I only use guides when I need too, Princess Waltz didn’t really need it per se, but The Sagara Family I needed it for a lot of the sisters solo paths, which were almost undecipherable from the choices available.
I have played a lot of games released before 1998. But they were neither Bishoujo games nor from Japan.
The oldest H-game I have played is probably the original X-Change, which I bought by a mistake. But I haven’t played it much and probably never will. (I thought it was about a man caught in a woman’s body and not a game for bisexual guys who would like to be able to also have sex with other men in a woman’s body.) The X-Change series of games are certainly not games that I will ever buy again.
I found games like that a bit harder than the average, but not super-difficult, really. Take YU-NO, one of the last games to use that moronic “LOOK / TALK to things fifty different times until the messages start repeating, then you can proceed” system - it’s tough, but I wouldn’t say it compares to things like the modern EXTRAVAGANZA.
Oldest H game I’ve played is Rance. (1989) It’s not hard, just a bit annoying.
I used to be a purist about not using walkthroughs, but now I’v sort of softened by position on them. Actually, I started using a walkthrough for Let’s Meow Meow, because I was in a hurry to get to the harem scene. And you know I sure could have used a walkthrough when I was playing Kana, because of that sequence where they visit the classroom, gym, and teacher’s office. I spent vast amounts of time trying to figure out how the order of the visits affected the rest of the game only to find out that it doesn’t matter at all.And I only found that out when I got a walkthrough. Still, I try to avoid them, because I don’t want to finish a game I spent thirty bucks for in one weekend. I just like to stroll through the game and let it take me where it will…or won’t.
If a game you spent $30 on lasts a whole weekend, that’s damn good value, as far as eroge goes. =P
Yeah it’s really outrageous how the japanese price these games since there is so very little work in them compared to actual games. Give me flash and a month and i can make one on par if not better then the majority of the sex romps.
… so why haven’t you, then? 
I’m with papillon, I’d really like see that, but then again I’m probably starving for something new on the marked so that might have something to do with it 
I was discussing this issue on irc with someone recently. Fate/stay night has 4.29 megabytes of Japanese text, which in mirrormoon’s translation ended up being 912,257 words [incidentally, this is far from the longest eroge - the recently released W.L.O. has around 6.5 megabytes of text and the upcoming Elfen Blaze has 16.3 megabytes of text]. If you take that as a very rough guideline, then Yume Miru Kusuri (1.33 meg) would be approximately 280000 words in translation, the upcoming Kazoku Keikaku (1.83 meg) would be approximately 390000 words, and even Kana ~ Imouto~ (0.68 meg) would be around 145000 words. [Working out how long the average eroge is would be difficult, but for major games released by top companies, most of their scenarios would be at least 2 megs of text] Whilst these are very very rough estimates, it’s likely that Kana (which is short by eroge standards) would definitely be longer than the average English novel (from a quick search the average length seems to be around 70000-110000 words). If you make a comparison in that sense with the average new work of published fiction, (as well as factoring in that an eroge usually also has art, music, voice acting, OP + theme song(s) and sometimes some form of gameplay), then for many games, the prices aren’t that unreasonable.
too busy beating my meat. But in all seriousness a lack of motivation? I made a entire dating sim back when i first encountered them and was studying flash. But besides passing it around to my friends in my class, I didn’t do anything with it, since i didn’t care enough to upload it anywhere, nor try to improve on it. The only thing it was lacking was sex scenes(i know right?) and voice acting(didn’t bother since it was a private project just for my own flash experience).
But thinking about it… Why don’t I make one? It’s been like 3-4 years so i’d need to reaccustom myself to flash, but it’d be fun. But let me say this, the only game i haven’t regretted importing was clannad(which was amazing).
-on a american budget- I don’t see $90-100 being a value associated with the time spent in these games, in comparison to OTHER japanese games that have obviously higher production value.
I’m not even a professional game maker and I could if making a effort put out a really decent quality flash VN, If i wanted to take the easy route I could just do it without a branching storyline and make it just a passive reading experience. and put it out within 2 weeks. Once you get the basic coding structure down, and your character portraits and photoshop picture filtered pictures for bgs, all that’s left is the dialogue, and considering most of the games share the same script regarding character interactions It’s not like I’d even have to think to make one.
Of course if i were to attempt something epic like fate stay clannad kanon etc then more power to me that’d be a real undertaking that’d take a long time. But I was referencing to the slew of trash.
Honestly, I’m kind of envious that you even have enough computer artistic ability to make one without any ero scenes. I’ve thought about trying to write a game, and since my computer art ability blows, taking pictures of places for locations and taking pictures of people in poses for the paperdolls. You know, the whole bit of trying to make it look as complete as possible, even if you just have placeholder bits.
You know I actually was thinking about that the other day, It would be pretty interesting to create a entire VN using real actors using their cutouts for the regular dialogue and then pose them for the CG. If you had a nice camera and willing to go to various places around your area, you could create some beautiful pictures.
And don’t be too envious of my computer artistic ability, It’s not like I can create things on par with todays top quality ones, you could easily do it if you took the effort to make each one. If you draw them smartly you can pose their pieces and then make alterations in their frames to make different emotion frames while only having to really draw him once or twice for portraits. more if you really want to have a more distinct emotion, but faces are the easiest thing to convey emotion so it’s pretty simple. I’ve even seen some professional VN’s that don’t even alter their character models besides faces.
It really is a matter of motivation and effort willing to put in. Heck I was even a typesetter/encoder for a fansub group that ended up going nowhere after our translator bailed after out 6th episode. I knew very little when i was asked and i learned how to do it and did it. So if you really did want to create a game the way you say did, the easiest way is to grab flash some tutorials create some starter games to learn the function of it, and then make a few small single path dating sim/vn’s with just ripped graphics(ie characters taken from other games) just to learn how do it, once you get the feeling for it(may be a 1-5 months pending how much effort you are putting in) then make your own from there. If you can create something you like through that, you may want to look into a different type of programming and learn that. Or just settle at that level. Look at the guys at newgrounds, they got their start in flash, but they’ve made some good games for consoles(alien homnid, and castle crashers).