"character interactions are so goddamn weird. Everyone is mean all the time for no seemingly no reason and characters intermittently engage in completely bizarre behavior." Finally, an accurate high school sim
Maybe I lucked out, but my highschool was pretty awesome and people were generally nice to one another. But then again, I went to HS in Idaho and not LA.
@@planescaped Yeah, my high school experience was basically the same. I was in the sort of nerdy group that played DnD, but there wasn't any like overt bullying I saw? The "prep" kids were like, half mormon for some reason and all really nice people to everyone. There WERE the various stereotypical cliques...to some degree, but they weren't really elitist and exclusive and mean, they were just groups of people that shared an interest. Then again, that was in a sort of middle class area in '06. My time in middle school, back when I lived in New Mexico and in a VERY poor area was closer to hell on earth. That school is, nowadays, literally in the 1st percentile for education outcomes. Teachers were literally bullied out of their jobs. I was bullied so badly it caused permanent issues that, to a small extent, I am still dealing with all these decades later... Random note, Class of 09 is complete crap
So yall saw the 90 minute masterpiece and are making bad jokes or yall didnt see it. Kevin pierce your joke was hilarious. I thought it was hyperbole, then i saw the whole video, and i realized it was not hyperbole Edit: had a typo
i can't imagine how dumbfounded people playing that route for the first time were 💀 i play a lot of VNs and dating sims so i'm used to strange plot twists but that's definitely a new one
>click on interesting video about a topic i know nothing about >scroll down to the comments right as the video starts >get absolutely blindsided by this comment GNSDKGNSDJKG
As soon as I heard about the girl injecting her dog with energy drinks I literally dropped the spoon from a coffee I was drinking........... Like, this is the kind of plot point a parody VN would do as black comedy, to make the heroine look absolutely deranged
Honestly, we need a game with a character that vibes with chaos energy drip. Just like "Wow, that outfit is completely insane. Either you were dropped on your head, or it must be really authentically you. I respect and appreciate someone who has so much confidence they'd willingly be seen in public looking like that.". I could see an avant-garde arts student girl or something who is attracted to and respects people who buck social conventions and chooses to beat to their own drum, even if that drum makes them look like a maniac who dressed themselves blindfolded.
Say what you want about 3, it accurately depicts being maidenless, dripless and your success in life being literally pure chance. Truly the nihilist horror game of the decade.
@@TheInsomniaddict If that was the case, you would have probably never even had a chance at winning to begin with and the whole game would have 3 endings: death by alcoholism in mid 30s, suicide by high school graduation or columbine reenactment where you rack up the biggest bodycount you can as the game switches to Doom gameplay.
@@nagotown Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I don't credit yansim for anything it contains 😂 This just reminded me of the names like Mai Waifu and Oku Ruta etc.
To play devil's advocate in the middle of a video for a dating sim I will never play, I can understand the _concept_ of making the first girl you meet on the hill random? Because if you then decide to go for her, it's like your romance was "fated to be" or something. Or alternatively, if you choose NOT to, it could lend your playthrough an air of "I won't leave things up to fate, I decide my destiny!" And it would be cool if they turned that into a theme throughout the game. ...but I have a sinking feeling the game is not going to be as clever as it could be. Edit: ok, yeah, this is WAY too much randomness for what boils down to a strategy game. Can't believe they accurately simulated nightmare scenarios if you have social anxiety. _("What if they don't show up? What if i ask them on a date but they say no and laugh at me? What if i ask for their phone number but they say no and laugh at me? What if-")_ Edit 2: _"What if this perfectly normal outfit actually weirds them out so bad they laugh at me and leave immediately?"_ So this is apparently the scariest horror game on the PS2? Got it.
@@derpro8125 Funnily enough that reminds me of a girl in my HS class who died from brain cancer. She did make it through HS, at least. 3 seems very realistic.
The ending slides are pretty funny: 'Oda went overseas to study acting. Despite appearances, she was serious after all...' 'In the end, Aizawa used her language abilities to become a stewardess. Perhaps this is a perfect fit.' 'Tachibana became a model. With her unique aura, no doubt she'll do well.' 'Shiratori became a pop idol. Come to think of it, I saw him in an ad on TV the other day. Impressive.' 'Yabe found work with a bottom-tier company. I'm sure he's made some new friends and is enjoying his new life.' This is delightfully mean-spirited. I love it. You made the game sound great.
"Kawai-san will be attending a technical university to continue her research into robots. She would like to send them into space next..." This girl is a menace.
I don't think it's meant to be mean... is it? I mean in a lot of media translated from Japanese, it seems that the translation isn't made so that you understand the true meaning of it but rather just to get a basic understanding of what the character is saying. I could be wrong though, maybe it is meant to be passive agressive or mean in a funny way ^^'
"the government kidnapped her parents because she has supernatural powers and fights demons" im sorry what? that's even more bonkers than the dog killer girl.
I will have to shamelessly admit that personally I did not really know the major differences between a dating sim and a romance visual novel so this video was very enlightening in that regard. I hope there is an English translation of the Tokimeki remake, frankly it looks like it will actually be really fun to play. Love to play with numbers. This was a really good video, really kept its pace. You did a good job. :)
It's a shame that og Tokimeki Memorial games never got translated release. They had really deep, intriguing mechanics and interesting fan disc / spin-off games to mess around. Especially TM1 drama series, surprisingly made by Kojima(yes, _THAT_ Kojima) crew. ...I still can't believe that official Korean version of TM1 (fully dubbed, minus the vocal songs) exists. Made pretty well also.
@@CB-L Yeah, most of these kinds of games just stayed in Japan or were sometimes released in China/Korea (due to closer cultures/languages). We tend to forget it, but back then even JRPGs were a very niche genre, especially here in Europe (pre-FF 7 almost nothing of note came out here). Dating sims/VNs and such are still mostly a niche genre... it's just how it is. On the other hand, FPS games, RTS games etc. are niche in Japan. Different strokes and all that.
@@mariusamber3237 Kind of weird when you consider that there's Starcraft leagues in Korea. I think it's a difference in mindset of how a game should be made between the West and East. West generally seem to focus a lot more on mechanics and overall the underpinning logic of world building while the East focuses on uniqueness. Like in the West, a lot of characters can have the same type of powers or skills because "that's how the world works" while in the East there's more focus on how powers are unique or character-defining. I think a lot of this might come down to original source material that gets used. For the West this is something like DnD or Tolkein, whereas in Japan it's like "Romance of the Three Kingdom," or "Journey to the West" or something similar.
Interesting thing to mention, because you brought it up and it's relevant to present day trends: Angelique is why we have so many "villainess-centric" anime and manga. Basically, the premise of Angelique is that you play as an angelically kind girl (Angelique) in a competition to become the next queen/saint tasked with protecting the universe. You spend the game raising stats and pursuing routes, eventually completing the mission before your aristocratic rival (Rosalia) and becoming the savior of the world. However, the rival character got unexpectedly popular. People started writing fanfics and fan comics from her perspective, and the series eventually canonized her complete redemption in a sequel. From this, a lot of writers and artists became professionals by publishing their own stories with similar premises to their fan works. From there, it inspired other people to make their own... and now we have a growing trend of meta stories featuring the 'rival/background extra/narrative punching bag character' fighting back against the fate given to them by 'the game/novel/god', usually finding love and friendship along the way.
Much like the isekai genre, I legit enjoyed some of those initial ones... Even the merged ones where a gamer got reincarnated as a mob (The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs) or the villainess (My Next Life as a Villainess). But just this year I have seen something like six anime with that trope at the very least. Sort of how the "I got expelled from the hero's party" now has at least one or two anime per season. I guess it all makes sense in this context that you gave, after all there seems to be a pipeline in Japan from fan fiction to light novel, to manga and then to anime. And once a trend catches on, every company and their subsidiaries wanna fight it out to cash in.
This seems to be at most half true since Otome game reincarnation stories are about as accurate to Otome games as Sword Art Online is to what would be a reasonable MMO. The villainess character is a shoujo manga trope and villainess themed web novels weren't originally Otome-game themed. Rosalia only fits the trope in being an Ojou-sama type rival in an Otome-game. The stock magical school setting of supposedly Otome-game themed isekai is more derived from Zero's Familiar fanfiction (a novel series where the sadistic Ojou-sama was already the default main love interest so villainess redemption is unnecessary). Maybe a magic school themed Otome-game does exist but its not a major trope as far as I can tell.
I kept thinking watching the footage of 2 "wow, this spritework is incredible and really emotive, I feel like I can understand these characters just through these visuals". Which made it all the more jarring when we jumped to 3 and its awkward and decisively less good looking 3D models.
felt the same way abt the character design in general! i was so charmed by hikari and her bestie's designs and thought they looked really good next to each other, seemingly having a conversation involving the player character. only to get slammed by fucking rika kawai outta nowhere
That's the case with everything I can think of that went 2D -> 3D, at least for the first 3D entry Mainline Pokemon is the most (in)famous example, because that transition didn't even happen that long ago
@@Hegataro The really ironic thing is that the actual switch to 3D in X and Y wasn't even that bad - sure, the Pokemon models had considerably less charm than the sprites, but the visual design was genuinely quite strong for characters and environments. Not perfect, but a decent start. It just... kinda kept getting _worse_ from there, which is baffling (especially given that Genius Sonority did everything about 3D Pokemon right with Gale of Darkness forever ago, and even the Let's Go remakes looked honestly frickin' adorable, _and those were developed by GameFreak!_). The real butt-ugly disasters only really started with the Switch era though. Anyway. TL;DR I do not understand GameFreak's weird-ass choices, but I'd actually like to posit the Ace Attorney series as the most infamous example of a horrid 2D -> 3D transition, with bonus points for the baffling choice of giving a _visual novel_ 3D models; the one genre in which it's still commonplace to Not Do That.
@@TheGuardyat least with ace attorney, the model sprites look super good after the initial rough transition. aa6 and tgaa have some amazing character animations, and it's allowed for some more dynamic gimmicks for characters and cases
@@Hegataro I will defend Pokemon Gen 6 for the 3D transition because 1. It was their first attempt and GF drastically changed things for the first time since Gen 3 2. Both XY and ORAS actually took advantage of the 3D and did things that wouldn't be possible or as effective in 2D or 2.5D and 3. The full 3D felt like pay-off to the 3D elements that they were building up in Gen 4 and Gen 5. You won't catch me defending any post-Gen 6 game though, they're all legit lazily and poorly-made trashfires. Also, I know people cite Ace Attorney as an example of a poor 3D transition, but at least they did get it sorted out and improved for Spirit of Justice and the TGAA duology. Unlike Pokemon where their first two attempts at 3D were the only good ones and it was only downhill from there.
yeah this one pops up all the time as a visual gag in other japanese media, it's been in, to my own knowledge, Hi Score Girl, Monthly Girl's Nozaki Kun and most obviously, The World God Only Knows.
It would have been one thing if she gave the dog something like human medicine (still wild but at least a followable thought process of a child) but ENERGY DRINKS??? What is the logic of that!!
to make a slight defense, "energy drink" likely refers to a quasi medicinal vitamin drink popular in japan. so its not straight caffiene but something said to help with hangovers and general listlessness. so she injected her dog with flintstone gummys
It's always such a gut punch to see games from this era that have earlier entries with gorgeous pixel art and later entries that were made in the days of 'If it's 3D, it's better' even when it just objectively looks worse. Would it have solved the problems of Tokimemo 3 if they stuck to their guns and either used the pixel art of 1 or the anime renders of 2? Of course not. But it would've at least made the game more palatable to look at. Also, if anyone who stumbles onto this comment has had their interest piqued in some of the dating sims from this era that Punchy mentioned (e.g. Mitsumete Knight, Angelique, True Love Story, etc.), there's a TH-camr named Bapsago whose whole channel is looking at these types of games. I highly recommend their content!
PC98 had the best spread of art style of all eras. and sadly I feel like we have lost this quite badly. give me snatchers or true love 95 art any day and I will be happy. kannon ruined VC and dating sim plus anime art with the moeblob garbage x.x
3 feels like an showcase of 3D artwork. Missed opportunity to call it Tokimemo 3D lol. I think they were trying to play it safe with the story hoping that the 3D graphics would save its appeal. If so, it backfired badly.
also for folks interested in that earlier era of PC98 dating sims, look up the Asenheim Project! it’s a group that translates old PC98 VNs and eroge and ports them so they’re playable in-browser. a lot of them can be played in just a few hours, and it really satisfies that itch for PC98 waifu stuff. i recommend Time Stripper Mako-chan, it’s super goofy and campy and such a good time.
I adored the game Virtue's Last Reward, but it was a sequel to a way better looking 2D game. They traded courgeous fully body sprites a cg artwork for very awkward plastic looking models (with some 2D scenes slotted in here and there that looks way better than the actual game). And somehow Virtue's Last Reward's sequel managed to look even worse because they tried to do a gritty realistic look. There's nothing wrong with 3D animations, but for the love of all that is holy, a studio should not just experiment around with it. Hire people that can actually make 3D look good. The 3D angle might actually have been the thing that ruined Tokimemo. Because if it wasn't for that then there would have been at least a larger variety in the heroines meaning all of its issues would have been diluted as more options would have been available (though only two specific types of clothing work sounds like a massive oversight that also could be single handedly blamed for tanking the game).
Im going to be honest- I've never been interested in dating sims, but hearing about tokimemo 2 made me wish there was an english translation. Like... just structurally that fascinates me. A whole seperate game style for a prologue? Options to have your name said- when games now still don't do that? It must have been incredible to play- it sounds like so much care went into it. Imagine a game made today where the creators could just... do what they wanted, without having to worry about money or the crushing desires of publishers, having as much time and fund as they needed, being allowed to just experiment like that. Like. It just blows me away that they got to DO any of that. All those discs! All those bizarre choices! They got to just do what they thought was best for yhe game. These days, only indie devs get to do that it seems, and they don't get the money these people did. What an idea. What a game.
tomimeki memorial 2 is genuinely one of my favourite games ever. Such a revolutionary and unique piece of video game that most people will never touch due to language barrier
If it interests you, Tokimemo Girls Side 1 2 and 3 all have english patches? Same game but you're dating men instead. This series is still going too, even though they took an 11 year hiatus after 3, TMGS 4 came out on switch 3 years ago almost exactly. (and google translate picks up on the text of 4 very well, so if you're familiar with the gameplay even that is pretty playable with limited japanese)
Same here, the closest I got to dating Sims were the princess maker games and that was because I kinda like management games like that. The ps1 and 2 era was so interesting in that there are entire game mechanics that just aren't used anywhere today and story's could get really experimental with how they were told. Nowadays the ambition on graphics have ballooned the budgets of these games so much the corporate side can't allow for too much experimentation lest they lose a shit ton of investment.
A Switch remake of Tokimeki 1 was recently announced and there was actually a decent amount of hype from the west, if it does well in Japan there’s a good chance we’ll get an official localization!
You're so right about how there's a massive audience for dating sims. When Coral Island, or really any Stardew/Harvest style game comes, pretty much the question all of my friends ask the same general question: "who are the date-able characters?". Those and the Monster Prom games are probably the closest we've gotten to earnest dating sims.
I feel like it's more the _term_ "dating sim" that has negative baggage rather than the concept or even the genre itself. Like (as you said) farming sims with romance elements are huge, so are regular life sims with them, etc but as soon as you call your game a "dating sim" people immediately turn around and call it cringe. (Maybe it's also due to the stereotype that "dating sims" are all bishoujo games for basement dwellers, whereas farming and life sims have a predominantly female audience. I feel like if otome dating sims were more well-known the genre wouldn't be as mocked by the people who enjoy romance in sim games?)
@@subekyuuke I suspect that, since they don't _really_ know the genre, they're thinking of visual novels like _Tsukihime_ where the objective, beyond dodging Bad Ends, is to make it to a sex scene with every possible girl.
