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Mount Rushmore of VNs?


onorub

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Which would you consider the 4 most important (not best or favorite) VNs of all time? Trying to be objective and japanese-centric based on what i've heard about the history of VNs my choices would be:

YU-NO: Helped define a VN as it's own genre, by combining adventure game and dating sim elements.

To Heart: Had one of its' songs make it to japanese radio and likely started the "top eroge songs" trend that is on the japanese VN community to this day.

Kanon: Became so famous that it pretty much jumpstarted the VN community by itself.

Higurashi: Was the first VN to reach big mainstream appeal beyond the VN genre (Clannad, School Days, Steins Gate and Fate Stay Night followed after).

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17 minutes ago, Silvz said:

Higurashi is a sound novel :amane:

Hmm, Higurashi is kind of a weird case, because it's not as lacking in visuals as the Chunsoft sound novels and has more focus on female characters. Then again, you can always replace it with Clannad or School Days.

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Oooku Maruhi Monogatari by nihon falcom, One of the first titles with an hint of a plot.

YU-NO, extremely influential with its accurate implementation of multiverse theories

Kamaitachi no Yoru, hugurashi's archetype

Snatcher

 

On 1/24/2018 at 5:51 PM, Silvz said:

Higurashi is a sound novel :amane:

 

 

On 1/24/2018 at 6:12 PM, onorub said:

Hmm, Higurashi is kind of a weird case, because it's not as lacking in visuals as the Chunsoft sound novels and has more focus on female characters. Then again, you can always replace it with Clannad or School Days.

There's no difference between the terms, Sound Novel is usually avoided because it is Copyrighted by Chunsoft.

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If I have learned anything from having played over a thousand VNs from the 80s till today, it's that pretty much everything that is written on the Internet about the history of VNs is wrong, even the articles written by Japanese people.

For example, there is nothing particular innovative about Kanon, YU-NO, To heart or Higurashi. The only reason that these novels are always mentioned in the context of "being the first of something" is that they are popular. And because people like to simplify everything and want their favorite VNs to be very special, they are very quick to give out awards based on their feeling of "this must be something special because I haven't seen anything else like this" even thought these people don't have the expertise to be able to make these kinds of statements.

This is especially dangerous with the younger generation which likes to generalize about the past since social media encourages them to enter discussions about their hobbies, but are too lazy and ignorant to actually do the research. And because people nowadays don't want to read articles and news based on truths but rather want to read something that simply confirms their narrow worldview, these lies and made-up facts are quickly going viral. And if everyone says it, it must be true.
History is written by the popular VNs. Just as it is with anime, video games, movies, books etc.

 

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^ Well, i went after the VNs that i felt made people go "there's this whole genre? let me try it" and made the VN community bigger, so that's why i went after the most popular ones. If i were trying to be western-centric, Katawa Shoujo would definitely be there, even though it's not that special of a VN either. I most certainly went for drawing power over gameplay and storytelling foundations, because i think that if no game on the genre became popular enough, there would not be enough of a community to cross-over to the west.

Edited by onorub
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14 hours ago, Tyrosyn said:

For example, there is nothing particular innovative about Kanon, YU-NO, To heart or Higurashi.

What was the first (j)ADV implementing multiverse theories in a semi-coherent fashion then? (or at the very least triyng hard to be coherent)

Edited by WinterfuryZX
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Being popular does not matter in any way if you want to make an interesting statement about a genre or medium. Popularity does not say anything about a work itself, just about the time and environment it was released in, and even then you can't really make educated guesses about the reasons for its popularity because it's hard to find trustworthy sources when everyone tries to infer success from quality post hoc.

