kivandopulus

The number of visual novels in 1987 increased greatly, but the number of masterpieces is relatively the same:1. Amazons no Hihou2. Urusei Yatsura3. DNA4. Koroshi no Dress5. Hadou no Hyouteki6. Jesus7. Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School8. Hiatari Ryoukou!9. The 4th Unit1987 has become a great breakthrough for visual novels. Text parser has been made obsolete by command selection and quite many games that amplify text over gameplay or graphics have showed up (even though the graphics have evolutioned immensely as well). But the most innovative and engaging game of 1987 is Hiatari Ryoukou adapted from anime by Toho. That's the first galge in modern sense - it's about daily routine and chasing one of the girls with lots of sunshine and comedy scenes. The charm of characters is overwhelming and gameplay is quite easy and infectious. If only it could be hooked... 1. Dennou Suikoden 電脳水滸伝 [870112] Hot-B 1 Game is based on the classic Chinese four-book epic "Suikoden" and uses the same character in an original story. Three scenarios are available from the start and upon clearing them the fourth one opens up. One of the stories starts with two journalists investigating a strange get into an ambush. One of them gets a strange disease that kills in two months time. To get the cure it's needed to break through three gateways and reach the peak of a mountain. There's a good English walkthrough of this game, but it covers only one story out of four due to ingame bugs. It's a rather complex game since you control multiple characters at each story and they hold various items. You can easily get stuck without knowing what specialization each character has. The number of commands and sub-commands is rather huge so bruteforcing is painful. Such a complex game is a welcome addition since majority of visual novels of this time are very primitive and crude. 2. Lolita Hime no Enikki ロリータ姫の絵日記 [8701] Bond Soft A kinetic novel containing graphic strips of Lolita Hime alongside with a bit of text. It's more of a CG collection than a synthetic work. Even though it's the same series with the scatology Lolita, here the system is different and is rather a pure ADV. It's very short too so there's nothing really to discuss here. 3. Teki wa Kaizoku Kaizoku Ban 敵は海賊・海賊版 [8701] Victor Musical Industries I am a first class pirate. There was a call from my noisy boss to settle one matter. While on it, two ships of my old enemy appeared. Together with my alien cat Apro I was able to settle the incident. However, strange incidents started to happen one after another. Based on the light novel series. The story is almost fully original though using novel heroes. You actually are playing for the cat! The game uses icons for actions which is welcome, but there's a need to keep in the head conversation keywords to go on which is very painful. The work was not really popular with original novel fans. 4. Touch タッチ [8701] Toho The story centers around three characters—Uesugi Kazuya, his twin older brother Tatsuya, and Asakura Minami. Kazuya is the darling of his town as he's talented, hardworking, and the ace pitcher for his middle school baseball team. Tatsuya is a hopeless slacker who's been living the life of giving up the spotlight to Kazuya, despite the fact that he may be more gifted than him. Minami is the beautiful childhood girlfriend and for all intents, sister from next door who treats both of them as equals. Society largely assumes Kazuya and Minami will become the perfect couple, including Tatsuya. Yet as time progresses, Tatsuya grows to realize that he's willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of his brother, except at the expense of giving up Minami to Kazuya. And thus the story is told of Tatsuya trying to prove himself over his established younger brother, how it affects the relationship between the three, and both brothers' attempts to make Minami's lifelong dreams come true. Another obscure Toho adaptation of an anime work. It's pure command selection. Characters are cute enough, but graphics are dated. The next Toho anime adaptation feels much better than this one. And at least touch here means baseball touchdown rather than something perverted. 5. Las Vegas ラスベガス [8701] Starcraft Co., Ltd. 1 Las Vegas is a Japan-exclusive graphical variant of Softporn Adventure, and hence can be seen as an earlier version of Leisure Suit Larry, which was released a few months later. The gameplay is, by and large, identical to the original text-only version, with the exception of a few adjustments made to the monetary system and a few commands handled slightly differently. Soft Porn Adventure released in 1981 is considered world's first adult game, so the will to imitate it with graphical presentation seems natural. 6. Dwelling デウリング [8702] Cross Media Soft 1 In "Dwelling" we have to infiltrate the mansion of Count Dracula and save a kidnapped girl Anna. The game is bizzare. It shows all kind of weird creatures in bright poisonous colors. It's pretty cool that in important scenes the command selection is taken away and you're being left alone with text parser and text "THINK YOURSERL". But it's mostly about visual shock and there's no real story apart of walking around the estate and seeing all kind of things, so it can't be called a masterpiece for me. 6. Twilight Zone トワイライトゾーン [8702] Great 1 Twilight Zone is a text adventure game with graphics. The protagonist is a young man who finds himself in a mysterious mansion created by an equally mysterious old woman. His goal is to escape the mansion and have sex with as many young women living there as possible. The interaction with the game is performed by inputting text commands (Japanese kana only). Navigation is performed by typing the Japanese words for the four directions, and locations are represented as still first-person screens. The game has no real puzzles and very limited item usage. Mansion search type. We need to find eight girls in the mansion and then can finally leave through the door. Search around with command input is no fun at all. The game spawned multiple sequels. 7. Amazons no Hihou アマゾネスの秘宝 [8703] Studio Lime Those who find the secret treasure of amazons will get immortality. The hero takes up this challenge and now he needs to deal with a lot of amazons that dwell in this forest. This is a rare work since it actually places fun and pleasure of playing above everything. There's a moderate eroticism present, but mostly it's a lighthearted comedy. On your travels you need to gather and appropriately use items (10 max, so need to throw something out at times). There are many commands to search from and when you don't know what to do you can use hints from the "voice of God". But if you hit the appropriate one, you move through, so no need for useless repetition and bruteforcing. But there are lots of optional things you can miss on. It may still look troublesome today, but compared to constant repetitions of Manhattan Requiem it was a real heaven and a very addictive work. 8. Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Shinjuku Chuuou Kouen Satsujin Jiken 探偵 神宮寺三郎 新宿中央公園殺人事件 [870424] Data East Corporation 1 2 3 4 Police inspector Scott Kingsley has asked Jake Hunter for help when a young woman was found dead in Aspicio Central Park. Jake accepts the case, but first he needs to find witnesses that are willing to speak out. Game has some English reviews. 9. Guin Saga ~Hyoutou no Kamen~ グインサーガ ～豹頭の仮面～ [8704] JAST Based on first volume of Guin Saga novels. You are the survivor of the royal family and are chased by mongolian raids. Game is based on the very first volume of the novel that nowadays has huge development in media. It is an adventure game which progresses by making various choices for every scene with his point of view in mind. It even had some voice of protagonist when connected to JAST sound. The difficulty degree is comparatively low. 10. Imitation City イミテーションシティ [8704] DataWest 1 In 2017, a rebellion of clones made with the use of biotechnology begins and you get caught in the middle of it. Three "Doll" robots have rebelled and escaped the factory and their managers hired you to find and return them. A classy and fashionable plot resembling Blade runner. But this game uses text parser in the year when it was abandoned already. It feels like the game tried to empathize freedom and pose a challenge for hardcore gamers. It seems have been shipped with a parser that produced hints and write a map. Well, this game hardly has any information coverage, so I supposed it did not really meet the needs of the crowds. 11. Loliventure no Shiro 幻夢の城 [8704] Champion Soft You are asked to find rescue the sister of your acquaintance. You need to find information about her in the town and then infiltrate the castle where she is kept evading all the traps laid about. Yet another text parser dated game. The systems have not gone anywhere since Pop Lemon and the difficulty level is really insane - sometimes you need to enter the same command many times to get a result. Now you can pretty much guess why Champion Soft decided to change name for Alice Soft - it's because Champion Soft was stamping the same dated ugly games over and over while almost everyone else moved on. 12. Makai Fukkatsu 魔界復活 [8704] Soft Studio Wing 1 The story begins with the fact that one reporter Akira Kamishiro gets a call from a friend archaeologist - Professor Masunaga. As it turns out, with archaeological research has been a stolen valuable artifact - "Divine Stone". At the same time in the nearby village disappears abbot of the local Buddhist temple. Trying to understand what happened, Kamishiro and Masunaga are involved in the chain of mystical events. Occultic adventure game are rarely good since they rely on things other than consciousness, but Soft Studio Wing is particularly known for creating very realistic setting and gradually inserting the insanity. This is also the first game of the brand for pc88. It's command selection, but you need to confirm each selection with pressing enter since any wrong choice inevitably brings a bad end. No bruteforcing will work here either since sometimes to move the story on the right order of commands is needed to take, like speak → talk → see. And there is no hint mechanic or context on the order. Games at that time weren't supposed to be cleared by everyone and were made as difficult as possible. 13. Project A-ko プロジェクトＡ子 [8704] Tatsumi Publishing An alien space craft crashed into Graviton City, wiping out the entire population and leaving a massive crater where Graviton City is rebuilt. Students A-ko Magami and her best friend C-ko Kotobuki, a bubbly, carefree optimist, enter a new year of school at the all-girls Graviton High School. Although A-ko possesses superhuman speed and strength, she considers herself an average teenager; she mostly worries about getting to school on time, chronically oversleeping her alarm clock each morning. The pair catch the unwanted attention of B-ko Daitokuji, a rich, spoiled and brilliant fellow student. That's what anime is about. And the game is just a dice game with A-ko/B-ko/C-ko competition. Rolling dice, using all kinds of buffs and just seeing the events constantly happening on rolling are quite fun even without reading the text. Playing with two people is possible with each player rolling himself and choosing his own buffs to hinder opponent's movement. That's a rare example of a game that empathizes ease of use and fun. 14. Soshi Hime Adventure 素子姫アドベンチャー [8704] Tatsumi Publishing Soshi Hime is science fiction writer. After finishing writing a novel she was sucked into the novel and you're the only one who can save her. Game only operates with function keys without the additional text input which is great. The contents is quite weird like a hundred of cats in one room. I guess the knowledge of original novel is required to understand what's happening. Game uses very few colors which makes images to look very simplistic. 15. Fairy Tale ふぇありぃている [8705] Fairytale Hero has been keeping an eye on the pretty girl Yumiko-chan and now succeeds now in getting in her apartment impersonating himself as a gas company staff member. On the pretext of a regualar check-up he searches the kitchen for useful items and then approaches Yumiko with an intention to get in her pants. The debut work of Fairy Tale and quite a lighthearted one despite the synopsis. System is pure command selection type and it's easy to manipulate allowing to bruteforce all the variants. Another nice feature is that the work actually uses hiragana+kanji and hot that horrified half-width katakana that old works had to adhere to because of technical limitations on symbols drawing. There is one branching so it's possible to say that it's a multi-scenario work. It can also be viewed as a comedy since hero has access to chest area but he only aims for the panty and he uses lots off strategies to get there - there is no real act in this game, but there are lots of erotic CG still. Yumiko is funny looking and her personality is bright leaving a good light impression on the game. 16. Fukashigi Denshou ~Kabara no Himitsu~ 不可思議伝承 ～カバラの秘密～ [8705] Zenryuutsuu The story is of the village of Syria close to Greece at the time when the German army invasion approaches in 1941. This work's motif is the search of holy grail and occult research performed by the Germany. Player is village chief's son who travels to get two secret books about Kabbalah. It's a strange game that reveals mysterious things one after another, such as the secret behind Nostradamus predictions and immortal clones that rule the Earth from the shades. 17. Still Sword すてぃる･そーど [8705] Fairytale 1 2 This medieval world is divided into 5 countries. The demon Incoma is jealous of the world's beauty and imprisoned the Princess from each of the 5 countries in their own castles. You are to rescue the princesses and stop Incoma's ambitions. Top down action rpg, an early predecessor of Ys series. It was first released as an all-age work, probably without text scenes, but later the game was reworked with addition of H scenes due to the popular demand. In adult version the main character is a girl, so there aren't many H scenes while you're successful - most of them packed close to the finale - but this is a lot of radical stuff when you lose, so it's an ancestor of Beat Blades Haruka and the like. 18. Urusei Yatsura うる星やつら [870605] Micro Cabin Scenario is original from the anime. We get and invitation to Okiko birthday party. The person who finds her first is going to get a kiss, so a fierce competition among the invited guests ensues. The mansion is a maze with lots of traps laid about. The characters are carefully transferred from the anime so it's needed to know the original to get the most of fun. It's possible either to go the shortest way or to eliminate all the other competitors, so it can be considered multiple-branch story. The ending also depends on how other characters are dealt with so it's multiple endings as well. The system is command selection, but the number of commands is quite large, so the difficulty level is really high. In the early visual novels years lots of works were clinging desperately to the popularity of anime franchises, but this work is really well done and it shows how a game can be better in many elements than the original anime. 19. Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin: Ohotsk ni Kiyu 北海道連鎖殺人 オホーツクに消ゆ [870627] Login Soft 1 2 A total remake of Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin: Ohotsk ni Kiyu. The version reworked for famicom. There is some info in English on this version. 20. Abunai Josei Shinrigaku Nyuumon あぶない女性心理学入門 [8706] Fairytale A kinetic novel comprising of four very short erotic stories about 15 screens each dwelling on women psychology. Each story lasts only some 2-3 minutes so it's faster to click through them than write about them. The feature of the work is that the stories are shown from the woman perspective. So from today's perspective it's useless to talk about this work. But from historical perspective it's quite eminent. First it's a kinetic novel while all the other works use command selection. Secondly, it's one of the first works from woman perspective and thus the work that separates the hero from the gamer. The third important aspect is that I don't really remember games before that had multiple stories in it - it presented a pleasant concept and more of multiple stories works spawned because of it. 21. Hot Milk ほっとMILK [8706] Fairytale The story is about a super rapist who violated 994 women already and he only needs six more to become a legendary person with a name "Weirdo 28" written forever in the history. Eroge of the 1980s rarely just relied on image alone, but were mostly conceptual games with much gameplay involved. Despite a pretty gloomy synopsis this game has rather light feel. It's a command selection ADV with the use of items - some have non-trivial use like stunning the girls with the smell of the socks. The game flow is six girls consecutively, but the big command list and the use of items distinguish it from just an eroge. 22. Akujo Densetsu II ~Sailor Fuku Rhapsody~ 悪女伝説 Ⅱ ～セーラー服ラプソディ～ [8707] Dott Kikaku A nampa game where the hero needs to get the girl interested, raise the affection level during conversation in a cafe, beat her in the blackjack card game and lead her to the hotel as a result. The prequel is not listed on VNDB and it was a very ugly (VERY few colors used) first adult game for MSX. But pc-88 chosen for the prequel has much more instruments in the department of picture beauty. Now the images are digitized from the drawings which make them especially cute. That's very different from the games of the time where the cover was mostly supercute, but the contents remaining ugly. The system is command selection, but several wrong answers lead to game over. While in the cafe it's needed to guess the right answer about 10 times to move on. But the game has a firm place in the history as one of the first with really beautiful girls. 23. DNA ドナ [8707] Himitsu Kessha KID DNA (Donna) is the name of the star in the universe. The giant city Megaro Dynamo is is inhabited by the two classes - titan (ruling class) and oak (laborers). The titans have excellent abilities, but their existence is endangered as they are cursed with reproductive function weakened with every generation. There is a girl from the titan class Mercedes who wished to undergo an experiment to fix this fatal trait. And the hero is an oak class member Cesare who wishes to protect her. Just like the previous game of Hot-B Youkiden - DNA uses manga strips for the screen - that really adds dynamic to the scenes. This game has adult content - the opening scene that I shot alone has two and it's cut just before more of it continuing. That's one of the reasons that the game was often overlooked as a trash adult game. But in fact it's a thrilling SF work with serious topics raised. The system is command selection and it goes without much stress. The character design is poor, but this is one of the first original heavy scenario oriented works and is a masterpiece in this regard. 24. J.B. Harold no Jikenbo #2 - Manhattan Requiem - Yami ni Tobu Tenshi-tachi J.B.ハロルドの事件簿 - マンハッタンレクイエム - 闇に翔ぶ天使たち [8707] Riverhill Soft inc. 1 2 3 24 year old pianist Sarah Shields was found dead after falling from the 25th floor of her apartment window. The cause of death was a fractured skull from the horrific impact. With no evidence of foul play, an act of suicide was the best explanation - but J.B. Harold thinks otherwise. Having recieved a letter from Sarah beforehand, the famous detective heads towards New York city to find the truth. There are English reviews of this game. 25. Adrenalin Connection アドレナリン・コネクション [870821] Amorphous "I shall take my revenge on the peaceful St. Eastern high school" - an anonymous letter arrived at the school. The principal asks the new teacher to investigate the source of the letter. At the same time transfer students are being forced to drop out one by one because of bullying... This is the only game every developed by Amorpheus company. I was not able to play this game since could not find a ROM for it. Although I really wanted to. Just look at the magazine ad - there's a very colorful company gathered in here. At least it would not be boring! I'll do my best to present information from japanese reviews on this game in a readable format. Setting is close to real world but events turn around school girls and the idealistic vibe of "let's be together forver" spoils it a bit. The atmosphere of the game was very light, but story was unexpectedly bulky. Schoolgirls were unrealistically glamorous. Multiple command selection helped to keep the good pace and concentrate on plot and the multi-ending was one of the first appearances in game. Graphics were of high standart considering hardware limitations of pc-98. Almost all the characters who talked actually had mouth animation. Sound would make you excited from the start of the game. Pity it could not have voices included yet. Every girl had her own ending. There were 5 endings overall. Its existence in 1987 was a miracle itself. Rather than having outstanding advantages and features, it was rather the work without shortcomings. It's not really remembered as masterpiece, but it was one of first quality works to pave the road for next generation of quality VNs. 26. Lovely GAL ラブリーＧＡＬ [8708] Champion Soft "Get three hidden treasures, then the door to another world will be opened" - said the mysterious old man. If you manage to collect the famous sword, secret medicine and ancient documents you may try to enter there. Game is basically divided into two parts - first you search for those three items and in the later half you'll have to find a way to awaken the Queen of the floating city Meniere in the alternative world from a deep slumber to prevent the crisis. The game is about gathering information and by coincidence only beautiful girls have that information and thus there's a need to interrogate them. So this is another Champion Soft game which means it has dated text parser system, low number of colors and not cute girls. And even though there's an attempt to introduce fantasy setting the gameplay is just your old guess what to write in H scenes. The difficulty level is again insanely high. 27. Tenshi-tachi no Gogo II -Minako- 天使たちの午後ＩＩ -美奈子- [8708] JAST 1 The sequel to "Tenshi-tachi no Gogo"; instead of playing as the obnoxious male protagonist of the previous game, the player takes control of Minako, a female Japanese high-school student with a strong interest towards sexuality. The story mainly depicts Minako's sexual encounters with men and women, which take place on school grounds, in various locations of the city, etc. JAST decided to just go with popularity flow and introduced a with the dated command input systems and even bolder erotic content. They did not bother to introduce any story and just depicted the two days of Minako's saturated life. This work is a step back from the original in terms of storytelling, but it was even more popular than the original because of amplified eroticism. 28. Timeparadox タイムパラドックス [8708] DataWest After his girlfriend Aiko is mysteriously killed, the hero hops into a time machine invented by his uncle and goes on a journey through the time to save her. DataWest releases yet another command input work after Immitation city. That and the fact that the synopsis does not leave much mystery ahead made this work obsolete already. Game also uses lots of difficult terms related to SF time travel. 29. Dreamy Town MAJO ドリーミータウン 魔女サンドラ [8709] Great On Sunday, I made a promise to date. When I entered the coffee shop her body began to get distorted suddenly and I understood that she was a witch. Now I'm dragged into her world and need to find her to get back. It's an adult adventure, but with some really weird transformations into monsters. System is basically command selection, but there is also command input possible and - needless to say - many steps are impossible to pass without manual input. The difficulty is very high. Sometimes you need to repeat the same action over and over to get a result and sometimes you need to know the contents of some novel to write the right input. The map of the town is total 7x7 squares which adds another layer of difficulty due to multiple locations. 30. Love Chaser ラブチェイサー [8709] Champion Soft Adventure game to investigate the case of fake kidnapping to stop political marriage that developed into a real abduction. Champion soft so we get another command input system again. In the beginning of the game we're given a huge puzzle to combine and 900 points of power. Upon puzzle completion we're left with the leftover power only and power is used on lots of actions, so effective puzzle completion is a must if one aims at clearing the game. In the terms of the content there is not much originality. The picture lacks originality either. A bit of deduction is still needed though, but the overall difficulty is reported to be moderate. 31. Ikenie no Machi いけにえの街 [8710] Adult Inn While exploring Shinjuku hero finds out a SM club "Ikemei' s House" - the world of pleasure and craziness. The content is on par with the synopsis. But these are mostly pictures of tied women. One interesting aspect though is that Shinjuku is displayed quite precisely. 32. Koroshi no Dress 殺しのドレス [8710] Fairytale Best friend's fiancé is found dead and naked at the park's toilet. Hero starts an investigation, but then the second murder occurs and his girlfriend disappears mysteriously. It' suspense mystery from the start since we don't really understand what's going on or who is the killer (but naming the game "killer dress" helps with guessing). It can hardly be called an eroge, but the adult atmosphere is everywhere including many gore scenes. It's a breakthrough game that broke the trend of games being treated as erotic cg collection. This is a game that carries away with the story alone and just couple of erotic cg thrown for the story's sake. System is command selection with a shortlist of commands to select from - very convenient to use. The story is basically a single road, but with good and bad end branching close to the finale. Another rather new feature is the ability to name the hero. This game is a paragon for all the future horror mystery scenario games to come. 33. Lolita Violence ロリータバイオレンス [8710] Adult Inn One usual day from the life of one girl, but as she returns home late there are various dangers on her way back. Kinetic novel or rather a picture story. On the way back girl's attacked by a gang and there's a help button that's possible to be pressed - that summons her boyfriend who rescues her and it develops into another H scene. The work is rare enough that I could not find it, but the focus is on graphics alone. 34. Shin Tamatori Monogatari 新玉取物語 [8710] Cross Media Soft The hero needs to find five balls scattered around the four worlds. A sequel to Shin Taketori Monogatari. It's the first such big ADV for pc88 - six diskettes! The content stays pretty much the same - explore everything and have fun. Age is requested at start and some scenes actually differ depending on the input. 35. Anjela [8711] Cross Media Soft The highly civilized star Obelix citizens use preserved red liquid as food. But production crisis occurs, and many of them find feeding grounds on the Earth by sucking animals and humans blood - thus they start to be called vampires. Anjela comes to the Earth in search of her father who was among the first generation to migrate to this planet. Commands are difficult to figure out, but as an additional layer of difficulty there are multiple challenging action fights. 36. Gakuen Monogatari 学園物語 [8711] Great Hero enters a well-known private high school and falls in love with his English class school teacher Norico at the first sight. One day a Noriko-sensei is suddenly expelled, apparently on the reason that she is intimidated by someone. The hero launches investigation to get to the source of it. Command selection adventure. In order to find the criminal and know more about Noriko-sensei the hero interrogates school girls. The story is a single road, but the difficulty level is high as it's needed to ask the right things in the conversation and use proper strategies to make people stop. 37. Hadou no Hyouteki 波動の標的 [8711] Soft Studio Wing 1 Events of "Hadou no Hyouteki" begin with a strange incident in a small Japanese village: one day all members of a local religious organization "Church of the Messiah" were brutally murdered. Our main character is a journalist Shiro Kusanagi, who came to the place of slaughter, to shoot the reportage. Soon begin to clear up the details of the incident - it appears that the sectarians themselves killed each other. In addition, inside the Church of our journalist discovers a strange secret altar. What actually worshiped members of the "Church of the Messiah", and that was the cause of the massacre in the village? All these questions remain unanswered, and meanwhile, the authorities sent Mr. Kusanagi on shooting a new story. The fact is that in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle suddenly there was a huge black tower, and it is rumored that in the nearby vicinity bred some creepy monsters. Can all these strange events be connected somehow? Peaceful Japanese village. One day all members of "Church of the Messiah" were found brutally murdered. We play as journalist Shiro Kusanagi who is sent to make a reportage. More and more shocking details come up. Sectarians killed each other and a strange altar discovered. With all questions hung in the air Mr. Kusanagi being sent to shoot another story on appearance of a huge black tower in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle. Who coould have thought that those were the events of one chain... I don't like horror stories. But reading about a good horror story is another thing. So let's investigate this outstanding work together. This game has a great dark atmosphere. Death comes at every corner and you constantly get bad end on the screen. Bullets are scarce, enemies keep appearing and only a small hope keeps beating. System was finally well done. Comand selection implemented. Graphics are great and rendering in an instant. There is even animation at many scenes. Cruel shots are especially impressive. The use of multiwindow makes actions dynamic and it starts to look like manga. For example you get picture in the left upper corner then the next picture appers in the left lower corner and in serveral lines some shocking picture appears in the center of the screen so that about 50% of first and second one remain seen. That's genius. I'll retell the plot here just to get a grip on the game story. I won't tackle any characters or important details though. The whole plot intorduction actually happens in the game and jungle infiltration is 5th chapter already. You can't even land the jungle peacefully. You have to destroy boobytrapped vietnamese barricade and border patrol starts to use arms against you. Water surface glows and huge water worm attacks your boat. In the cave there's a dead body of another reporter. Further on skeletons with different weapons assault you and you running low on bullets. Having made it to a tower, monster attacks and he can't be even killed with bullets. You get surrounded by feline monsters and skeletons with no weapons and no way back only to be miraculously saved by your fellow reporter on a military helicopter. You gain consciousness in the hospital and get to know that a black tower now appeared right in the center of Shinjuku. Somehow inside Shinjuku turns out to be a new village with a manor. You get to investigate the manor which happens to be a training facility for espers. The tower is awaiting. Men in black open fire on visual contact. One of survivors advises to find Shirai, who is good at teleportation. Mansion now is heavily guarded. At the verge of being shot you get teleported to the gathering of men with unique abilities like telekinesis. Mansion now is being guarded by both military and ESP. You manage to break through only to be cornered again with it all disappearing by a whirpool of hallucination. The final battle of you and ESP against the mansion darkest secrets awaits. Who's the enemy and who's a friend? What's that altar with a sword? What was that whirlpool? What is black tower? What is that double edged sword? All the mysteries get answered. In a way. 38. Jesus ジーザス [8711] Enix 1 2 3 4 5 The game takes place in 2061. Halley's Comet has been approaching Earth for quite some time, and the nations of Earth send a mission to investigate the Comet, as some form of life has been detected inside the gas of the comet. The main character of the story, Hayao Musou, is a Japanese soldier-in-training and the second-youngest member of the mission. Coincidentally, his girlfriend, Eline Suleyman, is also a participant. The game has multiple reviews in English. 39. Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School 中山美穂のトキメキハイスクール [871201] Nintendo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 The game begins with your character, whose family has just moved to the area, entering his new school for the first time. After class, you accidentially run into a conservative-looking girl wearing glasses. She introduces herself as Mizuho, but you can't help but notice her striking resemblance to your dream pop idol Cher (I mean Miho, of course). You pick up a good-luck charm Mizuho dropped to give back to her, then make a startling revelation - your photographer brother took a picture of Miho carrying the exact same charm! You go to the music room to confront her with this evidence - and this is where the true challenge of the game begins. There are English reviews of this game. 40. Seilane セイレーン [871210] Micro Cabin 1 One day when Prill visits Bukimi forest, he finds all the villagers have all been turned into stone statues. But more worringly his sister was nowhere to be seen. As he explores the forest, he later learns that the person responsible was the Demon King Pazul. With help from his friends, Prill sets off on a journey to save both his sister and the villagers, but it won't be easy as the Demon King is determined to stop him in his tracks. There is a good English review on the work. 41. Shiritsu Tantei Max ~Sennyuu!! Nazo no Joshikou~ 私立探偵マックス ～潜入！！謎の女子校～ [871220] Agumix 1 Max is a private detective who is known - beside his investigative and combat skills - for his way with women. One day, he receives just the case he was hoping for: he has to travel to a remote space colony near the Sun - more precisely, to the women school in this colony. The principal of the school has committed suicide. Two agents that were sent to the colony disappeared under mysterious circumstances. It's time for Max to find out what's going on - an interesting side-quest to his main mission: have sex with as many girls as possible! It's mostly collection work since there are some 12 girls that appear randomly and some are predetermined to resist Max's charms from the start so multiple new games needed for 100%. The H with the girls also restores Max's esper powers. The best part of the game the quality of girls pictures - they are digitized and thus look very good and cute. 42. Hiatari Ryoukou! 陽あたり良好！ [8712] Toho The story focuses on the relationships of Kasumi Kishimoto, a high school student. When she enters Myōjō High School, she moves into her aunt's boarding house, where four boys attending the high school are tenants. Despite her steadfast determination to stay loyal to her boyfriend, who is studying abroad, Kasumi finds herself slowly falling in love with one of the boarders, Yūsaku The first really impressive TOHO adaptation of an anime work. On top of that it seems to be the original galge ancestor - here you raise favorability rate with one of the girls during the game events and if you reach a high level with some girl you get her ending. I think the point of the game is to engage deeply in the world of the original and it worked 100%. We now refer to the slice of life scenes as to necessary evil in galge, but before Hiatari Ryoukou there have been very few games with focus on everyday routing. The game system is command selection ADV and it's easy to manage and possible to bruteforce to go on, but actually getting some girl's ending is quite difficult. The character cast is awesome and there are a lot of very funny scenes. There is no special aim in the game but living the everyday life and falling in love with someone. The graphic level is the highest of 1987. A very sunny and heartwarming work. 43. J.B. Harold no Jikenbo - Kiss of Murder - Satsui no Kuchizuke J.B.ハロルドの事件簿 - キス・オブ・マーダー - 殺意の接吻 [8712] Riverhill Soft inc. 1 2 Kiss of Murder, is set in a parallel world to Manhattan Requiem, and while featuring the same set of characters as that title, has a completely different scenario. Early releases of the game were addons to "Manhattan Requiem" and used its graphical data. Later iterations became stand-alone. The game was not usually shipped alone, but with Manhattan Requiem, so it does not have as many English reviews, but I'm sure there should be some reference in the numerous Manhattan Requiem reviews. 44. Kudokikata Oshiemasu 2 ~Kind Gal's~ 口説き方教えます２ ～カインドゥギャルズ～ [8712] Hard A nampa game with five adult women as heroines. First of all the game is R-18 same as the prequel. The game is famous for the conversation system it derived. So this time you get the beginning of the sentence prepared and need to input a correct continuation which would rise affection if right. Each of the heroines has some personality archetype. The game has very impressive graphics that alone is enough to overlook its many shortcomings. 45. Lagrange L2 PART2 D-SIDE ラグランジュL2 PART2 D-SIDE [8712] Vehicle Software Game starts in the shuttle right after the end of Lagrange L2. The breath is relieved now but the first challenge is already there - the need to escape from missiles of approaching Zera enemy. And the sequel still uses the same ancient systems... same ugly with text input. The only difference that now animation is frequently used. The overall difficulty is easier than part 1, but there are less hints displayed. As I see it this work is only for hard-boiled fans of first part. 46. Tennyo Densetsu 天女伝説 [8712] Champion Soft There are girls who descend from the celestial love weaving beings. Letters are hidden on their bodies and if you solve the mystery a celestial woman will appear. Champion Soft continues its odyssey to pour same loads of crap on the gaming community. Over and over. Now there is command selection but that's made really painful since even text lines take time to draw and there's the need to press enter after each selection. I guess noone ever tried to find the celestial woman since the game has zero reviews and even no CG apart of the two ones in the beginning that I saw. 47. The 4th Unit 第４のユニット [8712] DataWest 1 2 Yuusuke, a common boy back from school, finds a naked girl in the forest while searching for his hidden bike. She is amnesic and only remember a name: Blon-Win. Four days ago, a mysterious battle between unidentified aircraft occurred above Tokyo. One of them, shot down, felt in the same forest the girl was found. The authorities never found any body in the debris. Might this girl be linked to this case? This is what she is decided to discover. There is an English review of the game. 48. The Byouin ザ・病院 [8712] PSK 1 Patients begin to die one by one under mysterious circumstances in a mental hospital. A young nurse named Ikuko Matsuda doubts that these deaths were natural. On day, Ikuko disappears, leaving behind a blood-stained cash card. Her fiance Katsuyoshi Yamazaki ventures into the hospital, attempting to investigate the mystery. It's mostly a text adventure with CG only occasionally showed. In order to show that much text in good quality 400 lines were needed and The Byouin is the only PC-88 game in history to have 400 lines. All the new keywords are added to the list of commands and soon this list grows to huge lengths. The story is not bad, but without corresponding CG it feels lacking. PSK as the fathers of visual novels marked a new path - shifting from gameplay elements to focusing attention on reading and that's the game's biggest achievement. 52. Yamamura Misa Suspense: Kyouto Ryuu no Tera Satsujin Jiken 山村美紗サスペンス 京都龍の寺殺人事件 [8712] Taito Corporation The protagonist is American investigator Catherine Turner, who has just been accused of a crime commited in the grounds of Kyoto's most famous temple. She'll have to do some detective work to clear her name. Detective investigation is not my genre. 52. Wingman Special -Saraba Yume Senshi- ウイングマンスペシャル -さらば夢戦士- [8712] TamTam Co., Ltd. The story is the same as the the original Wingman game, but with enhanced size and quality. Same Powdream, same assassins sent for Aoi. The synopsis is really the same. The graphics are superb. The controls have not changed much and the operability remained difficult. Puzzles are inconsistent and are easy to get stuck on. The new scenes are cool, but reading the same story for the second time is much less fun and most of the fans of the series are felt unsatisfied. 49. Idaten Ikase Otoko ~Mugiko ni Aitai~ 韋駄天いかせ男 ～麦子に逢いたい～ [87] Family Soft The hero is a Korean wrestler who has been working in a Brazilian farm and now comes to Japan without the proper knowledge of the language. He has an ability to excite girls with words alone so now he phones to different phones saying ridiculous phrases getting them to the state of ecstasy. That's a nanpa bakage. Basically we get to choose numbers that correspond to some words and with three of those we construct a phrase. If the girls finds the phrase especially crazy or funny her excitement meter rises and when at top the reward erotic CG are show. There are five girls to call to. The words selected are funny so the result phrases alone can be entertaining to read. The game had many sequels and was sold cheaply in packs so it got quite a wide spread. 50. Mayonaka no Love Call 真夜中のラブコール [87] STUDIO ANGEL Mika and her boyfriend are having an intimate telephone talk with her becoming excited with each right answer. Another gameplay oriented erotic picture collection. The right answer out of three variants takes to new scene while the wrong brings back to the previous scene. And whether the answer is right or wrong is chosen at random, so clearing can take a while. The good point of the game is the ease of use since only three numbers and clicking is enough for clearing. 51. Melon Soda メロンソーダ [87] Bond Soft The hero arrives to the town where the secret of fobidden pheromone juice "Melon Soda" is concealed. He will have to interrogate the girls in the town to get to the secret. There are 13 girls in the game with H-scenes reserved for 12 of them. But the important part is that you have the endurance stat the depeletes with actions. There are multiple tricks not to waste endurance in different scenes, but still it's impossible to H with all the girls and get to the ending, so multiple playthroughs needed for 100% clearance. Command selection is used. 53. Zenkoku Nanpa Shugyou ~Tasogare no Kyouto Hen~ 全国ナンパ修行 ～たそがれの京都編～ [8712] STUDIO ANGEL To excel in nanpa the hero comes to Kyoto for training. The game is about choices. Choosing totally bad line brings game over. Choosing normal lines does not bring effect and you need to search on for the best variant. The game is not particularly interesting and Kyoto exotics does not really make it better. Emulator gets stuck after the first scene for some reason.

The masterpieces of the year 1986:1. Shiro to Kuro no Densetsu ~Rinne Tensei Hen~2. Wingman 2: Kitakura no Fukkatsu3. Boukenshatachi Kenja no Yuigon4. Alpha5. Hokuto no Ken: Violence Gekiga Adventure6. J.B. Harold no Jikenbo #1 - Final Mystery - Murder Club7. Casablanca ni Ai o Satsujinsha wa Jikuu o Koete8. Gall Force - Eternal Story9. Maison Ikkoku ~Omoide no Photograph~10. Suishou no Dragon11. Little Princess12. Toki no Tabibito13. 1000-nen Oukoku 1. Final Lolita ファイナル ロリータ [8601] PSK 1 Final Lolita has little to do with PSK's previous similarly-named titles gameplay-wise; however, it shares with them the macabre premise of sex with underage girls, and is the most explicit and violent of the three. The game's genre is closest to RPG format, since it focuses on a character's attributes and allows the player to increase them. These attributes are Power, Arm Level, Defence, and Technique, each playing a role in upcoming battles. The player can choose to distribute a hundred points among these parameters in the beginning of the game. We get to set four parameters from the beginning and start the search. Just walking alone spends your precious power, so first of all gasoline and bike need to be found. It's indeed the final loli work of PSK - next ones feature more mature characters. 2. Shiro to Kuro no Densetsu ~Rinne Tensei Hen~ 白と黒の伝説 ～輪廻転生編～ [8603] Soft Studio Wing 1 The second part of the "Shiro to Kuro no Densetsu" tells the story of the victims of the Bermuda Triangle, which was pulled into the distant past. To get back to their world, the crew of the ship will visit the ruins of Atlantis, medieval Europe, ancient Japan, and fight demons. Again, MSX exclusive and again pretty obscure. This time even more since this work does not seem to be remastered in the future. The game system is the same. One drawback of it is that in order to save there's a need to shift cassettes. The work is memorable for its music that occupied a full cassette. The story is very intriguing. An anomaly is found in the Bermuda triangle and UN mission is sent there. As a result the Atlantis land is discovered that drifts through the time with the power of demons. We get to execute a number of missions through the time to resolve this anomaly like the hundred year old war in France (meeting Jeanne d'Arc, of course) or the end of the Warring States period in Japan. This game is quite crazy and that's a pity it's forgotten. 3. Wingman 2: Kitakura no Fukkatsu ウイングマン2 - キータクラーの復活- [860410] TamTam Co., Ltd. 1 The aim of the game is to find the killers sent from Podrimus dimension and neutralize them. The clues are to be found in the eight locations of the school. Original story. This time it's more fun since we're accompanied by Aoi or Miki who do all the feedback. It's a pretty cool system that it's enough to write the proper verb and just click on the object - that's almost point-and-click here! There are three chapters with first two moving between the same eight places and the third final one without any moving. In the prequel the fights were happening on a narrow black line with two small characters - this time there is a full battle screen and animation is much better. The scene of transformation to wingman was especially impressive since it has "Ching!" real voice cry coming out and there have not been voiced games yet. There seems to be only two battles in the game though compared to four in the original. So with only 8 locations and two battles the game is really short and a perfect run can be done in 10 minutes if know the exploration part already. 4. Arion アリオン [8604] ASCII Corporation Game follows the story of anime with the same title. In Thrace, Arion is taken from his mother Demeter by the god Hades. In the Underworld, Arion is trained to be a warrior. His training is driven by revenge: Arion was told that his mother's blindness was caused by Zeus and Zeus' death will remove the curse. Finally, Arion and Geedo (a huge ape-like creature who had become Arion's friend and companion) left the Underworld to find Zeus. Seneca, a small thief, makes off with Arion's sword and this leads Arion to his first encounter with the forces of Zeus, commanded by his daughter Athena. Arion is captured but is later set free by Lesfeena, Athena's mute serving girl. As Arion rejoins Geedo and Seneca (and worries about Lesfeena), the forces of Zeus and Poseidon face each other in battle. In the background sits the scheming Hades, and the calm Apollon who seems to have plans of his own. Game has very beautiful graphics since the real scenes from the anime are digitized and used as CG. Command selection is used. There are battles with commands and hp bar, but the result depends on luck and it's not unusual to lose to average even though you're an ultimate assassin god with superior weapons. The story is about Greek mythology and is quite specific - it's actually easy to get stuck without knowing the contents of the OVA. Sometimes you need to not do anything at a certain map in order for a new opportunity open up elsewhere. 5. Galppo Club ギャルっぽクラブ [8604] Micro Cabin You are a teenager in glasses and with 450,000 yen in the pocket at the center of entertainment part. There are a lot of girls around to get to know. The systems of the game are quite peculiar. There are 9 squares you can move around. There are random and not random encounters with girls. There are also lots of stats that deteriorate with certain actions like fighting. The rules are actually quite difficult and need lots of dedication to get to know. Game seems to be influenced by Tokyo Nampa street. 6. Boukenshatachi Kenja no Yuigon 冒険者達 賢者の遺言 [860523] ASCII Corporation Chinese style gag-comedy. You train in the mountains with your master. One day a mysterious stranger hands over a golden a key. And so the adventure starts... Game symbolizes transition period between text parser and command selection. You start writing a verb, find the needed command in the list and then set it to function key and can use it from there later on. There are over 100 CG here and most of them are really funny, so the gags must be alright. There are some nude images and you can just undress yourself and walk like that - haha - but don't expect for anyone to talk to you while you're like that. 7. Alpha アルファ [8605] Square Co. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Once the natural resources on the Earth were exhausted, mankind started to look up for the next world to go to. Now their destination is a planet in the system of Epsilon Eridani - a star 10.7 light years away. As no means for faster than light travel or frozen hibernation exists, many generations of people will live and die on the ship "Daedalus", before it reaches its target... There's enough of English information on the game, including English reviews. Great characters and graphics are alone enough for it to be a masterpiece. 8. Hokuto no Ken: Violence Gekiga Adventure 北斗の拳 バイオレンス劇画アドベンチャー [8605] Enix 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Set in a post-apocalyptic world, the story follows a man named Kenshiro - successor to the deadly martial art known as Hokuto Shinken . Kenshiro travels the world fighting ravagers and rival martial artists, whilst also protecting the innocent and weak. The game covers the first arc of the story, where Kenshiro goes up against his old rival Shin. I was really astonished by the quantity of information in English on this game. This seems to be the beginning of fighting franchise that really stirs people's minds even today. 9. Mahoutsukai no Deshi 魔法使いの妹子 [8605] Teikoku Soft In the first part wizard apprentice gets caught in a variety of troubles in the village on her adventure path. Initially a doujin game that got commercial rerlease in 1986. The drawing is surprisingly nice, but game is quite short. 10. Cosmo Angel コスモエンジェル [8606] PSK 1 In the year 2888 an interstellar organization named Gammos began to terrorize space. Using a powerful new weapon known as GRAY-Q, Gammos launched an unprecedented assault on the headquarters of the Galactic Federation. The special government squad Cosmo Angel was assigned to infiltrate the Gammos base and destroy GRAY-Q. The agents in charge are a young woman named Lina and her ex-boyfriend Akira. A new PSK game and finally not about lolis... Or wait... is it? Lolis fighting in space? For realz, PSK? The story is quite absurdist and is made just to present cool SF nude pictures as I see it. Just as other PSK works, it's still the same text parser without any development. 11. Day Dream デイドリーム [8607] Cross Media Soft The theme is visit of aliens. There are three scenarios to choose from: "driver", "policeman", "pilot". Depending on the scenario chosen the story starts from different points, but the fabula is the same - you get restrained by the aliens in some room and need to get out of there. Otherwise there's no novelty - a very slow drawing speed combined with text parser. 12. Erika エリカ [8607] JAST Near future. The unknown black shadow enemy is planning to conquer the Earth. Erika is a special agent on a mission to investigate enemy's new weapon Spectron. Protagonist is an information agent that gets into contact with Erika to receive information from her. Together they must infiltrate enemy base and destroy the secret weapon. So JAST abandoned its Aftrernoon Angels series for the serious SF action? Not really. The game is mostly about Erika H scenes both with hero and enemies and there's not that much adventuring compared. The system is the same as in Afternoon Angels - command selection out of big list of commands. 13. Seijo Densetsu -Five Holy Girls- 聖女伝説 -Five Holy Girls- [8607] Studio Blue The hero is a detective who chases the mysterious criminal girl Remy who is rumored to have stolen the treasure "GOLD LADY". In the game you get to interrogate girls one by one with the aim to get information about Remy. That's a pretty lame synopsis, but anything really goes for a nukige. There are five chapters each for a new girl and the sixth chapter finalizes the deed. Game is pretty disgusting since pretty much all the time is spent on interrogating the girls and there's nothing "saint" or "holy" in it. 14. 1000-nen Oukoku 1000年王国 [8608] LOG 1 2 The prophet Nostradamus has foreseen that the world as we know it shall end in the year 1999, and the thousand-year kingdom of angels and children will commence. A young boy named Shou is at first unaware of these prophecies, enjoying a normal life with his sweetheart Alisa. However, a series of events changes his life forever, as he is entrusted with the task of saving humans by discovering the ancient continent of Atlantis. There's a good big walkthrough in English and mobygames article on top of that. 15. Five Sweet Dream ファイブスイートドリーム [8608] Great There are five rooms and you are to fulfill the wishes spoken aloud there. This piece of software is quite close to the Five Holy Girls. Same number five, same doing H to five girls, same troublesome and long process. The company actually had to take all the extreme scenes out of it and publish them separately. 16. J.B. Harold no Jikenbo #1 - Final Mystery - Murder Club J.B.ハロルドの事件簿 - 殺人倶楽部 [8608] Riverhill Soft inc. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 A horrible murder has taken place in the sleepy little town of Liberty. Bill Robbins, a wealthy man known for his wild womanizing ways is the victim and, list of possible suspects keeps growing. As J.B. Harold you must figure out the who, what, where and why of the case. To solve the mystery you will need to travel to various locations, interview people and search for clues. Game was localized in English and sold over 20 millions copies in the West, so it has a great press coverage. I only list here five of the more conventional sources. 17. Shoumakyou no Densetsu 照魔鏡の伝説 [8608] Starcraft Co., Ltd. Main character is caught by the enemy and starts in prison. He needs to break free and explore Japanese castle to find five pieces of the mystery mirror within time limit. There is both time limit and number of commands input limit, but overall commands aren't difficult. 18. Casablanca ni Ai o Satsujinsha wa Jikuu o Koete カサブランカに愛を 殺人者は時空を越えて [8610] Thinking Rabbit 1 June 1945. Chicago newspaper female reporter Jerry Randolph gets a letter from missing school friend saying that friend's father Mr. Edgar was conducting a dangerous scientific research. Jerry hurries to that adress only to find out that Mr. Edgar is stabbed and the research is a time machine. Jerry undertakes a time travel to year 1916 to get to the root of mystery. Quite an ok nostalgic SF mystery story, but it's stuffed with the same text parser so feels ancient while everyone else already shifted to command selection. The colored X68000 version actually uses command selection formula and colored screens, but misses much of the charm of the original version along with the cool original character designs. It still can be called a masterpiece. 19. Christine クリスチーヌ [8610] PSK 1 2 3 A young girl was enjoying a happy life with her boyfriend when suddenly, out of nowhere, a powerful spell was cast and the poor boy was turned into stone. A sorceress named Christine appears and says that another sorceress called Jane was the culprit. The young heroine must find a way to defeat Jane and revert her boyfriend to normal. There are two English reviews of the game (from the same person, but for different versions and are somewhat different). 20. Kudokikata Oshiemasu 口説き方教えます [8610] Hard Nampa game with CG reward for the right answers in dialogue for each girl. The game does not really leave any doubts of its content with nude images showing up twice during first couple minutes of the game. So each girls needs her own approach and you can use hits to try to guess her likes. If you still fail, you just move on to the next girl. Thus is the title - Please teach me how to speak. 21. Nichiyoubi ni Uchuujin ga…? 日曜日に宇宙人が…？ [8610] Soft Studio Wing Absurd story based on a novel. A reporter and photographer are sent 20 years back in time with the help of mad scientist to write a special article. That brought attention of aliens who attacked from Andromeda. Soft Studio Wing again which means that the game is MSX exclusive again and is difficult to find. The development is quite absurt, but the commands set are fairly usual. The text drawing speed has increased significantly since the Legend of White and Black. The difficulty level is reported to be moderate and the progress quite fun. 22. Dead Zone デッド ゾーン [861120] Sunsoft 1 2 3 4 In the space calendar 0385, the Earth suffers from overpopulation and humans started to build space colonies. Kirk, the protagonist of Dead Zone, works for the Earth federation's space development office. He is a brilliant engineer in space physics and he is working for Sirius third planet colony. He also got engaged with his beloved girlfriend Marry, but they had to postpone their wedding. Five months later, Kirk, accompanied with his robot Carry, decides to meet Marry at last, and prepare the ceremony. But when he arrives at the space station, everything is quiet. Then a beam of light hits him. He wakes up sometimes later, inside a sort of underground graveyard. The game was released for NES and thus it's more familiar for the Western auditory than pc88 counterparts. There are some English reviews on the game. 23. Cinderella Perudue シンデレラ ペルデュー [8611] STUDIO ANGEL The hero gets a strange message from communication club "BC" one day. In the encounter with five girls he needs to get the information to decipher the message. Five holy girls, then five sweet dream and now five Cinderellas. This time there's at least normal gameplay. You have time limit, 45,000 yen and the girls in the town to talk to. This is an actual talk, not an interrogation with torture, but there are enough H events in the game anyway. There is no explanation of the title in the game - the best I can think of is that we're give time limit (24 hours) to settle the deal as well. 24. Golques ゴルコス [8611] DataWest Hero is dragged into an alternative dimension in pursuit of woman named Daisy. This dimension is a battlefield between warrior girls and grotesque monsters who serve the Queen. This is not really a game to reflect on. When I tried to make a longer video I encountered two H scenes right after that. It's more about cool and cute girls assaulted. Text parser is still used for game progression. 25. Lolita Hime no Densetsu ロリータ姫の伝説 [8611] Bond Soft An adventure to rescue princess Lolita trapped in a certain castle in Europe. A kusoge from the creators of Time Secret and Time Tunnel. The evergreen text parser is present. This game was shocking as it introduced scat scenes for the first time in game history. 26. Seijo Panic 聖女ぱにっく [8611] Studio Blue The game picks up where the prequel ended. The "GOLD LADY" turned out to be a fake and the hero chases the girls to reveal the truth. So five holy girls weren't already enough and thus here you with a sequel made just 4 months after that. Five more girls to assault. Game system pretty much the same. The ending is reported be kind of heartwarming, but I'm not going to check out with this kind of a game. 27. Gall Force - Eternal Story ガルフォース Eternal Story [861210] ScapTrust The game is based on the anime series. Gall Force is a unit of seven girls that reach the satellite and get on a mission to protect if from the Paranoids. The game implements command selection (short list!) and looks absolutely gorgeous for pc88 game. I totally loved this game and would probably get to an end of it... but I found video walkthrough and thus I recommend it instead. 28. Maison Ikkoku ~Omoide no Photograph~ めぞん一刻 ～想いでのフォトグラフ～ [861210] Arrow Soft 1 2 You are Godai Yuusaku. You begin the game in Godai's room no. 5. Now then, what should you do? First how about trying to get the beautiful Kanrinin-san of Maison Ikkoku? To do that you will want to enter her room right? And you can meet her face to face and drink tea... And after that you can take her hand and... There are two reviews of this game with one being of yours truly. 29. Suishou no Dragon 水晶の龍 [861215] Square Co. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 The game is set in a science fiction-like setting, where the teenage main character must investigate a series of kidnappings and the mysterious dragon that suddenly appeared in outer space. The game is released for NES and has multiple English reviews. 30. Little Princess リトルプリンセス [861225] Champion Soft 1 2 3 4 5 The first game for Windows OS of Champion Soft (the later Alice Soft), contains pretty girl Miki and young warrior Kentarou trying to save her beloved one kidnapped by some evil guy. The game has an English release for Windows and there are some English reviews of it. 31. Toki no Tabibito 時空の旅人 [861226] Kemco Corporation 1 2 Based on the events of anime work with the same title. Time Stranger is the story of several teenagers getting transported back in time through Japan's history, and getting mixed up with samurai shenanigans. There is an English review and a guide for this NES game. 32. Cream Lemon - Star Trap くりぃむレモン スタートラップ [8612] JAST 1 2 The game faithfully follows the part 10 "Start Trap" of anime series Cream Lemon with some insignificant for the plot additional scenes. The game does not really follow anime episode faithfully. The very start shows the battle with the robot. Then there are some everyday life scenes and then the H scene that I failed to get through even with walkthrough. The text parser is very painful even with a list of frequently used commands to the right. 33. Luna City Satsujin Jiken ルナシティ殺人事件 [8612] Bond Soft You play as detective in charge of investigation of Luna city mayor murder in 2216 AD. You have both male and female body with a single personality and can switch them on will. The zapping potential is not realized here at all since everything important for the plot can be done with either character, but it's still the first zapping game. The personality is single between the two bodies, so it can't even be called multiple perspective one or multiple sites one. Otherwise nothing special. 34. Pop Lemon ポップレモン [8612] Champion Soft Game is a gag comedy. Main hero aims for a true pedometer. He sets on a journey to get "Eros", the source of power of lolicon. I failed to get through the text parser, but there is actually a full video walkthrough at nicovideo. And there is too much loli dubious content to even try to investigate it. 35. Shiro to Kuro no Densetsu ~Asuka Hen~ 白と黒の伝説 ～アスカ編～ [8612] Soft Studio Wing 1 The final part of the trilogy "Shiro to Kuro no Densetsu" takes us into the 199X-th year. Humanity is on the verge of extinction because of mysterious climate catastrophe. The city lays in ruins, food supplies running out, day temperatures reaches +50, and at night drops to -40 degrees. Rumor has it that all of these events are associated with the advent of the demons in our world and are signs of impending apocalypse. A group of brave heroes decides to use the last hope and goes into the mountains in search of a mythical temple, which according to legend hid all the answers. The third part brings some point-and-click elements. This is hands off the darkest work of the trilogy and the most depressive one. And the ending here is quite miserable, so I fail to see the appeal in this final work. 36. Youkiden 妖姫伝 [8612] Hot-B 1 Coming to rest on the nature, six friends accidentally stumble into the woods on a strange cave. For fun they decide to look into it and find there the remains of an ancient temple. That's a find! Inside the temple, the main character catches the eye of a beautiful comb - and she decides to take it with you as a souvenir. But as you know, steal things from the temple - a very bad idea. From this day girl nightmares every night, and her friends begin to die one by one. "YoukiDen" became the first Japanese horror containing erotic scenes. Another notable feature of game is the abundance brutal shock-content - a scene, where a zombie samurai cut hands alive girl (and then raped her), made "YoukiDen" most brutal and bloodthirsty horror game of its time (however, this status from the game will last long, because a year later in the arcades will legendary "SplatterHouse"). The novelty of this work is that the screen is displayed as manga strip. There are 9 commands given for selection, but soon you realize that you need to manually enter other commands as well. It's not the first work to introduce eroticism together with gore (Christine had the same stuff), but the first one with such huge amount of it. 37. Soapland Story ソープランドストーリー [8612] Hard City nampa adventure. There's nothing special about this work apart of the fact that it paved the way to future SIM mixes such as Welcome to the Cinema House by Hard later on. There are stats so it may even be called an RPG. The view is top down and the graphics are rough.

