News: Fate/Zero announced
http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/001401.html
News: OEL Visual novel being planned
http://www.finalwaltzonline.com/game/game.html
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A|together 2006 almost completed:
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And some old news:
Tsukihime english patch completed (yes, yes, I know, but for completeness)
EDIT:Correctd incorrect statement.
[ 11-24-2006, 07:09 PM: Message edited by: Phineas Lucis ]
cough Anyone claiming ‘first’ OEL visual novels being planned is always a liar. Even discounting all the free fanmade ones, there are and have been multiple ones for sale in small numbers, and are at least a few commercial projects in development at the moment (in otherwords, I don’t just mean me)
Corrected the statement, my apologies.
Btw, which ones are you referring to ? The original ADV gams, lik Monkey Island & the like ?
No, I refer to http://renai.us/all.shtml, and several other places whose links I don’t remember offhand…
plus some boy’s love games that were at least released in English but I don’t recall if they were original English…
[url=http://www.shira-oka.com/]http://www.shira-oka.com/[/url] claims they're aiming for a commercial release (and has a trailer)... they're still in progress.
There was a group called Peach Soft that was trying to work on a commercial OEL but I think they gave up…
There are rumors that the company who now makes the Nancy Drew games made some incredibly obscure modern-day dating sim years ago but it’s so obscure that I haven’t ever seen it to know if it was actually a visual novel or not.
There was another amateur English game on sale for a while but I can’t remember the details enough to be sure if it was original-English or just released-English.
Sprung on the DS is not anime-style but from the screenshots it seems to be a visual novel / dating game.
And there’s me of course. While Summer Schoolgirls was an ugly super-quick project with no budget done solely to test the market and see if people would download and play such a game (the answer was yes) and I am NOT encouraging you to go play it, it is definitely an original english language game that was released, on sale, and sold copies. 
Current project actually has some budget and will have much better art - which is why I can’t show you much about it at the moment. It’s very much in development.
Enh, I’ve seen so many half-made projects over the years it’s hard to be sure anymore which ones were ever released. Suffice to say a lot of people have at least WORKED on English games.
[ 11-24-2006, 07:57 PM: Message edited by: papillon ]
Oh yeah…I remember the Ren’py novels… ( a Slovakian ren’ai fansite described them as determined amateurs)
I also remember Sprung… it was mentioned on nanatuha’s blog a while back. And Shira-oka studios seems to be quite impressive (though I wonder if their planned game is an eroge or a hentailess feature. I wish it were both)
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Many people may have worked on ENglish gams, but more still needs to be done. WHat we really need is something of a big break.
The one by the Drew developers was more along the lines of the “go shopping/make a cool dress for the cute boy” thing that has shown up on a few games targeting 12- under girls. A few of the old Sierra graphic adventures had romance elements, but they were not the focus in any way.
There was also a life/marriage sim in development at Buena Vista Interactive of all places. The target audience at least in the few previews that made it into mags did not appear to be kids (it definitely didnt use Disney characters). But this was 10 years or more ago so, I’d suspect the project has long since been cancelled.
(this is old news, but this article contains more information, so do read it)
News: Visual novel developer/publisher KID goes bankrupt
http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/001493.html
This really does suck.
News: Canned Dogs operational
http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/001643.html
News: More eroge closures
http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/001652.html
Bishoujo Visual Novel Featuring SNK Gals - Days of Memories - http://game.snkplaymore.co.jp/consumer/title/dom1.php
This is the DS version. The previous games in the series were cellphone games. I think the DS version contains either just DS remakes or straight ports. Hopefully remakes. I’m too lazy to trasnlate the kanji and make out the info.
News: Fate/Stay Night fighting game by Capcom and Cavia
http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/001678.html
Of all the companies in the world… Capcom. Then again, SNK was already in on it, and Capcom did doa dating sim before, so it wouldn’t be too out of sync.
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Anyway,
News: Arcana Heart Full announced:
http://www.arcanaheart.jp/news.html
(For all those wondering, Arcana Heart was a game released by Yuki Enterprises, a former subsidiary of SNK, that was a parody of the galge-inspired moe fighters. As such, this game had characters of every galge/harem/moe stereotype.
And now… the fighting gamre is going to be adapted to Visual novel format)
Oh… I saw Arcana Heart arcade in Chinatown Fair at Manhattan, NY. It looked so good.
You have no idea how great it is. It should be more widespread, along with Sangokushi Taisen. True, it can’t really take on the likes of GG, KOF & SF, but it was a novel idea; turning the cliched moe-based/galge-adaptaion fighter and making areal genuine fighting game out of it. Plus, it’s quirkiness reminds one of Matrimelee.
And, is it just me, or does Yoriko look suspiciously like Asahina Mikuru ?