Popularity is poison for historic research because it's a catalyst for muddling the truth, especially if it is a field like video games where history is written by non-academics who write misinformed blog posts which later become sources for even more misinformed articles.
This thread is a good example for this:
I can name you a dozen pre-YU-NO VNs that influenced each other, formed the multiple route mystery genre and were the inspiration for YU-NO. But nobody cares about them, right? Because YU-NO is the one everybody remembers talks about. And because it is the only eroge from that era people even know, they are very quick to make outrageous statements to explain why it is the one that is still talked about today. Like the first reply in this thread ("YU-NO also created the Multiple Route Mystery genre") which is hilariously wrong since we talk about one of the last games of an era that was the golden age of mystery adventures where nearly every VN that wasn't a linear mystery adventure was a multiple route mystery adventure. How is it even possible to make such a grave mistake? Well, the poster probably read this false statement somewhere on the Internet where a number of misinformative reviews and comments about YU-NO exist, written by people who don't know anything about the time and context YU-NO was released in but want to make explanations why it's such a good game and why it's still talked about today. However, this is all baseless conjecture, essentially historical revisionism.

I didn't say that popularity can't be an interesting topic to explore. But that wasn't what I was talking about. What I wrote in my last comment was that none of the aforementioned VNs are innovative. Their popularity can't be explained solely by their content since VNs like these already existed for years. OP asked for VNs that were important. However, being popular does not make something important (though it certainly can be both). But we should refrain from inferring importance from popularity.

53 minutes ago, WinterfuryZX said:

What was the first (j)ADV implementing multiverse theories in a semi-coherent fashion then? (or at the very least trying hard to be coherent)

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. You are probably referring to me saying YU-NO is not particularly innovative, aren't you?

As far as I see it, YU-NO implements two concepts; multi-branched intersecting routes in the first part and an isekai world in the second part. Both are things you can already see in Kanno Hiroyuki's earlier works and are not that uncommon in other vns from that time either. (I don't want to make a statement what was the "first", I don't believe I have the knowledge to do that.)
However, it's not like the different routes are interfering with each other story-wise. As far as I remember it's nothing more than taking an item from one route to use it in another. The links between the second and first part of the game are not that different from what you can see in a time travel story. The multiverse stuff that comes up at the end of the story is not really more than background information and not part of the actual story while there are also a multitude of other VNs implementing some kind of space/time cop trope.
The reason I said it's not that innovative is because I don't think YU-NO does anything "new". What it does however is taking every trope that was already there and blends it together in one big epos. I think the reason YU-NO is remembered today is that it's the culmination of everything Kanno did so far and he never really tried to surpass it afterwards. However, if we are looking outside of Kanno's oeuvre, we can find many other VNs that explored and expanded on the genre in a similar or even different fashion.

If you mean multiverse theories as in "multiple routes that connect with each other" like in Higurashi, for example D.O.'s Zatsuon Ryouiki has a multiple route mystery where the protagonist can remember stuff from other routes. A few years after YU-NO, elf released Kawarazaki-ke no Ichizoku 2 which is based on the flowchart and multiple route mystery concept introduced in YU-NO but expands on it and tells a story where visiting multiple routes is essential for the protagonist and the reader and everything is deeply connected with each other and not just an alternative reality on its own.
As far as I see it, YU-NO is an important link in the evolution of the genre, but I don't think it's a beginning or an end.

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I mean the use of the Many World Interpretation of QM as a way tho shape the in-game universe in detail.

Infinity and derivates (root double, dunams, zero escape etc.), MUV-Luv, the sciadv and many others were most probably influenced by YU-NO.

Kanno even made a fake ingame scientific paper to justify and explain the multiverse and the reflector tecnology.

Edited by WinterfuryZX
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This is a common trope in scifi novels. It's not like Kanno invented this theory. He simply used this as a means to make the story look more complex than it actually is by explaining pointless backstory in the end. Which is a practice that was common back then. Elle, which was also published by elf a few years earlier, also used an elaborate scifi infodump in its epilogue to make the game appear more complex and meaningful than it actually was. Incidentally, both games take place in a seemingly normal town where you spend most of the time trying to bed waifus while some mystery is going on in the background and at the end of the game you have a long epilogue that tries to explain everything with science fiction twists.

I don't see how YU-NO is anything special. I don't think science fiction visual novel writers only played this one eroge. That's like saying Ever 17 was influenced by Elle because both games' twists are based on a misconception of when the story actually takes place. Instead of the more plausible explanation that these tropes are simply popular concepts scifi writers like to use. And were already using for decades in literature and cinema.

