it's more than just a galge. It has plot, climax and fascinating endings, especially bad ones. Logic of events is difficult to understand, but plot twists add some spice to romantic story. The characters are well developed and very charming. 24. Endless Serenade エンドレスセレナーデ [990226] Diskdream Yuji can't deny it – he's infatuated with Satsuki. She's the center of his every waking thought, the star of his every wet dream… There's just one major problem. Satsuki is his late brother's fiance. Now, a year after his brother's death, Yuji is hoping the day has finally come to make his move, but a steamy night with Miki, the shy red-headed girl at work, could change everything. Should he be with the girl he's always wanted, or the girl who's always wanted him? Game is divided into two parts. First part is two weeks period to take different actions in the morning, noon and evening. In the second part the hidden truths of each woman are getting revealed and it all leads to a crisis and its overcoming. In addition to such system there are totally 5 characters for capture which all leads to an abyss number of endings - 48+1. So overall game structure makes the game look modern, but too many heroines and endings make it much less memorable. 25. I Wish... Todoke, Kono Omoi I wish… とどけ、この思い [990226] Janis Rush is a miner who dreams of doing something big someday. One day he sets on a journey to find secret treasure that makes wishes come true. His childhood friend Latia joins him on this adventure journey. ADV inside town and RPG outside. Up to three people including protagonist can participate in battle. Game feels half-baked. Control is only allowed with a keyboard and joystick - if mouse is clicked it crashes. Freedom of movement is low and story is forced and linear. Game is quite short and can be cleared in 4 hours. 26. Kyouraku no Yakata 嬌烙の館 [990226] 13cm One day hero woke up without memory in a strange building. All the exits are blocked and in order to get out he needs to examine surroundings, contact its inhabitants and gather some sort of keys. Game boasts to be the inventor of pant synthesis system and the keys are actually mixes of appropriate pant voices that open the doors. That makes the difficulty excessively high. But this game is fully voiced and that put a strong signal to voicing visual novels. Length is about 10 hours which is a bit short. 27. Machine Maiden [990226] Evolution Hero has only recently graduated and now he's been hired for a job. He is given the assignment to raise artificial intellect girl named Alia, but commonly known as Doll. What results can he attain in one month? A raising SIM. Gameplay is really boring, but Alia is very nice and pure. SIM elements are almost nonexistent and we mostly only direct where to go. Game got quite famous and spawned a side-story and a sequel, but party this success is owned to famous artist Carnelian. There is also a devil part of the story. 28. Mujintou Monogatari XX 無人島物語XX [990226] Pinpai This time around, nine survivors end up stranded on an island. A mystery explosion happens on the Island in a laboratory. Aoi and Shiori are amongst the survivors of six girls and three men. They are all isolated and stranded with no means of communication. These girls find out that the purpose of the laboratory is to transplant one's thoughts and emotions into the body of a victim. No one has come to rescue them and the beautiful girls are attacked one by one as they struggle for survival. Compared to prequel system complexity is increased and now each girl gets a separate ending. The aim of the game is to find 20 hidden pieces of a boat and escape the island together with a girl of your choice. 29. Shoukansha 召喚者 [990226] MBS Truth A long time has passed since the great collapse originating from the fighting inside the royal family. The art of summoning that caused so much confusion on the continent has disappeared from the memory of people. But the unrest still goes on exhausing people. These times got the name of Times of Chaos. The story starts as Nash the adventurer travels in the forest. He meets fairy girl who sets to accompany him and many other girls on the way. This is an MBS Truth game, so abandon all illusions, it's just a H game. But still fantasy setting is much more appealing than previous titles. At the same time the presence of fairy companion widens the horizons of communication. There is at least one minigame since I got stuck at the spot where you need to place four different girl images in correct order. 30. Wake ~Futari dake no Himitsu~ 理由 ~二人だけの秘密~ [990226] Draconium Hero has to transfer from a boys' city school to a mixed town private school due to his father job circumstances. He's appointed responsible for the festival preparation and all his team members are beautiful girls. Thus the spring of his life begins. Just can't take this work seriously even with an opening - the graphics are too dreadful. The gameplay is also bad since you need to move around some 15 town buildings and each move advances time, which inevitably brings save and load pain and charts drawing. 31. Kohakuiro no Namida 琥珀色の涙 [990227] Ange Max and his wife worked at police. But 10 years ago his wife got killed during a police operation and Max has led repeated, alcohol-dependent life ever since. One winter day at the dusk he and general store owner Koharu find a mysterious girl Mil in metal collar and shackles. Koharu persuades Max to give the girl shelter just for one night and Mil stays to live with him. Max falls in love with Mill and decides to protect her instead of his deceased wife that he could not protect. Normal adventure. The ending is decided by choices towards Mill and Koharu. It's some kind of nakige, but lack of voicing and weird graphics don't really leave much place for sympathy here. -
Chiruhana ~Kindan no Ketsuzoku~ 散櫻 ~禁断の血族~ [C's Ware]
kivandopulus posted a blog entry in Vndbreview
Foreword: I've been mesmerized by C's Ware games for quite a long time by now and I could not miss this work even though it's not my type of game at all. Title: Chiruhana ~Kindan no Ketsuzoku~ Developer: C's Ware Date: 1999-01-29 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v2662 Length: 3 hours. There might be slightly more if you look for side H-events and look in non-plot rooms all the time. Game type: Mystery suspense detective story. Difficulty: Zero. Linear. Synopsis: Your uncle dies, and you investigate his mysterious manor. Structure: There are five chapters and each chapter ends with a murder save for fifth chapter that finalizes the game. Character Design rating: 6/10 Protagonist rating: 5/10 Story rating: 6/10 Game quality: 8/10 Overall rating: 6/10 Rating comments: Don't be led astray by the low scores - game is of high quality and is enjoyable. Mystery is well developed and I failed to guess the culprit. Well, I have not guessed the culprit not even once in my whole life, anyway. Low scores were almost inevitable and they come from the setting and from game length. You can't really extend manor mystery to 30 hours (Nocturnal Illusion managed to do that only thanks to torturing bruteforce gameplay). And you can't develop characters in action-driven mystery story. Game did everything it could - it produced a thrilling fast-paced story and created a nice mystery layer on top of that. It could be much worse if it tried to extend length or try to develop characters. Protagonist: There are two - mansion owner's nephew Shiraishi Minoru and mansion owner's granddaughter Chisato. Minoru is quite an ordinary young man without distinct traits. Chisato is kind of tsundere and tomboy. Characters: There are quite many characters - initially - hehe. The two most noticable are mansion owners' daughter and mother of four kids Michiyo-sama as she eventually pairs up with Minoru in investigation. Minoru's senior, investigator Kaneshima-san also comes to the mansion on the following day and he eventually pairs up with Chisato in investigation. Basically, Kaneshima-san is the only one who actually investigates and everyone else only a hindrance to investigation. But the most memorable are probably twins Tomomi and Tomoka. They are totally synced in speech so that one usually starts the phrase and the other one finishes it. Several phrases they speak together in unison. And you always hear their lauch, like a pair of small bells ringing and that laugh at some point drives Minoru to the point of craziness and he can't sleep and see them in every room following him. Another example of brilliantly enhanced atmosphere. Story: It's not the murder that's terrifying but the way how it's done - mansion owner's neck was cut and he was hanged on a sakura tree upside down. Many old legends show up featuring ghosts and evil revenge spirits that kill only men and the whole game this atmosphere is kept up which is great. Mansion inhabitants are paralyzed with primal fear and police only comes to assert the deaths as suicide. Minoru's senior Kaneshima-san is the only one who is able to think sober and analyze the facts. He finds a hidden room inside the mansion where some kind of laboratory exists and tries to link the deaths with poisoning. Only couple of deaths seem to linked to poisoning and the others are done much more brutally with piercing wounds. So is it an evil spirit ravaging or are there several culprits? We'll find it out eventually. CG: Cool CG in adequate quantity. HCG: I liked it that there are only H-events and they mostly are of soft nature and very very short, some 30 lines or so. They bear much artistic value. I especially liked the fact that melon-chest maids aren't having any scene in the main plot. Game's CG shows that they have a scene, but in order to get it it's probably needed to check non-plot highlighted rooms all the time. Sound: Full voicing. Even for both protagonists. One of BGM was irritating since it had one very high pitch moment deafening me and making voices unrecognizable, but lowering bgm volume helped. Also I'd like to notice that most of BGM are very lively yet old-mannered corresponding to Taisho era, so it's not a depressing game. Just with some atmospheric features. Themes: 1) It's not a theme, but rather a symbol. Blossoming sakura. It always had the most sweet reminiscences. Chiruhana treats it another way. Pink. Light red. Dark red. Red as carpet. It's the color of beautiful flowers that bring bad omen. Sakura demands blood. This symbol is repeated over and over with words an visuals and creates a specific atmosphere. Overall comments: It was very difficult to make something good from such synopsis and game succeeded in that. Mystery remained strong till the very end and numerous details made the atmosphere really thrilling. The end was very satisfactory for me as every murder is explained. It's not my type of the game, but if you have a taste for good quality short atmospheric mystery murder story, it's much advised. -
Refrain Love 2 and Ikusa Megami are masterpieces of the month, but my preference goes to Ikusa Megami 1. Another ONE [990101] APPLE Project Short story collection based on ONE visual novel. Stories depict feelings of girls after Kouhei Orihara leaves. Main feature of this work is a music cd disk and nice illustrations. Stories deal with depiction of feelings rather than events. 2. DEBAG GAME 1-2-3 DEBAG GAME 1-2-3 [990101] LANGuex A collection of three short stories created just to test vertical text layout and some some experimental features. Really? It's worse than doujin. 3. Tutorial Game チュートリアルゲーム [990101] LANGuex Short scenario that works as a tutorial of how the nbook engine differs from other game systems. A student ends up teaching a young female teacher how to use computers. She has her own past to get over, though. Also, there's another teacher with his eyes on her. Same as DEBAG GAME, but an attempt to make a bit longer story. 4. Ai-chan for Me ~Maid Choukyou Hen~ あいちゃん for Me~メイド調教編~ [990113] Ume Soft Hero receives a letter from his friend inviting him to apply for a job in a mansion. There he meets three newly employed maids and chooses one of them to take care of his needs as man. The next day he is tasked by the mansion owner to train the same maid and he takes the job since he cares for the girl. Each girl has mental shackles and it depends on the main character whether the shackles are to be lifted or tightened. Girl can be trained either in obedience or in love. Concept is same as SEEK, but realization is much weaker. 5. Higeki ~Nightmare Come True~ 悲劇 ~NIGHTMARE COME TRUE~ [990114] Saint Hero is a medical student, the son of a hospital manager. One day he receives a letter with instructions how to insult each of his girl acquaintances. He attacks the girls one after another. What's the truth behind insult instructions? Game progresses by choosing destination on the map. First insult is mandatory, next there are three girls to choose from - and depending on the order the story changes slightly. Game's also full of bugs which makes it a 100% kusoge. 6. Hotaru Mau Yoru 螢舞う夜 [990114] Aquarium A girl left this world in an accident without confessing her true feelings. The following morning Yui Uchiura and his childhood friend witnessed the Poltergeist phenomenon and consulted with the shrine maiden. She suggested that they lived at the shrine till she found the way to release the spirit. Instead of horror it turns out to be love comedy with two heroines. Game is very short and there are only three choices throughout it. Events take place during several days which follows by ending. There are multiple endings here. Even though the game is called night of fireflies it's a bit severe to show fireflies in the mids of the winter. Quite a crappy work. 7. Hunter [990114] Ast New anti-cancer drugs raise metabolic abilities of human beings. Although it is an effective medicine, it is difficult to control and experiments are being held on animals only. The experiment on a monkey finally showed good results, but it escaped the laboratory and now hero with a partner need need to find the species within a day. There are three girl partners available to choose from. Game's about making tough decisions and surviving since you're constantly given choice of two options. Operation is mouse only which is very painful and text rendering is slow even on highest speed. 8. Jumoku Hime 樹木姫 [990114] Desire While picking fruit and herb in a forest with his maid, our guy got hit on the head and tied under a sacred tree. When his secretary/bodyguard/wife found him, he had lost some of past two months memory. His first assassin suspects are his secretary and three maids. Later on, he found that either there is an assassin hiding in the forest or something strange is going on. Can he find out what in 10 days while loving one of the girls? Multiple scenario suspense adventure. Quite engaging as long as intrigue persists. Graphics are nice, but nothing special. BGM is nice, but there's no voicing. Story is ok, but pales in comparison with better representatives of the genre. 9. Mori no Nyanko 森のにゃんこ [990114] Segue Laboratory Cat-girl Kyoku Ran lives in the forest together with her mother. One day she gets on a tree in search of bird eggs and discovers a girl with wings on a tree. The girl does not remember her name, so Kyoku gives her name Kotori-chan. They start to explore this forest together. The story has a lot of choices that lead to H events and bad endings as a result. And the image of forest inhabitants who violate other species is really scary. The work is mostly to enjoy clean cute pictures and full voicing. 10. Prostudent Good ぷろすちゅ★でんとGood [990114] Alice Soft 1 The time is 2005 in Japan. The world has received word that aliens shall invade Earth. Therefore, Japan set up a robot group called Yugoku to fend off the aliens when they come. However, eventually the aliens did not come, so Yugoku was all for nothing. Meanwhile, the Japanese government was totally corrupted, and Yugoku decided to use their robot army to overthrow the government. There is an English review of the game. 11. Roommate W ~Futari~ ルームメイトW ~ふたり~ [990114] Datam Polystar You've got a new roommate and not just one, but two! Greetings and salutations to Kaori and Yamaguchi. This is a side-kick of the series. For the first time there is no Ryoko, but your roommate visits the same school as Ryoko did and she's referred to as "legendary sempai". This work also was only released for Saturn and has lower production values. One girl studies at school and the other one works as a nurse and thus she has night shifts all the time. Basically, you need to choose between them since you can't possible stay up 24 hours a day. This game feels inferior to prequels. 12. Seiiki ~Nageki no Usagi~ 聖域 ~嘆きのウサギ~ [990114] Mesa Hero is invited to an isolated island prison camp to analyze a girl's psyche. The six prisoners who he is in charge for start to disappear one after another. Hero has to go through temptation and traps to unravel the mystery of the isolated island campus. Exploration game moving around the same locations, gathering items and triggering events. There are hints when you get stuck and two big endings await as a prize. Every little mistake leads to a premature death. Story is ok if you like dark suspense. 13. Sweet Summer Dreamin' -Kono Natsu Yume Miru Musume-tachi- Sweet Summer Dreamin’ -この夏・夢みる娘たち- [990114] Shicchinmanpou Hero gives a ride to gentleman walking across the bridge and gets an offer to work for him as a driver as a result. The gentleman turns out to be an enterprise chief, and working for him will get hero acquainted with many women from chief's entourage. There are several fork choices determining whether we set up with some girl or move on with the story to discover new girls. Girl types vary a lot - there is a hostess, chief's wife, chief's daughter, daughter's friend etc. 14. Custom Reido カスタム隷奴 [990121] Kiss 1 Arisugawa high school is a prestigious girls' school well known around the world. Hero inherits from his uncle as the director of this school. The school turns out to be a slave training organization on a nationwide scale with a deep connections to the political and financial world. And it's main character's job to fulfill all kind of custom slave requests. Just the SEEK training type, but game series has become very famous because it allowed user extensions. That's really all I care to know about this series. 15. True Love Story 2 トゥルーラブストーリー2 [990121] ASCII Corporation The protagonist has just been moved with his sister Kimiko to a new town, due to the sudden transfer of their parents. Suddenly, a bunch of girls arrive in his life: his childhood friend, a tomboy, a clumsy junior, a silent classmate... Love has arrived to his life. Prequel was mostly notable by "walking home" sideview system and that remains intact. Instead for seasons now there are three semesters and each semester has its own cd, so the number of events increased greatly. Number of heroines decreased to four main and two limited time ones. Heroines characters are quite realistic. One play-through is about 4 hours, but replay-ability is great. 16. Hiiragi Sou ~Onaji Yane no Shita de~ ひいらぎ荘~同じ屋根の下で~ [990122] Pias 1 The story is actually about you the player trying to take the deed of the house for this "mysterious boss" guy. The only way to gain the deed and have the girls move out is to go undercover. And this is where your job comes in... There is an English review for this game. 17. Yureru Omoi ~Triangle Love Story~ ゆれる想い~Triangle Love Story~ [990122] Air Field Kotaro Hito is a student who left Kobe for Tokyo alone to enter university. He has left the girl of his love interest in Kobe but in Tokyo there even more temptations. The love story over two cities begins now. Fresh feature is that we get to choose our university specialization but that usually only affects the ending. Game takes a period of three months and we should take decisions for each day of it. There are 8 heroines and as many as 52 endings (basically each heroine multiplied for each occupation). Events are placed loosely and there can be the time that there's a whole month without events. Even though the game is called "love triangle" there is no special emphasis on two main heroines - everyone is equal. So it's a very painful, cheap, generic game with opening theme being its strongest side. 18. Tokimeki Check-in! ときめきCheck in! [990124] Crowd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Takayuki Yamano is a boy who simply wishes to break away from his family's tradition, running Yamano Inn, which is a hot spring resort where the most beautiful girls come from miles around for vacation time. One could easily question his sanity, as did his employers. Being rejected for the millionth time, he sadly returns to Yamano Inn to work as manager/butler. You've got three days to choose to follow and woo the girl of your choice. Game is localized and has English reviews. 