Tag Archives: Visual Novel

While it’s not unusual for a game franchise to sidestep stagnation by switching genres, 2012’s Persona 4 Arena was a truly curious crossover. With its source material exhibiting the resonant characterization and rich storytelling that’s ...

From Lord of the Flies, The Beach, Lost, and even the reality-TV staple Survivor, the desolate, uninhabited island has often served as a microcosm for examining humankind’s true nature. While the setting is typically introduced ...

Not long ago, it was nearly impossible for Westerners to play a localized visual novel. As former Nippon Ichi Software president (and now CEO of Idea Factory International) Haru Akenaga once explained, SCEA wasn’t interested ...

Pundits who claim that the plotlines of Japanese role-playing games have atrophied into a puddle of tired tropes likely overlooked 2010’s Hyperdimension Neptunia and its two sequels- subtitled Mk2 and Victory. Throughout the imaginative franchise, ...

I once had a psychology professor who claimed that self-preservation was the stimulus behind almost all human action. According to the instructor, a person’s desire to own a spacious house wasn’t just motivated by conspicuous ...

On the surface, Go! Go! Nippon! My First Trip to Japan‘s plotline seems like a setup for a lively eroge title. After the visual novel’s protagonist befriends siblings Mokoto and Akira while online, he’s invited ...

While Japanese gamers have enjoyed the virtues of visual novels for over thirty years (purportedly 1983’s Hito de Nashi no Rakuin ~Fukei Kankin Inukan Choukyou~ is the medium’s inaugural entry), the genre has only recently ...

Look past Retro Game Challenge’s collection of faux-Famicom titles, and the title divulges an implicit takeaway: despite cultural and geographical differences, the medium of gaming created an undeniable similarity across Eastern and Western childhoods. Much ...

One of the more curious cartridges to inhabit the slot of Japanese 3DS’s was 2012’s Guild01. A compilation of four distinct games, each conceived by a different luminary, the title demonstrated publisher Level-5’s periodic propensity ...

What Is The Concept? Corpse Party: Book of Shadows‘ purpose in life is to show you anime characters dying in truly horrifying ways. Their desperate struggle to defy fate, their thoughts, feelings, and suffering, are ...