@@subekyuuke It's weird because that stereotype exists, but male-oriented romance is very rare to find in western media. The perception's entirely based on imported culture. Japan seems to be the only country that makes it, in video game form or otherwise (at least in my experience). I'm sure there is some example of it made by American hands, and probably even an example made that isn't just trying to present itself as an anime parody, but it's genuinely difficult to find.
@@Typhonification You're right about most dating sims being targeted towards women. But with Stardew Valley and other genre games like the later versions of Fire Emblem (the ones where you get to interact with and date the NPCs), I feel like they've been opening up more to the male demographic. (Sorry, kind of unrelated to your main point)
If Tsukihime has any degree of accuracy to reality the solution to the 6 day school week Japanese kids took in the 90s was a massive amount of semi-socially acceptable truancy
I think that in Japan, once you finish middle school, your governmentally-obligated education is over, but 99% finish high school because unless you're inheriting the family business, you're going to be a bum the rest of your life if you don't.
Okay, I was wondering about that. when I went to japan just about everywhere, i went. No matter what time of the day it was, there was some high school or middle schooler just wandering around. It would be like 1:30 pm and in my mind I'm like "wait, aren't classes going on right now". Even more confusing was why are you skipping in your uniform. In the U.S. truancy has almost zero tolerance, to the point if you skip alot the police pretty much escort you to school
"Yae as a character resonated with the player base"... "The team's take away from that is people like sad girls" They really got the wrong lesson... The real takeaway is that people like the underdog style characters, but if you have a game like 3 where everyone is an underdog, then no one is an underdog.
1:18:30 You know, I feel like an English translation could revive this series. I mean, it's a whole new audience. Sell it as 'you've seen it parodied in anime, live the experience that took Japan by storm!'. I've never directly interacted with this series but I ended up knowing every beat of this game because it was in anime I'd watched where they play a thinly parodied version. It would be pretty easy to get people interested I'd say. Good sales there could mean a reason to revitalize the series. Of course, this would come with it being purposefully directed with an international audience in mind, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
Speaking of sincere and not-joke premise indie dating sims from the west, there was one insanely obscure indie game from 2010 called Shira Oka that was a bonafide full-on Tokimeki Memorial clone with 8 girls to pursue and even 2 guys. And by insanely obscure I mean the company that made this vanished into the ether shortly after the game came out and the only place you can even get this anymore is on DLsite of all places. Fascinating game in many ways. It had a lot of passion and soul put into it but they clearly struggled to live up to the scope of a Tokimemo game.
I've actually heard of Shira Oka! Incredibly odd production and basically the only example I've got of a western dev who was in fact, visibly trying to mimic Tokimeki Memorial. Didn't make it into the video because idk they can't all get shoutouts
Shira Oka is special. It's got a lot of quality voice-acting, and it's especially charming because in the last 1/3rd of every character's route is batshit insane - government conspiracies, ghosts and all things supernatural start to invade your otherwise normal high school depending on which character you pursue. Also, your angel companion kills you if you fail enough tests in school, which is a very funny way to force you to focus on stat-raising. Gunning for the true ending (which requires all routes) is exhausting and there are many regrettable design decisions, but I don't regret the 70-some hours I spent getting it.
Didn't think I'd ever hear someone talk about Shira Oka in present day, present time! I got the game through Gamestop's PC games launcher waaaaaaaay back when (2011) as a celebration for graduating high school, and man. It was a trip. I enjoyed it quite a bit (did 5 routes), but looking back on it now, it was kinda mediocre. The art's amateur, the tonal shifts the routes had really bothered me, it made some Japanese mistakes even 2011 me caught, etc etc. But it was earnest, and I respect it for that. The game's also on Myabandonware, but it uses a dubious crack that may not be safe.
Yo I'd been trying to find this game again for years!! Thanks mate! I remember really liking the gay route where you suddenly become a super spy to rescue your roboticist boyfriend from the government by TACTICAL CROSSDRESSING. Wild af game, absolutely loved it
This was a great video! I'm an otome game junkie and have played hours upon hours of the Girl's Side series, and it really resonated with me about how it's more of a strategy style game than a romance sometimes. I was explaining the gameplay to some friends a while back and I probably sounded like that one meme with the man talking in front of the massive chart with pins and strings everywhere. "Okay, so first you have to choose which bedroom you want because that sets your base stats. Then, you have to decide what part time job you want, because that will also raise your stats, which also means you need to decide ahead of time who you're going to pursue. If I'm going to do the sports guy route, I will work at the bookstore because it gives me enough intelligence points that constantly spamming the sports club will not make me stupid so I fail all my exams, and--" I'm honestly shocked we got Girl's Side 4 in 2021, especially since Konami seemed more interested in Pachinko than their old franchises. It doesn't shine as much as 3 did, which was peak TMGS, but it's still nice to get new content over a decade after 3 was released. Not sure how many videos you would like to make about terrible PS games, and it is a visual novel rather than a dating sim, but the absolute worst PS2 otome visual novel I ever played was called Orange Honey. I bought the first two TMGS games for PS1/2 in a lot on eBay, and Orange Honey was included. I have never been so horrifyingly bored and infuriated by a game before, but, at the very least, it had some unintended hilarity to it. The character I pursued showed up to a date wearing this jacket with wrinkles drawn on it in such a way it resembled certain anatomy. If you ever get the urge to play something truly awful for a video, I recommend it. XD
Girl's Side is so good! I love the rival system in GS 1+2, it really adds variety to each playthrough. I don't know if you know this or not, but they ported GS 1, 2, and 3 to the switch! The content is mostly based on the DS ports, so there are some tradeoffs (especially given that 3 lacks a chunk of features from the PSP version), but it's nice to see all 4 GS games on a modern system.
Thanks, is really refreshing to finally hear the discussion on this topic from someone who knows what they are talking about and does not have contempt for the genre
It's worth pointing out that Girls' Side 1 (and all of the other GS games) also has the Outfit System, and it is far better put together and more intuitive than... whatever they were going for here. Each guy has a style of clothing they prefer (Pure, Sporty, Sexy, etc.), every article of clothing has a style it's associated with, the game will tell you what style an outfit you put together is before you head out, it does take the season into account (eg. guys will call you out if you wear a tank top and shorts in the dead of winter), there's a style column in the paper and the guys who care about that will note when you wear a trending item or color, and you can buy swimsuits, dresses, and kimonos for holidays. I don't know if guys will just end the date if you wear a style they don't like or something that mixes styles. I think they just note that they don't like your outfit and ding you points. It's been a while since I've played it. It's a little wild knowing now that the two games were developed side-by-side and, despite its rough spots (whoever greenlit the principal character needs to be on a list) and lack of ideal budget, how much better GS1 came out.
I wanted to say this, too. Thanks for saving me from typing! :D Also I don't care how problematic he would be irl, I will Always have a soft spot for Himuro (homeroom teacher) 😅
I have to agree about the fact that anything that presents itself as even remotely a dating sim really feels the need to be satirical and sarcastic in order to be taken seriously in this day and age. The current biggest news in the Dating Sim scene I'm aware of is Date Everything, a game that, while it certainly looks high effort with its art and voice acting, is still ultimately about dating your household furniture. It really does feel that after Hatoful Boyfriend, western audiences and developers alike have been far too scared of treating the genre with any real sincerity without that barrier of "oh it's actually a parody"
I wrote that bit before Date Everything got announced and now I feel like it might get interpreted as specifically slighting it. and well. if the shoe fits, I suppose. It's certainly symptomatic of the things I talked about whether it means to be or not.
I always like seeing videos like these where bilingual speakers talk in depth about untranslated games. Feels like I’m getting a look in at a game I will likely never play.
Adding to the argument. Japanese companies were so sure that westerners didn't "get" their games, that they invested in western studios to make sequels to appeal to a western audience. Capcom being one of the biggest offenders, but konami also went this route with silent hill.
Ironically, in the early 2000s Silent Hill 2 had a very mixed reception in Japan. The players didn't like the changes compared to the first game that much, and the game was much more successful in the West; that's part of the reason why SH 3 goes back to the occult instead of personal drama.
@@zenmastakilla Wow, someone else actually agrees with me about SH2. When it was new I remember feeling let down by it, but its gotten worse now that everyone sees it as some model to follow.
@@zenmastakilla Real. I love the first and third games a lot more. I don't hate SH2 and I know how impactful it was at the time but god forbid you say it's not your favorite sometimes. You might as well have said it was a shit game for all they care.
"Here in tokimemo 3 you can ask a girl for a date, or make the risky choice to ask a girl for her phone number. Here in tokimemo 3 no one goes for the phone number."
Small amusement on the bit between JRPGs and WRPGs that you intentionally picked a western developed game for the JRPG representative, and a Japanese developed game for the WRPG representative. I see what you did there!
rika's story has to be someone airing out their childhood trauma because that is a hauntingly realistic example of what a child would do if they had access to a syringe
Huh, so that's the difference between a romantic Visual Novel and a Dating Sim... In that case, it seems I've never actually played a dating sim in my life. I'll correct that whenever I get time. Also what the hell why does a girl have a dog body count.
It seems that (as for games that truly have sim gameplay) life-sim elements have been given up in favor of farm-sim nowadays. Or else streamlined the sim in favor of narrative decisions gameplay (more VN-like), and generally as a work of smaller studios.
The anecdote in the description remind me of a european friend who lived in Japan for a few years and was often told that he "talked like a woman". In his case, it was because the people he spoke japanese with the most were his wife, her mother and her sister, so he learned from them.
I'd sooner say P3 onward's format is more directly inspired by Yoru ga Kuru by Alicesoft, which was 5 years earlier than P3. That and Tsukihime were basically the trendsetters of 'urban supernatural fantasy'. You managed your schedules and built relations with there rest of the cast by day and explored urban dungeons by night, but could only stay in for a limited amount of time thus putting emphasis on time management and economy of actions. If that didn't sound Persona enough already, the base plot was a 2nd moon appears in the sky and a group of people with special powers, masquerading as a school club, try to investigate the mystery behind it's origins and its powers, while combating monsters created by its blue light and other empowered people using their abilities for evil...
@@gtf234 I've never heard of that one and wikipedia and steam page summaries for the remaster aren't especially helpful, but it does sound like there was some inspiration there. Does Yoru ga Kuru have the time management aspects of dating sims/Persona games as well or is it more of the linear visual novel style?
@@nerdorama009 Like I said, the game is about time management and dungeon crawling rpg- you're either spending time building relationships with the other characters or exploring dungeons, and like the original P3, you had a timer on your back for how long you could stay in the dungeon before getting booted out/the game tries extra hard to game over you. Alicesoft did this same hybrid format even earlier too with Pastel Chime in 1998; Yoru ga Kuru was April 2001 (Tsukihime was December 2000, for reference since we're also talking about when the motif of modern day supernatural fantasy started to take off). My point more is that this hybrid visual novel/life simulator + RPG format was pretty well established well before P3 in 2006 more than the latter was inventing something radical as a cheeky throwback or parody.
One thing with the English translation of the SNES version is that Japanese dialogue is often kinda dry and to the point so if the English fan patch went for a very literal translation, the characters will inevitably come off sounding kinda monotone and lifeless. That's why often times, other translations will sort of spice up the dialogue but it can sometimes sound so different to the original intent that people get mad and resort to calling the American scripts worse because they lose the original meaning. Translating is a very rough thing to do.
I feel like there's also the issue of Japanese being constructed in a way that imbues the text with subtext that can't be literally translated. The grammar used in Japanese conveys a lot of information about intent and the personality of the person who is speaking, but all these different forms can still translate directly into the exact same phrase in English. Depending on which pronouns are used when referring to themselves, a Japanese person can be giving off a dramatically different vibe, but all of those different variations are equivalent to the English word 'I'. It's not really possible to recreate that in a language where there's only one word available to cover all those different pronouns and where vocal intonation and rhythm are employed instead, at least in terms of written form.
@@casanovafunkenstein5090 And none of this is even getting into the more complicated nuances of Japanese that make it harder to translate. Puns are infamously known for being damn near impossible to translate because they're so often only ever going to make sense in Japanese.
Was expecting a plot twist where the main girl of TM3 is actually dressing up as every other girl because of her jealousy issues and that would explain the same face syndrome. x_x
Ok but that would be an incredible plot twist for a dating Sim. An obsessive girl wants to date you but doesn't know what kinda girls you're into so she makes up a bunch of different personas to try to woo you. You could even explain scenes that have multiple girls in it as her getting her friends to help her.
Whats funny about the west not getting the dating sim craze too much is that i remember SO MANY flash games of this format on deviantart back in the day. As someone more familiar with VNs, i thought they were a little bizarre at the time with how complicated they were, only to find out later they were modeled after actual dating sims like this! (Also yay Hatoful mention :) even if you were being a little sarcastic there lol, its legit a good game past the parody disguise it wears. Definitely skewed a lot of people's views on the genre a bit tho, for people who didnt actually play it)
A dating sim-like game with live action actors was made in the west at one point, it didn't get enough traction to become a trend though. generally VNs aren't that marketable in the west due to cultural differences imo
@@Pavlinka__ keep in mind that: -A game that doesn't involve battle or action in the west and simply talking with minigames is involved was deemed as an interactive video (at best) or porn (at worst). To make matters worse, in the later years it got the kiddie edutainment treatment, which pretty much doomed the VM/DS genre outside of Japan. -Especially on the 90s and earlier, the gameplay was so much the primary focus that almost every game got an excuse plot. -Localization companies would label any game that focused on storylines an instant failure and never even bother to market it properly in the rare case they would go through with it. The cultural difference? Games in Japan focused on storytelling. Games in the West focused on mindless gameplay. The reason for that is deeply rooted to the devastation Japan suffered after WW2, which can be made into a video essay on its own.
I think my introduction to the genre was the flash game “Air Pressure,” which is kinda depressing now that I’m an adult and actually understand what was going on. u.u Umm, but after that, I jumped into the Pacthesis games… Chrono Days was my favorite, I replayed that soooo many times.
hatoful boyfriend is one of those games that has an incredibly silly premise but also, within the work itself, engages really sincerely with the premise and is genuinely emotional and gripping with an incredible cast like it's very fun to dunk on 'pigeon dating sim' as a concept but it IS a really, really good game that's worth suspending your disbelief for also in stars and time spotted, hell yes
what every other parody dating sim fails to get about hatoful boyfriend is that the joke of HB isn't haha isn't it funny we're dating pigeons, it's that it is a completely sincere dating sim/visual novel except all the characters are pigeons, with the characters riffing on popular otome archetypes and the individual routes all coming back in the true ending. the game would also not work if it wasn't pigeons, especially plot points like sakuya's family.
Your last bit about comparing putting dating sim stuff into bigger games being like slipping medicine into dog food is so true dude. People will give the idea of dating sims the side eye whenever it's brought up, but then there will several debates about who the best girl is in each persona games (Mitsuru, Naoto, Makoto for me) People love romance in their games, but they don't want to play a game that's JUST romance, for some reason. As a soon to be 29 year old Canadian dude I'll happily say it; Romance is awesome. Put a good romance story in front of me with characters that i'll like and i'll eat it up and ask for another helping; romance fucking rules.
Give it till your first serious break up. Romance can be bitter sweet, and I’d imagine a good dating sim should get that across. But I get your point, ya hoser (Canuck here too :D)
My best guess is that a pure dating sim basically lives and dies by its character writing, and it takes a lot of confidence to write a cast of characters that people will adore when the only thing you can really do in the game is talk to them. It's much easier to get away with slightly weaker character writing if they're among other fun things to do. There's nothing worse than a character driven game that has a cast you don't care about (looking at you, Inescapable).
These japanese dating sims are not "just romance" themselves. They have obvious game aspects. And not enough freedom and interactivity. Eh... What others have said, "lives and dies by character writing" isn't it. It lives and dies by the vibes. You can throw a lot out of the window if you only get that right. The game can be really short and loop back on itself, and it'll still be worth it.