19. Refrain Love 2 リフレインラブ2 [990128] Riverhill Soft inc. In April hero decided to move to Sakurazaki Town to enter university there. He rents a room in Scarlet Hall apartments. These several months he will spend together with his university colleagues and other boarding house members. Another quality species among galge. One distinctive feature is that age is set much higher than usual. Another one is that standing sprites are animated... that's a very refreshing view. Unlike first old work SIM elements are excluded so can play without restraint. That all and lovely heroines create lots of charm for this work. 20. Chiruhana ~Kindan no Ketsuzoku~ 散櫻 ~禁断の血族~ [990129] 1 Your uncle dies, and you investigate his mysterious manor. I've prepared a full review. 21. Datenshi 堕天使 [990129] Noise Minoru Nagata is hit by a car and regains consciousness at the edge of hell. The mysterious voice tells him to obtain the "proof of life" that an angel has if he wants to return to the Earth. However, the maze of hell is inhabited by strange monsters and and the angel would not surrender without a fight as well... We start in front of several portals containing various monsters, but eventually find the portal to the apartment where some girl lives. She jumps to the hell portal trying to run away from the hero and their weird adventures at hell begin. Apart of that it's very close to the previous game Daite. Wrong moves lead to premature game over, right moves bring continuation with new weird situations. 22. Ikusa Megami 戦女神 [990129] Eushully 1 2 3 4 5 Celica Sylphil obtained the body of a goddess by slaying her. As a result, he was chased by gods and nations, and hunted by assassins until the ‘water miko’, the guardian saint of the holy nation of Rewinia. During the Battle of Dounel, he lost almost all of his divine power while defeating the evil dragon Aracale. Rewinia was saved, but he had become a soul-less female body. Before he had time to recover his wounds, the ‘water miko’ requested that he head to the Rerun area to investigate the disappearance of the princess of Rewinia 18 years ago. Following the Rewinian order of knights who had left before him, he arrived to find a giant labyrinth. Will he be able to uncover the truth and regain his lost power? Game has English reviews. 23. Mahjong Mokushiroku まあじゃん黙視録 [990129] West Gate Shinichi Sakurai is the protector of justice of mahjong world. One day the general of mahjong world is overthrown by a group of assassins, and the Mahjong Federation announces the world mahjong martial arts festival as a retaliatory measure in order to eliminate the soldiers of the back mahjong world. Of course hero gets an invitation letter as well. What a pile of crap of a plot. As usual, there is story mode and just mahjong mode. The reviews are very displeasing. That's as far as my investigation goes. 24. Zenjidou Saishuu Shori Ningyou Kururu-chan 全自動最終処理人形クルルちゃん [990129] A2 Near future. Inventor created three automatic muppet dolls. There story starts as a boy and a girl find them. This is a bakage with 15 patterns of scenarios to unfold. Stories are vertical text and rakugo style, so that's an amusing read, but hard to do sequentially. There's lots of H-events as well. 25. Gray Judge [990130] Sorciere Near future where security structures are privatized. Sakura Genichiro works for a microscopic police company. He will resolve incidents together with his female companions. There are four different cases to resolve. There is an ending for each of five heroines, but not all of them are available from the beginning. Story tries to be hard boiled, but lacks tension for it. There is no integral line, so after four different cases it's an abrupt end - very disappointing.
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Year 1998 has become a year of hope for me. After very devastating transition year 1997 there are so many joys and wonderful games at last. Running a bit ahead, there is a 50% increase both in total number of games and in number of listed games resulting in the record number of masterpieces this year. Let's prolong the chart. VN per year Year Total 1991 75 1992 80 1993 121 1994 155 1995 180 1996 183 1997 202 1998 303 The split is exactly the same featuring 50/50 eroge and galge market and 50% galge market with some additional titles blocked for other than eroge reasons. But look at the numbers, there is a 50% increase in every number compared to 1997. Finally industry got out of slump and gains momentum. Let's see what year 1998 brought: The complete shift to Win95-98 platform resulted in dramatic increase in resolution and colors with most works having 256 colors and some reaching 16 bit colors. With dating SIM dominance substantial shift to pure love stories the number of heroines decreases significantly to just 4-5 and in some cases to just two as in With You ~Mitsumete Itai~ or even one as in DiaboLiQuE without decreasing the volume. There is a significant number of works where hero is already in relations with the main heroine, but has an option to cheat on her. The starter of that tendency is White Album. There is a surprising influx of mahjong games, but most of them are blocked as eroge due to having strip element on losing. Contrary to 1997 there were a lot of major games in 1998. So here is my 1997 masterpieces list. 1. Castle Fantasia ~Seima Taisen~ 2. Cross Tantei Monogatari ~Motsureta Nanatsu no Labyrinth~ 3. Double Cast 4. Doukoku Soshite... 5. EVE: The Lost One 6. Exodus Guilty 7. First Kiss☆Story 8. Hajimari no Kisetsu ~Izakaya Fuyu Monogatari~ 9. Kisetsu o Dakishimete 10. Kuon no Kizuna 11. Love Escalator 12. luv wave 13. One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~ 14. With You ~Mitsumete Itai~ Fourteen. A decent number. What especially pleases the eye is that there are many RPGs and console games. PS1 and Saturn production values were still much bigger than their PC counterparts and that attracted talented story-writers. There are a lot of worthy games in this list, but my heart was stolen by luv wave as soon as I saw it. It's the most serious work in my favorite setting that rose the most of topics for thought. It's a very subjective feeling, of course.
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Kuon no Kizuna is the only masterpiece of December 1998 1. Kuon no Kizuna 久遠の絆 [981203] FOG 1 2 3 4 5 6 This story starts out from the perspective of a high school student. One day a transfer student comes to his school, and tells him she’ll kill him. At the same time, he starts seeing weird dreams and people mysteriously gets killed in his city. Soon he realizes that them two are incarnated personalities of a man and a goddess that fell in love 1000 years ago. Since then, they have been trapped in a cycle of reincarnation and a battle against an evil god. Game has English reviews. 2. Boku no Tame ni Kane wa Naru 僕の為に鐘は鳴る [981204] Image Craft Main hero is a salary-man who is tired of work. He feels depressed and even his lover can't make him relax. As a coincidence, he witnesses a love scene of his boss and office lady which invigorates him with excitement. He starts to push his acquaintance girls to hook with other men. NTR peeping fetish related work, but there are also ways to advance the story without other men participating. There is even a happy ending. 3. Dragon no Tiara ドラゴンの姫冠 [981204] Pinky Soft The world where the civilized society collapsed with the appearance of the phantom beasts. You go on a journey on king's request to discover "Dragon's Tiara" item. An RPG game with map movement, battles, level rising etc. Hero mostly fights lizards and dragons who are actually beautiful girls with different kind of horns. HCG are of specific drawing and with abuse of breast expansion. 4. Injuu no Ikenie 淫獣のいけにえ [981204] Motion 3D dungeon exploration in search for monsters' king while rescuing girls from monsters and tentacles on the way. Battles are done with cards mechanic. Movement is exhausting since can't control with keyboard. Game's about HCG and animated H scenes, ofc. 5. Kanpai 乾杯 [981204] h.m.p 1 As the title of the game tells it all, it is a game mainly about drinking beer..Typically, you just hang around with a couple of friends either in a bar, karaoke, or a club. During the time you also got introduced to some girls that either was your friends' friend or her friend that was dragged along for having fun. There is an English review. 6. Kokoro... コ・コ・ロ… [981204] Aaru 1 2 Kuonji Souji seems to have it all going for him. He is handsome, popular and excels at his club activities. His past is another thing altogether -- as a boy, he was raped repeatedly by his foster parents. The years have passed, and he has tried to forget by repressing those memories. They are still there, though, and come to him as hallucinations. Who is the raven-haired beauty he keeps seeing in those visions? Does she hold the key to unlock his past? There is an English review. 7. Love Seed [981204] Voice Distant future, another galaxy. There are five star systems each forming a nation. You are a freelance captain of a spaceship and can take missions varying from good transportation to pirates elimination and sometimes even revealing nation scale conspiracies. The whole universe is before you! This work is very special, because it was the first work to try and imitate the unique Kichikuou Rance system. In Love Seed there are dozens of characters to capture and simultaneous capture is also allowed. There are at least 40 heroines present. There has not been another such global game till Daiakuji in 2001. This game is not as polished as above mentioned Alice Soft games, but it's a huge enterprise. 8. 5th Luna フィフスルナ [981205] Platinum Soft Hero finally graduated from the university, but his girlfriend decided not to wait for him and was dating another man already. While walking the streets in frustration he was dragged into a suspicious shop and appeared in another solar system. He was recruited as a pilot to save that Arlheim planet. "Fifth Luna" consists of movement, adventure part, selection phase and the actual shooting action part. So it's an action game where you move alongside an ally - one from air, another from the earth. There are 5 stages and different difficulty levels so that even newbies could reach the end. 9. Gin'iro no Ki ~Konayuki no Photograph~ 銀色の樹 ~粉雪のフォトグラフ~ [981210] Blue Bell Hero is afraid of women after drinking party where he was assaulted by one of them. Now he's set to overcome his phobia and get a girlfriend by the Christmas. Why must hero be raped by women even before game starts... The game has four heroines filled into two scenarios with one being main one and another side one demanding certain conditions. It has SIM elements since there are parameters to reach. 10. Hotaru ほたる [981210] Bell-Da It's bad luck that our guy got hit by his student's car. This put him in her father's hospital, without memory of his past. Will she or her two sisters be able to help him regain his memory? Or will he regain some memory that has been long buried? Bell-da works are mostly ero-oriented, so I tend to block most of them. At least this time scenario is ok. Hero thinks of himself as a hero of justice and the hospital as a secret organization hideout. 