So there are very few VNs in 1985 and even fewer account for masterpieces. Karuizawa Yuukai Annai was obviously a favorite after Horii Yuji won the previous two years, but the game lacks the mystery and fills it with lots of fanservice. El Dorado Denki gets a pretty devastating review. Tenshi-tachi no Gogo is an eroge that I would strike out if it weren't in the 80s. Abyss II and Dezeni World still use text parser. So why not Shiro to Kuro no Densetsu first title? The story is fresh and serious. There is only command selection. That's definitely not the worst option and a good read! 1. El Dorado Denki エルドラド伝奇 [8501] Enix 1 2 3 A young Japanese man receives an unexpected call from his friend Akira in the middle of the night. He hurries to Akira's house, only to find him dead under unclear circumstances. Checking out his computer files reveals information about his sister, who was allegedly kidnapped. The trail leads to the mysterious land of El Dorado in South America, populated by tribes of Amazonekos ("Amazon cats"), who look like young attractive human females with cat tails. In order to solve the mystery, the hero must find a way to view tattoos adorning various body parts of the young ladies. There are two English reviews on this game. 2. Saiyuuki 西遊記 [8501] Gamu Saiyuuki or Journey to the West is one of the four great books of China. Sanzo Hoshi and Son Goku to go on a journey to examine Buddhist scriptures. Sanzo Hoshi gets caught by a monster and carried to the top of the mountain. Son Goku sets off to rescue his friend. He will need to defeat numerous monsters and pass through three demon gates. There are four layers of the mountain, so we need to travel around and look for a gate while getting into numerous fights. 3. Juggler Stone ジャグラーストーン [8501] Riverhill Soft inc. Collecting all three juggler stones is supposed to bring great power. Main character acquires one stone by chance and heads to Alpha Town to find traces of the other two with the help of characters met along the way. A classic short adventure that's notorious for instant picture display and unexpected ending. 4. Asteka アステカ [8502] Nihon Falcom Main character Annie comes to the recently discovered archaeological site at Latin America. She believes that he can finally reveal the mysteries of ancient Aztec civilization. A rather unique game with adventure spirit. The prominent features are ability to write commands with a commas and to track back your progress. The difficulty is high since commands are elaborate. 5. Time Zone [8502] Starcraft Co., Ltd. 1 2 3 4 5 Time Zone is a multi-disk graphical adventure game written and directed by Roberta Williams for the Apple II. Developed in 1981 and released in 1982 by On-Line Systems (later Sierra Entertainment), the game was shipped with six double-sided floppy disks and contained 1,500 areas (screens) to explore along with 39 scenarios to solve. Produced at a time when most games rarely took up more than one side of a floppy, Time Zone is one of the first games of this magnitude released for home computer systems. There are English reviews. 6. The Count ザ・カウント [8502] Starcraft Co., Ltd. Main character heads to Count Dracula castle to rescue travelers lost in stormy weather. There are only three days given to defeat the vampire with the help of garlic and holy cross. Quite a creepy horror adventure. If Dracula manages to drink hero's blood for several times, then protagonist becomes vampire himself. 7. Doukeshi Satsujin Jiken 道化師殺人事件 [8503] Thinking Rabbit A summer resort town Brighton stands not far from London. A small circus troupe becomes the main attraction of the season. Just a day before the premiere clown Charles Dubois is found dead in a shower wagon. The cause of death is a knife strike from the back. Main character is a detective who is called from London to resolve this case. A particularly famous game of the time. The entire town is the stage, and moving is done with common 2 4 6 8 numerals. There's a huge number of suspects. Game even has Sega Saturn remake with prominent graphics and normal command selection system. 8. New Godzilla ニューゴジラ [8504] Toho The aim is to repel Godzilla and prevent the Soviet missiles from launching. The story is divided into three parts and proceeds according to the film events. Again Toho, again Godzilla. The "New" in the title is set to mean the shift from child cartoons back to original horror. The plot actually follows that one of the movie quite faithfully. There are some real time elements included while searching. At the very least this time the graphics are tolerable and the drawing speed is fast. 9. Tokyo Nanpa Street Ｔｏｋｙｏナンパストリート [8504] Enix 1 2 3 You have to manage your stay at a local hotel and, during the day, use your wiles in conversation to snag a girl for the night. The most crucial phase of the game is the restaurant conversation you have with a date, which involves careful selection of options from a text tree. There's no real plot, just these conversations with artificial intelligence. There are some numbers to take into account while talking, especially the money factor. There are 55 females in the game with only small differences about them. This game still is the founder of the whole genre and historically significant. 10. Karuizawa Yuukai Annai 軽井沢誘拐案内 [8505] Enix 1 2 3 4 Kumiko and her younger sister Nagisa are spending their vacation in Karuizawa. One day Nagisa went out to the supermarket to do some shopping, but then failed to return to the villa they were staying at. Kumiko also receives a strange phone call later that night. With the police not being very helpful, Kumiko and her boyfriend (i.e. you) decide to take matters into their own hands. This is actually the third work from the same people who did Portopia and Okhotsk detective stories previous years that became game of the years 1983 and 1984 from my point of view. There is enough English information on the work including the full review from an author whom I nearly worship for playing these old games these days. 11. Tankentai 2 - Makyou Amazon no Okuchi ni Kogane Densetsu o Mita! 探検隊第二弾　魔境アマゾンの奥地に黄金伝説を見た！ [8506] DataWest Game is a parody on famous Japanese geographical TV show. It is reported that gold is found on the Amazon river with the aim of raising TV rating and expedition is sent there alongside TV unit. This is the game that I failed to find rom for which explains why it's so obscure. Anyway, text parser is used and you need to guess not just the appropriate answer for the situation, but the best one to raise TV ratings of the program. Item collection is important. The whole location takes 6x7 squares, or 42 screens. The end TV ratings depend on the actions taken, so it was nice to compare results afterwards. 12. Tenshi-tachi no Gogo 天使たちの午後 [8506] JAST 1 2 3 4 Tenshitachi no Gogo is an adventure game set in a Japanese high school. The goal of the game is to seduce Yumiko Shiraishi, the star girl of the tennis club. To seduce her, the protagonist will have to become acquainted and intimate with her friends by talking to them. The ancestor of bishoujo games since before there were mostly lolicon games. And finally the characters are drawn really cute here. There is a list of commands to the right, but inputting your own is also allowed. The game is also notable for the glorious JAST sound. It's the shockingly good visual and audio quality that makes this game a masterpiece. 13. Abyss II ~Tears of Emperor~ アビス Ⅱ ～帝王の涙～ [8507] Humming Bird Soft 1 In the year 3006, various organizations in the galaxy are searching for a legendary weapon known as Tears of Emperor. It is said that possession of this weapon will allow its owner to dominate the entire world. A criminal syndicate called Grimp has devised its own scheme for procuring the weapon. They kidnapped a well-known space explorer and infused his body with a tiny neutron bomb. If the explorer will not obtain Tears of Emperor for them, the bomb will detonate... It's still text parser, but common commands are set to function keys. The graphics are much better. This is actually a work of high completeness. 14. Yellow Lemon イエローレモン [8508] PSK 1 2 Yellow Lemon is a simple text-based simulation game consisting entirely of conversations with four school girls. The player has to type conversations topics and responses, hoping to increase the girl's "liking" parameter. Once it is high enough the girl would assume erotic poses and sexual relationship is implied. Afterwards the game switches to another girl for the same procedure. Tenshi-tachi no Gogo released two months before really shifted the gears from lolicon games to bishoujo ones. Even the originator of loli genre PSK introduced older girls in this new game. It's not a real conversation that's used in the game since you don't really ask questions. You only get to answer them, so interrogation or a quiz is more appropriate. The reward is nude CG. At this time there was already EMMY artificial intelligence bishoujo software, so this game felt dated. There is an English review on the game. 15. Will: The Death Trap II ウィル デス・トラップII [8509] Square Co. 1 2 3 President of the United States of America receives a letter with simple, but blood-chilling words: within the next twenty-four hours, the entire life on Earth will be annihilated. Specialists track the sender of the letter to a small island named Torinia somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Special agent Benson is sent there with the ultimate mission: find out who sent the letter, or prepare for the destruction of the world... The game has enough information in English including one review. 16. Shiro to Kuro no Densetsu ~Hyakki Hen~ 白と黒の伝説 ～百鬼編～ [8511] Soft Studio Wing 1 Story begins with an incident in a psychiatric hospital - at midnight the third floor of the building suddenly burst into flames. Reporter from the local newspaper arrived on the scene to write an article. After interviewing witnesses it appears that the fire started in the chamber of 301 - but the cause of fire remained unknown. Moreover, the patient of this chamber disappeared - even his body could not be found. After a long search, the reporter still finds the missing patient on the streets - but he just mumbles some strange prophecies. The next day, the usual trip on the train turns into a nightmare for our reporter: when the train enters a tunnel, the world outside the window suddenly begins to change and he find ourselves in a terrible alternative world. But all this is only a prelude to the coming apocalypse. First game of Soft Studio Wing and MSX exclusive. MSX placed really harsh limitations on the games and thus very few colors are used. The drawing speed is slow. Pure command selection is used, so it's at least user-friendly. The game was later released as Desctruction series and better known as that. 17. Dezeni World デゼニワールド [8512] Hudson Soft 1 2 This time the player is put in the role of an onscreen character - Dezeni Man, a fat dishevelled loser who bears some kind of resemblance to Hudson spokesperson Toshiyuki Takahashi (also known as Meijin Takahashi, who was also the main character of their Adventure Island series, although he denies the connection.) His goal - to infiltrate Dezeni World and disable the evil computer HAL3 (a parody of the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, although in Japanese it's pronounced "harumi", a girl's name.) There's a good English article on the game. 18. Lupin Sansei ~Cagliostro no Shiro~ ルパン三世 ～カリオストロの城～ [8512] Toho After a successful robbery leaves famed thief Lupin III and his partner Jigen with nothing but a large amount of fake money, the so called "Goat Bills," he decides to track down the counterfeiter responsible—and steal any other treasures he may find in the Castle of Cagliostro, including the "damsel in distress" he finds imprisoned there. However, as usual, Inspector Zenigata is hot on his trail. RPG game based on animation movie of the same name. Player chooses Lupin or one of the other two heroes and investigates the castle. Scenes from the OVA are used for as title screen and demo screens. This game is obscure because in 1985 there was another Lupin III game with the same title but being an arcade and that game got much better spread and coverage. 19. Harry Fox ~Yuki no Maou Hen~ は～りぃふぉっくす ～雪の魔王編～ [8512] Micro Cabin Mother Fox died of hunger in the snowfall. Little Fox was found and nursed by girl Mari. Basically they wanted to give slightly different story, just in winter aesthetics. Now we get to meet winter animals and birds and there's also girl Mari looking for the fox.

I'll definitely write proper reviews for proper titles. Basically, here should have been only one novel - Salad no Kuni no Tomato-hime. But I did not write mine because this game has a lot of thorough reviews and does not need mine. Other 27 candidates just had no information on them so I had to see them all to know that they don't fit my criteria. I think I'll take those that were too short under spoiler in order to make it readable. Further years should have longer format VNs so this should not be a problem in future. But the number of VNs under review without information is only going to rise... and I think I won't start making monthly issues till some 1990 - the main reason is because older games often have month of issue unknown. Well, the format should settle with time.

