Bear with me, the old guy is going to speak… and I need a bit of an intro.
Hmmm… well let me take you all back to the year 1995, one of the first years that Himeya Soft (for those of you who remember them) was pretty much brand new here on the American/English-speaking market. Now, yes, Mixx had brough over Graduation prevously, but Himeya had decided to do something very pioneering in the American market; introduce an adult bishoujo game.
So, there I am, summer of my sophomore year in college looking at this Himeya Soft website (when they had that character from Re-Leaf as their primary mascot, before the cute little kitty-girl) reading about Divi-Dead. I’m not even sure I remember how I stumbled across Himeya’s webpage. Anyway, to make a long story short, I bought the game out of curiosity.
I had never heard of “bishoujo” games before, and Divi-Dead just sounded like a cool horror game. So I bought it, and enjoyed the hell out of it. Yes, Divi-Dead has some of the best art (both adult and non-adult) I’ve seen, but I was hooked by the game and story, not by the art.
As for visual novels, I’m of the book reading persuasion too. If the story is well done, I really don’t care if it’s more of a “visual novel” then a story. In my opinion, Desire (also by Himeya Soft/Csware) is the best bishoujo game I own.
Now, I have picked up some games, just to support the market, and to have a complete collection, but I can’t really say I ever picked one up just for the “anime booty”. Even Viper Paradice, I started playing more for the weird milton-bradly “The Game of Life” game it was. And Love Love Show does have a pretty excellent connect-five game in it too… though the card-matching game is kinda lame.
As a side note, I will admit that when I was a teenager, one of the reasons I picked up “End of Summer, Vol 1” on VHS was that it sounded etchi. I couldn’t buy R rated movies, but I could get this. So I bought it, brought it home to watch… and started watching the story more than the adult scenes.
Anyway, there’s your trip down memory lane.