11. Maid Ikuseikan メイド育成館 [981210] Melty Lip Hero is invited to educate maids of the house. Training SIM about nurturing skills like cleaning, laundry, manners etc, but also about giving private lessons at night. System-wise looks very similar to Maid Monogatari by C's Ware. 12. Desert Time Mugen no Meikyuu デザートタイム 夢幻の迷宮 [981211] Software House Parsley 1 One day a huge mystery dungeon appeared in the middle of the desert. A number of hidden treasures were discovered there and the rumor spread all over the world. As you step inside, you are challenged by girl wizard. A huge explosion occurs and everyone got sucked under the sand. Now you need to get back to ground floor and maybe even further. Balance is bad. Message speed is too slow and non-adjustable. Story does not develop far beyond synopsis. Girls lack unique approach, capturing is totally the same. So systems are lacking and there's pretty much nothing but gameplay. 13. Flowers ~Kokoro no Hana~ Flowers ~ココロノハナ~ [981211] Craftwork Ryusei Ryousen is a 2nd year high school student. His school has just recently been co-educated from all girls school. There are only three boys in school and a lot of wonderful girls around the hero. Which one will be chosen by the April? We attend school and make decisions where to go during lunch break and after school. There's hardly any story besides that, but a great emphasis is put to getting to know characters during conversations. They look like real persons, not just moe abbreviations. Game was advertised with a lengthy description of flowers and that they need the proper soil to grow. Game text is full of comical references. So gameplay is not good, but it's easy to get interested in these nice girls. 14. Lost Memories ロストメモリーズ [981211] Nouvelle One evening on a rainy day in April Naoto meets a girl who is shivering and looks like a thrown cat. He takes her home. She lost her memory but reacts to the name Alice. As she starts to gradually recover the memory she is confused by memory contents and conflicts. What's the truth behind her past? It's an multi-end adventure so capturing of side-characters is also possible. There is time urgency and it's game over if you don't click in time. It's actually easy to get stuck and get to a state when there are no more encounters possible due to missed encounters. It's a rare example of the game that's very torturing to move on even with a walkthrough. 15. Medical Fellows めでぃかるFellows [981211] Kingdom Shimamura Kazito just got a doctor's license. He has never had any interest in girls and his monther and aunt conspired that his medical team would include only beautiful women. Can hero become a fin doctor? Which way will love fly? There are four heroines and after first few days story falls in the route of the girl with the most favorability. Girls routes follow the same pattern and feel cheap. Heroes try to be funny and fail at it hugely. 16. Nyuuin 入院 [981211] 13cm A day before entrance to the university hero is hit by a car and hospitalized. But these three weeks of his life will be an unforgettable experience. Maybe he can even find love there? There are more than 10 girls to chase. It's possible to focus on pure love story with comedy touch as well as only on different fetish H events. Heroines have lots of emotions that are fun to watch. 17. Omatase! Pai Pai Pie! Christmas Special おまたせっ! パイ牌PIE! クリスマススペシャル [981211] Bags Mahjong undressing game with three beautiful sisters. Game's normal mahjong, but without save/load feature, so it's really difficult to clear. It's also buggy. 18. Shamanic Idol Milky Humming シャーマニック・アイドル みるきぃ・はみんぐ [981211] Medusa It is the story of an idol who fights monsters with the power of singing. An ero-centered bakage. Game's very short and ends in 30 minutes. It's full of animation, but poor quality one. It resembles old Sogna titles the most. 19. Sonnet ~Kokoro Kasanete~ sonnet~心かさねて~ [981211] Blue Gale Winder vacations approach and hero gets uneasy. He looks around and finds several girls that he previously considered unfriendly. Will he be able to find a familiar soul from 1st to 24th December or shall he spend Christmas alone? Looks like Christmas is locomotive of Japanese demography. There are a lot of heroines to choose from. And inside each heroine route there is an angel and a devil path resulting in good end and bad end. Since there is such a big number of routes/paths each story lacks uniqueness. Still, a good quality general product. 20. Tenshi Ningyou 天使人形 [981211] JAST Co., Ltd. Edepus is a high school student. One day he gets to know that his lord father died and thus he needs to take care of the mansion and the servants himself. Taking care of servants (who are called "slaves" for some reason) inevitably leads to a spree of H events and I did not care to investigate any further. 21. Tonari no Onee-san となりのお姉さん [981211] Nikukyuu Haunted by the memory of his ideal woman, Masahiko is determined not to lose his virginity until he finds her again. Too bad his memory sucks and he can`t remember who she is. While Masahiko is dreaming of his mystery woman, he may not have a choice in waiting for her much longer! It seems that everyone wants a piece of him lately. At work, his sex-starved boss is looking for a little action while her husband is out of town. At home, a very buxom childhood friend moves in and leaves him drooling. At college, he`s become the target of both his professor and a sly sexy student stalker who manages to pop up in the most unusual places! To top it off, Asuka, one of his neighbors, is secretly harboring her own fantasies about him! With this amount of sexual frustration swirling around him, can he possibly manage to hold out for the girl of his dreams. Game proceeds as a strong bakage. There are five heroines as candidates, but oneesan is only one of them. Game has SIM elements as you move around different spots trying to remember facts about oneesan. If a different subheroine is found at the spot, your energy depletes. If subheroine is met when energy is at 0, that heroine attacks and the game enters into femdom H event. So success is only possible by visiting the right places and escaping all the subheroines. 22. Vampire Tokyo e Iku ヴァンパイア東京へ行く [981211] Sweet Basil Hero is half vampire half human who goes all the way from Transylvania to Japan in order to take revenge on the girls that bullied him when he was young. Introduction is nice, but upon arriving to Japan it's the case of bullying and reverse bullying. Some women are so fierce that vampire can only obey. Girls backgrounds are weird like exorcist, a nympho, a warwolf etc. There just aren't proper girls to take revenge on. There are a lot of endings prepared, but those mostly have to do with some H fetish. 23. Young Shakti ヤングシャクティ [981211] Shakti A collection of six short stories. 1.「Sweet Love」 2.「Bunny's Love」 3.「SF・饅頭こわい」 4.「夏日和」 5.「くそゲーのすすめ」 6.「あゆみガッツ!」 Stories are done as manga strips and are inevitably ero-focused. 24. Magical Kanan まじかるカナン [981217] Terios 1 2 3 A magical creature went to the normal world to retrive some seeds. He lost his power and fainted. A girl found him and took him home. Well, this creature became a man after gaining back his power, which surprised the girl some. An incident happened and she became a magical fighter with his kiss. Things start to get complicated as they try to get the seeds and with most people not being what they seem. Light comic work with great CG. It starts with few choices but as routes are cleared new choices become available. There's no parody in game text and watching Magical Canon animation would probably bring a comparable experience as playing the game, save for HCG. It hugely lacks in the story department though. 25. P.S. [981217] Uran 1 You play as a college student named Hiroyuki, and the story centers around an internet site called "P.S.". The site consists of five different women who live dual lives, as they each have a darker side to them that reveals their true sexual identities. There is Akane, an elevator girl who is into exhibitionism; there is Aoi, a secretary who likes to be raped; there is Haruka, a sports instructor and Kaoru, a flight attendant, who are both into heavy and public masturbation; and finally there is Sakura, a TV newscaster, who is into something called "scat"(you may find that very disturbing and offensive). There is also Jun, who is Hiroyuki's tomboyish girlfriend. Hiroyuki plays as "master" of the P.S. site and to the five women. There is an English review. 26. Bibou Vintage Kaikan 2 美貌ヴィンテージ 壊館2 [981218] Hyperspace Hero is approached by a beautiful woman dressed in leather. She offers one million yen for training some pets. Hero agrees since in worst case the pet would be a lion and he has enough courage to do such job for a million yen. But it turns out that the pets are women... Miltiple ending insult SIM. There are four women to train. There are parameters to raise on talking and on actions. 27. Bus Girl ~Geki - Dai Enkai Ryojou Hen~ バスガール~激・大宴会旅情編~ [981218] Interheart One year ago main character abandoned his hometown and his lover to chase his dream in a Tokyo company. As the season of travel comes the company employees go on a bus trip. Game lasts for 4 days and 3 nights with the flow of banquet - after banquet - sightseeing spot. H event takes place after banquet. Happy ending is only possible if the same woman is chosen for all three nights. Hero hardly talks at all and scenario is non-existent. It's just a H-focused game, after all. 28. Corsage コサージュ [981218] Studio Folio Main heroine Yumiko has heart wounds due to tragic past love experiences and is afraid to open her heart. She holds a photo studio where she organizes nude shooting sessions for girls in need of money. Will Yumiko ever be able to get close to someone again? It's basically a whirlpool of H events. There are four endings prepared depending on the choices taken. Quite an ordinary ero-focused game with the only distinguishing feature being woman viewpoint. 