Is there something about Canadian guys liking dating games? I don't get it. I think it's worth comparing the Japanese Otome scene with romance novels in the West. Both cater largely to women, so women are the core audience in both cases. Japan grew up with less computers and more family consoles, so I think it's likely that more women grew up playing games in the East compared to the West. This might change now with the prevalence of smartphones. For why we don't see more dating sims already current day, I think that's because videogames were even less socially acceptable in the West back in the 90's and 2000s. Livejournal, Tumblr, DeviantArt, and Fanfiction sites are where more of the Western nerd girls ended up in their teenage years. Since much less focused on gaming and instead on other media, they ended up going in that direction. I also think that Western dating games haven't found their "voice" yet. They can imitate Japanese hits they know about, but they haven't started creating stories for themselves yet. Anyways, that's my take as some buddy from Western Canada who enjoys macking on the digital ladies, eh?
i absolutely ADORED the girls side games when i discovered their english patches about 10 years ago; i don't speak a lick of japanese (though my couple-years obsession with those games did get me reeeaaaal close to maybe starting classes lol) but they still had me importing the PSP version ahead of that one getting a patch and an artbook and soundtrack. i'd love to see a return to the stat builder kinds; i'm not great at reading and the kind of vignette / spontaneous style of TMGS games always got me easier than wading through shinsengumi lore for the 50th time i also cannot stand that dating sims have to be wrapped up in ironic delivery; it's even worse when every localised release of an otome vn is getting the most low effort machine translation you can imagine 😭😭😭 girl you can't do that the writing is the whole point!
Ah, I still remember how I realised that I can actually romance the homeroom teacher so I dropped the "cool" guy for his stoic ass halfway through the game. That's a core memory 😂 Loved those games. I'll may replay them...
I loved them all too! if you’re interested, while its a little slower, google translate reads the text in the most recent switch game very well. The main characters gimmick is pretty fun, too.
Oh, also, I assume the 'hitching' is an attempt at immersion - the girl is animating as 'you respond' to her. The pause is for your character to actually say the line to her. If your character had voice acting, it'd work, but it comes across immensely awkward without it.
@@planescaped ....But wouldn't they do that before they actually press the button to select it? When i play a VN i read the option and THEN click on it. And some VN's have your character actually say the line in the chatbox after you pick it, i dont know why the dating sim could not just do that
@@EdyAlbertoMSGT3 Most likely? They ran out of money to complete the protag audio and decided to scrap it but otherwise left the rest of the system in place. The game was already under the expected budget.
Despite me knowing the differences between VNs and Dating sims more than 99% of people, I still was gripped enough to not skip ahead. This channel is a real gem. It's pretty uncommon for a native English speaker to understand Japanese, and if they did, they typically don't make videos like this and would be a localizer. I'm heavily into Japanese media, but I don't know Japanese. So it's very nice to see someone cover things I wouldn't be able to experience and explain them while also coming from a Western perspective. I like Japanese content creators who can speak about these things in English (which is also rare), but their experiences tend to be so different that it doesn't scratch the same itch. These videos act like a gateway into untranslated works. They are a unique glimpse into media I don't have access to without learning the language. Like that UNO video you did a bit ago was similarly interesting and was something I never would have thought existed until you covered it. Thanks for making these kinds of videos.
Less than two minutes in and Punchy makes me agree with him possibly more than I ever agreed with anyone. "Genre definitions are all semantics and where braincells go to die." Couldn't agree more
1:06:40 Imagine finding out your entire run went up in flames because you decided to placate Yukiko for a night, and that caused your actual girlfriend to drop dead because you didn't check in on her instead. So you boot the game up and prioritize, but this instead causes Yukiko's bomb to go off, tanking your rep, and the shock causes you to fail the relationship anyway, as the girlfriend dies in disgust. I would never play the game again after that, but I would sure as hell get a big laugh out of it XD
49:00 During my play though I eventually committed to wearing either the white or black button up and either the brown or black pants. For shoes, I opted for the brown leather ones. During the final year of my play through ,I ended up discovering that the brown shoes are actually supposed to be paired with the suit and will always trigger a disgusted reaction with any other outfit combination. I’m not sure what’s wrong with pairing brown dress shoes with a business casual fit but ok. Once I replaced them with the sneakers I started getting girls complimenting my style. (P.S, tshirt, jeans, and sneakers is a good fit to wear if you’re going after Makihara - she never complimented me for it but never complained either. I opted for the business casual fit because it caused the least problems and when I eventually decided to pursue Chitose she liked it)
Probably because outfits in Japan are/were much more strict than western countries (such as forcing students to dye their natural hair colors to conform to student expectations and uniforms or the way job applicants all wear near identical suits). It isn't about personal style, it's about fitting societal expectations
The impression I've had on the randomization of who you meet at the start of 3 is it basically being a response to traditional romance genre issue of the first girl always winning, and more directly to its own lineage in the matter. For better or worse, Shiori is pretty clearly the "correct" choice in 1 by basically every metric (importance, difficulty, in-game popularity, etc), but in 2 the game goes out of its way to include events with as many of the characters as possible in the prologue, so everyone's on more even ground come the actual start of the story, and less feeling like Hikari is who you're "supposed" to go for. 3's version in turn is giving you a random character for your fated meeting, so any given character could be the "first girl" for a given playthrough. It doesn't work as well, but nothing else in 3 does, so. Also, a fun note re: Serika since there wasn't footage obtained, all the stuff about her secretly being a Persona character only gets revealed in the very last event in her story, which isn't actually necessary to see to get her ending. If you don't see it, the ending just has her being a lounge singer who does smalls jobs in bar across Japan, which in context is pretty clearly a cover story and kinda hilariously implies you spend your entire relationship never figuring out why Clark Kent takes so long to make a phonecall.
Years and years ago I read an LP of Tokimeki 1-3 and Girls Side on Something Awful by vibrating sheep that they translated as they went along, doing 1-2 routes per game. It's from them that I learned how hard the hardest girls could be, because he literally had a "giblo" (ギブロ aka savescum) playlist he had on repeat to stay sane when he had to savescum to optimize stats to do Maho's route in 2. I highly recommend anyone who wants to get a sense of the writing for these games to look the LP up on the LP archive, because they're one of the most comprehensive looks at the series in English even if they don't cover most of the routes. They even cover the death of the genre!
VibratingSheep's runs are absolutely great and anyone interested in the Tokimeki Memorial games should take a look at his screenshot LP. I only wish he could have finished his run of Girls Side 2 or showed off Tokimemo 4.
@@richardpreston7333 I read that KOTOR2 playthought with Jesus so many times... (also it basically was one of the main reasons behind Dangan Ronpa ever making it to the west).
As a person who doesn't really care about Japanese games and definitely not anime or dating sims you had me hooked with the writing, keep up the good work
Me as a child: i shall experiment with magnets. Oh no, the color swiels on the CRT TV didnt go away. Maybe i can do the motion in reverse to fix it. Oh NO Rika: where did i get access to energy drinks at age 5 or something? Not my problem
It's so funny that you mentioned using magnets on a CRT because I did the same thing as a kid, and I was thinking about that when he mentioned doing stupid stuff as a kid. At least we never killed a dog.
You'd be surprised how easily available energy drinks were in Asia. It's just not advertised as "EPIC GAME FUEL" but as medicinal supplement for business people working 12 hour workdays. You know those tiny bottles that you buy at Donquiote that's on the front counter in the hundreds in Yakuza series? Those are all essentially 5 Hour Energy before 5 Hour Energy
Energy drinks I can believe without too many odd assumptions, it's getting her hands on injection needles at that age that really worries me. I can see her understanding that they're used for medicine, she'd definitely had a flu shot or something, but them being within easy reach? In her house at all? Deeply concerning!
Konami saw the popularity of the singular somber character in an otherwise upbeat game and decided the lesson to take would be "All sad girls now" seems exceptionally on brand for the video game industry at any point in time, TBH
Local horror game speedrunner who knows Japanese rants about obscure Japanese dating sim series (emphasis on the sim). All according to keikaku. *Translator's note: Keikaku means "plan."
tbh it's possibly the *least* obscure dating sim series I could've picked out of the genre but the genre itself is obscure in the West so it be like that
@@Mario_bland *Dating before the internet was like living in the world of Dracula or Frankenstein:* _Strange and scary but you can overcome it through hard work and wits._ *Dating in the age of internet and social media is like being trapped in a Lovecraft or Junji Ito story:* _You are doomed from the start and all your efforts are futile._
in Tokimemo's case, it's literally has ties to horror, and Dracula because the guy who wrote the story for the early games is non other than Koji "IGA" Igarashi, who is now more known for "creating Metroidvania"
As an aspiring game dev, I would love to play a translated version of TokiMemo 2 and TokiMemo 3. TM2 seems like an absolute masterpiece that should get more recognition, while TM3 sounds like an extreme cautionary tale of game designers implementing things "because they sound good" or "because that's realistic" without considering if they will break the game.
TM3 just seems like such a bonkers experience that i really want to play it. if anything i would probably save 2 until after 3 so i could heal my soul with a game that's genuinely good
TM3 kind of looks like an ambitious game that was released reaaaly unfinished. Like, I could buy that the reason the girls all look so similar was because they created the first character model, with the idea of modifying it later to differentiate them more, and then just... never got to it. Similarly a lot of the game mechanics seem like they could have been good ideas... but they were never debugged or properly balanced, so they just end up being a mess. It might be a cautionary tale about getting too ambitious right out of the gate, though.
All I kept thinking throughout this video is "Damn, I would really love to play Tokimemo 2, or see someone cover in depth like Tim Rogers did..." Even in Tim Rogers 6 hour deep dive of TM1, TM2 only gets a mere mention of being "really good" and that's it. Such a shame, because TM2 seems to genuinely improve upon every single aspect of TM1.
What I loved about Magical Diary duology is that not only you could date both boys and girls, but also the fact some of them had friendship routes as alternatives. So even if you weren't interested in them as romancable candidates, you could still get close to them no problem. If dating sim ever becomes a relevant genre again, I wish they'd keep making friendship routes and allow you to date both genders too(not every game needs to have this, but I wouldn't mind a few more).
This was a really in-depth video, and I'm glad to see that someone who genuinely Gets It and has love for the dating sim genre (and Tokimemo!) did a deep dive on TokiMemo3! I'm a HUGE fan of the Girls Side series (almost half of my VODs are playthroughs of said series, and Girls Side 3 is what I personally consider to be the best Tokimemo game after TM2)--Tokimemo 3's date outfit mechanic seems to be a really, really rough version of what would be the Girls Side Outfit System, which is a super detailed, in-depth stat/luck system that I can best describe as outfitting your character with a weapons and armory loadout in action rpgs. It really is kind of a shame to see that the Girls Side series gets written off as "silly girls games/that silly otome spinoff series" or forgotten, because the producer behind it (and Love Plus!) as well as the team were firing on all cylinders in terms of writing, art, and mechanics. Setting that aside, thank you for your sacrifice in playing 3, and also, thank you 3 for dying so that Girls Side could live (although they're still all trapped on the 3DS and PSP respectively still, and we don't talk about Girls Side 4, oof)
Actually, 1, 2, and 3 got ported to Switch! The content is mostly based on the DS ports though, so 3 in particular is missing some features from the PSP version.
As an American, most of us do not wear shoes indoors either. I don’t know why that stereotype exists but it’s very strange. Also, that “insert coin” anecdote was very funny.
>"There aren't many indie games inspired by TokiMemo 2" > Laughs in Katawa Shoujo (sorry, but memories of that game hit me like a truck when I saw the rival character guy at 35:17 and I think even if it's more in that VN camp as you distinguished, it was clearly inspired and for better or worse exists)
Oh also as a weird little freak child who accidentally ended up on the wrong side of Newgrounds, I grew up playing a surprising number of dating sims clearly inspired by the actual genre, with lots of very paired down attempts at the same mechanics, and I think most of the girls were stolen still images from animes, like I distinctly remember one where you could date Asuka from EVA but it was NOT a game "marketing" itself as "The EVA dating sim" -- I feel like there's always been an interest, and Persona games def show it and all that, but it's kinda funny that it indeed never materialized as, at the least, more translations and ports.
Oh so THIS is where the love-confession tree I see in various japanese high school media comes from! Dang, this series really did have a lot of cultural impact.
Never ask an anime self-insert protagonist about their family. It is a road to eldritch and existential horror that uproots everythingtou thought you understood... Or finding out they're the lost child of Doctor N. Gin.
To be fair, unless the parents are doing something important in the story, they don't need to be mentioned. It's the same reason why homework is never mentioned... unless it's a study session/date.
@@lunamaster123 Why though? Parents and siblings are some of the most important relationships in a young person's life and it's weird to omit them. They're a major source of guidance, comfort, stress, and fun. Parents influence children's goals or cause them to rebel. They could have major story and gameplay significance in a genre like this, but for some reason all this potential is omitted. Even if they played an extremely minor role, still weird that they are completely absent and this isn't remarkable.
I nearly choked when you/Punchy talked about the outfits choosing "game", culminating in you dunking on the pink-white shirt of one of the girls (around 48mins). That was hysterical. Great video!
1:08:07 'She inexplicably called me out of the blue to watch her participate in an acting contest' Protag should have said "Oh so you were just PRETENDING to be a massive bitch this entire time? Damn girl, you're got this contest in the bag!! I really believed you were an absolute c**t!" (for real, it's a hilarious explanation as to why she would suddenly invite you for moral support. Girl is an insane method actress)
Really fantastic work here. I love it when a video makes me go "aha, this guy CLEARLY failed to consider-" and then the guy demonstrates that he did in fact consider what I was about to say, and that happened twice in the first 20 minutes (the point about high school nostalgia not being a uniquely Japanese phenomenon + the mention of Riven also coming on five discs).
Very intdreting and fun video, I had no idea Tokimeki fumbled the bag SO hard. Also, killing a dog with energetic drinks? That shit had me having a laughter fit so hard I could barely breath or speak. That shit is HILARIOUS.
kind of random thought but there's like a joke/stock character floating around The Media, the massive geek with no social skills in love with his anime girlfriend, and in a broader sense I wonder if a lot of people are afraid to make/play sincere dating sims because only LOSERS who can't get a REAL girlfriend would want a FANTASY one. like romance isn't a super common thing to fantasize about, and like people don't want an outlet to express and play around with that kind of stuff I guess.
you're absolutely right tbh. it's hilarious (aka it sucks) because people don't really make that assumption about any other genre. like nobody says stuff like "oh you play cooking mama? couldn't cut it as a REAL chef huh 😏" it's only towards people who play romance games it's such a mean-spirited take and i hate that it's so prevalent. these games make people happy and the people who play them literally aren't doing anything wrong i don't see the problem
I mean, that's why I originally avoided them. But I decided to give one a chance, just because why not. Don't judge it until you've tried it I thought. Then I realized it was incredibly fun... and that the genre was largely untranslated... and everyone confuses them with romance visual novels... and the genre is practically dead... meaning finding one to play is an act of futility. :(
Since I'm an otome game player (playing the girl side games and games from other companies) this is SUPER interesting to watch since this is obviously territory I havent touched at all. But the double bonus of seeing the context of tm3 and how so many things in this game baffle me holy shit.
I wanted to indulge Girl's Side a bit more I feel like I sidelined it a little in service to keeping the run-time down because I have played at least GS1 and thought it was a pretty good time.
@@PunchyYTthe thought and mention is appreciated! They're a different beast and often both the genre and audience can be easily misunderstood, so I personally think it's a smart choice to keep the topic more focused towards just one side of the series.
I'm glad to find someone like me here! I'm also an otome game player and had only played Girl's Side of the Tokimeki franchise, so this video was very interesting. I'm happy Girl's Side was mentioned at all; considering there would be a lot to cover when it comes to that kind of genre and audience.
