Are they just a linear story or do they have multiple choice questions/different paths?
some are more linear than others, but they all have some choices.
Hourglass of Summer, Phantam of watchamacall it, Day of Love, they any good?
Hourglass of Summer is highly recommended by me.
Hourglass of Summer is the best of the group. The rest are all edited 
However, Tea Society of a Witch is decent. Phantam of Watchamacal is okay. I wish they hadn’t edited them though.
I have bought a copy of Hourglass on Hirameki’s summer bargain after repeated recommendations, but alas, I won’t have it in my hands for a long time (it had to be shipped to a US address and I won’t be able to pick it up until next month)
the biggest problem, as I hear, is that the DVDs sometimes don’t work as well as they should on different systems and players, and that getting the passwords that represent saved games is slow and painful and sometimes crashes.
(http://direct.hirameki-int.com/index.html is the summer dealie but the international shipping fee was HUJ so I got mine sent elsewhere and will get it later)
Wow! That is a nice deal. Is that site trustworthy?
My biggest problem with these games, is that I need to install DVD player software on my computer in order to play them. I didn’t realize this when I originally bought Hourglass of Summer. Does anyone happen to know some DVD player software I can get free? Or at least very cheap?
I don’t know what you mean by DVD player softwarre but these games don’t work right when I play them on my computer. I recommend doing it on a regular dvd player because I’ve heard many similar problems from other people who’ve attempted to play these games on pc.
Also, DetectiveConan, the site is trustworthy because you’re ordering directly from the publisher, Hirameki, themselves.
[ 08-08-2006, 07:08 PM: Message edited by: Mockingbird ]
I see, thank you.
That’s why I said it depends a lot on your system - for some people it works better in a real DVD player, for others it screws up in a real DVD player and works better with player software on the PC. Or so I’ve heard. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were part of the reason they gave up on the whole interactive DVD thing. 
Well, the save-code-routine of “Hourglass of summer” is really a special bitch.
None of the other DVD-player-game sever gavbe me troubles on my DVD-player-software, only this one though. The only way that I found for playingthe game and using the save-positions was using XP’s Windows Media Player instead of my usual DVD-playing-software.
… and of course, using a regular DVD-player was ruled out for me by living in Region-2 (Europe and Japan) and the DVD’s all being coded Region-1 (North-America)!
I tried Day of Love a while back, the dvd worked fine, and the codes to continue were just 2 numbers 
but of course it would be much better on a pc.
You could try Media Player Classic it’s free, and can play dvds.
Heh. Hourglass of Summer is just a great game wich i bought after watching the anime wich was produced out of one of its routes.
The only problem i have myself with the game would be that my DVD Player is not able to play the DVD cause it’s Region 1 coded and i have a Region 2 player ( wich is in some way a strange problem. cause if i remember correctly, it was statet that the game would be region free o.O )
Well at least, it runs just fine on my PC with PowerDVD or with mPlayer on Linux.
That reminds me, that i should get my lazy ass up and play the game. I still havent finished it :S
Actually most of the IDVD games that hirameki have released are region free but hourglass of summer is a region 1 disc (thank goodness I have a region free player)
Edited by Mystvan
[ 06-18-2007, 04:53 PM: Message edited by: Myst-Vearn (Mystvan) ]