29. Hanketsu 判決 [981218] Speed Hero is a prosecutor in a trial held for a consecutive rape case. To prove the case women testimonies are needed. You need to delicately take them out of their state of shock, heal their heart wounds when possible and reveal the truth, of course. SIM mainstream gradually changes for ADV mainstream and this studio works are a good example of it. It's very different from normal court games in that main events happen out of the court and many H-events are shows as flashbacks. Drugs are also involved. Volume is quite small and girls stories get crumpled by that. It's a rough work, but with a fresh look. 30. Haru Aki Fuyu ni nai Jikan はるあきふゆにないじかん [981218] Trabulance The long title means time that is not in Spring, Autum and Winter, which is Summer. Anyway, it's another year of no girlfriend for our guy. While thinking about why, which is that his first love met badly with a car when he was 8 years old, he got hit by a car and woke up near a weird mansion. Girls and people that he can't remember know him. It turns out that he is 10 years back in the past. Since this game messes with time, things are a bit confusing. He can chase after 4 girls(or so), some in the past and some in the present. If he can save his first love, things are even more confusing. The synopsis is intriguing, but in practice the stage of the game is not described properly, situations change frequently and information is clustered to tiny bits everywhere. Text is not good and that all makes things very confusing. That resulted in poor reception by the gamers followed by oblivion. 31. Kekkou Suki Kamo けっこうスキかも [981218] Lip Harassment of girls by invisible hero in interactive manner. Not hookable and the title and CG row don't leave any doubts that it's an ero-focused title. 32. Maid in Heaven MAID iN HEAVEN [981218] PIL The protagonist has a dream to have a maid someday. One day, his childhood friend, Nagisa, visits him. When they were children, he told Nagisa that he liked maids. Nagisa remembered his words and came to him as a maid. Finally his dream came true and he begins to enjoy his night life with her... PIL ero-focused maid SIM with some comedy. It seems to be really popular, but I could not care less. 33. Satsuki no Kimochi さつきのキモチ [981218] Optimist Satsuki who is one year younger than the hero starts taking moves towards him. Hero is busy with approaching exams and has a hard time noticing that increased attention. There's hardly a synopsis to the game. The first play-through takes... just 18 minutes. But with each playthrough new branches appear adding development to the story. The time for total capture hardly surpasses an hour, so it feels more like a CG collection loosely connected by sentences. Satsuki is totally missing attraction points and developers never bothered about her character. 34. Shoujo 少女 [981218] Curott Hero becomes a tutor for three sibling girls. Game deliberately puts up a simplest ever title and synopsis. But it has its charm. Initially you're given a set of questions and those determine the number of CG. Characters managed to feel unique. 35. Triangle Heart とらいあんぐるハート [981218] Janis 1 Triangle Heart's story is basically a normal school life. You have time from December to your graduation to find a girl you can love. There are six girls, two of them are your childhood friends, but there isn't any "love triangle" between them. There is also a secret special character. Game has an English review. 36. Wish Well ウィッシュウェル [981218] Agumix Distant future. Interstellar navigation is common and humankind together with alien races populated most of the known galaxies. Galactic Integrated Space Army was created to protect confederation. A young man transferred to its academy in order to join this elite military unit. Raising SIM + tactical SIM. We raise stats during the classes and have lunch and date after school. On holidays there are various events. There are five girls to date. Once per month there is a mech tactical combat with its own rules. 37. 6 Inch My Darling 6インチまいだーりん [981223] KID 1 2 The story follows a high-school student, named by the player, who lives with his parents and a younger sister. During his time off of school he is helping his mom by part-time working at the liquor store. One day, upon returning from school, he stumbled on a buried box while taking a path through the woods. Inside was a strangely shaped figuring with a message on the inside of the box lid. Not sure what it all was about, he left it on the desk and went to sleep. The next day, he heard a voice in his room, and while trying to determine the source of the voice he stumbled upon a small girl by the name of Etosera. And by small, it means 6 inches in size. But she wasn't the only one that appeared due to the mysterious box, two more girls, Minty and Pim, just as well, also became his secret roommates. Thus his next couple of weeks filled with surprises and getting to know each other commence, all the way while they are trying to build trust and assess the relationship with humans, namely, the player. There is an English review. 38. Lord Monarch -Shin Gaia Oukokuki- ロードモナーク -新・ガイア王国記- [981223] Nihon Falcom 1 2 3 4 You are prince Alfred, the son of the great king of Monarch. Since you have been a rather fresh and lazy boy, the king decides to strengthen you by sending you to battle. You are now sixteen, and you must prove you are worthy of being the prince of Monarch! This is a strategy war game. You command an army and can perform various actions, such as sending troops, fortifying your position, allying with another ruler, etc. There are time limits to your strategic operations during which you'll have to defeat the enemy. I'm not really sure why it's here (since strategic part is much bigger than dialogue scenes), but there are some reviews. 39. Precious Love プレシャスLOVE [981224] Black Package End of November. Ogata Kosuke is a third year high school student who has been studying hard to get employment. From a trivial quarrel with his sister he makes a bet that he finds a girlfriend before the holy Christmas night. Raising favorability through repeated contacts, inviting on a date, through skillful conversation enter exchange diary stage or H-event. Exchange diary is not as cool as it sound since it's done via selection of choices. The good part of it is that it contains some H text. Conversation simulation part is the hardest one since there are lots of random subjects and it's difficult to keep guessing good answers. But overall quite good atmosphere is created and impression is good as well, but nothing special. 40. Hana no Kioku Dai 4 Shou 花の記憶 第4章 [981225] Foster Collection of five short erotic stories. 1. Boss leaves office lady for overwork 2. Model girl gets seduced right during the promo gig 3. Quiet girl either goes home for some lesbian action or gets stopped by some guys 4. Girl either gets stalked in the toilet or gets into SM or lesbian activity 5. Policewoman day ends as erotic adventure No scenario, just H scenes with a short prelude. 41. Oisha-san to Issho お医者さんといっしょ [981225] Guts! A fake doctor is playing with mischievous loli girls. Ugh, I'll skip for comments here. 42. Sanatorium サナトリウム [981225] ZyX 1 The main character of this game is a detective named Ryouichi. He and his assistant, Mizuki, were on a way to a sanatorium, a place of remedy for mental illness patients, for investigation as he received a mystery slip asking to save her before next full moon. Upon the arrival of this sanatorium, he realized something strange about this place: everything is too calm. As he begins to investigate, a horrible scheme will survive little by little until the next full moon. There is an English review. 43. Ruriruri るりるり [981229] Lime Green A parody on Sega Saturn hit Kidou Senkan Nadesico: The Blank of 3 Years. Its heroine Hoshino Ruri will know lots of love and insult over these blank three years. The secret of energy transfer between main characters is given original explanation. Doujin crap parasiting on a great story. 44. Eien eien(永遠) [981230] Stage-nana A doujin game based on Tactics' "One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~", with Kawana Misaki as main character. No info 45. Tenshi no Sumu Yakata 天使の住む館 [981230] Nirvana Soft Main characters loses parents and in order to calm down goes to a trip abroad alongside two maids. The rest of the staff resign, but why do these two girls stay loyal until the end? Surprisingly decent quality level for a doujin game made by three people. 46. Pureprime -pianissimo- [9812] Usagi Club One day main character suddenly has to live with his three sisters. Every day is full of laughter now. And every night sisters visit his room and talk about lots of different things... Ancient forgotten doujin 47. Densetsu no Ato de LoveLove no Shou 伝説の後で・ラブラブの章 [9812] G-Work@mi This is a story about how Ryosuke and Makoto became lovers. They meet during spring, play at the sea during summer, participate in the sports festival during autumn and warm up at boy's room during winter. In the last chapter it's possible to request the girl to fulfill sex fetishes. Another ancient H-tilt doujin. 48. Kaijin 怪人 [98] Guilty Player can choose to become either a monster or Akechi. As a monster, humiliate Rina as much as possible. As Akechi, help Rina and enjoy your reward. Doujin crap released in 1997-01-09, actually, but it's discontinued from dlsite RJ007426 for quite some time, so why should we care. 49. Mako-chan to Asobo マコちゃんと遊ぼっ [98] Nyannyan Club Feel free to come in and play with Mako all you want. Of course, H things are allowed. H-tilt doujin that's surprisingly still available ad dlsite 50. Black Album [98] Yoshy Teikoku One year after the music festival, Yuki Morikawa is nominated for the music festival again. Main character is in good standing with her, so one week before the festival he starts to help preparing. How will festival fare and who will be alongside the protagonist by the end of it? Never like parasitism on others stories 51. Via Bianco -Yumi no Baai- ビアビアンカ ~ゆみの場合~ [98] Angler Soft Please play through all kinds of likely and unlikely laughable situations and reach one of the endings with Yumi. Dojin 52. Roots [98] OKOJARA-C Sion is a swordsman of the rank Blood Knight. He does not want to scare people with that title, so she hunts monsters rampaging near towns. Inside the down there are all kinds of facilities for adventurers. But there are also nine different cute girls, including lively girl Dahlia who has a habit of chasing Sion. Why does he stay alone then? Furthermore, he starts to suffer from terrible nightmares as of late... Finally a doujin game that aims for smth bigger that just H events. 53. Slaughter Gate スローターゲート [98] Studio K2 Berserker stalks humans who slaughtered Berserker's home galaxy and escaped to the Magellan Nebula ... New battle is destined to take place at the Slaughter Gate. The whole fleet depends on your actions. What will be your command, captain? Berserver is a series of space strategy games, but this side-game is pure ADV mostly for those who appreciate the series.