The masterpieces of the year are:1. Miko to Akemi no Jungle Adventures ,2. Salad no Kuni no Tomato-hime ,3. Eiyuu Densetsu Saga4. Again5. Jigoku no Renshuu Mondai6. Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin: Ohotsk ni Kiyu7. Corridor8. Wingman9. Time Tunnel10. ZarthFirst of all, Death Trap is not included in the masterpieces list because it does not feel exciting to me. But we're still left with as many as 10 masterpieces on our hands! Lots of novelties and good stories this year, but the VN of the year 1984 is Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin: Ohotsk ni Kiyu. And one of the reasons for that is that this work both used command selection AND allowed to use only a short list of commands. Another reason is that the game feels very realistic both in characters, dialogues and landscapes. The mystery is great as well since the three consecutive murders seem completely unrelated. No other work in 1984 is same engaging. It just feels like a professional AAA class game like no other game of 1984. 1. Abyss アビス [8401] Humming Bird Soft 1 Events take place in 3001. You were in the middle of the confidential "ABYSS" space mission when got abducted by the Space Crime Syndicate and got memory erased. You need to know where you are and transfer coordinated to the mother ship in order to destroy Shinjigate Base. Text parser is rather merciless. The aim is to destroy this space syndicate that succeeded in developing the final weapon. There's a full video walkthrough of the game. 2. Akujo Kamakiri 悪女かまきり [8401] CSK Research Institute Game is based on the events of the movie of the year 1984 with the same title. Fujimura Masako aims to get insurance money by killing Dojima with an electric cord while he takes a bath. Game does not have much text and most of the time it's the items rendering one by one over and over. Text parser is used. Mouth of the heroine is animated. The furniture is totally unproportional and leaves a bad feeling of CG. She kills the man and leaves in the red car, probably just like in the movie. 3. Doukyou ~Kaisou Densetsu~ 道鏡 ～怪僧伝説～ [8401] CSK Research Institute Game is a fantasy based on legend of Doukyuu - a yokai of a mirror during 8th century (Nara period). Historical erotic adventure with monks and mirrors. At least this time numbered choices are used instead of text parser. 4. Manji 卍 -まんじ- [8401] CSK Research Institute The wife is cheating on the man with another woman. The man tries to show his love to his wife by lying down with that woman partner. The original is a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki, and in 1983 the movie of the same name was produced by Toei. The game begins with the scene where the wife, the hero and the wife's mistress are sleeping side by side and the aim is to lie down with the mistress without waking up wife, otherwise it's a bad end. Answers need to be input with katakana. So this is where NTR genre starts! 5. Office Love no Tehodoki ~For Lunch Time~ オフィスラブの手ほどき ～FOR ランチタイム～ [8401] CSK Research Institute You're a section manager of a company. So the only free time you have is lunch time between 12-00 and 13-10. There is a 23-year old colleague that can be targeted. Each command wastes some 30 seconds of the lunch time. Command input made this game very difficult. There are very few common commands that are accepted. And there are even traps set like not extinguishing cigarette starts a fire. 6. Onsen Mimizu Geisha 温泉みみず芸者 [8401] CSK Research Institute A man and a geisha at hot springs. Game is a part of Serious World game pack. There is both text parser and command selection. The aim is to get man's percentage and geisha's percentage to the top up from 0%. 7. Time Secret タイムシークレット [8401] Bond Soft You can go back and forth in time to different eras to solve puzzles. In addition there are battles and you have hp and attack stat as well as weapon attack stat. In Time Secret you need to discover the weakness of alien "Danak" race in order to save the colonial planet "Farras" in 2552 AD. A very good SF implementation with a large number of screens (CG). Both command input and command selection are used. 8. Kidou Senshi Gundam Gundam Daichi ni Tatsu 機動戦士ガンダム ガンダム大地に立つ [840310] Rapport 1 2 3 Game covers episodes 1 and 2 of the anime work with the same title. Command input is used. Action is quite good, but commands are way too specific like get beamrifle, get namarme, catch sayla etc. Quite impossible to figure them out without walk through even if u seen that title. It's funny that the output is actually in English. There is quite much information on the game in English in the three links listed above. 9. Demons Ring デーモンズリング [8403] Nihon Falcom 1 Crawley, the king of Jeremiah was destroyed by demon king Salone. Now that his son Dumrin is of age, he sets off to avenge his father. Game is basically about mazes. That's what shows us opening of multiple corridors (I think the first opening in VNs, no music ofc) and that's how it really is. There are mazes of the house and of the undergrounds. Game uses new technology to render full screen in just one and a half seconds and this game is the perfect show off of that technology. That's why there are so many maze screens which would need over 10 seconds to render as of late and now just 1. That was quite revolutionary and it set a new standard for the new games to come. 10. Miko to Akemi no Jungle Adventures ミコとアケミのジャングルアドベンチャー [8403] SystemSoft Miko and Akemi went on a long-awaited African trip, but their airplane crashed. Now you need to lead them out of wild jungle with dangers on every corner. Game features scoring system depending on how much you do before leaving the jungle. You need to escape the animals that you encounter. This game is one of the originators of command selection genre. It's possible to only select commands to beat the game. The drawback is that the number of commands is huge, some 30. But given the large number of screens that you need to go to the drawing speed is painful. 11. Keiko-chan no Himitsu 慶子ちゃんの秘密 [8404] Champion Soft Your tutor Keiko disappeared from the room. You need to find her to continue love lessons. Searching games weren't frequent yet and it felt fresh. The item you need to find is placed randomly around the room so it's not enough to memorize location once. And there are a lot of such situations where you need to find something. Command input is only allowed in katakana. 12. Kuronekosou Souzoku Satsujin Jiken 黒猫荘相続殺人事件 [8404] Riverhill Soft inc. The owner of Kuronekoso “Oonogi Yoshizou” was killed. There are 8 suspects related to him. The player becomes a detective and searches with his partner. Harold no Jikenbo could not appear without early imitations as this one. 13. Kaze no Tani no Naushika 風の谷のナウシカ [8406] Game Technopolis 1 Game is based on the anime work of the same title. You manipulate main character Nausicaa with numeric keyboard, collect items, shoot, ride your vehicle. There seems to be several different games for different platforms, but the game was so crude and ugly that there's a legend that the director Miyazaki was so furious that he banned gamefication of any of his works ever again. It was crude for year 1984. When I look at picture now I just wish I won't see nightmares featuring that. There's a nice article in English on it. 14. Nanako SOS ななこＳＯＳ [8406] Game Technopolis 1 Game's based on anime work of the same title. There are a few mini-games in the game, one of which places Nanako against a giant aardvark in a yakyuken game. The aardvark gives her hints if she wins, but she has to strip if she loses. Nanako ending up naked results in a Game Over. Characters ask you questions and you need to answer them in katakana. This is a game for hardcore fans of the anime that I've never even heard of (probably because it's old anime for younger kids). Native speakers reviewing the game had great trouble getting it through because of very specific anime-related command input. 15. Alice アリス [8407] PSK 1 This is a parody on Alice in Wonderland. Alice opens a book, follows the bunny into the hole and gathers notes to decipher JAWON which is a key to get out of this world. Quite a beautiful and entertaining work and also with many naked scenes - the price was as high as 8,000 yen at that time and the size was two diskettes. There's a lot of weird adventures like stealing a magical bra and giving it to the shady raincoat man. We even get to kill a dragon at some point. Command input in English characters is used and there's a walkthrough around, so it's possible to clear it even on emulator. 16. Ankoku-jou ~Souzou-shin Gyarian no Fukkatsu~ 暗黒城 ～創造神ギャリアンの復活～ [8407] Enix The game is an adventure part of the series of jrpg games. Dark apostle wants to become the ruler of the world with the help of legendary mirror of Laval. In this grand adventure featuring 9 chapters and over 460 split screens you need to defeat him. It was the hugest adventure of the time, but gameplay was quite boring and lacked originality. Lots of screens are actually the variants of the same CG with minimal differences. There's very little text on top of that so screens change at very fast speed. 17. Salad no Kuni no Tomato-hime サラダの国のトマト姫 [8407] Hudson Soft 1 2 3 4 5 6 The evil Minister Pumpkin betrayed his king, kidnapped his daughter, the lovely Princess Tomato, and began to terrorize the land of vegetables. The king entrusted Sir Cucumber with the task of freeing his daughter and his kingdom. Without further delay, the brave warrior embarks on a long journey. This old japanese adventure was the first to be imported to the West and thus it's well known there. I'll only give some review links, but there is a great number of reviews for this game. 18. Eiyuu Densetsu Saga 英雄伝説サーガ [8408] Arrow Soft 1 Dragon assaults village and girl is needed as sacrifice to calm him down. In order to help your sister you set off to find the holy sword and face dragon at the sacrificial site far in the north. The graphics are superb compared to other games of this year. Also you only choose from commands instead of typing them. There is a good English review on this game. The game is fascinating even today. First of all, you need to make your map of use premade one by other users to understand where to go. Basically you need to move only by roads and explore the three caves scattered around. Caves can bring avalanche (instant game over), spider battle (winning is based on luck) or finding the legendary sword. And after that all is left is to discover that dragon. And there's a cheat - when you die it's possible to say a secret phrase and be resurrected with the legendary sword. Game's beautiful, because all the images are drawn elsewhere and then digitalized. The screen rendering is instant. Pure command selection in English is used. The game is definitely a masterpiece and the paragon to look up to. 19. Zarth ザース [8408] Enix 1 2 3 4 In the 21th century, powerful computer systems were invented. However, the humans failed to control them. Near the end of the century, one of such systems, Orion, triggered a devastating nuclear war. A few survivors found a shelter and went into a cryogenic sleep. A hundred years later, they wake up and go out onto the surface, to face a new, unknown world... Inferior technology (quite long screen rendering speed at MSX), but otherwise very impressive. People at that time could not believe that such beautiful pictures could be achieved with primitive MSX. And Zarth came 3 months earlier than Wingman. So the survivors of nuclear world war wake up 100 years later from cryogenic sleep. But now the regenerated Earth is in danger again - you need to go to the Moon space station and get rid of nuclear weapons. This game is often referred as Mirika, because everyone remembers the magazine ad with her beautiful face while Mirika appears in game only in opening and never again - such a bummer! Zarth should have been the final part of tetralogy, but first three parts were never finished. Good game with good action, but buried by inferior technology and manual command input. There is also quite much information in English available. 20. Chouhou Buin 諜報部員 [8408] Prosumer Main character John gets a message from the Director of Space and Aeronautics. He has trouble finding the place, so he travels on foot and asks around. A standard adventure with very difficult commands to find and type. 21. Ginga o Sukue 銀河を救え [8408] Raven Soft There is a crisis that can destroy the entire galaxy - such message arrives from the alien who is the first to notice it. Main character goes to the outer space on a spaceship to find nine passwords and prevent the disaster. Game is about encounters with all kind of space entities and also about space battles and maintaining all the four parameters above zero. 22. Mission Impossible [8408] Starcraft Co., Ltd. A spy infiltration inspired by the famous movie. The stage is a fully mechanized nuclear reactor center. A mechanic is trying to commit suicide by setting a time bomb in the reactor. Main character Jim Phelps needs to prevent that from happening by finding his way in the maze-like building. There is little of note here except maybe for tape recorder that appears when it's needed and disappears afterwards. 23. Jigoku no Renshuu Mondai 地獄の練習問題 [8409] Humming Bird Soft 1 2 The main character is a lower angel who entertains an exam to become senior angel. It's a practice exam in the hell surroundings. You talk to different people in hell layers - Cleopatra, Hitler, Dracula, John Lennon, Napoleon, Merlin Monroe - walk around lake of blood and mountain of needles and answer the quiz. Depending on your actions on the way to exit, you gain score. 60 is needed to pass the exam. If someone gains 100 points and sends the proof to the developer, his name will be published in the magazine. That was promissed. It seems impossible to gain 100 points, but imagine the competition! Game is short and tedious since you need to input commands manually. There's a very good English article on the game. 24. Shin Taketori Monogatari 新竹取物語 [8410] Cross Media Soft The game is a gag parody on japanese Taketori legend. The purpose of the game is to discover anything at any opportunity and have fun. There are three difficulty levels and multiple endings. Game features some nude scenes. Slow rendering of every screen makes gameplay painful. Since it's a parody it's supposed to bring more fun for those familiar with all these ancient legends and folktales. A very original work taking into account multiple difficulty settings, multiple endings and possibility to enter characters in English, romaji and kana. 25. Shiro Densetsu 白伝説 [8410] Crystal Soft (old) It is the land of conflict. Red and blue people fight each other day after day. White people appeared - "We shall rule this land". Can you proclame leadership over the land as a white man? Setting is horrible. And since you're being thrown into the game without even this little knowledge unless you read the manual, game looks like a chain of random events. You need to get to village elder and then revive some god after a maze of caverns. Everything else is optional, but there seems to be a lot of such optional secrets. Command input and slow rendering don't make things easier. The feature of this game is physical strength bar which depletes with every action, so taking notes required. 26. The Death Trap ザ・デストラップ [8410] Square Co. 1 2 3 4 During the 1980-ies, the relationship between the free world and the socialist block became increasingly tense and hostile. Many countries began to prepare for a global-scale war, working on new weapons. One of such countries is the mysterious "B country" in Eastern Africa. Eager to seize power with biological weapons, an organization associated with this country kidnaps the famous scientist Dr. Gitanes. An agent named Benson is sent to B country in order to rescue the doctor and avert the new threat to world peace. Some african "B country" kidnaps a famous scientist who can produce biological weapons and you're on spec op to rescue him. First game made by Square with scenario produced by future FF creator and the most financial successful game at that time selling over 500,000 copies. Command input still present, but screen renders from left to right and quite fast. Graphics is top notch for the time. Game features half screen as your outlook, half screen as map (always present) and text at the bottom. So what made this game so popular? My guess is the seriousness of approach. Serious story - briefing at headquarters - flight on a helicopter - using a parachute - map movement - two separate branches of how to get to the scientist - it all looks professional compared to amateur games of that time. Only Eiyuu Densetsu Saga had graphics same good, but had quite plain gameplay and weird screen sequence (like you get 5 slightly different pictures in color one by one, then the rest disappears and only main one stays). There is quite much information on the game in English. 27. Corridor コリドール [8411] Koei 1 King sends three princes on a journey so that the prince who gets the most wonderful journey becomes his successor. The player prince is searching for the legendary cursed castle to become next king. You get text and images (usually separately - one or another) and often get to make a choice among 1-6 variants. There are stats and lots of fights that rely on some real mechanic, not just luck. But most of the time we just read a wall of text. There are lots of bad endings as well. 28. Godzilla ゴジラ [8411] Toho Game is based on the first Godzilla movie. There are three parts - first you investigate the incident - then you pursue the monster and invent what to do with it and finally you confront Godzilla with oxygen destroyer. Game's quite lackluster for year 1984 - still low screen rendering and still command input with ugly graphics. Toho games are the only ones that I can't load with emulator whatever modes or roms I try. 29. Kaitei Gunkan 海底軍艦 [8411] Toho Game's based on 1963 year japanese film about submarine. It is divided in two parts: first you search for an enemy with command input and then action based underwater battle. Another Toho game. And this the rom is just impossible to find. Game's graphics done in basic so they are... both bad and slow to render and paint. 30. Wingman ウイングマン [8411] TamTam Co., Ltd. 1 2 3 Kenta is a Japanese teenager who is obsessed with superhero stories. One day, he meets a mysterious girl named Aoi. She tells him she is from a dimension called Powdream, and gives him a powerful item called Dream Note, which can fulfill wishes. Kenta is eager to realize his dreams by asking to be transformed into a superhero named Wingman. However, the dictator Rimel fears that the new hero will endanger his existence in Powdream, and swears to get rid of Kenta by separating him from Aoi. Wingman is a popular manga and anime hero. This is a story of Aoi, a girl who escaped her dimension to protect "Dream note". The hero of righteousness "Wingman" is to protect Aoi. There are four fights and after each fight you learn new fighting techniques, but loosing does not affect the game outcome. This is definitely professional level of work. CG, faces, battles, different weapons, constant use of sound effects. And the creator is Enix company. Now i know why FF series were a success. Because professionals from Square (The Death Trap) and Enix were there. Story is original side story of anime. The game actually has a full English review made at our times by the guy I next to worship for playing such old games nowadays. 31. Harry Fox は～りぃふぉっくす [841210] Micro Cabin 1 2 Little fox child caught a disease called Romus disease. Mother fox remembers a story from old woman that a certain mushroom cures this disease and sets off on a journey to a Shinto shrine where those mushrooms grow. Mother fox encounters various dangers o the forest. I've countered 10 animals, one hunter and a swarm of bees on the mother's way. Scenery is very bright, screen is rendered vertically and very fast like in Eiyuu Densetsu Saga. Text shows on the same screen as image and there are some really cute animals, including fox itself. Sound effects show up when needed and they're better than usual short beeps. Text parser with katakana input is used. 32. Again アゲイン [8412] Enix Heavens dweller needs to live 7 lives to become a Holy Spirit .There are 7 short stories. Each story is a life we live to become Holy Spirit in the end. All stories vary in gameplay: there is rpg story, surgery opperation, puzzle etc Finally all stories get connected. The game takes multiple forms and is unique for that. That's a new level of storytelling - a conceptual work. There's a good video walkthrough. 33. Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin: Ohotsk ni Kiyu 北海道連鎖殺人 オホーツクに消ゆ [8412] Login Soft 1 2 3 4 A corpse of a man is discovered at Harumi Wharf, Tokyo Bay (game features real geographical locations). The main character, police inspector, investigates the identity of the victim with his subordinate Kuroki and tracks the source to Hokkaido island. Second and third murder cases occur one after another. What's the purpose of the criminal? Another murder investigation from the same authors as Portopia Renzoku Satssujin Jiken (1983). Screen renders slow but picture is made very simple to make the pace good. You get to choose from 9 commands, so tedious, but not too much. As for the story, what happens next differs with pc88 and later versions. A very realistic and persuading setting. I can see the appeal here. There is enough information in English on the game. 34. Time Tunnel タイムトンネル [8412] Bond Soft In Time Tunnel story picks up where Time Secret Ended. Your time machine collapsed and your are taken prisoner at space station. You need to use this planet Time Tunnel technology to go back in 2552 AD and fight off Danak invasion. In these games you can go back and forth in time to different eras to solve puzzles. In addition there are battles and you have hp and attack stat as well as weapon attack stat. Time Tunnels has as much as 4 endings including a bad end. 140 screen splits. Command inputs and slow screen rendering again. On your time travels you get to meet some celebrities like Beethoven or Murasaki Shikibe. This is probably the first visual novel to implement multiple endings which are four in this game. And not everything is done with text parser here - directions are used to move around N S E W. The story of the game makes it a masterpiece, but it's next to impossible to play nowadays. 35. Lagrange L2 ラグランジュL2 [84] Vehicle Software Federal military research ship "Gallia 201" was destroyed by a mysterious missile attack in area L-2 on the way home from Mars back to Earth. The only survivor escaped by jumping with a spacesuit in the open space. Out of pure luck he was found and dragged by nearby ship... Wow, this game is so serious and difficult. Basically you wander at the space station with an aim to fly away on a spaceship. Some tasks are timed which is insane with command input. There are 14 scenes overall with each presenting some kind of puzzle. 36. Emmy エミー [84] Kogado Studio Emmy is a curious artificial software girl. Have an intelligent conversation with her to improve its quality. Needless to say, it's really difficult to find proper and varied commands. If the the same thing is typed several times, Emmy calls you boring and sets off. 37. Ningyo no Namida 人魚の涙 [84] Teikoku Soft Hero goes out looking for the bride in a fantasy world. He meets different characters and animals and talks to them to solve their problems. Allegedly the first Doujin visual novel. Which is cool because picture quality level is superb for 1984. It's also the first game with individual endings for heroines. Mermaid is the maid sexual interest of the hero, but there is also an ending with a turtle (sic!) even though it's actually a girl transformed into a turtle. Fun pictures and strange texts create a warm atmosphere. 38. Southern Cross ラグランジュL2 [84] Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. In 1999 main character stays at the Southern Cross star. He has already retrieved the Phoenix capsule, and now looks for a way to return to the Earth. He is suddenly told about an opportunity to ride a UFO as soon as he finds the secret password in his room. Game is surprisingly long featuring over 150 screens. Space part actually finishes very soon as UFO we ride has an emergency landing to the kingdom resembling ancient mythological Greece with centaurs and the like. There are actually different routes from this point to reach the new spaceship, so it's possible to try another way if you get stuck. Game ends up with discovering the contents of the Phoenix capsule upon landing the Earth.

