Re-releasing out-of-print games? Discuss

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

What do you think? We all wish we could play some of these out-of-print games that have become pretty much impossible to get nowadays, those who bought it presumably are keeping them, since I hardly see them surface on eBay or the sorts. When they do people jump all over them. I remember Jast setup a poll a while back to gauge interest, now that they have sales data from the re-releases of Milky House and Jast USA games, perhaps it’s time to put this on the table again. What do you think?

A short list of out-of-print games that have yet to be re-released are:

Cobra Mission (?)
Knights of Xentar [aka Dragon Knight 3] (Elf)
Mad Paradox (Queens-Soft)
Metal & Lace [aka Ningyou] (Forest)
Paradise Heights (Foster)
Return to Paradise Heights (Foster)
Ring Out! (ZyX)
Timestripper (? possibly Foster)
True Love (Software House Parsley)
Venus Select (Software House Parsley)

That’s all the Bishoujo games I know that have been out-of-print for a while, everyone is welcome to add more to this list.

Edited: added Cobra Mission and Knights of Xentar, as well as Metal & Lace and Mad Paradox

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 04-24-2003).]

#2

what is venus select? i have never heard of that one…i know of all the others though

#3
quote:
Originally posted by ladyphoenix:
what is venus select? i have never heard of that one....i know of all the others though

Venus Select was a collection of CGs, published by Software House Parsley, it was the sequel to the CG collection simply entitled Venus. Not much is known about this title, because it's also not available for perusal on Foster's own website since it's an old title.

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 04-24-2003).]

#4

Since it appears to be out of print, I guess you could add GinIro - The Color Silver (NekoNeko) to the list.

#5
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
[B]Paradise Heights (Foster)
Return to Paradise Heights (Foster)
Ring Out! (ZyX)
Timestripper (?)
True Love (Software House Parsley)
Venus Select (Software House Parsley)

[B]

Argh, I have five of those (all except Venus Select). I could be sitting on an absolute goldmine. So, nobody re-release them until I've decided whether or not to sell them!

Incidentally, I think Timestripper is by Foster, as that's where the installed files are on my machine (along with Paradise Heights).


#6

Honestly I have to say that I think that a release of for example Paradise Heights and it’s sequel would be meaningless - I don’t think pure ADV’s are too popular here, and I never thank Paradise Heights was very popular. I think True Love is the only among those it might actually be worth a try to re-release. It’s after all one of the very few sims that has reached the english market so far, and it’s still a pretty well-liked game even today, so…

#7

i didn’t play the original paradise heights, but i have the sequel, and it blew ropey goat chunks, in all honesty…it was one of the first bishoujo games i ever bought, and it very nearly turned me off to the whole genre (the saving grace was that i bought True Love at the same time)

True Love is the only title in that list (and Gin-Iro, if you add that to the list) that is worth re-releasing in my opinion, and on that note, i think it would do wonderfully if it were to be released again, maybe with the updated compatibility and graphics like the Jast Memorial Collection has

#8

Thing about True Love is, it’s from Software House Parsley, and they publish unbelievably few Bishoujo games, I’m guessing their capital is rather small, if you go to their page you will see they have only about 1 game a year, and that was true even for their old staff. Right now they’re building on the success of their Diablo-like/Brave Soul like RPG and making sequels for it, but the last installment of this was in 2000, and this year they are only coming out with the third installment, a space of three years in between. I wonder how willing they are to have this one republished.

In any case, I’ve been looking at the movies and demos they have posted, and they look nice. Not utilizing the best sprite rendering effects, but it gets the job done, it has kick ass music from I’ve, very cute girls and very good voice acting.

Sonic Princess is a shooter. Here’s the Sonic Princess Demo Movie link, the first one is from the main site and the second is from the mirror site.

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 04-24-2003).]

#9
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
I wonder how willing they are to have this one republished.

Perhaps, the problem would be: How willing would they be to re-engineer the game's engine for XP- and Longhorn-compatibility.
Only reprinting the already existing product shouldn't be such a problem, after all. But since the game is quite old, it's engine should have similar problems as the old engine of LMM.

... but probably, it should work in Win95-compatibility-mode under XP. That would make things more likely for a comeback of "True Love".

#10
quote:
Originally posted by ladyphoenix:
i didn't play the original paradise heights, but i have the sequel, and it blew ropey goat chunks, in all honesty....it was one of the first bishoujo games i ever bought, and it very nearly turned me off to the whole genre (the saving grace was that i bought True Love at the same time)

That's a, er, interesting image. And just be happy you didn't play the original. Not good at all... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]

Hmm, the only other titles I can kinda think of are Cobra Mission (or something) and Knights of Xentar, but even those really aren't worth re-releasing either.

#11

There’s Metal & Lace. by the same ppl who released Cobra mission and Xentar. I think that might be the first bishoujo game that I bought. Man that sure was a while ago.

#12

Ooo, yeah megatech released power dollas, Knights of xentar, Cobra missions and Metal and lace. I have all 4 of them with the nr-18 patches. I’ve ran knights of xentar and cobra mission on 2k. I can get the voice to run for a little while on 2k then it craps out for some reason, but the midi plays fine. I haven’t tried metal lace or powerdolls on 2k yet though. Well powerdolls wasnt really a b-game though so I guess it doesn’t count.

[This message has been edited by smog (edited 04-24-2003).]

#13

I forgot names of unpublish games from Otaku Publishment (sp)

Two or three games did not release yet.

#14
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
Thing about True Love is, it's from Software House Parsley, and they publish unbelievably few Bishoujo games, I'm guessing their capital is rather small, if you go to their page you will see they have only about 1 game a year, and that was true even for their old staff. Right now they're building on the success of their Diablo-like/Brave Soul like RPG and making sequels for it, but the last installment of this was in 2000, and this year they are only coming out with the third installment, a space of three years in between. I wonder how willing they are to have this one republished.

In any case, I've been looking at the movies and demos they have posted, and they look nice. Not utilizing the best sprite rendering effects, but it gets the job done, it has kick ass music from I've, very cute girls and very good voice acting.

Sonic Princess is a shooter. Here's the Sonic Princess Demo Movie link, the first one is from the main site and the second is from the mirror site.


[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 04-24-2003).]

Hey Bokmeow Parsley's going to be releasing a new Labyrinth game called Type S later this year. (Desert Time Fantasy and Phantom Knight are the other two games in the series)

#15

Yeah, I played the demo of Desert Time, it seems like a lot of fun, a blend of walking around exploration plus non realtime battle, when you encounter enemies you take turns whacking each other. The girls are cute, it kind of looks like the original artists are still all there, they look very similar to the girls drawn in True Love, which I dug a lot, although sometimes the faces were a little bit putty like. But as I was saying, Software House Parsley release very few games, I’m guessing the people who work for the companies all have day jobs, salarymen by day, bishoujo game programmers and artists by night.

#16