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There are quite few quality fantasy adventure stories and this was a quality one for me. My favorite type is kinetic novel, so yeah, royal road video dvd was totally ok as long as I had the story in its fullest. Fantasy stories are usually action driven and it's difficult to place some fancy character traits inside, so characters did not look plain to me. Without real mechanics it really looked very stupid to gather those books of different elements and such. So if someone is willing to read it I suggest rewinding, works perfectly for video. Ctrl+right to jump 1 minute and shift+right to jump 5 seconds are native for VLC. There are not so many descriptions in this game so only dialogues matter anyway, really. I'll keep an eye on next Kanno works at least at least for the sake of categorization. It's easier to remember works if there are some associations linked.
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Foreword: This is Kanno-san's scenario and I could not miss on it. There are a lot of good English reviews on the game so I'll try to just add some additional thoughts I have on top of those reviews. Title: Exodus Guilty Developer: Abel Date: 1998-07-31 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v172 Synopsis:The year 2000. Kasumi Shindo is at first glance a run-of-the-mill high school student in modern-day Japan. However, beneath his normal appearance, Kasumi is in fact a top-notch treasure hunter. This time, Kasumi is aiming to seek out the lost 11th Commandment of Moses. Kasumi discovers that his childhood friend, Reina Tachibana is in southern Europe participating in an archeological dig. Pretending to be a tourist, he visits the excavation area and manages to get put on the excavation staff. But he is not the only treasure hunter looking for the Eleventh Commandment of Moses and before he knows it, he's embroiled in a dangerous adventure. Structure: There are three stories - one 1200 B.C. fantasy story, one 2000 A.D. treasure hunting adventure and 13,800 A.D. future anti-utopia fantasy. Story-lines exist pretty much separately only to be loosely connected by girl Will and flashbacks from the other time to help on puzzles. All the lines coincide in the last chapters of last "Future" Volume 3. So basically I consider first two stories to be preparatory and I'll focus only on 3rd Future story. I feel that the chosen composition is wrong - it's 1st chapter of Past, then 1st chapter of Present, then 1st chapter of Future, then full Present, then full Past, then full Future. In my video walkthrough I went for showing full Past, then full Present, then full Future. This really feels more logical to me since all the roots and the Will story are in the Past. And when seeing all those first chapters one by one and then Present my head was already blowing up from the characters and the kind of mess it created. Length: 21 hour Game type: Epic multi-story ADV with minimal interaction (speaking of DVD version only, ofc) Difficulty: DVD version is supereasy, but I got stuck once at a puzzle that was not properly described. I left a link at VNDB discussions page of the game to prevent other people from wasting time. Character Design rating: 10/10 Protagonist rating: 8/10 Story rating: 9/10 Game quality: 8/10 Overall rating: 9/10 Rating comments: Why such a high score again? Well, VNs are akin to literature, what matters is whether I like it or not. And if I like it, there's no point thinking which one is better. I really loved the story here - arigato, Kanno-san! And that might easily be 10 if I played Japanese pc version. There are a lot of protagonists in this game and I have grudges to some of them. I think I'll develop on it in characters section. I also blame the structure as video is not as engaging as game and pouring all three story lines all at once was very confusing and only belief in Kanno-san actually made me unwind this mess. But when things get clear, it's a very engaging story - thus the high scores. Protagonist: There are too many of them. Characters: There are three sets of characters. The setup of characters on the screen changes a lot with the story. Let's look at characters in bulk, according to their epoch. Past: Main characters cast are a swordsman Ales and his foster mother Masa. Masa bears some strange tattoo and she sends Ales to find Will - another girl with such tattoo since their fates were linked and Mother Spirit was calling to do that for some reason only Gods could understand. But in order to pay a visit to the God one needs to gather sacred books of elements and oracles of those elements. That's pretty much what we do during the whole Past chapter. Of course we find Will as well under strange circumstances. So Ales is a pretty straightforward swordsman who fulfills the will of his mother and who protects those who are dear to him and... pretty much everyone else, even his enemies, lol. This is a traditional fantasy story, so there's no need for quirky characters, but without some gameplay it's quite boring to watch. Well, some of the four oracles are pretty cool/funny so they ease the tensions and their interactions basically save the narration. This part is seinen enough, but it gets to be pretty dull due to very serious characters and lack of fights. Present: From left to right we have Kasumi, Ai's sister Reina and fiance Ai. Reina is much older and already divorced - she is always flirting making Ai mad. Kasumi and Ai actually only met 10 years ago and they they fight all the time over everything. Kasumi is basically interested in money and treasures and he does not really encourage Reina moves. Ai is also quite stingy and only Reina moves bring her tolerance to the brink and she starts acting aggressively to any "oppai" girl near Kasumi. That creates some comical situations, but at the same time is an eternal source of drama. And the further it goes, the more drama it is. So at times it was really nauseating. And at some point I got somewhat disappointed in Kasumi as well. It was at one scene where Kasumi was getting down to the den on a rope. Ai threatens to jump down from that insane height if Kasumi does not take her with him. Here's the exact extract: - If not, I'll kill myself. - Then die. - I will die. - Die right now, here. In less than 10 seconds. - Meanie. I'm going to cry. - Cry if you can. Cry. It's presented in a comical manner, but it was not funny for me. Too much relations hustle, predictable characters' behavior and lack of intelligent talks did not let me enjoy this volume. So it's a great shounen story, but I can only appreciate seinen stuff. Future: The cast from left to right is scientist Titi, secret royal family descendant Sui, self-supporting town boy Tatsuta and Sui's bodyguard Laily. Oh, and don't foget this animal... something (squirrel?) Railulu. Sui basically plays the role of straightforward and cheerful bakagirl while Laily is reserved and she does everything right. Titi is a chatterbox, she usually supports Sui in everything and provides scientific advice when needed. Tatsuta is a usual town boy who lives alone and who this time allows girls to have food and shelter for a mere trifle - wedding Laily! He's pushy and manages to win her heart little by little and this sideline is really nice. Story: I seem to have tackled a lot on story already, so let's finally focus on the main part as I see it - Future 13,800 AD. For 40 years earthquakes and acid rains devastated the Earth burying the scientific civilization and the remaining humanity declared science outlaw in order not to repeat previous mistakes. The royal house monopolized the right for science as people needed to survive somehow in this barren wasteland. Royal house suffers from a spree of coup d'etats and this last king is a very cruel man who's seeking for descendants of former family and especially for a girl matching Sui's description. Sui and Laily's foster mother asked them to find some Uu person and give him the Key of Will. And they have no idea where to search for those. That takes first half of Future story and the second half is meeting the guys from Past and Present and together facing their fate. CG: I seem to be not demanding towards CG quantity but this game has a whole ocean of CG - even many small actions have one. Game really tried to look like an anime so it has some animated sequences and a lot of screen changes. Outside of my habit, I'm not going to post gore CG this time since there aren't many of them and they can be spoilers. HCG: None since it's initially a PS1 and dreamcast game and only much later it got PC version version. It's a very funny version to see since usual CG have low resolution and PC HCG are of very high resolution. Sound: The good part is that it's full voice even with all the protagonists voiced. The bad part is that some lengthy conversations with side characters aren't really voiced or voiced up to 3-4 phrases. It does not hurt at all, but just for the justice sake let's say that it's only about 85% voiced. Humor: Future part is culmination and it has quite much humor in it. One example is that Layla always apologies to Sui and says "It must be in my character". For the first times it looks ok, but later she tells the same thing to the very little notices like you look moody today or is it you stomach growling. There was one fabulous joke when Titi, Sui and Laila with Railulu needed to see guards out and they consequently tried to use sex appeal on them. First Titi failed