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Well, apparently it would be quite a sticky topic here. But still I find the topic was quite interesting, so I'll give some my opinion in regard of this. Note that I'm just used available data on VNDB, so it might be very wrong. Also keep in mind that in regard of the internet data, the material of that was usually quite limited so the history of VN might be blurred.

Shizuku - I don't know if this is the first denpa VN or not, but at least it's the one that popularized the genre according to Asceai back at his Subahibi review.

Portopia - One of the very first VN that was known, and apparently Yuuji Hori of Dragon Quest fame was inspired from American advanture game according to this article. Oh, and it also have some premise in regard of detective work, which in turn influenced some detective VN in the future with one example was Umineko.

ONE - While Kanon was more popular, people could also argue as well that ONE was the VN that inspired several KEY works in the future considering that the staff there was also work for KEY in the future. I don't know whether there's some nakige or choice based VN before that - usually VN using adventure game system interface back at 90's, but at the very least it's one earlier well known VN with nakige element.

EMIT trilogy - Well maybe the premise was not exactly innovative, but this is one of VN that was have combined release for both of Japan and English language, the feature that many VNs developer nowadays use for the Steam release. The purpose of the VN was quite interesting, because apparently it was used for the learning media of English language for Japanese children iirc.

Keep in mind that those example could be wrong because there's might be some example that preceded those four, although hopefully it would be closer to the truth.

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Making my choices based on influence over the course of VNs in general.  I don't necessarily like these games... (though I have played them).

Air- While One, made by the same team, is a decent nakige, it didn't define the genre the way the team that came to be named Key did.  While Air is often forgotten by those who talk about Key games, the fact is that Air is the game that defined nakige as a genre.

Tsukihime- While a few story-focused VNs came out before Tsukihime (Yu-No being one of them), it was Tsukihime that sparked the tinder that eventually roared into the flames of the 'VN Golden Age' (the era of the greatest creativity, if not necessarily quality, in VNs... basically an industry growth spurt or a bubble), which began in 2004 and 'ended' in 2009.  While FSN  is more recognizable for most people who have encountered the Nasuverse, it was Tsukihime that first brought it to life.  It was also the first VN that can really be called a chuunige.

Ikusa Megami- Ikusa Megami, with its unique and flexible setting, gave a lease on life to the gameplay hybrid VNs.  While the VN has aged horribly by modern standards (even more than Tsukihime), the wide appeal of its world is still evident today in Eushully's yearly releases of new games based in its setting. 

Ever17- How many modern VN tropes were introduced by this VN?  Alternate realities, higher dimensional beings, time loops (both fake and real), duality of perspective... While many other VNs use these tropes better or in more interesting ways, Ever17 and its successors definitely left their mark, even if I have no interest in playing them ever again. 

 

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1 hour ago, Clephas said:

Ever17- How many modern VN tropes were introduced by this VN?  Alternate realities, higher dimensional beings, time loops (both fake and real), duality of perspective... While many other VNs use these tropes better or in more interesting ways, Ever17 and its successors definitely left their mark, even if I have no interest in playing them ever again. 

Again, many of those were already introduced by YU-NO.

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On 1/25/2018 at 5:00 AM, Palas said:

The first to do something isn't important. The first to make it reach an audience is. Don't listen to Tyrosyn. Being popular matters. 

Hear, hear.  A guy by the name of Paul Otlet invented the internet.  In 1910.  He had all the main ideas, more or less.  (The only thing they hadn't cottoned on to was user-driven content, like Wikipedia, being king; but nobody predicted that would be as successful as it was.)  The only problem was, there was no way to actually implement his grand vision in a way that could get decent market penetration.  It ended up being forgotten for several decades before being rediscovered a few years ago.

Edited by Nandemonai
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Just now, Plk_Lesiak said:

I'm pretty sure that second thing pays better, at the very least. ;)

True. :sachi: By the way, there are hundreds of stories about famous inventions and discoveries that they were first made by some random guy nobody knows about, and later redone/stolen/enhanced by some other guy who decided to publish his discovery or patent his invention, and in the end it's always the second guy who is known as the inventor. Reminds you something about VNs, doesn't it?

Though, in reality, making things popular is important. Nobody would care about VNs with multiple-route mystery if they only existed in the 80s.

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