Category Archives: Articles

All the non-Cover Game articles and features in one place.

From the Archives, READ.ME

From the Archives: School Days, Chaos Theory and Emotional Engagement

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School Days HQ is a visual novel/interactive movie from STACK and 0verflow, localised by Sekai Project and published by JAST USA.

It’s a remastered remake of an earlier title from 2005, simply called School Days, and is rather notorious for all the wrong reasons — specifically, its violent tragic bad endings, which I won’t spoil here.

This article isn’t going to describe or analyse the overall plot in depth; rather, I’d like to talk about what School Days shows us about the possibilities and challenges a branching narrative offers to content creators, and what other games might be able to learn from the visual novel genre in general in this regard.

This article was originally published on Games Are Evil in August 2012 as part of the site’s regular READ.ME column on visual novels. It has been republished here due to Games Are Evil no longer existing in its original form.

Continue reading From the Archives: School Days, Chaos Theory and Emotional Engagement →

Essentials, Wii U

Wii U Essentials: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

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Any time someone claims that Nintendo’s flagship action-adventure-kinda-sorta-but-not-really RPG series The Legend of Zelda is stagnant and doesn’t try anything new, the perfect rebuttal is The Wind Waker.

Originally released in 2002 to a somewhat surprised Gamecube audience that wasn’t sure what to make of its cel-shaded visuals and seafaring-heavy gameplay, The Wind Waker has subsequently proven itself to be a timeless classic in the series as well as one of the most interesting Zelda titles there has ever been.

And with the HD remaster for Wii U, the definitive version of the game now exists thanks to some much needed tweaks and updates as well as full widescreen support and glorious high-resolution visuals.

Continue reading Wii U Essentials: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD →

Essentials, Wii U

Wii U Essentials: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

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While Nintendo as a company is often accused of playing things rather safe by relying heavily on its established franchises and game styles, titles like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker remind us that we’re dealing with a company that is still willing to innovate and experiment with its most beloved properties.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Captain Toad hereafter) is a spinoff of the excellent Super Mario 3D World for Wii U. The titular Captain, who was first introduced as a character in the Wii’s Super Mario Galaxy, put in occasional guest appearances for single-player puzzle levels throughout Super Mario 3D World, and so well-received were these levels that they were subsequently spun off into a game of their own.

Captain Toad is far from a simple Super Mario 3D World reskin, however — and it most certainly develops the base idea considerably beyond the bonus levels found in its source material. The result is one of the Wii U’s most unusual but utterly joyful games, and an essential addition to any collection.

Continue reading Wii U Essentials: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker →

Essentials, Wii U

Wii U Essentials

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MoeGamer’s site mission has always been to delve into the overlooked and underappreciated Japanese games of yesterday and today. And, let’s face it, you don’t get more overlooked, underappreciated and Japanese than Nintendo’s troubled Wii U console.

With Nintendo now looking to new horizons after two successful mobile apps — Pokémon Go and Super Mario Run — and its next console, the Nintendo Switch, on the way in March of 2017, now’s a great time to look back at the Wii U’s lifespan. More specifically, it’s a great time to look back at its small but well-formed library of games, and pick out those titles everyone looking to build a “complete” collection before the console disappears off the face of the planet should have on their shelves.

With that in mind, over the next few weeks/months, watch out for a series of “Wii U Essentials” articles alongside MoeGamer’s regular Cover Game features. Each focusing on a single retail game from the Wii U’s library, these articles aim to build a comprehensive record of this turbulent period in Nintendo’s history: a time when the company released some of its very finest games, yet it struggled to recapture popular attention and commercial success in the same way as the original Wii did.

The games will be presented in no particular order, beginning later this week with a look at Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.

One-Shots

Root Letter: Eleven Letters, Eight People, One Truth

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Kadokawa Games’ Root Letter, first in their new Kadokawa Games Mystery series, quietly snuck out onto the market at the end of October, just four months after its Japanese release.

The proposed series is set to be a collection of visual novel-cum-adventure game hybrids for PlayStation platforms that feature real-world locations, artwork from Love Plus character designer Mino Taro and a cast of fictional actresses who will play different roles in each game. The plan, presumably, is to create a series of adventures that, while distinct in their own right in terms of story, will have numerous thematic and stylistic similarities throughout that make them feel like “part of a set”.

So far, all we have to judge the series on is its inaugural installment Root Letter, but fortunately it’s a very strong start indeed, eminently worthy of your time if you’ve ever enjoyed the Ace Attorney or Danganronpa games.