with her charms, then Sui was ignored and sent off and then came this. Game also uses repeats wisely. In this very scene the fourth try was Layla's and her appearance actually melted men's hearts and maybe something else as well. In another scene later on the three girls were trying to get food and shelter from Tatsuta and he asks a girl to become his wife. Titi and Sui blush and say they're not ready and here's the except: - But let me tell you something, I have no interest in cow breasts or eyeglasses monkeys. - ....Raylulu? What, are you...? That was pretty awesome. Themes: It's mostly and adventure work with pretty straightforward characters, but there are couple themes that I was able to discern: 1) God's will VS human logic. This is the major theme of the game. All the time we're asked to do weird things. Seemingly horrible events occur due to some god's will without much explanation. The future part is the one where this conflict becomes the culmination of the game and heros are confused what to do - blindly follow God's will or send the Gods to hell and try to preserve humanity as it is. You can guess from the game's title which side wins. 2) Sacrifice. There are quite a lot of sacrifices in the game. Sacrifices are the least logical thing to do and yet so many characters choose it over persecuting their own goals. As one of the character explains: "Death is not the end. It's the beginning". Well, it falls in perfectly with the first theme. After all, it's the game about God's will and it's a difficult topic to develop since irrational actions won't get much appeal. Still the game does its best in that and sacrifices are seen as fulfilling some selfish-less desires for the greater good of others and at least look organic with the setting. Overall comments: By now it should be evident that Guilty Exodus was much to my liking even though I tend to dislike religion and shounen stories. My first reaction was akin to that depicted in beliar review. Too much information poured at once, seemingly meaningless dull talks, false drama, religious preaching, random events, lack of gameplay. It's a different work that we usually get to see in visual novels. We got the worst release of the game translated - DVD video one. If it was a different release - it'd be a perfect game and I would not need to rant at all. If it was a different release, we'd need to pay great attention to game progress because it would be a gameplay issue. DVD release is basically a video with just a few meaningless choices so it's easy to get distracted, listen to it only as background and inevitably compare it with compact and fast-paced anime works. Guilty Exodus is very demanding to the player right from the start. It's easy to get confused with all that information. But if you take it seriously, you'll be able to enjoy one of the best stories written by Kanno Hiroyuki, on par even with YU-NO.
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Castle Fantasia ~Seima Taisen~ and Exodus Guilty are the masterpieces of the month and the winner is Exodus Guilty for being the more traditional VN type. 1. Hatsukoi Valentine Special 初恋ばれんたいん SPECIAL [981105] Family Soft In Hatsukoi Valentine Special the game features a new character, a new menu, a small improvement in the gameplay, new sequences, etc. Story same as original game. 2. Situation しちゅえ~しょん [981105] Berserker 1 The game starts with a sex scene and finishes with a sex scene! Actually, there's no story. Just sit back and enjoy erotic scenes to the fullest! Multiple short H stories. 3. Neko na Kankei 猫なカ・ン・ケ・イ [981105] Victor Interactive Software 1 2 A visual novel adventure game focusing on a player who is a regular high school student who one day stumbles upon a special stone that grants him the ability to turn into a cat at will. Using it for evil things or stopping to use it at all will invite bad luck into his life, so he decides to use for getting to know girls he would be too shy to approach as a regular boy. Which girl wouldn't find a little kitty cute and not want to pet it or hold it close to her breasts. It's a win-win situation for our hero, and he is resolved to put it to best use... for him. The game is split into 10 weeks time and plays as a regular dating simulation visual novel romance adventure. And one more dating SIM 4. Fuyajou ~Hikisakareta Junketsu~ 不夜城 ~引き裂かれた純潔~ [981106] Desire Many girls are invited to a party inside the mansion. It's a perfect environment for a new acquaintance. There are four heroines and lots of map movement around the mansion. Basically it's hunting for girl - she keeps escaping and hero keeps finding her spot with H event following. There are also bad endings. 5. Okiraku Heaven おきらくHEAVEN [981106] May-Be Soft I'm dead. But I do not want to die as a virgin! Luckily, I'm given 30 more days to finish my earthly business! H work, but with a comedy touch. There are 6 heroines to capture. Typical May-Be-Soft stuff. 6. Yasashii Ame ~Hitotsu no Kasa ni wa Futari Made Shika Hairenai~ やさしい雨 ~ひとつの傘にはふたりまでしか入れない~ [981106] Juice Hero was a promising cameraman three years ago, but he lost in the harsh profession competition. One day he was delivering photos to a magazine as assistant photographer when the rain suddenly started. He saw a girl hiding from the rain and his dulled vision started to shine as brightly as ever. It's a low-price work from a small developer so it lacks voicing and polishing. There are four heroines and as long as you deliver attention to one of them you get that route. Still, there is a normal end and a bad end for each heroine and true ending is really worth some sweat. 7. Gasshuku Monogatari 合宿物語 [981110] J-Box Swim club school training camp of summer 1995. Boys and girls occupy inn rooms, break into three groups and start everyday physical exercises and swimming practice. Who knows, maybe a new strong feeling is born out of small breaks and joint exercise. Genre is best described as romance comedy. Every day we make choices who to speak to during breaks and gradually form sympathy. Drawing is not refined, but the mood of the game and BGM is bright. 8. Another Mind アナザー・マインド [981112] Square Co. 1 2 3 4 5 A 16 year-old girl named Hitomi Hayama is involved in a car accident and admitted to a hospital. Upon waking, she realizes that another being, albeit a mind, has taken residence in her head. The player takes on the role on this separate consciousness. Game has an English review. 9. Iinazuke 許嫁 [981113] Zero Shoichiro Takase is a usual high school student who attends kendo club. One day his grandfather tells him that they are from very ancient family and that Shoichiro must marry Kiyoshihana Shizukawa and from now on they should live under the same roof. Will Shoichiro accept his fate or make his own decisions in life? Story tries to be serious only at the beginning of it. On the day 2 it's forgotten that he needs to train as a warrior and absurd school life begins. It's a good tempo fun bakage. There are many choices (lots of fake ones too) and many branches. There are some questions to the scenario, so best just consider it a bakage and pardon it all. Graphics are quite rough and there is no keyboard operability, but overall the story can be enjoyed if one has mood for it. 10. Ikenie Michiru Tsuki no Sangeki 生贄 満ちる月の惨劇 [981113] Artemis 12 female students are confined inside the ward and hunted by the player who wishes to sacrifice their souls in order to reincarnate as a demon. There's a lot of walking around, fighting and collecting items, so it really looks more like an RPG. Hero is a bullied kid who wanted to commit suicide but was rescued by incubus. Game is short, but difficult as there is time limit and concept of time introduced. 11. Kurayami 2 ~Tozasareta Meikyuu~ 暗闇2 ~閉ざされた迷宮~ [981113] Melody Hero and a heroines are trapped in closed space of the subway. What happens to them? There are five heroines each telling a unique story. It's more like an omnibus type since stories are only connected by entrapment in a closed space. Stories vary greatly in pace and quality. 12. Mayu まゆ [981113] Bell-Da Hero visits his sister-in-law Mayu who missed him a lot and calls him "Onii-chan". She's so charming that it's difficult not to fall in love with her. It's a point-and-click game without any scenario at all. Point-and-click is shabby here and not comfortable for a good number of players. There are choices to be made as well. Basically this is a moege as everyone notices Mayu cuteness and awesome voicing. Period is two weeks. 13. Sensei せ・ん・せ・い [981113] D.O. Sekimoto Akihiko is a private academy second grader descendant of powerful Sekimoto Heavy Industries. As new semester starts, he begins to feel a strong desire for the beauty of a female teacher who takes care of his class. Typical insult ADV with 6 heroines (including main teacher heroine). The number of H events is large, but each capture is short and text is quite bad. 14. The Hustle ザ・ハッスル [981113] h.m.p Business simulation game of adult video maker. The job is to scout the city in search of future actresses and manage their careers: participation in contests, performance on TV, scandals and other events. hmp specializes in 3D games and that allows experimenting with genres. This game is of isomentic 2D view. Game actually has no HCG even though it tackles adult video production. So it's fully gameplay-driven SIM that is of little value for visual novels history. 