However, it was unique in that it contained not only adventure-game elements but also a combat system borrowed from tactical combat games such as Tactics Ogre. Sega's popular bishōjo game series Sakura Wars also first saw publication in 1996 for the Sega Saturn like Tokimeki Memorial, it contained no erotic elements. To be accessible to a more mainstream audience, it contained no erotic elements, seeking instead to create a "romantic" atmosphere. Tokimeki Memorial, the first dating sim, featured good graphics, full voice acting, and a role-playing game-like gameplay system. Dōkyūsei, whose gameplay focused on meeting girls and seducing them, established the standard conventions of the dating simulation genre. Ī turning point was ELF's Dōkyūsei (1992). While the title was another eroge title targeted at males for its sexual content, the players began to identify with the protagonist and the idea of overcoming "the emotional trials and tribulations of pure love." A late PlayStation 2 port removed the sexual content and sold better than the original, leading eventually to two anime adaptations. In 1999, Kanon was released by Visual Arts/ Key. The first major title of the 1990s was Tokimeki Memorial, released in 1994 by Konami which was on the verge of bankruptcy, the platonic dating sim becoming the first major bishōjo game since Koei's release of Night Life. Thus free from controversy and fueled by continuing improvement in technology, in the 1990s the bishōjo game industry underwent a decade-long boom. This organization tamed down the most objectionable content in the "wild west" of the 1980s. Several prefectures began classifying games as obscene and pulling them off the shelves.įaced with the threat of being forcibly censored out of existence by the government, in 1992 the bishōjo game industry formed the Computer Software Rinri Kikō (meaning "Ethics Organization for Computer Software", and often abbreviated EOCS or Sofu-rin), setting industry guidelines for acceptable content and packaging. In November 1991 there was an incident where a middle-schooler shoplifted an adult bishōjo game Saori: the House of Beautiful Girls, resulting in increased police scrutiny for makers and retailers. In 1989 serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki was arrested and was revealed to be a consumer of lolicon manga, causing widespread opposition to pornographic manga, otaku and anything similar. In the early nineties the atmosphere in Japan became more and more hostile towards bishōjo games. Thus, more than regular games, the main employees required by bishōjo game companies today are not programmers, but artists and writers. Throughout the nineties, bishōjo games underwent an evolution from being one of the most technologically demanding types of games (because their detailed 2D graphics required a large amount of storage space by the standards of early computers) to one of the least (they rarely use 3D graphics). The industry gradually moved away from proprietary Japanese hardware to the burgeoning DOS platform, and then later in the decade to Windows. Prior to 1985, girls were generally drawn either as normally proportioned adults or super deformed children. It was also the first to have recognizably modern anime-style artwork: its characters had very large eyes and a tiny nose and mouth but were otherwise basically normally proportioned, characteristics which today are found in virtually all bishōjo games. Among early bishōjo adventure games it had a degree of polish that previous games lacked. At the beginning of the genre, almost all the games were pornographic.Ī notable landmark was Jast's Tenshitachi no gogo (1985), a precursor to the modern dating simulation. The first bishōjo games were not too popular, being limited to graphics of 16 colors or less. The first bishōjo game commercialized in Japan appeared in 1982 as Night Life by Koei. īishōjo games are similar to Choose Your Own Adventure books in the way of narrative, in which the game tells a story but the player may make choices to change how the story flows.īishōjo games began to appear in Japan in the beginning days of personal computers. "pretty girl game") or gal game ( ギャルゲーム, gyaru gēmu, often shortened to " galge") is "a type of Japanese video game centered on interactions with attractive girls". A bishōjo game ( Japanese: 美少女ゲーム, Hepburn: bishōjo gēmu, lit.
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