I’ve been kind of felt about writing this after looking at a post by Shingo of Heiseidemocracy. And also because of my new interest in games by Eushully. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of my examples are similar to Shingo’s
The question. Is there a difference between visual novels and eroge? There are probably a ton more posts like this besides mine (and Shingo’s).
Simple answer: Yes
Long answer: Read the rest of the article.
Visual novels, Dating Sims, Sound Novels, Galges, or whatever… all have a common thing, and that’s a story. But a simple visual novel would be defined as simple emphasis on writing. The Nscripter format would be a good example.
From Tsukihime: The text goes across the screen. You make choices, You choose your route and just click
(of note the artwork is by my favorite artist)
Type Moon (that made Tsukihime featured above) has made so far only visual novels. But you can talk about how their ganes have adult content. But then you have to argue that the game is not purely about the adult content as some other games are.
Yoru ga Kuru! By Alicesoft. Has quite abit of rape. Aswell as an OVA series. Would it be funny to think about playing it for the story?
You move farther into a eroge/dating sim world when you start adding more elements. Alicesoft is the best example of this. Alicesoft has made many games. Many of which actually do have gameplay. Their “Rance” series is a strategy game RPG, or their Dice Battler games (encompassing Dacrow, Beat Angel Escalayer, and the newly released Beat Blades Haruka) which has the player role dice to determine stats of characters. Alicesoft’s games also have a very heavy emphasis on Adult content. Both Escalayer and Haruka have a certain plot element, that is sex = added power to fight. Or take Toushin Toushi where the male winners of battles can do “whatever they want” to their opponent’s female partner for 24 hours.
….Funny to notice the difference in text between the last two paragraphs.
But of course there are times where the line becomes bit hard to see. Some companies that have released both titles that contain no-adult content or little adult content and have even re-released titles.
Key’s first few games, Kanon and Air contained very little adult content, but put a lot of emphasis on the story. Therefore it was very easy for them to release a version of the game that did not have the adult content. They then released Clannad without any adult content. Last year they released Little Busters! which also had none. But this year they re-released Little Busters! as Little Busters! – Ecstasy which included more content aswell as adult content. It’s now confirmed that they will re-release the game again with the added content but wthout the adult scenes.
Little Busters! Ecstasy: Before the the re-release Little Busters! was still the only KEY title I was interested in.
Navel has done the opposite with Shuffle! -> original adult release -> extended all-age release -> (planned) extended adult release
Type-Moon is moving in a similar direction, as their games have heavy focus on story aswell. Fate/stay night was re-released as “Fate/stay night – Realta Nua” for the PS2 and now they are planned to release “Mahoutsukai no Yoru” without adult content but only because the original draft of the story did have any such content.
They are also posed to release a remake of Tsukihime with extended content. But it is unknown if the adult content will remain
Nitro+ takes it a bif further. Their games are very dark and also quite complicated. Only two of their (many) games have been re-released without adult content. Because their games make a lot of emphasis as adult stories in general (with gruesome and dark visuals), re-releasing the game again would not take away the fact that it is an adult game. I’ve already stated that I love the blend of elements featured in Nitro+’s games.
Hanachirasu by Nitro+ Has awesome dark atmosphere. Alternate History. And lots of blood.
Overall. The emphasis on story is very important for how the game in question can be observed,
What made me decide to write this?
As sais I’ve been getting into Eushully’s games. Almost entirely from a review of their latest title “Ikusa Megami Zero” (here) (and I hope to I can learn enough Japanese to play it).
Ikusa Megami Zero: God I love the art of this game.
Eushully seems to be a interesting studio, their games seem to have very complicated stories, aswell as gameplay (mostly RPG elements). But their games do contain sexual fetish aswell.
Meishoku no Reiki:This image is enough to show that the game is meant for ages 18+
Their earlier game “Meishoku no Reiki” (shown above) put a lot more emphasis on the adult appeal, as the plot can be summed up as “Wizard transforms himself into a demon and sets out of capture all the world’s princesses for himself”. Or their other title “Soukai no Oujotachi” in which the main character is a male commander of a submarine which has a crew made up of all women.
So I guess I felt kind of interested to think about my feelings over…..well I don’t really know. I guess there’s a small possibility of me feeling alittle guilty over getting interested in a game that has a very interesting story but also depicts sex in various ways (I don’t think I need to describe such ways).
This whole post was sort of an experiment. So if it sounds ackward please understand. My writing is childish.
Also to note: I have not played too many visual novels or eroge. I’ve only played.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – Matsuribayashi-hen
Tsukihime
Prologue of Fate/stay night
Gekkou no Carnivale demo
Little Busters! demo (if you call 2 minute play time a demo)
October 3, 2008 at 10:59 am
I prefer those fcking Visual Novels..