I'd only hope to get to some October 2008 since the rest is mostly covered by Micchi. And I'm not going to go through well known works with great reviews, just to compare the obscure ones with them. Lots of work, still.

The masterpieces of the year are:1. Joshi Ryou Panic,2. Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken,3. Star Arthur Densetsu I ~Wakusei Mephius~,4. Mio no Mystery Adventure,5. Dezeni Land.The VN of the year 1983 is Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken, because it introduced command selection that was used for many years to come. It's a huge step from text parser. There was another revolutionary game Star Arthur Densetsu that introduced point-and-click elements for the first time, but the main part remained with the text parser there. 1. Mission Asteroid 四次元少女リディア [80] Sierra Entertainment 1 2 3 4 5 Mission Asteroid (shown as Mission: Asteroid in the manual and on the title screen) is a graphic adventure game for the Apple II written by Ken and Roberta Williams and released in 1980 by On-Line Systems.It was later ported to the Atari 8-bit family and Commodore 64. The game was released as Hi-Res Adventures #0, despite being released after Mystery House and Wizard and the Princess. It was meant as an introduction to the adventure game genre so it was made easier than the rest of Hi-Res Adventures games. There are English reviews. 2. Lolita ロリータ [8212] PSK 1 2 Lolita: Yakyuuken is a simple video game adaptation of yakyuuken, a Japanese parlor game that is essentially strip rock-paper-scissors. The gameplay involves pressing one of the three numbered keys (1, 2 or 3) corresponding to the rock, paper and scissors moves of the game, trying to beat the opponent's choice. All this is done while seeing a drawing of a young girl. The girl removes an item of her clothing after each successful round, and the player wins the game when she is completely naked. The player character has five symbolic clothes items, i.e. losing five rounds leads to a Game Over. Game is made by one person in a week as a hobby to show to friends. 3. Date Adventure デートアドベンチャー [8301] Micom City An adventure game that progresses in the form of text questions. For the most part it's text-only adventure. Not much is known, but it should be a simple game as other games from Micom City that vanished really fast. 4. Ninja Adventure 忍者アドベンチャー [8301] Micom City An adventure game where you steal a secret book and sneak into an enemy mansion. Again, mostly a text adventure. 5. Puzzle Adventure パズルアドベンチャー [8301] Micom City An adventure game that progresses in the form of text questions. The flow is meeting a guy, asking him a hint and moving on to another guy. Guys have very slight differences like moles, earrings etc, and asking guys in wrong order is immediate game over. There are 7 questions, but answers only to first 6 questions are given in the hints, so game is pretty much impossible to complete. 6. Seiko no Adventure 星子のアドベンチャー [8312] Enix Space adventure where Seiko needs to solver several puzzles fast or go mad and get sent to a hospital. First Enix game. There are some 10 scenes that you need to type the right answer, like open the hatch etc. 7. Genma Taisen 幻魔大戦 [8303] Ponyca Game features battle scenes from the anime movie released the same year. Battles are done with just one button, but damage is random, so in one fight if you don't defeat opponent in one turn, it will be instant game over due to taking enormous amount of damage in return. 8. Happy Bushman ハッピーブッシュマン [8303] Ponyca Main character is an African bushman who travels on foot and meets various animals and people. A simple moving command type adventure, but with quite a few fun moments scattered around. 9. Mystery House ミステリーハウス [8304] Starcraft Co., Ltd. 1 2 3 Mystery House is a monochrome interactive fiction adventure game that places the player in a Victorian mansion with seven other people. As the player explores the mansion, he discovers that there is a killer murdering each guest one by one. The objective of the game is to figure out who the murderer is before the murderer finds the hero. Players explore and manipulate objects by typing in one or two-word phrases such as "north" or "get knife". There are English reviews. Game is made in 1980 in the West, but Japanese remake dates back to 1983. 10. Wizard and the Princess 四次元少女リディア [8305] Starcraft Co., Ltd. 1 2 3 4 5 King George's daughter Priscilla has been kidnapped by an evil wizard named Harlin, who holds her in his castle. The King offers half of his kingdom to anyone who would venture into the faraway mountain land, enter the castle, defeat Harlin, and bring back the princess. Only one adventurer is brave enough to accept this challenge. There are English reviews. 11. Lolita 2 ロリータ２ [8305] PSK 1 It is a very simple text-only adventure in which the protagonist must track young girls after school and have them perform various actions (a few of them of a remotely sexual nature). The sparse descriptions are in Japanese, but the text parser is English-only, recognizing the four directions (N, S, W and E) and a few basic commands such as "Look" and "Use". Much of the game is spent navigating the protagonist through the invisible, text-only maze by typing the directional commands. A few items must be found and used in order to complete the game. It's more like a bunch of mini-games with CG as reward. The aim is actually to assault 10 girls and not be caught by the police officer. 12. Icarus イカロス [8305] Rastaman A sequel to Odyssey game. In order to discover the phantom bird, Phoenix, main character goes to an adventure. Quite a normal command input adventure, but luckily with hiragana introduced already. 13. Joshi Ryou Panic 女子寮パニック [8306] Enix You infiltrate a girl's dormitory to try to find your kidnapped lover. Game was innovative in a way that it did not have either command parser or command selection. It's just like modern visual novels - you select an action and game goes on to till the next branch. Game has time limit and multiple bad endings. That's a real masterpiece of its time. 14. Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ポートピア連続殺人事件 [8306] Enix 1 2 3 4 5 Kouzou Yamakawa, the president of the Loan and Savings Company, was found dead inside his mansion. Despite all the evidence indicating that it was a suicide, a detective (i.e. you) and his assistant arrive at the scene for further investigation. The player must resolve the mystery of a murder by searching for clues, interacting with characters, and solving item-based puzzles. There are at least four English reviews of the game. 15. Oooku Maruhi Monogatari 大奥マル秘物語 [8307] Nihon Falcom Main character is a female who comes to the inner chambers of Ooku castle in search of her master favor. She performs various tasks with the ultimate aim of giving birth to a child. Game has both selection out of several variants close to modern visual novels and frequent command input sequences. The title has a huge "secret" sign encircled and actually it's really difficult to get what should be used where in this game. 16. Star Arthur Densetsu I ~Wakusei Mephius~ スターアーサー伝説 Ⅰ ～惑星メフィウス～ [8307] T&E SOFT Inc. 1 2 3 In 3826 Jamil leads an invasion against Galactic Federation and destroys one planet after another. The main character Star Arthur is searching for the legendary sword to crush Jamil's ambitions. Game is beautiful enough and occupies as much as three floppy discs. Most of the time you need to break free from a prison or some other secluded area, like a desert. Command input is used. 17. Mio no Mystery Adventure ミオのミステリーアドベンチャー [8309] SystemSoft You get caught in the rain and hide in the mansion. Upon entry you hear "I've got a present for you - It's your death!" Now you got to solve puzzles, defeat devil, the master of the house and find a way out. Each room is a puzzle that needs to be solved with command input to proceed. There are also N S W E directions to keep in mind. 18. Kagiana Satsujin Jiken 鍵穴殺人事件 [8310] Thinking Rabbit A strange request comes to Scotland Yard. Client Gilles Willcock receives a murder notice that's bound to happen at midnight. He calls out a detective, and seven people at the mansion wait nervously for escalation. Gilles locks him up at the second floor while detective hides in waiting at the first floor. At midnight gunshots are heard on the second floor, and a murder is seen through a keyhole. When detective finds the key and enters, there is no body. Mansion stuff and interior hide the keys to the mystery. First game of Thinking Rabbit. The main feature is suspects interrogation that can be done at any time with different result depending on the game progress. It's very different from normal mansion room search. It's more of a mystery with emphasis on human relations. 19. Lolita Syndrome ロリータ・シンドローム [8310] Enix 1 2 3 Pretty girls live in the Maison Rolita. In order to make friends with the girls, you'll go play with them. They're waiting for you in rooms 1 through 5. Now, go into their rooms and play! There's a good English review of it. 20. Dezeni Land デゼニランド [8312] Hudson Soft 1 2 The aim of the game is to find a legendary treasure hidden in the Dezeni Land amusement park and safely escape. The game features numerous areas in the amusement park. There's a good English review of it. 21. Ooi! Kaguya-hime ~Kinuginu no Wakare~ おーい！ かぐや姫 ～衣衣の別れ～ [8312] Ponyca 1 You're placed in a field of humongous bamboo filled with menacing birds. You might think the idea is to shoot the birds, but it isn't; instead, you have to shoot the proper section of bamboo before you run out of ammo or the birds hit you enough to end the game. Successfully clearing the stage causes the princess who is garbed in several layers of kimono to take one off. The reward is erotic drawings. It's very surprising that instead of shooting birds you need to shoot proper section of bamboo and find princess there. 22. Star Arthur Densetsu II ~Ankoku Seiun~ スターアーサー伝説 Ⅱ ～暗黒星雲～ [8312] T&E SOFT Inc. The story picks up where part one ended. You obtain the legendary sword. A hologram of a two thousand year old wise man sends you to Orion with the newly obtained weapon and your adventures on the way there take the whole game time. It features recognition of four parts on the screen for point-and-click and also has 3D shooting sequences. It could not repeat the success of the original game though. 23. Shijigen Shoujo Ridia 四次元少女リディア [83] Champion Soft 1 You are a member of science object investigation team and are on a mission to investigate the mystery of Bermuda. You end up in a parallel world and continue investigation. Game was shipped on 4 floppy drives. Stereoscopic glasses are included with it which are useful for some scenes. That's really innovative - Champion Soft makes a remarkable appearance at that time already. 24. Dasshutsu! Shi no Aokigahara 脱出！死の青木ケ原 [83] Luna Kikaku Main character gets lost in Aokigahara forest. He needs to find his way back to the civilization. Kind of normal moving adventure with occasional checking the map. 25. Nehan no Mori 涅槃の森 [83] CSK Research Institute Early in the morning you went to explore mount Fuji and got lost. There are a lot of spirits there aiming to make you a resident of the Demon World. Escape from the demon world by using physical strength and intelligence. Typical CSK game with huge drawing times and overall low number of screens, but difficult to figure commands. 26. Orly Kuukou Satsujin Jiken オルリー空港殺人事件 [83] Champion Soft Kanae and Akina went to France for the first time abroad and got involved in a murder case. A Southern Tourist tour operator is killed, and Kanae follows victim's schedule from arrival to Paris till return. Game has two phases - item search and investigation itself. Without properly finding all the items it will be impossible to go on during the main course of the game. 27. Wonder House ワンダーハウス [83] Task Forts Kouchi The purpose of the game is to explore the house and find the treasure. Ordinary mansion exploration game with the need to constantly to type look in different combinations.