@@scarlettskipper9352 @chaoticdance @PunchyYT Hey, it's good to see fellow Girls Side gamers! I don't usually play otome games (I'm a BL and joseimuke gamer) but I adore the Girls Side series with how strongly they're written and how their mechanics work--3 especially!!
Wow another girl's side gamers! I started delving myself into otome games since 2011 and tmgs series is among my first otome games i played. Currently I replayed tmgs3 psp version using emulator in my phone because recently one of the voice actors for one of the secret characters passed away @@chuchuonlinevt
Everything about TokiMemo3 feels like it was designed to be a middle finger to the fanbase for failing to completely crowdfund the game. From the insane amounts of luck required to do literally anything, to the insufferable meanness of the characters, to the dark and depressing stories of the girls. It all feels like Konami telling their audience "You didn't give us enough money! Fuck you!" And as a fan of Metal Gear, Silent Hill, & Zone of the Enders, I at the very least say #FuckKonami right back
The way the 3D models look kinda gives me the vibe of some long forgotten cheap digipaint anime from the early 2000s and I actually kinda vibe with that.
On a technical level they are impressive for the era. The models maintain an outline and keep an anime style at multiple angles, from the models I would not have guessed it was a 2001 game. I would not be surprised that these models were placeholders using a base model and the unique models that were meant to replace them never came to fruition.
@@tierdra9513 The style could work if the art wasn't so anime-centric. The problem is they attempted to capture anime proportions that were common at the time rather than trying to find something better. Cell-shaded graphics can be great, and I think there's some good examples that came out just a few years later. Oni comes to mind, readily.
I kind of like it too, it has a certain charm that carries the limitations of that era. I'm sure they put a lot of work into it, even considering that it probably didn't have that big of a budget.
Funny that you mention Hatoful Boyfriend at the end, I genuinely loved that game so much. It has a silly premise but took itself surprisingly seriously in the final route. Wish there were more dating sims in the west!
I didn't even care about dating sims, I put this video to continue working, but halfway through I was so invested in what Tokimeko Memorial 2 could do. This is what happens when you speak with true passion about a subject, becase NOW I really want to play Tokimeko Memorial 2!!!
No, because there's Visual Novel called Kanon. There a trend in early 2000 where type of depressing story like this are massively popular at the time, in Japan at least, and Kanon are the one popularized a depressing type story like this
I very much enjoy a well-written _nakige_ , but man, those are really hard to write and many authors fumble them pretty hard. It reminds me of dark fantasy in the west, and how many authors don't know how to write it without becoming misery porn.
Imagine the inverse time line: Tokimeki 3 was a hit Every girl in the game shows up Every girl is nice The dying girl refuses to die by the power of love The Kawai girl is killed by a dog. Everybody in the highschol is'n and asshole. Every event is just a coin flip without a seed. And in the end the MC always DUMP the girl because he is a GIGA CHAD and needs to grind for more stats.
Dating sims like these actually existed in the west. A lot of them being flash games and rather pornographic, however the sim part of dating sim is still there. you still leveled stats via activity's, went on dates, and in some cases were rewarded with erotic content. Which is a major distinction between western flash dating sims, and what japan defines them as.
It is definitely not a major distinction. If you look into the history of japanese dating sims you'll find that many of the earliest versions of the concept included H-scenes (nsfw material). Often times, every other element of the game was simply preamble to the goal of getting to an adult scene. This was true for many visual novels as well. I've heard some analysts actually say the clean nature of tokimemo was one of the things that made it stand apart at the time it came out, though I wouldn't take that claim at face value. Many of these works were created in doujinsoft circles and made independently for computers, and it wasn't until the more popular works received console ports/adaptations that they had to make changes to adhere to ratings boards/expectations. In a way, you could say they were exactly the same as those flash games, in that they were independent small scale projects that didn't shy away from adult themes or topics.
@@Namingway248 ya id agree with on that. It's not like it has to be NSFW. But see it was if someone was going to choose between a sfw or NSFW one. Then its more likely to choose NSFW one as they demographic for the games is teen/adult people that want a waifu/husbando. Since that what what the sim.
Those games still exist, just not so much on Newgrounds any longer. They're part of different Interactive fiction rings. What @Namingway248 says is true though, it was similar in Japan. Itch carries some, albeit most lean more towards VNs than sims.
Prior to this video, my only exposure to TM3 came from an old Screenshot LP that focused primarily on the one girl you barely touched on this video (the grey hair psuedo-magical girl character), so it was really nice to see this video showcase the rest of the cast and see this game in motion! Well, as nice as you can get with TM3. It does seem like they did want to try to keep innovating and try making the games feel more 'real'. However, the dev team seem to have done it in the same way that Disney does with their live action remakes of their animated movies or adults seem to do with kids cartoons, in a 'uhhhh that's not how it actually works in reality check and mate we need to make this more ''mature''' by making it realistic' without actually considering why that suspension of disbelief may be necessary. Thanks for the thoughtful video! I feel like there's been an uptick in English-speaking people's acknowledgement of TM ever since that Action Button Reviews video, and it's something I'm deeply grateful for. I'm setting up my own prayer circle for the TM remake to get a English translation
the outfit selection was in girls side too! except waaaay better! it showed what “style” your outfit was after you put it together. all of the boys have preferred styles.. i don’t remember them straight up walking out on you if your outfit was ugly but maybe i’m just too goated
22:58 That sounds genuinely upsetting. It's like some of the things in Tales of Symphonia, when certain characters... leave the group. 30:56 The face that says "30 bucks well spent" (that is a rather sizeable box) Also yeah, the direct comparison especially between 2 and 3 is rather jarring. Kind of like the downgrade Disgaea 6 had with the 3D-chibi-models instead of proper, lively sprites. 1:15:05 And they lived happily ever after. After all the previous tragedy I almost expected a "or at least they would have if she didn't slip on her way down the legendary hill, hit her head and fell into a coma" or something. Maybe that actually is in the game, but has a low chance of happening like the two RNG-girls showing up.
That being said, the genre is still somewhat alive due to otome games experiencing a renaissance on PC/Switch/mobile, with labels like otomate publishing and translating their work (including older classics) like never before. I mean, the west is now getting FANDISCS like Cupipara Sweet and Spicy! I guess that's more due to dating sims being folded into the wider "visual novel" genre; but otome games are still fairly romance-oriented (and descended from Angelique/TokimemoGS) so i still think that tracks.
So I'm sure it'll get worse since I'm only 8 minutes in, but this description of having to juggle all the girls you're not interested in with token acknowledgement so you can date the girl you *are* interested in sounds like it would work really well if it was reskinned into a regency-era dating sim, where instead of teenage girls getting upset with you, it's you earning a reputation for being a snob to all the eligible women in the county - "that Mr Punchy, do you hear he *didn't* send Eleanor a gift on her birthday? Poor dear was embarrassed in front of the vicar and everything, what a cad."
Matches & Matrimony is an otome game (so, with a woman as a protagonist trying to find a husband) inspired by Jane Austin's works, and while I am not quite sure it goes as far, I think I remember you had relationship bars with some non dateable characters which I think could affect your relationship with (for instance) their brothers, or trigger necessary events, I'm not quite sure. Some of the dateable characters are friends, but again, I don't remember if you really needed to be in good standings with one to have a shot with another. One funny thing I remember is, why it felt pretty intuitive that having good enough stats in relevant skills would be necessary to have a chance with each character, you also need one stat to be high enough to manage to say no and reject your first proposal, the guy is really insistant and your character will fail to escape the situation otherwise, leading to a premature ending. I don't know, the idea of a potential suitor in that sort of game just latching onto you and not letting go unless you have high enough skills really stuck to my memory.
Oooh, I’d kill for a historical dating sim!! (Could work as a whole series too- medieval, Renaissance, rococo or Victorian styles as well… Meet your date at the jousting tournament in the medieval sim, outsmart the Medicis and study art in the Renaissance sim, navigate the social landscape of Versailles in the rococo sim, and have a ‘social season’ with balls and seaside outings in a regency/Victorian/edwardian sim. If your date returns to the city during the season… game over!) But I’d REALLY want it to be made for either/any gender. Like a Pokémon red/blue situation probably because the historical gender dynamics would require a lot of different writing for a male or female protagonist, not just pronoun swapping, but the potential for events, outfits, different historical personalities and hobbies and setting things in different countries is HUGE. And if a Japanese company was making it it would be awesome to get a game in Edo period Japan! Imagine a ukio-e type of art style for a game like this😍
While dunking on bad games is fun, after hearing about how Tokimemo 2 was a masterpiece of its genre, it's sad to hear that the next entry was so bad and poorly funded. It's like this artistic star was coldly snuffed out for no reason
Your comment that romance must be added to a larger genre like medicine to dogfood got a sensible chuckle out of me. And you know what? Absolutely true. I would probably never go out of my way to get a dating sim type game. But, if you throw a little dating sim to my farming simulator, or let me romance shadowheart or Karlach in BG3? Sign me up daddio.
As a TMGS fan, I was always very curious about what happened to the original games, so this video was very interesting! It's pretty strange how it sounds that GS has chosen to keep most of the old TM mechanics and style, while TM3 has changed so much, seeing how they were both made at the same time. It's also pretty interesting that the first 3 GS games have been translated to English, the 4th one currently being actively worked on, while it took so much time for just one TM game to be translated... I wonder why is it. As someone who's been a TMGS fan for around 15 years, I can say that, at least online, the game is more popular than ever! With a lot fanarts and merchandise and even all previous games ported onto Switch. Portable consoles have always been pretty much the main platforms for otome games, so I suppose that might have helped as well?
I think the Otome games just have a larger audience compared to male-targeted dating sims. TM3 specifically had problems even making budget, only getting 2/3rds of the expected investment. Out of curiosity, how much of the TM2 mechanics still exist within the Girl Side games?
It's seem like the dating sim genre these days is somewhat alive mostly from games that are either parody, satire to the genre, horror or it's built in a game that isn't label as a dating sim game like rpg games. To some it look like the genre is a joke and dead, but I think we're in a phase right now. At some point people will start to see the value of this genre. The reason why is because a lot genre and series no matter if it's video game related or not will go to a phase where it's treated like a joke, weird, or has a bad reputation. They'll eventually bounce back up. Thanks to a some people that see the value of what they have.
I definitely appreciate the unique concepts of Tokimeki Memorial, but I get why proper dating sims like it barely exist anymore. The stigma of "romancing fictional girls is cringe, go touch grass" is strong and depending on the players age/mentality about the game sometimes warranted, but it feels like such a shame that so many games have "romance options" that amount to nothing more than talking to a character a few times before they blush at/sleep with you
Legitimately can't think of another (non-adult) dating sim in the last decade besides Magical Diary and I was sitting on that one for the whole video before you brought it up. And honestly even the porn "dating sims" rarely have more than affection stats.
"character interactions are so goddamn weird. Everyone is mean all the time for no seemingly no reason and characters intermittently engage in completely bizarre behavior."
Finally, an accurate high school sim
class of 09 wishes
TRULY. REALISM.
Truly accurate to my experience in high school XD
Maybe I lucked out, but my highschool was pretty awesome and people were generally nice to one another.
But then again, I went to HS in Idaho and not LA.
@@planescaped Yeah, my high school experience was basically the same. I was in the sort of nerdy group that played DnD, but there wasn't any like overt bullying I saw? The "prep" kids were like, half mormon for some reason and all really nice people to everyone. There WERE the various stereotypical cliques...to some degree, but they weren't really elitist and exclusive and mean, they were just groups of people that shared an interest.
Then again, that was in a sort of middle class area in '06. My time in middle school, back when I lived in New Mexico and in a VERY poor area was closer to hell on earth. That school is, nowadays, literally in the 1st percentile for education outcomes. Teachers were literally bullied out of their jobs. I was bullied so badly it caused permanent issues that, to a small extent, I am still dealing with all these decades later...
Random note, Class of 09 is complete crap
So, in summary, the Dating Sim genre was already a sick, dying dog, and Tokimemo 3 injected it with Bang energy.
In the end, it was a fucking metaphor for how this game killed the genre
So it detonated a bomb big enough to tank the relationship between the general public and the entire genre?
So the game was a nuke to the genre then?
So yall saw the 90 minute masterpiece and are making bad jokes or yall didnt see it. Kevin pierce your joke was hilarious. I thought it was hyperbole, then i saw the whole video, and i realized it was not hyperbole
Edit: had a typo
Man, the layers to this joke.
Got absolutely blindsided by the accidental dog murder plotline 😭
i can't imagine how dumbfounded people playing that route for the first time were 💀 i play a lot of VNs and dating sims so i'm used to strange plot twists but that's definitely a new one
Thanks for the warning! Gotta skip this one, not in the right mental state for this kind of blow atm.
>click on interesting video about a topic i know nothing about
>scroll down to the comments right as the video starts
>get absolutely blindsided by this comment GNSDKGNSDJKG
As soon as I heard about the girl injecting her dog with energy drinks I literally dropped the spoon from a coffee I was drinking........... Like, this is the kind of plot point a parody VN would do as black comedy, to make the heroine look absolutely deranged
For those who want to avoid it in the video, it starts at 1:03:27 and ends at 1:05:27 .
For those who want to avoid it in the game, it's Rika's route.
"Instead of a legendary tree, it's a legendary hill instead."
Please understand, they needed 300,000 more yen to afford the tree.
I was CACKLING at the outfit thing. You can have such horrible drip, that the girl doesn’t want to be seen with you
Honestly, we need a game with a character that vibes with chaos energy drip. Just like "Wow, that outfit is completely insane. Either you were dropped on your head, or it must be really authentically you. I respect and appreciate someone who has so much confidence they'd willingly be seen in public looking like that.". I could see an avant-garde arts student girl or something who is attracted to and respects people who buck social conventions and chooses to beat to their own drum, even if that drum makes them look like a maniac who dressed themselves blindfolded.
Say what you want about 3, it accurately depicts being maidenless, dripless and your success in life being literally pure chance. Truly the nihilist horror game of the decade.
In TokiMemo 1 and 2 you were basically a protagonist blessed with good genes and popularity, in 3 you're part of the bottom 50% of men.
@@TheInsomniaddict If that was the case, you would have probably never even had a chance at winning to begin with and the whole game would have 3 endings: death by alcoholism in mid 30s, suicide by high school graduation or columbine reenactment where you rack up the biggest bodycount you can as the game switches to Doom gameplay.
I'd say more than 50% of men are bottoms hahaha 🌈 @@TheInsomniaddict
@@powerforcex6190I play a game like that
@@PM-oh6er im sure if you look hard enough, there's a mod of Doom out there which does just that.
The hyperliteral names in 3 feel like the true Japanese equivalent of the names in Yandere Simulator lmao
The generic anime models shared by multiple characters are similar too. 🤔
this is definitely not a yansim thing. japanese devs love name puns
@@nagotown Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I don't credit yansim for anything it contains 😂 This just reminded me of the names like Mai Waifu and Oku Ruta etc.
Yandere Simulator is ultimately nothing but a satirical entry in the genre.
@@nagotown especially Phoenix Wright lol
To play devil's advocate in the middle of a video for a dating sim I will never play, I can understand the _concept_ of making the first girl you meet on the hill random? Because if you then decide to go for her, it's like your romance was "fated to be" or something. Or alternatively, if you choose NOT to, it could lend your playthrough an air of "I won't leave things up to fate, I decide my destiny!" And it would be cool if they turned that into a theme throughout the game.
...but I have a sinking feeling the game is not going to be as clever as it could be.
Edit: ok, yeah, this is WAY too much randomness for what boils down to a strategy game. Can't believe they accurately simulated nightmare scenarios if you have social anxiety. _("What if they don't show up? What if i ask them on a date but they say no and laugh at me? What if i ask for their phone number but they say no and laugh at me? What if-")_
Edit 2: _"What if this perfectly normal outfit actually weirds them out so bad they laugh at me and leave immediately?"_ So this is apparently the scariest horror game on the PS2? Got it.