15. Castle Fantasia ~Seima Taisen~ キャッスルファンタジア ~聖魔大戦~ [981120] Studio e.go! 1 2 3 4 5 The 200 year long war between Lushiera and Injiera continues. This is the story of a hero who changes the course of this neverending war and the lives of people around him. In Castle Fantasia 2 you play as Hewie, commander of the seventh holy knight corps. He has a keen mind for strategy and tactics, seeing through and predicting enemy plans. However, his laid-back attitude causes him to be kept in a low regard by his commanding officers, friends and even his subordinates. Game is localized and has many English reviews. 16. Palette [981120] F&C Co., Ltd. 1 Last summer school vacation. It's your last chance to experience school romance! Game has an English review 17. SSS ~Three S~ SSS ~スリーエス~ [981120] Triangle Hero is a prince of a certain country, but he studies in Japan with an actual aim of finding a bride. Can he find his love in just a month from the end of November to December 24th? Each day is divided into three time zones when you can visit locations in search of girls. Getting to a happy ending is easy, but in order to see H event a special event with the girl must be triggered, which can be tricky. In addition to heroines it's possible to do H with servants. One playtime is between 3 and 4 hours. 18. Abunai Hyakkaten 危ない百貨店 [981120] Penguin Works Main character's parents die, and he inherits a department store. He does not know how to run the company, but he is very interested in female employees. No one can stop him playing with these girls now. H oriented crap 19. Exodus Guilty エクソダスギルティー [981126] Abel 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The year 2000. Kasumi Shindo is at first glance a run-of-the-mill high school student in modern-day Japan. However, beneath his normal appearance, Kasumi is in fact a top-notch treasure hunter. This time, Kasumi is aiming to seek out the lost 11th Commandment of Moses. Kasumi discovers that his childhood friend, Reina Tachibana is in southern Europe participating in an archeological dig. Pretending to be a tourist, he visits the excavation area and manages to get put on the excavation staff. But he is not the only treasure hunter looking for the Eleventh Commandment of Moses and before he knows it, he's embroiled in a dangerous adventure. Game is localized and has many English reviews. I'm still reviewing it since it's Kenno-san scenario and does not have video playthrough. 20 Fluorite ~Hotaruishi~ Fluorite ~ほたる石~ [981126] Air Plants 1 The story revolves around a hotel, a strange glowing stone, the ghost of a young girl who is haunting the main character and there are six heroines. Game has an English review. 21. Gakuen King Bangai Hen -Hidehiko Curry o Tsukuru- 学園KING番外編 -日出彦 カレーをつくる- [981126] Alice Soft Several months after collapse of Kunlun island the school building was moved to the mainland and students enjoyed their school lives. It looked like the lawless state of the school was over. However a new trial awaits the students. Free follow-up game packed with Alice CD. It's reported to last only 20 minutes or so, but I'm not familiar enough with the main game to play this one. 22. Pastel Chime -Koi no Skill Up- ぱすてるチャイム-恋のスキルアップ- [981126] Alice Soft 1 In a High school of a fantasy world, students spend their time learning magic and sword fighting, training to be adventurers. At the botton of the school there's a special dungeon to test their skills. The protagonist is one of these students who want to become someday a great hero. There is an English review of the game. 23. Seventh Rush [981126] [K]rimzon Fake Hero looses a girlfriend and tries to find salvation in hard labor work. At the same time he starts to see attractive girls while at work and in his neighborhood. Game's not hookable and there aren't normal reviews. Nothing too fancy according to the footage. 24. Umi ni Ochite... 蒼海に堕ちて… [981126] Alice Soft Hero is sailing on his yacht when he finds a small plane crashed in the sea. Inside he finds a dead old man and a young girl who he brings home. Hero decides to sail the girl home to Hawaii and they start the voyage through the ocean. Game is shipped with Alice CD for the fans. I could not find enjoyment in the story as the story is quite dark. Heroine used to be abused by her foster father and now abused by the hero. And even more depressive SM memories show up here and there. Game takes less than two hours and there are just two BGM. There's no even normal end - oh, we arrived, good bye. For me this work has zero meaning. 25. Yukiwari no Hana 雪割りの花 [981126] SCEI 1 2 Winter. I live in a small town by a port. My life is very ordinary, I just go to a nearby college on a daily basis. One winter afternoon, my friend invited me to a party, but I refused to go because of a girl, Kaori Sakuragi, who lived next to me, whom I had a big crush on. That particular afternoon, I witness her kissing a man. It hurts my feelings greatly. Following the incident, I hear a knock on the door. As I open the door, I see two policemen standing. They ask, "Do you happen to know a girl named Kaori Sakuragi?" Yarudora vol.4. Atmosphere and drawing are unique, but game suffers from too many bad endings. The conflict is not developed good an no empathy is felt towards towards protagonist. In the second half his mental state gets unstable and only alienation is felt. Game lost its live-action nature and became just a novel with choices which was for the worse. 26. Bishoujo Dorei Club 美少女奴隷クラブ [981127] Guilty Prestigious private school has become a nest for a gang of bad guys "SMACKS". One day a diligent female student visits this den voluntarily. What's her aim and why she's doing it out of free will? One route H-focused game with no other selling point than visuals. 27. Fantastic Fortune ファンタスティックフォーチュン [981127] Fujitsu 1 The story is set in medieval times, in the planet Warand. A raising sim where you take control of one of three protagonists over the space of a year. Diana is the second Princess of the Kingdom of Klein (her hobby is collecting hats). Mei is a regular high school student from the human world who was accidentally summoned to the Royal Academy of Magic. Sylphis is a knight apprentice from a race that chooses their gender once they start puberty. The player's character will spend a year at Klein to achieve the proper magic abilities. Their fate is in the hands of the player. Otomege. Fantasy dating SIM very similar to Eberouge. There's the need to raise parameters and each opponent requires at least two parameters of high level for capture. 28. Itazura ~Joushuusha-tachi no Utage~ 悪戯 ~常習者達の宴~ [981127] Interheart Main character is an office worker who molests girls on a train. Point and click game to discover sensible zones. Introduction is long, but actual gameplay small and monotonous. 29. July [981127] Fortyfive 1 2 3 July 7, 1999: Six years after a mysterious terrorist bombing, two Japanese youths start out on a bizarre quest to get to the bottom of a mystery that only begins with the mysterious bombing. Makoto Takamura, a bare-chested college student, lost his parents to the freakish bus bombing. Joshua, a rebellious youth often wanted by the law, uses his connections to Tokyo's seamy underbelly to track down the culprits behind that same bombing. As their paths cross, the two uncover a plot by an evil race of genderless beings to bring about the prophesied end of the world through their secretive puppet corporation, NAX. Game has two English reviews. 30. Missing ~Itsuka Kitto~ Missing ~いつかきっと~ [981127] Pinpai On the White Day February 14th Yuuki Masahiro received a bar of chocolate in the post. The next year he also gains a bar of chocolate and a message only saying "Missing". From that moment events starts to whirl around him. Period is two weeks. There are 9 heroines total, but some are only available after clearing the game. Routes vary in quality greatly and evaluation greatly depends on chosen route as of any charage. 31. Motif ~Sepia-iro no Sobyou~ Motif ~セピア色の素描~ [981127] Speed Shinya Kano opposed his father's will and for three months he needs to support himself. As he arrives home for the first time in four years he finds three smiling girls who call themselves "sisters" while there should have been noone there. SIM about raising sisters. Period is 3 months and it's basically the same planning actions each day mixed with occasional events. Tempo is bad and picture is not for everyone's taste. 32. Pretty Crisis プリティ・クライシス [981127] Inspire The king of the medieval setting country dies leaving a daughter as successor, but she is not qualified for ruling. That's why main hero is appointed to educate the princess and arrange her schedule with other teachers. The setting is somewhat decadent, but characters are beautiful and well depicted as each has her own circumstances and emotions. The SIM part is easy. One playthrough is about 2 hours. 33. Radical ラディカル [981127] MBS Truth Classmates urge Kazuya to insult a woman. After succeeding in that he goes down this path chasing other women. It's the usual MBS Truth H-focused stuff apart of one thing. There is a competition between two company's writers and both the scenarios are presented in the game. The topic is the same, but writing differs a lot. 34. Re-leaf [981127] C's Ware 1 A demon and a shy high school girl change personalities, and deal with adapting to their new situations. There is an English review of this game.What I have to add is that game has terrific art and sound support, but lack of voicing and shallow storyline are big minuses. Very uneven work, just like most of C's ware products.