I used to like VNs rated. To such extent that whenever I could not find an english localized VN review with a rating, I wanted to make a review with a rating myself. And usual vote ratings aren't reliable since anyone can vote for any rate, even having dumped the actual VN. As of late my opinion on this matter changed drastically. What a review actually needs instead of being structured one (like this my old review) is just to transfer impressions, VN core, noticeable flaws and afterthoughts. This way author does not need to retell the same things in several parts and review brings more useful information and wastes less time for writing. Majority of blog authors that I enjoy reading write in free style without ratings. At the same time ratings and some structure are almost always present in amateur reviews. Hence is the poll question. So here is my flawed structured review on the game that noone ever heard of and will certainly never will (and I'd never picked that out of free will). Some kind shepherd translated this VN into English, but never bothered to actually hack the game, so translation only exists as a word document. Now I know that it was not a good idea since there turned out to be some 100 branches with vastly coinciding text and a lot of confusion with search. Foreword: The novel under review is Anaheim Girl's Love Story by short doujin-maker studio Fan-na and it's here only because it miraculously managed to stretch the dialogues to 10 hours and because there appeared a person to actually translate all those talks and because the only review I found is fuwa-fuwa review on yurination with no score given - thus all three conditions miraculously coincided and here I am trying to figure what this game is about. I only appreciate platonic yuri relations, never ever watched anything of Gundam series and greatly oppose doujins and nukige - oh, well, that clearly puts me out of target group, but at least it's going to be unbiased. Title: Anaheim Girl's Love Story Original Title: アナハイム・ガールズ・ラブストーリー Producers: Fan-na Release Date: 2009-12-30 (English translation published 2013-02-10) VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v6924 Game Type: Yuri story Summary: A girls' love story between two Anaheim Electronics engineers. It also chronicles the development and construction of the fourth unit in the Gundam Development Project (GP-04 Gerbera), and its subsequent alteration into the Gerbera Tetra as seen in the "Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories" anime. Story Length: Medium (10-30 Hours) Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy Comments: There is basically only one partner and all three endings are outcomes of decision what to do about her her. Character Design Rating: 4/10 Story Rating: 3/10 Protagonist Rating: 2/10 Game Quality: Low Overall Rating: 2/10 Rating Comments: Well, I do not know where to start. Story is plain, protagonist is baka-baka shoujo, all the photoshopped backgrounds and sprite models are crap. Story: 80% of the game as nothing but small talk and 20% of the game is forced development in attempt to embrace events from Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories. The most exciting thing from those 80% of the game is probably sneak peek at Gundams - Gundams have about 50% of overall game CGs and always drawn good. If only that quality could be spent on backgrounds and character sprites. I got only the general idea behind all the Titans, Federation, Gerbera Tetra, Zeus and things like that that i've zero awareness of so I see very little logic in actions of main characters and all the drama composed looks very forced. Characters summary: So there are only two main characters, there's also Marion as a failed main character, two side-characters and a bot that plays probably the most important role in the game. Oh well there is also boss character and Chinese colleague girl, but those are mostly dialogue fillers. Saotome Rinne is just a baka-baka shojo character who has to be a protagonist and thus be an invalid without brain, without will and without wits. Well, most protagonists need to be this way so that the story could unfold in any way creators want. To reabilitate this characters creators nominated her twice as an annually best junior Gundam engineer. So forget that she's a no-brainer, she's just only good for engineering. Most of choices are phrased by her thoughts and thus look almost the same - Oh no, I want but i can't... I need to say no this time but... But, but... You can't always guess where she's actually going to get with this or that phrase. In the first 80% of the game her choices do not mean much anyway, whether she says yes or no she still gets laid. Sophie is our second main character. She's already an experienced engineer. Kind, reserved. But authors really needed a fast developement so there was not any space for acquaintance or roleplay. The very second time she meets Rinne, Sophie just kisses her right ahead. Senpai, why did you kiss me? Oh, well, I just wanted to cheer you up. IN YOUR FACE. Worst development ever Marion is a stub character. This is the only CG she ever got apart of one h-CG. Arrogant and sharp-tongued, just a generic bi@ch. Her only purpose for this game is small talk and attempts to avert Rinne from Sophie by temptating her. Haron is actually a swiss-knife of the game. He starts as just a cute robot mascot only saying "Ha-ron!" but as the game switches to active phase he just does everything because all the heroes are so useless. He spies, gives advice and even defends his masters. Whenever autors needed some development, they just threw Haron in. Why do they even need all those various Gundam models when this omnipotent creature like that does all the work. Oh right, Gundams just look cooler and they can hold blasters. Sexual Content: High Between the small talk scenes heroines cuddle all the time with the very same HCG repeating over and over with only small adjustments. HCGs look very solid, but by the look at everything else it can be said for sure that they consumed all the budget and efforts. There's even kind of animated HCG scene in shower with every drop of water animated (the very single use of animation in the game)! That's the very spirit of doujin works - they only aim to make memories of HCG scenes. Affection for the Characters: None CG Score: 6/10. CG of this game look very cool but sample CG are totally the same on every internet board because one thing - those are actually almost the only CG that game has. The game lacks not only non-h CG but even HCG get repeated over and over with just some small change. Out of five characters two secondary characters got zero CG and Marion who actually can be called one of the main characters since she has a h-scene and an ending featuring her - Marion got exactly ONE non-HCG and ONE HCG with two slight variations. So 50% of CG are hcg of two main characters and other 50% are pictures of gundams standing, gundams flying, gundams shooting etc. My biggest complaint is not really CG, but character sprites and backgrounds. Character sprites are surrounded by thick black marker which makes them absolutely artificial and literally drawn. All the backgrounds are just photoshopped real photos and thus leave very bad impression. Music Score: 8/10. I dont really have any complaints with the music. There were some 30 variations of BGM, two with actual singing. Overall they vary by mood quite ok and do not irritate, but do not really affect the gaming process much. Addictiveness: Low. Conclusion: A must for all the yuri-lovers. A pass for everyone else. Pros: HCG are good There aren't too many yuri VNs, especially this bold type Gundam fans may be thrilled with such undercover of Gerbera alteration events Game has 10 funny omake stories and seiyu freetalk Cons: Plain Story Irritating background and character sprites drawing Very random actions of heroes Bland and clishe characters

Blog purpose Well, I've been around VNs for about 15 years. As far as I can remember, my first game was MS-DOS Three Sisters Story, what we know now as San Shimai. At that time such games were the first erotic games along with Snake games and Poker ones and were referred as forbidden fruit. That game was a shock - what should have been a light experience turned out to be a really difficult story. All the characters were so nice that I really did not want to blackmail their father and looked for ways to stop my brother from revenge. Risa was so young that the only feeling I had was to protect her. The scene of fire and confrontation with brother was very well set. So what's the blog purpose? I'll get there... eventually... So over this time I've played a lot of VNs, mostly in japanese with Translation Aggregator and sometimes with machine translation just because I missed VNDB appearance and kept thinking that TLWiki had the full list of english translated VNs... how I was WRONG. I've even looked through all the titles on Getchu just to pick several companies which art I especially liked. One of those games was Katahane by Tarte and I just played all games of that company since I'm kind of completionist (like I've watched over 1000 anime titles till had absolutely nothing left to interest me, watched all the doramas that interested me at d-addicts wiki etc etc) and those were very weird games, but at least I got a quite different outlook. So, the purpose of the blog? I know, I know, any time soon I'll be there... So my purpose is to know absolutely all of VNs great stories. But I see some difficutlies in there (you see them too, right?). Anime has only about 3500 TV titles (and there's just a handful of really interesting OVA) and the majority of them have subs, so watching 1000 tv seasons of anime is not that big of a problem. So what should I do with over 20,000 novels of average 10 hours length with my still limited knowledge of japanese and greatly limited time? I've got and easy answer - just get rid of bad VNs and read good thorough reviews on the plot of good VNs. Phew, case closed... Well, not really. So the purpose of this blog... no, not yet! But I promise it wont take long! So VNDB actually discovered the world of translated VNs for me but description tells us quite nothing about the game, only about the synopsis and no matter how many times i reread it, I don't seem to understand anything about the game. And discussions either show the everlasting 0 or some unanswered question and almost never a review, let along a thorough one. And since there are a lot of VNs there without the needed tags, I can completely miss some titles, which is inappropriate for such a completionist. Reviews are scattered around multiple blogs and forums and google tends to forget to render a great deal of them. Visual novels are virtually books, books = stories, that's the most important aspect of them and can't be ignored. So I really need a review section on VNDB. And since it might not come in our lifetime, I've promissed ( https://vndb.org/t950.310 ) to make my own vndb for reviews till such section comes to life. And here it is http://vndbreview.tigrimigri.com Since I've zero experience with web design I had to use a ready solution - semantic mediawiki (and grind through that). There are quite some annoying technical restrictions which are gracefully avoided in VNDB and no beauties of custom css and such, but it does the job and allows me to gather reviews and show the result in a comfortable way. That's what really matters. Even though it's on a free hosting with free domain I really hope you can add some links of reviews and impressions in there as well since I can miss smth from 98,000 posts of VN talk in here. And since I hate to waste other people's time here's my review of one of antique VN oddities Cosmology of Kyoto to make the whole post useful. Cosmology of Kyoto Foreword: Today's patient is Cosmology of Kyoto. There are quite a lot of English reviews of the game, but although the general idea behind them is overall praising - none actually gave any kind of evaluation score and that's something that i'm going to fix here. Title: Cosmology of Kyoto Producers: Soft Edge & Yano Electric Release Date: 1993 (english version 1994-08-01 for Mac OS) VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v14314 Game Type: Unique eduactional story on Heian period in Japanese history Summary: Step into the mind of an ancient Japanese person in the Heian period in ancient Kyoto. Live their fears, fight their demons, and understand their history and legends by actually experiencing them first hand. Story Length: Medium (10-30 Hours) Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Easy Comments: The Story is more or less easy to grasp as there are only few actions that actually needed to be taken to get the endgame notion. What makes it this long is slow adaptability to interface, game mechanics and great the abundance of exploration options. Character Design Rating: 8/10 Story Rating: 10/10 Protagonist Rating: 5/10 Game Quality: Varies Overall Rating: 8/10 Rating Comments: I am most assuredly going to be blamed for setting such a low rating to a unique educational spiritual and revolutionary game for the time of its issue, but i believe i have some good points to support my choice. First things first - mechanics of the game. Cosmology of Kyoto is and interactive adventure and most of the time we spend wondering the streets. Turning only allowed by 90 degrees. There are only three things that are worth mentioning here. We need a katana to defend from multiple vagabonds. We need to learn Sutra to defend from demons. We need special outfits to be allowed to special places. The example of extinguishing demons with Sutra There are several other objects that have limited utility. Some items are just needed to be given to the right person. Money is good to learn rumors. Mirror useful to see what garments u have on. I've only found one utility for the bow - to shoot at flying kimono in one of the events, but there might be more. Nothing can surprise the inhabitants. Moreover some 80% of them turn out to be either demons or possessed. Events, CG and animation are great but events and reading through encyclopedia take only couple hours of pure time, and the number of hours of seeking for anything on the streets take hours and hours. Game really takes it slow and that's something that contemporary consumer is not accustomed to. Character Summary: There are only several named characters in the game and all of them are covered well by encyclopedia. Half of them are mad, the other half are priests and warriors who actually help us defend from devils in some events. Protagonist has no character at all. Despite the fact that we create our body and face at the beginning of the game - with each death we're given a random body. The most useful character in game Encyclopedia is the single thing that's absolutely fabulous Sexual Content: None Comments: The only couple times the naked woman's breast actually appeared on the screen the woman was eaten alive or strangled to death the very next second. Those several women that actually showed interest in the protagonist were in a few minutes time decapitated/torn to pieces/cut through. Affection for the Characters: None CG Score: 10/10. The game actually looks amazing for the year 1993. Pretty much every creature and person is animated when you approach them close enough. The game boasts 256 colors and the actual picture still looks more or less decent. Music Score: 5/10. I failed to hear any music. It might be due to the fact that i failed to find Mac PC to play in original and used DosBox for that. But as for voices, all the dialogues are voiced (but not the protagonist) and voicing quality is good. Some hell layer. Human eating his own brains is quite a mild example of what's happening there. Addictiveness: Quite Low. When you beat the game since there are only couple dozen events in the game and apart of that it's just aimless wandering around the streets with an ugly interface and talking to beggars trying to know something new. Conclusion: Pros: Unique atmosphere of medieval Japan A well made built-in encyclopedia that holds information on all the locations, all the named characters, all the events background and what not. Great events and actual pictures. I think i've seen about a hundred of different demons with their unique faces and bodies. The scenes and very vivid and memorable, especially those of seven layers of hell. Game claims to be educational and contains quite a few historic figures. Cons: Most of the time is spent in aimless wondering Game fails to exhort educational function due to the fact that all historical events are greatly folklorized and fails to play entertainment function since apart of rare events there's nothing really fun about it. Interface and controls are very simplistic for the interactive adventure exploration game Several bugs that make the game freeze. E.g. there are two cool old men, one 800 and another 900 years old who know absolutely everything in the world, but while speaking to them game always crashes.