"What if the girl turns out to be a psycho who killed her dog? What if the girl stands me up because she literally DIES?"
@@derpro8125 Funnily enough that reminds me of a girl in my HS class who died from brain cancer. She did make it through HS, at least. 3 seems very realistic.
@@derpro8125 Accept your fate, coward. jk lol
@@derpro8125 me with Monika and Sayori in DDLC
@@TheInsomniaddict What a sham that happened. May she rest in peace.
The ending slides are pretty funny:
'Oda went overseas to study acting. Despite appearances, she was serious after all...'
'In the end, Aizawa used her language abilities to become a stewardess. Perhaps this is a perfect fit.'
'Tachibana became a model. With her unique aura, no doubt she'll do well.'
'Shiratori became a pop idol. Come to think of it, I saw him in an ad on TV the other day. Impressive.'
'Yabe found work with a bottom-tier company. I'm sure he's made some new friends and is enjoying his new life.'
This is delightfully mean-spirited. I love it. You made the game sound great.
"Kawai-san will be attending a technical university to continue her research into robots. She would like to send them into space next..."
This girl is a menace.
@@blazerchocobo I bet she's going to name it Laika...
it's like they were trying to make these slides as passive-aggresive as possible.
Uh...That's an interesting profile pic and username...
I don't think it's meant to be mean... is it?
I mean in a lot of media translated from Japanese, it seems that the translation isn't made so that you understand the true meaning of it but rather just to get a basic understanding of what the character is saying.
I could be wrong though, maybe it is meant to be passive agressive or mean in a funny way ^^'
"the government kidnapped her parents because she has supernatural powers and fights demons" im sorry what? that's even more bonkers than the dog killer girl.
SMT references
Yeah this is just a hilarious shin megami tensei reference
I will have to shamelessly admit that personally I did not really know the major differences between a dating sim and a romance visual novel so this video was very enlightening in that regard. I hope there is an English translation of the Tokimeki remake, frankly it looks like it will actually be really fun to play. Love to play with numbers.
This was a really good video, really kept its pace. You did a good job. :)
It's a shame that og Tokimeki Memorial games never got translated release. They had really deep, intriguing mechanics and interesting fan disc / spin-off games to mess around. Especially TM1 drama series, surprisingly made by Kojima(yes, _THAT_ Kojima) crew.
...I still can't believe that official Korean version of TM1 (fully dubbed, minus the vocal songs) exists. Made pretty well also.
@@CB-L There was a fan-translation for the Super Nintendo version of the first game.
I am aware of that but that's unofficial and came out much, much later since original release anyways
@@CB-L Yeah, most of these kinds of games just stayed in Japan or were sometimes released in China/Korea (due to closer cultures/languages). We tend to forget it, but back then even JRPGs were a very niche genre, especially here in Europe (pre-FF 7 almost nothing of note came out here). Dating sims/VNs and such are still mostly a niche genre... it's just how it is. On the other hand, FPS games, RTS games etc. are niche in Japan. Different strokes and all that.
@@mariusamber3237 Kind of weird when you consider that there's Starcraft leagues in Korea. I think it's a difference in mindset of how a game should be made between the West and East. West generally seem to focus a lot more on mechanics and overall the underpinning logic of world building while the East focuses on uniqueness. Like in the West, a lot of characters can have the same type of powers or skills because "that's how the world works" while in the East there's more focus on how powers are unique or character-defining.
I think a lot of this might come down to original source material that gets used. For the West this is something like DnD or Tolkein, whereas in Japan it's like "Romance of the Three Kingdom," or "Journey to the West" or something similar.
Interesting thing to mention, because you brought it up and it's relevant to present day trends:
Angelique is why we have so many "villainess-centric" anime and manga.
Basically, the premise of Angelique is that you play as an angelically kind girl (Angelique) in a competition to become the next queen/saint tasked with protecting the universe. You spend the game raising stats and pursuing routes, eventually completing the mission before your aristocratic rival (Rosalia) and becoming the savior of the world. However, the rival character got unexpectedly popular. People started writing fanfics and fan comics from her perspective, and the series eventually canonized her complete redemption in a sequel. From this, a lot of writers and artists became professionals by publishing their own stories with similar premises to their fan works. From there, it inspired other people to make their own... and now we have a growing trend of meta stories featuring the 'rival/background extra/narrative punching bag character' fighting back against the fate given to them by 'the game/novel/god', usually finding love and friendship along the way.
this makes an incredible amount of sense but I'd never connected it to Angelique lol
Oh this is so interesting!! I love this trope, but never knew where it came from!
Much like the isekai genre, I legit enjoyed some of those initial ones... Even the merged ones where a gamer got reincarnated as a mob (The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs) or the villainess (My Next Life as a Villainess). But just this year I have seen something like six anime with that trope at the very least. Sort of how the "I got expelled from the hero's party" now has at least one or two anime per season. I guess it all makes sense in this context that you gave, after all there seems to be a pipeline in Japan from fan fiction to light novel, to manga and then to anime. And once a trend catches on, every company and their subsidiaries wanna fight it out to cash in.
@LuizAlexPhoenix Rising of the Shield Hero is easily the most popular example of this.
This seems to be at most half true since Otome game reincarnation stories are about as accurate to Otome games as Sword Art Online is to what would be a reasonable MMO.
The villainess character is a shoujo manga trope and villainess themed web novels weren't originally Otome-game themed. Rosalia only fits the trope in being an Ojou-sama type rival in an Otome-game.
The stock magical school setting of supposedly Otome-game themed isekai is more derived from Zero's Familiar fanfiction (a novel series where the sadistic Ojou-sama was already the default main love interest so villainess redemption is unnecessary). Maybe a magic school themed Otome-game does exist but its not a major trope as far as I can tell.
A wise person once said "The fear of looking cringe is standing between you and what you want". Great video!
I kept thinking watching the footage of 2 "wow, this spritework is incredible and really emotive, I feel like I can understand these characters just through these visuals". Which made it all the more jarring when we jumped to 3 and its awkward and decisively less good looking 3D models.
felt the same way abt the character design in general! i was so charmed by hikari and her bestie's designs and thought they looked really good next to each other, seemingly having a conversation involving the player character. only to get slammed by fucking rika kawai outta nowhere
That's the case with everything I can think of that went 2D -> 3D, at least for the first 3D entry
Mainline Pokemon is the most (in)famous example, because that transition didn't even happen that long ago
@@Hegataro The really ironic thing is that the actual switch to 3D in X and Y wasn't even that bad - sure, the Pokemon models had considerably less charm than the sprites, but the visual design was genuinely quite strong for characters and environments. Not perfect, but a decent start. It just... kinda kept getting _worse_ from there, which is baffling (especially given that Genius Sonority did everything about 3D Pokemon right with Gale of Darkness forever ago, and even the Let's Go remakes looked honestly frickin' adorable, _and those were developed by GameFreak!_). The real butt-ugly disasters only really started with the Switch era though.
Anyway. TL;DR I do not understand GameFreak's weird-ass choices, but I'd actually like to posit the Ace Attorney series as the most infamous example of a horrid 2D -> 3D transition, with bonus points for the baffling choice of giving a _visual novel_ 3D models; the one genre in which it's still commonplace to Not Do That.
@@TheGuardyat least with ace attorney, the model sprites look super good after the initial rough transition. aa6 and tgaa have some amazing character animations, and it's allowed for some more dynamic gimmicks for characters and cases
@@Hegataro I will defend Pokemon Gen 6 for the 3D transition because 1. It was their first attempt and GF drastically changed things for the first time since Gen 3 2. Both XY and ORAS actually took advantage of the 3D and did things that wouldn't be possible or as effective in 2D or 2.5D and 3. The full 3D felt like pay-off to the 3D elements that they were building up in Gen 4 and Gen 5. You won't catch me defending any post-Gen 6 game though, they're all legit lazily and poorly-made trashfires.
Also, I know people cite Ace Attorney as an example of a poor 3D transition, but at least they did get it sorted out and improved for Spirit of Justice and the TGAA duology. Unlike Pokemon where their first two attempts at 3D were the only good ones and it was only downhill from there.
7:20 Oh that's why so many anime that have an episode which parody dating sims involve a bomb when the MC is about to piss of a girl.
yeah this one pops up all the time as a visual gag in other japanese media, it's been in, to my own knowledge, Hi Score Girl, Monthly Girl's Nozaki Kun and most obviously, The World God Only Knows.
@@PunchyYT i never noticed this... clearly this is time for a rewatch...
@@PunchyYT Excel Saga had a dating sim parody where the guy had to literally diffuse a bomb during a date
"What do you mean, 'there's a bomb'?"
@@PunchyYTwasn’t it also a gag in super paper Mario?
It's been several days and I *still* can't get over the Red Bull dog euthanasia being a real plot point in this real video game, what the *hell*
It would have been one thing if she gave the dog something like human medicine (still wild but at least a followable thought process of a child) but ENERGY DRINKS??? What is the logic of that!!
@@may-tine hey, when your dog starts getting sluggish, the red bull commercials make sense
@@may-tinemust have watched those damn commercials
to make a slight defense, "energy drink" likely refers to a quasi medicinal vitamin drink popular in japan. so its not straight caffiene but something said to help with hangovers and general listlessness.
so she injected her dog with flintstone gummys
@gwennorthcutt421 honestly that just makes it funnier
It's always such a gut punch to see games from this era that have earlier entries with gorgeous pixel art and later entries that were made in the days of 'If it's 3D, it's better' even when it just objectively looks worse. Would it have solved the problems of Tokimemo 3 if they stuck to their guns and either used the pixel art of 1 or the anime renders of 2? Of course not. But it would've at least made the game more palatable to look at.
Also, if anyone who stumbles onto this comment has had their interest piqued in some of the dating sims from this era that Punchy mentioned (e.g. Mitsumete Knight, Angelique, True Love Story, etc.), there's a TH-camr named Bapsago whose whole channel is looking at these types of games. I highly recommend their content!
PC98 had the best spread of art style of all eras. and sadly I feel like we have lost this quite badly. give me snatchers or true love 95 art any day and I will be happy. kannon ruined VC and dating sim plus anime art with the moeblob garbage x.x
3 feels like an showcase of 3D artwork. Missed opportunity to call it Tokimemo 3D lol.
I think they were trying to play it safe with the story hoping that the 3D graphics would save its appeal. If so, it backfired badly.
nah it looks fine, you are just retropoisoned
also for folks interested in that earlier era of PC98 dating sims, look up the Asenheim Project! it’s a group that translates old PC98 VNs and eroge and ports them so they’re playable in-browser. a lot of them can be played in just a few hours, and it really satisfies that itch for PC98 waifu stuff. i recommend Time Stripper Mako-chan, it’s super goofy and campy and such a good time.
I adored the game Virtue's Last Reward, but it was a sequel to a way better looking 2D game. They traded courgeous fully body sprites a cg artwork for very awkward plastic looking models (with some 2D scenes slotted in here and there that looks way better than the actual game). And somehow Virtue's Last Reward's sequel managed to look even worse because they tried to do a gritty realistic look. There's nothing wrong with 3D animations, but for the love of all that is holy, a studio should not just experiment around with it. Hire people that can actually make 3D look good. The 3D angle might actually have been the thing that ruined Tokimemo. Because if it wasn't for that then there would have been at least a larger variety in the heroines meaning all of its issues would have been diluted as more options would have been available (though only two specific types of clothing work sounds like a massive oversight that also could be single handedly blamed for tanking the game).
"Bro...were we ever real bros, or was I merely a bro of mechanical convenience to you?" "..." "Bro! Don't walk away from me!"
Im going to be honest- I've never been interested in dating sims, but hearing about tokimemo 2 made me wish there was an english translation. Like... just structurally that fascinates me. A whole seperate game style for a prologue? Options to have your name said- when games now still don't do that? It must have been incredible to play- it sounds like so much care went into it. Imagine a game made today where the creators could just... do what they wanted, without having to worry about money or the crushing desires of publishers, having as much time and fund as they needed, being allowed to just experiment like that. Like. It just blows me away that they got to DO any of that. All those discs! All those bizarre choices! They got to just do what they thought was best for yhe game. These days, only indie devs get to do that it seems, and they don't get the money these people did. What an idea. What a game.
it seems someone's working on a translation but I wouldn't expect it in the immediate future
tomimeki memorial 2 is genuinely one of my favourite games ever. Such a revolutionary and unique piece of video game that most people will never touch due to language barrier
If it interests you, Tokimemo Girls Side 1 2 and 3 all have english patches? Same game but you're dating men instead. This series is still going too, even though they took an 11 year hiatus after 3, TMGS 4 came out on switch 3 years ago almost exactly. (and google translate picks up on the text of 4 very well, so if you're familiar with the gameplay even that is pretty playable with limited japanese)
Same here, the closest I got to dating Sims were the princess maker games and that was because I kinda like management games like that. The ps1 and 2 era was so interesting in that there are entire game mechanics that just aren't used anywhere today and story's could get really experimental with how they were told. Nowadays the ambition on graphics have ballooned the budgets of these games so much the corporate side can't allow for too much experimentation lest they lose a shit ton of investment.
A Switch remake of Tokimeki 1 was recently announced and there was actually a decent amount of hype from the west, if it does well in Japan there’s a good chance we’ll get an official localization!
You're so right about how there's a massive audience for dating sims. When Coral Island, or really any Stardew/Harvest style game comes, pretty much the question all of my friends ask the same general question: "who are the date-able characters?". Those and the Monster Prom games are probably the closest we've gotten to earnest dating sims.
I feel like it's more the _term_ "dating sim" that has negative baggage rather than the concept or even the genre itself. Like (as you said) farming sims with romance elements are huge, so are regular life sims with them, etc but as soon as you call your game a "dating sim" people immediately turn around and call it cringe.
(Maybe it's also due to the stereotype that "dating sims" are all bishoujo games for basement dwellers, whereas farming and life sims have a predominantly female audience. I feel like if otome dating sims were more well-known the genre wouldn't be as mocked by the people who enjoy romance in sim games?)
@@subekyuuke I suspect that, since they don't _really_ know the genre, they're thinking of visual novels like _Tsukihime_ where the objective, beyond dodging Bad Ends, is to make it to a sex scene with every possible girl.
@@subekyuuke It's weird because that stereotype exists, but male-oriented romance is very rare to find in western media. The perception's entirely based on imported culture. Japan seems to be the only country that makes it, in video game form or otherwise (at least in my experience). I'm sure there is some example of it made by American hands, and probably even an example made that isn't just trying to present itself as an anime parody, but it's genuinely difficult to find.
Yeah and then you have people making whole a*s mods to make non dateable characters actually dateable XD
@@Typhonification You're right about most dating sims being targeted towards women. But with Stardew Valley and other genre games like the later versions of Fire Emblem (the ones where you get to interact with and date the NPCs), I feel like they've been opening up more to the male demographic. (Sorry, kind of unrelated to your main point)
If Tsukihime has any degree of accuracy to reality the solution to the 6 day school week Japanese kids took in the 90s was a massive amount of semi-socially acceptable truancy
I've wondered about this for AGES actually so this is really illuminating if true
Shiki skipping school for like a week and no one really calling him out on it was pretty funny
I think that in Japan, once you finish middle school, your governmentally-obligated education is over, but 99% finish high school because unless you're inheriting the family business, you're going to be a bum the rest of your life if you don't.
@@ayatobeats608Ryougi casually dipping for months post coma
Okay, I was wondering about that. when I went to japan just about everywhere, i went. No matter what time of the day it was, there was some high school or middle schooler just wandering around. It would be like 1:30 pm and in my mind I'm like "wait, aren't classes going on right now". Even more confusing was why are you skipping in your uniform. In the U.S. truancy has almost zero tolerance, to the point if you skip alot the police pretty much escort you to school
"Yae as a character resonated with the player base"... "The team's take away from that is people like sad girls"
They really got the wrong lesson... The real takeaway is that people like the underdog style characters, but if you have a game like 3 where everyone is an underdog, then no one is an underdog.
