Tag Archives: visual novels

Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Michiru Matsushima

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After many months (years, actually, I think) of waiting, I finally took possession of my Grisaia Complete Box today.

As you may recall, I had many, many words to say on the subject of The Fruit of Grisaia and its sequel in a previous Cover Game feature, but I’m yet to explore either the third and final game in the main series or any of the “side” games. Consequently, I’ve officially earmarked some time (maybe after Death End Re;Quest) to cover the remainder of the series.

In the meantime, though, I thought it might not be a terrible idea to give one of the Grisaia girls a bit of a shout-out for today’s Waifu Wednesday. And since I’ve given Amane a bit of favouritism previously, well, today it’s Michiru’s turn.

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One-Shots

Reflections on PlayStation Vita

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At the time of writing, Sony has just announced that production of the PlayStation Vita will be ending in 2019, with no plans for a successor.

This follows news from earlier this year that we’re counting down the days until the last Western physical Vita release, with many of the last releases coming in limited form from boutique publishers such as Limited Run Games and Special Reserve.

With all that in mind, I think it’s about time we looked back over this remarkable and vastly underappreciated system’s life… and celebrated the things it did really, really well.

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Podcast

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 2 – No Sex Please, We’re Valve

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I’m just back from holiday and my podcasting partner in crime Chris has just departed on a trip, so it’s a short episode this time around… but an important one.

If you’ve been paying attention to social media today, you’ll doubtless have seen that there has been some concern over Valve’s apparent change of policy over adult content… or at least titles that have ties to adult content.

Hit the jump for the full episode.

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One-Shots

The Three Ages of Visual Novels

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With this month’s Cover Game being one of the most influential, well-regarded visual novels of all time, it seems only right and proper to take a look at the history of the medium as a whole.

To date, there have been three main “eras” of visual novels that can be clearly distinguished through a combination of their visual style, thematic content, gameplay elements (if any) and breadth of appeal. Of course, things aren’t quite as neat and simple as that might suggest, with some modern works deliberately channeling older styles, or some older works being ahead of their time, but it’s a working hypothesis to start from.

And, since visual novels form an extremely important part of both Japanese gaming and Japanese popular media in general, it’s worth tracing the route things have taken to get to where we are today.

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One-Shots

My Earliest Visual Novel Memories

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Although it was quite a few years ago, I have some vivid and fond memories of my first experiences with what I now know to be visual novels.

I commonly attribute my present love of visual novels to 2012’s Katawa Shoujo, but in fact my earliest encounter with the medium was some years earlier. This was back when I first discovered an interest in Japanese popular media in general thanks to a combination of promotional Manga Video VHS cassettes my brother brought home on one occasion, and the discovery that I really liked JRPGs thanks to Final Fantasy VII.

Those early visual novels had a pretty strong impact on me, and I was delighted to discover that there are ways to play them once again on modern machines — more on that later.

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