Continue reading Root Letter: Eleven Letters, Eight People, One Truth →

One-Shots

Negligee: Pretty Girls in Sexy Pants

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With a title like “Negligee”, you probably think you know what you’re getting — and in this case, you’d probably be right. Mostly.

Negligee is a short visual novel from the UK-based (but heavily Japan-inspired) developer Dharker Studio, whose previous work has included Beach Bounce, Summer Fling and Club Life, among others. To date, the team has put out works encompassing both “slice of life” romance stories and more fantastic, outlandish tales incorporating magic and sci-fi. Negligee falls very much into the former category by being about as down-to-earth as you can get.

But is it just an excuse to depict its heroines in a variety of revealing lingerie, or is there something more to it? Read on, and let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading Negligee: Pretty Girls in Sexy Pants →

One-Shots

Supipara: A Tale of the Greatest of Smiles

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[Editor’s note: as of February 2019, it appears that unfortunately minori is ceasing operations. This article has been left in its original form as published in October 2016 to preserve the original intention behind the series, even if it will likely never happen now.]

minori’s Supipara, a collection of five visual novels, the first of which has been localised by MangaGamer, is in an interesting situation. It’s a series that doesn’t quite exist yet.

As the series microsite notes, Supipara is an ambitious undertaking for both developer minori and localiser MangaGamer; while the first two chapters currently exist in Japan (albeit as a single game), and the first of these has already been localised into English, the future of the series is largely up to visual novel enthusiasts.

Rather than relying on crowdfunding as developers such as Frontwing and localisation outfits such as Sekai Project have done in the past, minori and MangaGamer are instead ploughing the combined profits from Supipara’s first chapter and science fiction love story eden* directly back into the series, with various milestones allowing the companies to continue their collaboration and — hopefully, anyway — see the Supipara project finally brought to complete fruition.

Having finished reading the first chapter of Supipara last night, I would very much like to see the remaining chapters become a reality. And if you’re a fan of visual novels, checking out Supipara’s first chapter is an eminently pleasing way to spend twelve or so hours of your life.

Why? Read on.

Continue reading Supipara: A Tale of the Greatest of Smiles →

One-Shots

Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire: Exactly What it Sounds Like

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You have to respect a game that is up-front about what it is; one that says to you “we both know why you’re here.”

Japanese developers and localisers — particularly in the visual novel sector, and especially when it comes to nukige, or games where the main point is sexual content rather than narrative — are good at this sort of frank honesty; browsing, for example, MangaGamer’s (emphatically not safe for work) front page reveals titles such as Boob Wars: Big Breasts vs Flat Chests, Busty Maid: Creampie Heaven and the gloriously self-aware Eroge: Sex and Games Makes Sexy Games.

Devleoper-publisher Zoo Corporation is no stranger to this practice, either, with its various labels Norn, Cybele, Miel and Yumesta each putting out a variety of games with fairly self-explanatory titles. Prior to 2015, the only Zoo title we’d seen in the West was 1994 puzzler BreakThru! — which Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov had his name attached to despite having very little to do with — but all that changed with the release of Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle in January of that year.

A new series was born, with Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire being its latest installment. And, you know, it’s pretty good, particularly considering its ludicrously cheap price at the time of writing.

Continue reading Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire: Exactly What it Sounds Like →

One-Shots

VA-11 Hall-A: Mixing Drinks and Changing Lives

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VA-11 Hall-A is a remarkable work in so many ways. Not only is it the work of just two mysterious chaps from Venezuela, it’s one of the most authentically “Japanese-feeling” Western works for quite some time.

On top of all that, it’s simply an extremely well put together package, featuring beautiful pixel art by Christopher Ortiz strongly reminiscent of vintage Japanese computers such as the PC-88 and PC-98; some snappy, witty writing by Fernando Damas; and a cast of characters so memorable they’ll haunt your dreams long after you serve your last Piano Woman.

The cherry on top of all this is, as we previously discussed when we looked at the game’s early Prologue version, the fact that VA-11 Hall-A’s focus and setting are interesting, compelling and, if not completely unique, then certainly very distinctive.

Continue reading VA-11 Hall-A: Mixing Drinks and Changing Lives →

From the Archives, MoeGamer 1.0

MoeGamerTV: Treasures of Steam’s Summer Comiket Sale

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Steam’s running another Summer Comiket sale full of Japanese doujin games goodness — they’ve actually remembered to promote it this time, though! Here’s a selection of games that are worth exploring.

Check out the articles from last year for more on some of the other games available in the sale:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV