Hmm. X-change were the first game you released, right? That may be why it’s the most sold of your games… maybe some of your “one-time-customers” just brought this once to get a impression of the games you’re offering… But then, again, I find it somehow unlikely… what other reason could there be… hmmm, hmm
Actually, the rankings do make sense to me. First off, although Tokmeki Check-in offers greater variety for a broader base of fans, there’s probably less sales for it than the other two just because it’s more expensive! (I’m not arguing against the price, I’ve seen the going values for other games from Japan.) $15 might not seem much compared to what some people spend but it does tend to factor in, especially if you’re new to the games. If you’re really unsure about trying bishoujo games, more than likely you’ll buy the cheaper games to “feel out” if you like them in general or not. Or just the financial situation itself since it seems to me that a lot of the people who are already interested in the games are college students. And we all know how “rich” college students are.
Now for the rankings between X-Change and Snow Drop, this I feel may be more of a word of mouth problem. Yes Snow Drop is more complex and that may be the problem for some people. It takes some effort and savy to get to the “good endings” while X-Change you can pretty much get all the endings and images in less than an hour using the “fast-forward” feature. If you’re buying a game to get a fix of “cheap anime porn” (someone I know actually used that phrase), X-Change is the better buy because it takes less effort to get the end result you want. And even if you enjoy complexity, I know several people were having a lot of trouble getting through Snow Drop, I know I did the first couple times I played it. If you can’t get anything but the one ending, more than likely frustration will set in, giving you a bad impression of the game that would be transferred to anyone you talked to about the game.
And what about Water Closet? It’s a primary fetish game, and the fetish is a bit frowned upon as disgusting, especially here in America. Sounds strange but having an S&M fetish is “better” than a bathroom fetish in many people’s minds. So there’s a psychological limitation that people would need to overcome before they buy the game.
I’m not saying these are the actual reasons behind the rankings but how they “make sense” in my mind. I wish Tokimeki Check-In was in the #1 spot so that many more games like it would be made but I’m a little beyond the point where I think my wishes would actually become true.
Ah, I believe what Kumiko means is the Bishoujo games with older engines and more simplistic gameplay is selling more copies than the Bishoujo games with newer engines and more complex gameplay. She is not saying that the tallied sales figure suggests that the current Bishoujo gaming audience prefers a game for its simplicity, though it may be a probably cause for the sales figures, but that the cost of translating games with simpler game engines far outweighs the cost of translating games with complex game engines. So, if the current Bishoujo gaming audience does not expand beyond its current niche and lend its appeal to new gamers, Peach Princess will have to give style greater consideration over substance.
That said, don’t fall into the pit trap of jumping to one subjective conclusion when interpreting data. One of the cardinal rules of data collection in statistical methodology is to consider the different factors that may lend their weight to the final figures. Obviously an expensive undertaking no matter how you do it (those little postcards that come with videos or computer games? Someone’s paid to calculate those), sales dollars is the most visible indicator. But, as an extreme example, the person who purchased “Diablo 2” for $50.00 isn’t looking for the same thing as the person who purchased “Samba De Amigo” for $50.00. The statistician looking at this demographic is placing increased attention on ‘motivation.’ Does that same $50.00 tell volumes about the gender of the individual who purchased those games? Female gamers in the U.S. have lamented for years that the gaming community is generally negligent or ambivalent toward female gamers’ needs. Pardon my short discussion, I know there are a lot more factors that contribute toward the final sale figures, but these are the top two factors I remember that has received fairly large attention in gaming magazines and newspapers, which without a doubt support their own little agendas but do shape public opinion with their massive circulations.
So, why’d I buy Tokimeki Check-In!
1. The girls are adorable
2. The poster girl Ayumi is so adorable
3. I heard good things about this game
4. I am a cheap ass, so when I saw it at BAAF for $40.00 (below retail) I bought it
What I liked about the game now that I’ve played it:
1. The girls are adorable
2. The poster girl Ayumi is so adorable!
3. I like the stories a lot
4. The roleplaying is faithful and does not cheat
5. I love the music!
6. twiddling my index fingers I love the sweet and endearing H-scenes.
Hmm, well my comments were mainly because it sounded like people were wondering how X-Change could be first at all. I was mainly giving some thoughts off the top of my head as to why I didn’t really find it so surprising. I wasn’t saying that it’s the trend things are going to or anything else, just trying to get some thoughts out there for others to consider.
Speaking of reviews, I noticed Hentai Neko put mine up. (Not that I thought she would reject it out of hand but they were my first reviews and I was nervous about them.) I was just surprised that no one had offered up reviews for some of the games as yet. Rowena-san and Hentai Neko herself both had reviews for Snow Drop there but TCI, X-Change, and WC were all missing. Granted, the site is rather for a specific audience but at least with a review, people will know the games exists. (Even if they don’t agree with me. )
Well, we’ll see what happens in the coming months I guess. I’m really interested in seeing how well Critical Point does when it comes out, since I know there’s an overlap of interests between Sci-Fi and anime among my friends. Who knows? Maybe I can hook them with that?
hey hey, I prefere sophistical games, and I like the new games better because it is voiced. But I agree that it the results may be due to the price even though I don 't think it is expensive because I use to spend way more money on nintendo games.
Can you give the url of hentai neko ekylo ?
I have some friends that are into anime, but if I try to convince them into bishojo they say naaah, because hentai is bad
[This message has been edited by Kurutsu (edited 11-06-2001).]
well, i don’t know if i alone count, but i personally liked Snow Drop the best
i think the sales might have something to do also with your requests that we buy everything you’ve released to support bishoujo…with xchange being the first, it makes sense that most people who are trying to support the industry would buy the first released game first, and maybe just can’t afford the others yet…i know lots of people prefer to go ‘in order’ when they buy things that are related…
just a thought
quote:
Originally posted by Kurutsu:
Can you give the url of hentai neko ekylo ?
Whoops! Sorry. It's http://www.hentaineko.com Guess I'm going senile... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]
Hmm, I don't think hentai in and of itself is bad. If you spend all day locked in your room with kleenix because of hentai videos, then it's bad. (Okay, maybe good, depending on your point of view... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img] )
Well Snow Drop is my favorite as well, otherwise I wouldn't be spending so much free time tinkering with this guide. (Um, I'll try and get a draft out this weekend for people to laugh at.) And I am absolutely looking forward to Critical Point and Little My Maid. Of course now I have to bug all my friends to support PeaPri enough to guarantee they're around long enough to keep producing games... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
quote:
Originally posted by ekylo:Rowena-san and Hentai Neko herself both had reviews for Snow Drop there but TCI, X-Change, and WC were all missing. Granted, the site is rather for a specific audience but at least with a review, people will know the games exists. (Even if they don't agree with me. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img] )
I do have reviews of all of PeaPri's releases plus some other bishoujo games from other companies... http://www.animetric.com/bgames.html
They aren't at Hentai Neko because we've pretty much decided to work on our own stuff... but please feel free to make contributions of titles you don't see on the list. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]
[This message has been edited by rowena (edited 11-06-2001).]
[This message has been edited by rowena (edited 11-06-2001).]
Sorry, Rowena-san, I wasn’t doing a dig against you since I like your reviews. I just thought it was odd for a site with numerous reviews on bishoujo games in English not to have some of the most recent ones. (And unfortunately, it looks like there’s a possibility for Hentai Neko to go down. )
Hmm, actually I might submit some to your site later. (Princess Maker 2, Gloria and the original Paradise Heights come immediately to mind of ones I’ve played but you don’t have reviews for.) As I said before, I’m hoping to have the draft for my Snow Drop guide done and up by this weekend and then I’ll work on a few reviews. And maybe submit a few to gameFAQ’s like I had originally planned to this past weekend. Sigh, I seem to be spending almost as much time on these things as I do on my REAL job…
Heh, I know this is probably off the topic, but I finished Fallout recently after having played quite a bit of Tokimeki Check-In!, and my outlook for Fallout was completely different. I felt so cheated at the conclusion of Fallout; the supposed ‘Roleplaying’ was dice rolls and skill checks, and how cliche can you get with that kind of ending? “Kill the masterminds and save the world”! Not to mention all the choices I had to choose was obviously outlined for me since there were the ‘rational thinking choices’ and the ‘outrageously offensive insults’ to choose from in talking dialogues. What, no character development? I want my $5 back! Not to mention the game is totally devoid of H-scenes although there is lots of blood.
[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 11-06-2001).]
I guess I must exile myself to that sad minority which would prefer a sweet, romantic non-adult dating sim over the more mainstream subject matter of scat and incest…
Fallout isn’t the kind of “roleplaying” like the one’s we talk about, becoming a character and living their lives. It’s “roleplaying” as in back to the old Dungeons and Dragons paper game “roleplaying” where you go out and have a lot of adventures where you kill a lot of things. The skill checks and dice rolls are part of that genre. And Fallout is raved as a “roleplaying” game because you could develop your character to some degree. Yes, you do pretty much go out and kill everything but with secondary character’s, it doesn’t necessarily have to be you doing the killing. For instance the third character I played as was more of a sneak thief who sneak around and grab loot and let everyone else kill people. The choices in dialogue, again are limited, but the limitation is for you to be “good” or “evil” not much more than that. My second character would pretty much be insultive as possible, go through the quests, and once he was done with the quests, slaughter everything and everyone in a town.
Fallout never ever intended to have h-scenes. It’s higher “rating” is due to language, innuendo, and violence not for actually depicitions sex acts. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to sell it to it’s target audience of teenage males. (Or even be able to sell itself in major computer wholesalers.) This is a holdover from the game it was based on, Wasteland, which did push the envelope at it’s time. I can’t remember when it came out but I do remember I played it on my apple IIe, so about mid-80’s. It was one of the first games where NPC’s reacted differently based on your gender. It did have swearing and if you wanted to, you could even “sleep around” and get mutated herpes.
So it sounds like you had some unrealistic expectations about the game. As we’ve talked about at various times, games targeted at the current Amercian 15-25 male audience are full of violence, gore and swearing (with just a hint of titilation), which Fallout provides. You just have to remember that “roleplaying” means various things to different people and currently in the mass market, it’s exactly what a game like Fallout provides rather than something like Snow Drop or Tokimeki Check-In.
Heh, ekylo, you know a joke when you see one right? ^_- Of course I know about the type of ‘roleplaying’ in Fallout because I’m a tabletop roleplay gamer myself. I was just talking about my diminished expectation and changed outlook after I played Tokimeki Check-In!, which was only 3 days later after I got Fallout and Fallout 2. Funny how the sexual innuendo in Fallout seemed like pushing the envelope. Of course there can’t be H-scenes, I’m joking, can’t have that, after all exploding bodies and flying body parts are far more in line with the puritanical ethics than nekkid bodies. . I won’t take back what I said though, I felt so cheated by the ending and the retarded killing quests I had to do, it gave me bad Diablo flashbacks, and yes, I was a thief. I spent half the gameplay time stealing for experience, andI think the most I have collected thus far at 99% steal skill was a mere 210 experience. But I did get expensive weapons, which is strangely very satisfying to a cheapass like me.
“Which is worse, sex or war?”
[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 11-06-2001).]
Actually, at this point, I’m not even sure what planet I’m on anymore. <text deleted because I’m sure it was way too much info into the chaos of my life…> If it weren’t for my invisible friend Mark, I’d be going completely bonkers…
Um, so saying that…
Well, now that I’m awake and my brain is back to normal. (Well, normal for me that is.) There’s actually nothing in your post to indicate you were joking, Bokmeow-san. It’s not like when Serio-san talks about smelling his armpit or anything obvious like that. (At least, I sure hope he was joking…otherwise I don’t want to know.) So I treated it seriously and responded to it as such. I’d rather mistake on the side of taking something seriously I shouldn’t than blowing off something that is serious.
[This message has been edited by ekylo (edited 11-07-2001).]
quote:
Originally posted by ekylo:
Sorry, Rowena-san, I wasn't doing a dig against you since I like your reviews. I just thought it was odd for a site with numerous reviews on bishoujo games in English not to have some of the most recent ones. (And unfortunately, it looks like there's a possibility for Hentai Neko to go down. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/frown.gif[/img] )
Oh, don't worry. It looks like a miracle is coming to save Hentai Neko... He he he...
I'm not about to let it go down, not when I've seen so many people support it. In fact, I still have a barage of updates to put up on the weekend.
And Everett, I like your reviews (so you don't really have to be nervous...you write with what you feel). Thanks for sending them to me! ^_^
[This message has been edited by hentaineko (edited 11-07-2001).]
Errr, um…
while we’re on the topic of reviews, i’m looking for a few people to write reviews for me on Tokimeki Checkin and Snow Drop for my new bishoujo gaming site…i can’t pay you, but i’ll prominantly display your name or nic!
if you want to do this for me (it’d be a huge help, since programming the site is taking up all my time right now) email me at
BishoujoGaming@aol.com
my site is
www.adultsexhost.com/engbishoujo
Yaay, that is good news. I am making a review of X-change (I will make more) so I when it is finished I will let you know.
I don 't have much time to read all those reviews, lot 's of work to do for school lately.
[This message has been edited by Kurutsu (edited 11-07-2001).]
quote:
Originally posted by Kumiko Kamiyama:
Princess Maker 2 would not be a good choice to do too much reviewing on because it is not available to purchase - it never was, as was explained on the website of the company who licensed the game (see the non-adult forum topic for PM for more info.) It would be sort of like doing a review of a Japanese-only title... that's not much use for the English market, that's all, and doesn't help the companies trying to open the market here. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
Well I mentioned it mainly because it's listed on her site but she didn't have a review under it. Or if anything, a brief discussion on what happened to the game may be more appropriate. Hmm, and if you're sending those sample games to her, I might as well wait for her to review them herself, she writes better than I do. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
I can make a guide of X-change if somebody wants
Yup, just like Kumiko said, I mainly play the games because of the nice stories and the very good artwork.