"Rika is a psychopath and a serial dog murderer. Next girl." I lost it at this point xD
1:18:30 You know, I feel like an English translation could revive this series. I mean, it's a whole new audience. Sell it as 'you've seen it parodied in anime, live the experience that took Japan by storm!'. I've never directly interacted with this series but I ended up knowing every beat of this game because it was in anime I'd watched where they play a thinly parodied version. It would be pretty easy to get people interested I'd say. Good sales there could mean a reason to revitalize the series. Of course, this would come with it being purposefully directed with an international audience in mind, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
Speaking of sincere and not-joke premise indie dating sims from the west, there was one insanely obscure indie game from 2010 called Shira Oka that was a bonafide full-on Tokimeki Memorial clone with 8 girls to pursue and even 2 guys.
And by insanely obscure I mean the company that made this vanished into the ether shortly after the game came out and the only place you can even get this anymore is on DLsite of all places.
Fascinating game in many ways. It had a lot of passion and soul put into it but they clearly struggled to live up to the scope of a Tokimemo game.
I've actually heard of Shira Oka! Incredibly odd production and basically the only example I've got of a western dev who was in fact, visibly trying to mimic Tokimeki Memorial. Didn't make it into the video because idk they can't all get shoutouts
Shira Oka is special. It's got a lot of quality voice-acting, and it's especially charming because in the last 1/3rd of every character's route is batshit insane - government conspiracies, ghosts and all things supernatural start to invade your otherwise normal high school depending on which character you pursue. Also, your angel companion kills you if you fail enough tests in school, which is a very funny way to force you to focus on stat-raising.
Gunning for the true ending (which requires all routes) is exhausting and there are many regrettable design decisions, but I don't regret the 70-some hours I spent getting it.
Didn't think I'd ever hear someone talk about Shira Oka in present day, present time! I got the game through Gamestop's PC games launcher waaaaaaaay back when (2011) as a celebration for graduating high school, and man. It was a trip. I enjoyed it quite a bit (did 5 routes), but looking back on it now, it was kinda mediocre. The art's amateur, the tonal shifts the routes had really bothered me, it made some Japanese mistakes even 2011 me caught, etc etc. But it was earnest, and I respect it for that. The game's also on Myabandonware, but it uses a dubious crack that may not be safe.
Yo I'd been trying to find this game again for years!! Thanks mate! I remember really liking the gay route where you suddenly become a super spy to rescue your roboticist boyfriend from the government by TACTICAL CROSSDRESSING. Wild af game, absolutely loved it
DLsite actually preserving games. Look at that.
This was a great video! I'm an otome game junkie and have played hours upon hours of the Girl's Side series, and it really resonated with me about how it's more of a strategy style game than a romance sometimes. I was explaining the gameplay to some friends a while back and I probably sounded like that one meme with the man talking in front of the massive chart with pins and strings everywhere. "Okay, so first you have to choose which bedroom you want because that sets your base stats. Then, you have to decide what part time job you want, because that will also raise your stats, which also means you need to decide ahead of time who you're going to pursue. If I'm going to do the sports guy route, I will work at the bookstore because it gives me enough intelligence points that constantly spamming the sports club will not make me stupid so I fail all my exams, and--"
I'm honestly shocked we got Girl's Side 4 in 2021, especially since Konami seemed more interested in Pachinko than their old franchises. It doesn't shine as much as 3 did, which was peak TMGS, but it's still nice to get new content over a decade after 3 was released.
Not sure how many videos you would like to make about terrible PS games, and it is a visual novel rather than a dating sim, but the absolute worst PS2 otome visual novel I ever played was called Orange Honey. I bought the first two TMGS games for PS1/2 in a lot on eBay, and Orange Honey was included. I have never been so horrifyingly bored and infuriated by a game before, but, at the very least, it had some unintended hilarity to it. The character I pursued showed up to a date wearing this jacket with wrinkles drawn on it in such a way it resembled certain anatomy. If you ever get the urge to play something truly awful for a video, I recommend it. XD
Girl's Side is so good! I love the rival system in GS 1+2, it really adds variety to each playthrough. I don't know if you know this or not, but they ported GS 1, 2, and 3 to the switch! The content is mostly based on the DS ports, so there are some tradeoffs (especially given that 3 lacks a chunk of features from the PSP version), but it's nice to see all 4 GS games on a modern system.
Thanks, is really refreshing to finally hear the discussion on this topic from someone who knows what they are talking about and does not have contempt for the genre
It's worth pointing out that Girls' Side 1 (and all of the other GS games) also has the Outfit System, and it is far better put together and more intuitive than... whatever they were going for here. Each guy has a style of clothing they prefer (Pure, Sporty, Sexy, etc.), every article of clothing has a style it's associated with, the game will tell you what style an outfit you put together is before you head out, it does take the season into account (eg. guys will call you out if you wear a tank top and shorts in the dead of winter), there's a style column in the paper and the guys who care about that will note when you wear a trending item or color, and you can buy swimsuits, dresses, and kimonos for holidays. I don't know if guys will just end the date if you wear a style they don't like or something that mixes styles. I think they just note that they don't like your outfit and ding you points. It's been a while since I've played it.
It's a little wild knowing now that the two games were developed side-by-side and, despite its rough spots (whoever greenlit the principal character needs to be on a list) and lack of ideal budget, how much better GS1 came out.
Indeed. Girl's Side 1st game is actually very good!
I wanted to say this, too. Thanks for saving me from typing! :D
Also I don't care how problematic he would be irl, I will Always have a soft spot for Himuro (homeroom teacher) 😅
@Mikumo91 omg I know... Himuro absolute peak. It's a fantastic game but I suppose it would get eviscerated by Western fandom for that now... alas
@@idiotette OMG SAME 😭 Himuro ruined me fr
@@Mikumo91 im the odd one out here cause osako from tmgs3 became my favorite as soon as he showed up. love that silly guy.
I have to agree about the fact that anything that presents itself as even remotely a dating sim really feels the need to be satirical and sarcastic in order to be taken seriously in this day and age. The current biggest news in the Dating Sim scene I'm aware of is Date Everything, a game that, while it certainly looks high effort with its art and voice acting, is still ultimately about dating your household furniture. It really does feel that after Hatoful Boyfriend, western audiences and developers alike have been far too scared of treating the genre with any real sincerity without that barrier of "oh it's actually a parody"
I wrote that bit before Date Everything got announced and now I feel like it might get interpreted as specifically slighting it. and well. if the shoe fits, I suppose. It's certainly symptomatic of the things I talked about whether it means to be or not.
@@PunchyYT Oh jeez, sorry. I wasn’t suggesting that you were slighting Date Everything, I just thought it was a relevant example of that idea.
You should get on itchio and see what the average person is making rather than big developers
On the other hand people will buy the shit out of games, that aren't "dating games", that have dating game mechanics.
Oh I interpreted “date everything” as the type of game referencing those humanized inanimate objects images
I always like seeing videos like these where bilingual speakers talk in depth about untranslated games. Feels like I’m getting a look in at a game I will likely never play.
Adding to the argument. Japanese companies were so sure that westerners didn't "get" their games, that they invested in western studios to make sequels to appeal to a western audience. Capcom being one of the biggest offenders, but konami also went this route with silent hill.
INAFUNE~~~~~
Ironically, in the early 2000s Silent Hill 2 had a very mixed reception in Japan. The players didn't like the changes compared to the first game that much, and the game was much more successful in the West; that's part of the reason why SH 3 goes back to the occult instead of personal drama.
@@mariusamber3237 I feel the same way. SH2 is one of the most overrated games of its generation.
@@zenmastakilla Wow, someone else actually agrees with me about SH2.
When it was new I remember feeling let down by it, but its gotten worse now that everyone sees it as some model to follow.
@@zenmastakilla Real. I love the first and third games a lot more. I don't hate SH2 and I know how impactful it was at the time but god forbid you say it's not your favorite sometimes. You might as well have said it was a shit game for all they care.
"Here in tokimemo 3 you can ask a girl for a date, or make the risky choice to ask a girl for her phone number. Here in tokimemo 3 no one goes for the phone number."
Small amusement on the bit between JRPGs and WRPGs that you intentionally picked a western developed game for the JRPG representative, and a Japanese developed game for the WRPG representative. I see what you did there!
i'm so glad someone noticed this joke lol
@@PunchyYT always hyped to see In Stars and Time
ISAT MENTIONED. I absolutely love that game!
@@PunchyYTI'm supposed to actually watch this video instead of listening to them in the background at work?
@@zombieplasticclockISAT gang, assemble!
rika's story has to be someone airing out their childhood trauma because that is a hauntingly realistic example of what a child would do if they had access to a syringe
Huh, so that's the difference between a romantic Visual Novel and a Dating Sim... In that case, it seems I've never actually played a dating sim in my life. I'll correct that whenever I get time.
Also what the hell why does a girl have a dog body count.
"dog body count"
That sounds so weird without knowing what you're talking about.
@@willyvereb Not just white girls...
It seems that (as for games that truly have sim gameplay) life-sim elements have been given up in favor of farm-sim nowadays. Or else streamlined the sim in favor of narrative decisions gameplay (more VN-like), and generally as a work of smaller studios.
The anecdote in the description remind me of a european friend who lived in Japan for a few years and was often told that he "talked like a woman". In his case, it was because the people he spoke japanese with the most were his wife, her mother and her sister, so he learned from them.
Oh, this is why the "life sim" part of the Persona games is like that! Because it's a riff on these kind of games.
Oh hey. Fellow Persona fan.
Yeah, the main games of 3, 4, and 5 are very much a (simple) dating/life sim welded onto a JRPG in a way that really caught people's attention.
I'd sooner say P3 onward's format is more directly inspired by Yoru ga Kuru by Alicesoft, which was 5 years earlier than P3. That and Tsukihime were basically the trendsetters of 'urban supernatural fantasy'. You managed your schedules and built relations with there rest of the cast by day and explored urban dungeons by night, but could only stay in for a limited amount of time thus putting emphasis on time management and economy of actions. If that didn't sound Persona enough already, the base plot was a 2nd moon appears in the sky and a group of people with special powers, masquerading as a school club, try to investigate the mystery behind it's origins and its powers, while combating monsters created by its blue light and other empowered people using their abilities for evil...
@@gtf234 I've never heard of that one and wikipedia and steam page summaries for the remaster aren't especially helpful, but it does sound like there was some inspiration there. Does Yoru ga Kuru have the time management aspects of dating sims/Persona games as well or is it more of the linear visual novel style?
@@nerdorama009 Like I said, the game is about time management and dungeon crawling rpg- you're either spending time building relationships with the other characters or exploring dungeons, and like the original P3, you had a timer on your back for how long you could stay in the dungeon before getting booted out/the game tries extra hard to game over you. Alicesoft did this same hybrid format even earlier too with Pastel Chime in 1998; Yoru ga Kuru was April 2001 (Tsukihime was December 2000, for reference since we're also talking about when the motif of modern day supernatural fantasy started to take off). My point more is that this hybrid visual novel/life simulator + RPG format was pretty well established well before P3 in 2006 more than the latter was inventing something radical as a cheeky throwback or parody.
One thing with the English translation of the SNES version is that Japanese dialogue is often kinda dry and to the point so if the English fan patch went for a very literal translation, the characters will inevitably come off sounding kinda monotone and lifeless. That's why often times, other translations will sort of spice up the dialogue but it can sometimes sound so different to the original intent that people get mad and resort to calling the American scripts worse because they lose the original meaning. Translating is a very rough thing to do.
I feel like there's also the issue of Japanese being constructed in a way that imbues the text with subtext that can't be literally translated.
The grammar used in Japanese conveys a lot of information about intent and the personality of the person who is speaking, but all these different forms can still translate directly into the exact same phrase in English.
Depending on which pronouns are used when referring to themselves, a Japanese person can be giving off a dramatically different vibe, but all of those different variations are equivalent to the English word 'I'.
It's not really possible to recreate that in a language where there's only one word available to cover all those different pronouns and where vocal intonation and rhythm are employed instead, at least in terms of written form.
@@casanovafunkenstein5090 And none of this is even getting into the more complicated nuances of Japanese that make it harder to translate. Puns are infamously known for being damn near impossible to translate because they're so often only ever going to make sense in Japanese.
id rather take dry direct text than redit maymays
Learning more about dating sims its become obvious to me that most dating sim "parody" games are parodying dating sim flash games on newgrounds
Was expecting a plot twist where the main girl of TM3 is actually dressing up as every other girl because of her jealousy issues and that would explain the same face syndrome. x_x
Ok but that would be an incredible plot twist for a dating Sim. An obsessive girl wants to date you but doesn't know what kinda girls you're into so she makes up a bunch of different personas to try to woo you.
You could even explain scenes that have multiple girls in it as her getting her friends to help her.
Whats funny about the west not getting the dating sim craze too much is that i remember SO MANY flash games of this format on deviantart back in the day. As someone more familiar with VNs, i thought they were a little bizarre at the time with how complicated they were, only to find out later they were modeled after actual dating sims like this!
(Also yay Hatoful mention :) even if you were being a little sarcastic there lol, its legit a good game past the parody disguise it wears. Definitely skewed a lot of people's views on the genre a bit tho, for people who didnt actually play it)
The tons of F&M games... the evangelion game... and the miriads of other sketchy flash games
It was NewGrounds, and hell yeah, that and clickable mystery games
A dating sim-like game with live action actors was made in the west at one point, it didn't get enough traction to become a trend though.
generally VNs aren't that marketable in the west due to cultural differences imo
@@Pavlinka__
keep in mind that:
-A game that doesn't involve battle or action in the west and simply talking with minigames is involved was deemed as an interactive video (at best) or porn (at worst). To make matters worse, in the later years it got the kiddie edutainment treatment, which pretty much doomed the VM/DS genre outside of Japan.
-Especially on the 90s and earlier, the gameplay was so much the primary focus that almost every game got an excuse plot.
-Localization companies would label any game that focused on storylines an instant failure and never even bother to market it properly in the rare case they would go through with it.
The cultural difference? Games in Japan focused on storytelling. Games in the West focused on mindless gameplay.
The reason for that is deeply rooted to the devastation Japan suffered after WW2, which can be made into a video essay on its own.
I think my introduction to the genre was the flash game “Air Pressure,” which is kinda depressing now that I’m an adult and actually understand what was going on. u.u Umm, but after that, I jumped into the Pacthesis games… Chrono Days was my favorite, I replayed that soooo many times.
hatoful boyfriend is one of those games that has an incredibly silly premise but also, within the work itself, engages really sincerely with the premise and is genuinely emotional and gripping with an incredible cast
like it's very fun to dunk on 'pigeon dating sim' as a concept but it IS a really, really good game that's worth suspending your disbelief for
also in stars and time spotted, hell yes
the secret route of hatoful boyfriend was so engaging I completely forgot they were pigeons
Dream Daddy is another one that became a meme, but is actually a really sincere exploration of dating as a single parent.
what every other parody dating sim fails to get about hatoful boyfriend is that the joke of HB isn't haha isn't it funny we're dating pigeons, it's that it is a completely sincere dating sim/visual novel except all the characters are pigeons, with the characters riffing on popular otome archetypes and the individual routes all coming back in the true ending.
the game would also not work if it wasn't pigeons, especially plot points like sakuya's family.
@@sandybestgirlYeah, absolutely! And with its silly moments, Hatoful laughs with the genre, not AT the genre!
Dream daddy was considered a bit of a joke in the gay community, it's just so obvious that that the target demographic for the game is women.
"I am here to engage sincerely"
preach
So confused. How is there a 7 day old comment on a 3 day old video. 🤔
@@honaleri If you're a Patreon member you get a week of early access to his videos.
@@caseypatterson7030
Omg. Thanks. I was genuinely confused. lol.
Your last bit about comparing putting dating sim stuff into bigger games being like slipping medicine into dog food is so true dude.
People will give the idea of dating sims the side eye whenever it's brought up, but then there will several debates about who the best girl is in each persona games (Mitsuru, Naoto, Makoto for me) People love romance in their games, but they don't want to play a game that's JUST romance, for some reason.
As a soon to be 29 year old Canadian dude I'll happily say it; Romance is awesome. Put a good romance story in front of me with characters that i'll like and i'll eat it up and ask for another helping; romance fucking rules.
Give it till your first serious break up.
Romance can be bitter sweet, and I’d imagine a good dating sim should get that across.
But I get your point, ya hoser (Canuck here too :D)
I want to be the Byronic Hero in the romance story too, I get it
My best guess is that a pure dating sim basically lives and dies by its character writing, and it takes a lot of confidence to write a cast of characters that people will adore when the only thing you can really do in the game is talk to them. It's much easier to get away with slightly weaker character writing if they're among other fun things to do. There's nothing worse than a character driven game that has a cast you don't care about (looking at you, Inescapable).
These japanese dating sims are not "just romance" themselves. They have obvious game aspects. And not enough freedom and interactivity. Eh... What others have said, "lives and dies by character writing" isn't it. It lives and dies by the vibes. You can throw a lot out of the window if you only get that right. The game can be really short and loop back on itself, and it'll still be worth it.
Is there something about Canadian guys liking dating games? I don't get it. I think it's worth comparing the Japanese Otome scene with romance novels in the West. Both cater largely to women, so women are the core audience in both cases. Japan grew up with less computers and more family consoles, so I think it's likely that more women grew up playing games in the East compared to the West. This might change now with the prevalence of smartphones.
For why we don't see more dating sims already current day, I think that's because videogames were even less socially acceptable in the West back in the 90's and 2000s. Livejournal, Tumblr, DeviantArt, and Fanfiction sites are where more of the Western nerd girls ended up in their teenage years. Since much less focused on gaming and instead on other media, they ended up going in that direction. I also think that Western dating games haven't found their "voice" yet. They can imitate Japanese hits they know about, but they haven't started creating stories for themselves yet.
Anyways, that's my take as some buddy from Western Canada who enjoys macking on the digital ladies, eh?
i absolutely ADORED the girls side games when i discovered their english patches about 10 years ago; i don't speak a lick of japanese (though my couple-years obsession with those games did get me reeeaaaal close to maybe starting classes lol) but they still had me importing the PSP version ahead of that one getting a patch and an artbook and soundtrack.
i'd love to see a return to the stat builder kinds; i'm not great at reading and the kind of vignette / spontaneous style of TMGS games always got me easier than wading through shinsengumi lore for the 50th time
i also cannot stand that dating sims have to be wrapped up in ironic delivery; it's even worse when every localised release of an otome vn is getting the most low effort machine translation you can imagine 😭😭😭 girl you can't do that the writing is the whole point!
I LOVE the girls side games! I still have the English patched ones for my old Nintendo ds.
Ah, I still remember how I realised that I can actually romance the homeroom teacher so I dropped the "cool" guy for his stoic ass halfway through the game. That's a core memory 😂 Loved those games. I'll may replay them...
I loved them all too! if you’re interested, while its a little slower, google translate reads the text in the most recent switch game very well. The main characters gimmick is pretty fun, too.
Oh my God, I'm still playing the girls side games (1-3) today!
Alll girl side games did got remasters for the switch, with a 4th one being made
“Why is bro being so mean to rika she hasn’t done anything to him! How weird!”
20 minutes later
“Not mean enough”
Oh, also, I assume the 'hitching' is an attempt at immersion - the girl is animating as 'you respond' to her. The pause is for your character to actually say the line to her. If your character had voice acting, it'd work, but it comes across immensely awkward without it.
Maybe they expect the player to say it to their monitor?
Wouldn't surprise me.
@@planescaped ....But wouldn't they do that before they actually press the button to select it? When i play a VN i read the option and THEN click on it. And some VN's have your character actually say the line in the chatbox after you pick it, i dont know why the dating sim could not just do that
@@EdyAlbertoMSGT3 what if they somehow forgot to make the mc say the line but had already put in the hitch
@@EdyAlbertoMSGT3 Most likely? They ran out of money to complete the protag audio and decided to scrap it but otherwise left the rest of the system in place. The game was already under the expected budget.
Despite me knowing the differences between VNs and Dating sims more than 99% of people, I still was gripped enough to not skip ahead. This channel is a real gem. It's pretty uncommon for a native English speaker to understand Japanese, and if they did, they typically don't make videos like this and would be a localizer. I'm heavily into Japanese media, but I don't know Japanese. So it's very nice to see someone cover things I wouldn't be able to experience and explain them while also coming from a Western perspective. I like Japanese content creators who can speak about these things in English (which is also rare), but their experiences tend to be so different that it doesn't scratch the same itch. These videos act like a gateway into untranslated works. They are a unique glimpse into media I don't have access to without learning the language. Like that UNO video you did a bit ago was similarly interesting and was something I never would have thought existed until you covered it. Thanks for making these kinds of videos.
Less than two minutes in and Punchy makes me agree with him possibly more than I ever agreed with anyone.
"Genre definitions are all semantics and where braincells go to die."
Couldn't agree more
1:06:40
Imagine finding out your entire run went up in flames because you decided to placate Yukiko for a night, and that caused your actual girlfriend to drop dead because you didn't check in on her instead. So you boot the game up and prioritize, but this instead causes Yukiko's bomb to go off, tanking your rep, and the shock causes you to fail the relationship anyway, as the girlfriend dies in disgust. I would never play the game again after that, but I would sure as hell get a big laugh out of it XD
49:00
During my play though I eventually committed to wearing either the white or black button up and either the brown or black pants. For shoes, I opted for the brown leather ones.
During the final year of my play through ,I ended up discovering that the brown shoes are actually supposed to be paired with the suit and will always trigger a disgusted reaction with any other outfit combination. I’m not sure what’s wrong with pairing brown dress shoes with a business casual fit but ok.
Once I replaced them with the sneakers I started getting girls complimenting my style.
(P.S, tshirt, jeans, and sneakers is a good fit to wear if you’re going after Makihara - she never complimented me for it but never complained either. I opted for the business casual fit because it caused the least problems and when I eventually decided to pursue Chitose she liked it)
Sheesh and i thought girls these days were picky!
Probably because outfits in Japan are/were much more strict than western countries (such as forcing students to dye their natural hair colors to conform to student expectations and uniforms or the way job applicants all wear near identical suits). It isn't about personal style, it's about fitting societal expectations
The impression I've had on the randomization of who you meet at the start of 3 is it basically being a response to traditional romance genre issue of the first girl always winning, and more directly to its own lineage in the matter. For better or worse, Shiori is pretty clearly the "correct" choice in 1 by basically every metric (importance, difficulty, in-game popularity, etc), but in 2 the game goes out of its way to include events with as many of the characters as possible in the prologue, so everyone's on more even ground come the actual start of the story, and less feeling like Hikari is who you're "supposed" to go for. 3's version in turn is giving you a random character for your fated meeting, so any given character could be the "first girl" for a given playthrough. It doesn't work as well, but nothing else in 3 does, so.
Also, a fun note re: Serika since there wasn't footage obtained, all the stuff about her secretly being a Persona character only gets revealed in the very last event in her story, which isn't actually necessary to see to get her ending. If you don't see it, the ending just has her being a lounge singer who does smalls jobs in bar across Japan, which in context is pretty clearly a cover story and kinda hilariously implies you spend your entire relationship never figuring out why Clark Kent takes so long to make a phonecall.
Years and years ago I read an LP of Tokimeki 1-3 and Girls Side on Something Awful by vibrating sheep that they translated as they went along, doing 1-2 routes per game. It's from them that I learned how hard the hardest girls could be, because he literally had a "giblo" (ギブロ aka savescum) playlist he had on repeat to stay sane when he had to savescum to optimize stats to do Maho's route in 2. I highly recommend anyone who wants to get a sense of the writing for these games to look the LP up on the LP archive, because they're one of the most comprehensive looks at the series in English even if they don't cover most of the routes. They even cover the death of the genre!
Great recommendation, just looked it up and it looks like something I’m gonna enjoy reading in my off time for a while.
VibratingSheep's runs are absolutely great and anyone interested in the Tokimeki Memorial games should take a look at his screenshot LP. I only wish he could have finished his run of Girls Side 2 or showed off Tokimemo 4.
People are forgetting the LP Archive... I feel old
@@richardpreston7333 I read that KOTOR2 playthought with Jesus so many times... (also it basically was one of the main reasons behind Dangan Ronpa ever making it to the west).
What lp mean?
As a person who doesn't really care about Japanese games and definitely not anime or dating sims you had me hooked with the writing, keep up the good work
Me as a child: i shall experiment with magnets. Oh no, the color swiels on the CRT TV didnt go away. Maybe i can do the motion in reverse to fix it. Oh NO
Rika: where did i get access to energy drinks at age 5 or something? Not my problem
It's so funny that you mentioned using magnets on a CRT because I did the same thing as a kid, and I was thinking about that when he mentioned doing stupid stuff as a kid. At least we never killed a dog.
I will say like, magnets are something a child could easily find. But energy drinks AND a needle??? that's just... wild... too many little things
You'd be surprised how easily available energy drinks were in Asia.
It's just not advertised as "EPIC GAME FUEL" but as medicinal supplement for business people working 12 hour workdays.
You know those tiny bottles that you buy at Donquiote that's on the front counter in the hundreds in Yakuza series? Those are all essentially 5 Hour Energy before 5 Hour Energy
@HellecticMojo that's very sad but also makes a lot of sense. (Not that America has a moral high ground)
Energy drinks I can believe without too many odd assumptions, it's getting her hands on injection needles at that age that really worries me. I can see her understanding that they're used for medicine, she'd definitely had a flu shot or something, but them being within easy reach? In her house at all? Deeply concerning!
Konami saw the popularity of the singular somber character in an otherwise upbeat game and decided the lesson to take would be "All sad girls now" seems exceptionally on brand for the video game industry at any point in time, TBH
Oops! All Sad Girls
Local horror game speedrunner who knows Japanese rants about obscure Japanese dating sim series (emphasis on the sim). All according to keikaku. *Translator's note: Keikaku means "plan."
tbh it's possibly the *least* obscure dating sim series I could've picked out of the genre but the genre itself is obscure in the West so it be like that
@@PunchyYTLike I said. All according to keikaku.
Because dating is horror
@@Mario_bland *Dating before the internet was like living in the world of Dracula or Frankenstein:* _Strange and scary but you can overcome it through hard work and wits._
*Dating in the age of internet and social media is like being trapped in a Lovecraft or Junji Ito story:* _You are doomed from the start and all your efforts are futile._
in Tokimemo's case, it's literally has ties to horror, and Dracula
because the guy who wrote the story for the early games is non other than Koji "IGA" Igarashi, who is now more known for "creating Metroidvania"
>As of 2001, Japanese schools stopped having school on Saturday
HOW THE FUCK DOES PERSONA STILL NOT DO THAT THEN, P3 WAS HALF A DECADE LATER.
As an aspiring game dev, I would love to play a translated version of TokiMemo 2 and TokiMemo 3.
TM2 seems like an absolute masterpiece that should get more recognition, while TM3 sounds like an extreme cautionary tale of game designers implementing things "because they sound good" or "because that's realistic" without considering if they will break the game.
TM3 just seems like such a bonkers experience that i really want to play it. if anything i would probably save 2 until after 3 so i could heal my soul with a game that's genuinely good
TM3 kind of looks like an ambitious game that was released reaaaly unfinished. Like, I could buy that the reason the girls all look so similar was because they created the first character model, with the idea of modifying it later to differentiate them more, and then just... never got to it. Similarly a lot of the game mechanics seem like they could have been good ideas... but they were never debugged or properly balanced, so they just end up being a mess. It might be a cautionary tale about getting too ambitious right out of the gate, though.
All I kept thinking throughout this video is "Damn, I would really love to play Tokimemo 2, or see someone cover in depth like Tim Rogers did..."
Even in Tim Rogers 6 hour deep dive of TM1, TM2 only gets a mere mention of being "really good" and that's it.
Such a shame, because TM2 seems to genuinely improve upon every single aspect of TM1.
What I loved about Magical Diary duology is that not only you could date both boys and girls, but also the fact some of them had friendship routes as alternatives. So even if you weren't interested in them as romancable candidates, you could still get close to them no problem. If dating sim ever becomes a relevant genre again, I wish they'd keep making friendship routes and allow you to date both genders too(not every game needs to have this, but I wouldn't mind a few more).
That is such a modern game thing in my opinion, but as long as it's done well.
This was a really in-depth video, and I'm glad to see that someone who genuinely Gets It and has love for the dating sim genre (and Tokimemo!) did a deep dive on TokiMemo3! I'm a HUGE fan of the Girls Side series (almost half of my VODs are playthroughs of said series, and Girls Side 3 is what I personally consider to be the best Tokimemo game after TM2)--Tokimemo 3's date outfit mechanic seems to be a really, really rough version of what would be the Girls Side Outfit System, which is a super detailed, in-depth stat/luck system that I can best describe as outfitting your character with a weapons and armory loadout in action rpgs. It really is kind of a shame to see that the Girls Side series gets written off as "silly girls games/that silly otome spinoff series" or forgotten, because the producer behind it (and Love Plus!) as well as the team were firing on all cylinders in terms of writing, art, and mechanics.
Setting that aside, thank you for your sacrifice in playing 3, and also, thank you 3 for dying so that Girls Side could live (although they're still all trapped on the 3DS and PSP respectively still, and we don't talk about Girls Side 4, oof)
Get out of these comments, Chu!
@@MF4F NEVER
Actually, 1, 2, and 3 got ported to Switch! The content is mostly based on the DS ports though, so 3 in particular is missing some features from the PSP version.
@@MsCuriousinferno Oh yeah, I forgot about that! Japan only iirc...also it's a shame that the extra PSP goodies from 3 got cut out, oof
I played GS4. It's not bad? I mean it's not a masterpiece but it's definitely not a shame to the series. I am curious about your comments
As an American, most of us do not wear shoes indoors either. I don’t know why that stereotype exists but it’s very strange.
Also, that “insert coin” anecdote was very funny.
33:48 I immediately had to think of Josh Strife Hayes' Worst MMO Ever series and his iconic line: "Behold: Combat."
>"There aren't many indie games inspired by TokiMemo 2"
> Laughs in Katawa Shoujo
(sorry, but memories of that game hit me like a truck when I saw the rival character guy at 35:17 and I think even if it's more in that VN camp as you distinguished, it was clearly inspired and for better or worse exists)
Oh also as a weird little freak child who accidentally ended up on the wrong side of Newgrounds, I grew up playing a surprising number of dating sims clearly inspired by the actual genre, with lots of very paired down attempts at the same mechanics, and I think most of the girls were stolen still images from animes, like I distinctly remember one where you could date Asuka from EVA but it was NOT a game "marketing" itself as "The EVA dating sim" -- I feel like there's always been an interest, and Persona games def show it and all that, but it's kinda funny that it indeed never materialized as, at the least, more translations and ports.
Oh so THIS is where the love-confession tree I see in various japanese high school media comes from! Dang, this series really did have a lot of cultural impact.
32:07 It seems like the 3D artists designed the redhead girl and then simply copied her head onto the other characters, changing only the colors.
Kinda weird how in school based sims your family is no where to be found
Never ask an anime self-insert protagonist about their family. It is a road to eldritch and existential horror that uproots everythingtou thought you understood... Or finding out they're the lost child of Doctor N. Gin.
And if they are it’s your little sister that’s also a romance option 💀
To be fair, unless the parents are doing something important in the story, they don't need to be mentioned. It's the same reason why homework is never mentioned... unless it's a study session/date.
hey yeah where's mom lol
@@lunamaster123 Why though? Parents and siblings are some of the most important relationships in a young person's life and it's weird to omit them. They're a major source of guidance, comfort, stress, and fun. Parents influence children's goals or cause them to rebel. They could have major story and gameplay significance in a genre like this, but for some reason all this potential is omitted. Even if they played an extremely minor role, still weird that they are completely absent and this isn't remarkable.
I nearly choked when you/Punchy talked about the outfits choosing "game", culminating in you dunking on the pink-white shirt of one of the girls (around 48mins). That was hysterical. Great video!
1:08:07
'She inexplicably called me out of the blue to watch her participate in an acting contest'
Protag should have said "Oh so you were just PRETENDING to be a massive bitch this entire time? Damn girl, you're got this contest in the bag!! I really believed you were an absolute c**t!"
(for real, it's a hilarious explanation as to why she would suddenly invite you for moral support. Girl is an insane method actress)
Really fantastic work here. I love it when a video makes me go "aha, this guy CLEARLY failed to consider-" and then the guy demonstrates that he did in fact consider what I was about to say, and that happened twice in the first 20 minutes (the point about high school nostalgia not being a uniquely Japanese phenomenon + the mention of Riven also coming on five discs).
Very intdreting and fun video, I had no idea Tokimeki fumbled the bag SO hard.
Also, killing a dog with energetic drinks? That shit had me having a laughter fit so hard I could barely breath or speak. That shit is HILARIOUS.
kind of random thought but there's like a joke/stock character floating around The Media, the massive geek with no social skills in love with his anime girlfriend, and in a broader sense I wonder if a lot of people are afraid to make/play sincere dating sims because only LOSERS who can't get a REAL girlfriend would want a FANTASY one. like romance isn't a super common thing to fantasize about, and like people don't want an outlet to express and play around with that kind of stuff I guess.
you're absolutely right tbh. it's hilarious (aka it sucks) because people don't really make that assumption about any other genre. like nobody says stuff like "oh you play cooking mama? couldn't cut it as a REAL chef huh 😏" it's only towards people who play romance games
it's such a mean-spirited take and i hate that it's so prevalent. these games make people happy and the people who play them literally aren't doing anything wrong i don't see the problem
I mean, that's why I originally avoided them. But I decided to give one a chance, just because why not. Don't judge it until you've tried it I thought.
Then I realized it was incredibly fun... and that the genre was largely untranslated... and everyone confuses them with romance visual novels... and the genre is practically dead... meaning finding one to play is an act of futility. :(
Since I'm an otome game player (playing the girl side games and games from other companies) this is SUPER interesting to watch since this is obviously territory I havent touched at all.
But the double bonus of seeing the context of tm3 and how so many things in this game baffle me holy shit.
I wanted to indulge Girl's Side a bit more I feel like I sidelined it a little in service to keeping the run-time down because I have played at least GS1 and thought it was a pretty good time.
@@PunchyYTthe thought and mention is appreciated! They're a different beast and often both the genre and audience can be easily misunderstood, so I personally think it's a smart choice to keep the topic more focused towards just one side of the series.
I'm glad to find someone like me here! I'm also an otome game player and had only played Girl's Side of the Tokimeki franchise, so this video was very interesting. I'm happy Girl's Side was mentioned at all; considering there would be a lot to cover when it comes to that kind of genre and audience.
@@scarlettskipper9352 @chaoticdance @PunchyYT Hey, it's good to see fellow Girls Side gamers! I don't usually play otome games (I'm a BL and joseimuke gamer) but I adore the Girls Side series with how strongly they're written and how their mechanics work--3 especially!!
Wow another girl's side gamers!
I started delving myself into otome games since 2011 and tmgs series is among my first otome games i played. Currently I replayed tmgs3 psp version using emulator in my phone because recently one of the voice actors for one of the secret characters passed away @@chuchuonlinevt
Everything about TokiMemo3 feels like it was designed to be a middle finger to the fanbase for failing to completely crowdfund the game. From the insane amounts of luck required to do literally anything, to the insufferable meanness of the characters, to the dark and depressing stories of the girls. It all feels like Konami telling their audience "You didn't give us enough money! Fuck you!" And as a fan of Metal Gear, Silent Hill, & Zone of the Enders, I at the very least say #FuckKonami right back
she's so possessive that "she" is all the other girls
Great vid, and I don't know why but the *vrooom* whizzing past makes me genuinely laugh out loud. I'm easily amused and fine with it. 😁
I kinda like the 3D models, they could have worked if devs had more time to make them more distinct from each other.
The way the 3D models look kinda gives me the vibe of some long forgotten cheap digipaint anime from the early 2000s and I actually kinda vibe with that.
Maybe, but in the early 2000s 3D animation was still very expensive to make, and there where fewer people who know how to do it.
On a technical level they are impressive for the era. The models maintain an outline and keep an anime style at multiple angles, from the models I would not have guessed it was a 2001 game. I would not be surprised that these models were placeholders using a base model and the unique models that were meant to replace them never came to fruition.
@@tierdra9513 The style could work if the art wasn't so anime-centric. The problem is they attempted to capture anime proportions that were common at the time rather than trying to find something better. Cell-shaded graphics can be great, and I think there's some good examples that came out just a few years later. Oni comes to mind, readily.
I kind of like it too, it has a certain charm that carries the limitations of that era. I'm sure they put a lot of work into it, even considering that it probably didn't have that big of a budget.
The last Toki game being a funeral to the franchise where the main goal was to die on a high note is actually really sad.
What are we, some kinda Tokimeki Memorial?
Maybe the real eternal happiness was the outfits we chose along the way...
Funny that you mention Hatoful Boyfriend at the end, I genuinely loved that game so much. It has a silly premise but took itself surprisingly seriously in the final route. Wish there were more dating sims in the west!
Less than 20 minutes in and I already feel pretty confident about subscribing having never seen this channel before it showed up in my youtube recs.
Deadass I highly suggest his loop 8 or ps1 uno vids, they’re hilarious
I didn't even care about dating sims, I put this video to continue working, but halfway through I was so invested in what Tokimeko Memorial 2 could do. This is what happens when you speak with true passion about a subject, becase NOW I really want to play Tokimeko Memorial 2!!!
I kinda can grasp why most of Tokimeki 3 girls route are kinda depressing, well its because Kanon
So, its "Cannon" route?
No, because there's Visual Novel called Kanon. There a trend in early 2000 where type of depressing story like this are massively popular at the time, in Japan at least, and Kanon are the one popularized a depressing type story like this
Yeah, they're called nakige I think (crying game - you'll be crying by the end, that's the point). So, you're most likely right.
I very much enjoy a well-written _nakige_ , but man, those are really hard to write and many authors fumble them pretty hard.
It reminds me of dark fantasy in the west, and how many authors don't know how to write it without becoming misery porn.
Yeah it was the style time
Imagine the inverse time line:
Tokimeki 3 was a hit
Every girl in the game shows up
Every girl is nice
The dying girl refuses to die by the power of love
The Kawai girl is killed by a dog.
Everybody in the highschol is'n and asshole.
Every event is just a coin flip without a seed.
And in the end the MC always DUMP the girl because he is a GIGA CHAD and needs to grind for more stats.
Dating sims like these actually existed in the west. A lot of them being flash games and rather pornographic, however the sim part of dating sim is still there. you still leveled stats via activity's, went on dates, and in some cases were rewarded with erotic content. Which is a major distinction between western flash dating sims, and what japan defines them as.
It is definitely not a major distinction. If you look into the history of japanese dating sims you'll find that many of the earliest versions of the concept included H-scenes (nsfw material). Often times, every other element of the game was simply preamble to the goal of getting to an adult scene. This was true for many visual novels as well. I've heard some analysts actually say the clean nature of tokimemo was one of the things that made it stand apart at the time it came out, though I wouldn't take that claim at face value.
Many of these works were created in doujinsoft circles and made independently for computers, and it wasn't until the more popular works received console ports/adaptations that they had to make changes to adhere to ratings boards/expectations. In a way, you could say they were exactly the same as those flash games, in that they were independent small scale projects that didn't shy away from adult themes or topics.
Even the pornographic western stuff is mostly parody or someone with really poor English skills
@@Namingway248 ya id agree with on that. It's not like it has to be NSFW. But see it was if someone was going to choose between a sfw or NSFW one. Then its more likely to choose NSFW one as they demographic for the games is teen/adult people that want a waifu/husbando. Since that what what the sim.
Those games still exist, just not so much on Newgrounds any longer. They're part of different Interactive fiction rings. What @Namingway248 says is true though, it was similar in Japan. Itch carries some, albeit most lean more towards VNs than sims.
You got me lmao
"Behold" woman
Seriously...I laugh so hard
Prior to this video, my only exposure to TM3 came from an old Screenshot LP that focused primarily on the one girl you barely touched on this video (the grey hair psuedo-magical girl character), so it was really nice to see this video showcase the rest of the cast and see this game in motion! Well, as nice as you can get with TM3. It does seem like they did want to try to keep innovating and try making the games feel more 'real'. However, the dev team seem to have done it in the same way that Disney does with their live action remakes of their animated movies or adults seem to do with kids cartoons, in a 'uhhhh that's not how it actually works in reality check and mate we need to make this more ''mature''' by making it realistic' without actually considering why that suspension of disbelief may be necessary.
Thanks for the thoughtful video! I feel like there's been an uptick in English-speaking people's acknowledgement of TM ever since that Action Button Reviews video, and it's something I'm deeply grateful for. I'm setting up my own prayer circle for the TM remake to get a English translation
the outfit selection was in girls side too! except waaaay better! it showed what “style” your outfit was after you put it together. all of the boys have preferred styles.. i don’t remember them straight up walking out on you if your outfit was ugly but maybe i’m just too goated
22:58 That sounds genuinely upsetting. It's like some of the things in Tales of Symphonia, when certain characters... leave the group.
30:56 The face that says "30 bucks well spent" (that is a rather sizeable box)
Also yeah, the direct comparison especially between 2 and 3 is rather jarring. Kind of like the downgrade Disgaea 6 had with the 3D-chibi-models instead of proper, lively sprites.
1:15:05 And they lived happily ever after. After all the previous tragedy I almost expected a "or at least they would have if she didn't slip on her way down the legendary hill, hit her head and fell into a coma" or something. Maybe that actually is in the game, but has a low chance of happening like the two RNG-girls showing up.
Imagine that you were right and having that bad RNG roll after an ending makes you continue the game and unlock a secret girl
That being said, the genre is still somewhat alive due to otome games experiencing a renaissance on PC/Switch/mobile, with labels like otomate publishing and translating their work (including older classics) like never before. I mean, the west is now getting FANDISCS like Cupipara Sweet and Spicy!
I guess that's more due to dating sims being folded into the wider "visual novel" genre; but otome games are still fairly romance-oriented (and descended from Angelique/TokimemoGS) so i still think that tracks.
Based fujoshis saving culture one game at a time.
@@misfire33 there are BL games on the switch too. we just keep winning
@@misfire33otome wouldn't be fujoshis, it would be yumejoshis 🫡
@@el9250our freakiest soldiers 🫡
That WRPG/JRPG bit was such a clever subversion lol
Tokimeki Memorial 3 perfectly embodies the sentence “the worst she can do is say no”
So I'm sure it'll get worse since I'm only 8 minutes in, but this description of having to juggle all the girls you're not interested in with token acknowledgement so you can date the girl you *are* interested in sounds like it would work really well if it was reskinned into a regency-era dating sim, where instead of teenage girls getting upset with you, it's you earning a reputation for being a snob to all the eligible women in the county - "that Mr Punchy, do you hear he *didn't* send Eleanor a gift on her birthday? Poor dear was embarrassed in front of the vicar and everything, what a cad."
That honestly sounds like a great mechanic.
Matches & Matrimony is an otome game (so, with a woman as a protagonist trying to find a husband) inspired by Jane Austin's works, and while I am not quite sure it goes as far, I think I remember you had relationship bars with some non dateable characters which I think could affect your relationship with (for instance) their brothers, or trigger necessary events, I'm not quite sure. Some of the dateable characters are friends, but again, I don't remember if you really needed to be in good standings with one to have a shot with another.
One funny thing I remember is, why it felt pretty intuitive that having good enough stats in relevant skills would be necessary to have a chance with each character, you also need one stat to be high enough to manage to say no and reject your first proposal, the guy is really insistant and your character will fail to escape the situation otherwise, leading to a premature ending. I don't know, the idea of a potential suitor in that sort of game just latching onto you and not letting go unless you have high enough skills really stuck to my memory.
Oooh, I’d kill for a historical dating sim!! (Could work as a whole series too- medieval, Renaissance, rococo or Victorian styles as well… Meet your date at the jousting tournament in the medieval sim, outsmart the Medicis and study art in the Renaissance sim, navigate the social landscape of Versailles in the rococo sim, and have a ‘social season’ with balls and seaside outings in a regency/Victorian/edwardian sim. If your date returns to the city during the season… game over!)
But I’d REALLY want it to be made for either/any gender. Like a Pokémon red/blue situation probably because the historical gender dynamics would require a lot of different writing for a male or female protagonist, not just pronoun swapping, but the potential for events, outfits, different historical personalities and hobbies and setting things in different countries is HUGE. And if a Japanese company was making it it would be awesome to get a game in Edo period Japan! Imagine a ukio-e type of art style for a game like this😍
While dunking on bad games is fun, after hearing about how Tokimemo 2 was a masterpiece of its genre, it's sad to hear that the next entry was so bad and poorly funded. It's like this artistic star was coldly snuffed out for no reason
I had a date with a girl once... but when she saw I was wearing a bowtie, she just... Left.
Your comment that romance must be added to a larger genre like medicine to dogfood got a sensible chuckle out of me. And you know what? Absolutely true. I would probably never go out of my way to get a dating sim type game. But, if you throw a little dating sim to my farming simulator, or let me romance shadowheart or Karlach in BG3? Sign me up daddio.
As a TMGS fan, I was always very curious about what happened to the original games, so this video was very interesting!
It's pretty strange how it sounds that GS has chosen to keep most of the old TM mechanics and style, while TM3 has changed so much, seeing how they were both made at the same time. It's also pretty interesting that the first 3 GS games have been translated to English, the 4th one currently being actively worked on, while it took so much time for just one TM game to be translated... I wonder why is it.
As someone who's been a TMGS fan for around 15 years, I can say that, at least online, the game is more popular than ever! With a lot fanarts and merchandise and even all previous games ported onto Switch. Portable consoles have always been pretty much the main platforms for otome games, so I suppose that might have helped as well?
I think the Otome games just have a larger audience compared to male-targeted dating sims. TM3 specifically had problems even making budget, only getting 2/3rds of the expected investment.
Out of curiosity, how much of the TM2 mechanics still exist within the Girl Side games?
It's seem like the dating sim genre these days is somewhat alive mostly from games that are either parody, satire to the genre, horror or it's built in a game that isn't label as a dating sim game like rpg games. To some it look like the genre is a joke and dead, but I think we're in a phase right now. At some point people will start to see the value of this genre. The reason why is because a lot genre and series no matter if it's video game related or not will go to a phase where it's treated like a joke, weird, or has a bad reputation. They'll eventually bounce back up. Thanks to a some people that see the value of what they have.
I definitely appreciate the unique concepts of Tokimeki Memorial, but I get why proper dating sims like it barely exist anymore. The stigma of "romancing fictional girls is cringe, go touch grass" is strong and depending on the players age/mentality about the game sometimes warranted, but it feels like such a shame that so many games have "romance options" that amount to nothing more than talking to a character a few times before they blush at/sleep with you
Legitimately can't think of another (non-adult) dating sim in the last decade besides Magical Diary and I was sitting on that one for the whole video before you brought it up. And honestly even the porn "dating sims" rarely have more than affection stats.