Because it is my avatar, I feel a slight obligation to answer your question. But I have to warn you in advance: the answer (particulary the last paragraph) will not please you.
The game’s name is ““√∑¬ë√å”]¬à√ö” (read: Nikutaiteni). That name roughly translates to “Body Exchange”. The game was released by “Silky’s” in 2003.
Actually, according to your other questions, this game might even be right up your alley:
It is a highschool-setting, an interesting tangle of relationships and even involves gender-bender - though it doesn’t really work here like in X-Change.
There are 5 main characters in this story - and the player chooses at the beginning of the beginning of the game whose point of view he wants to take.
However, at the beginning of the first playthrough, only one of these five characters is accessible. The others become only accessible after in previous playthroughs certain conditions have been met.
Game mechanics look at the beginning quite standard: read the text and at certain points choose one out of usually thre alternatives. However, because the story consists of encounters between the characters and every character has in his or her scenario an own set of decisions, we see sometimes for the character that “our” character only talks with, pop up the selection of choices too - and we see which choice the other character (thus the game-engine) picks - and sometimes, that decision of the engine is influenced by decisions that the player made for “his” character before.
Enough about mechanics! Now the most important part: the story and the characters.
Three of the main-characters are connected in a triangular relationship since their early Childhood: Yoshimi, Miho and Kenichi are childhood-friends with Yoshimi being a year older than the other two. Now, while Kenichi is used to respect Yoshi-nee (that’s how Miho and Kenichi are used to call Yoshimi) like an older sister, he recently came to feel about her as well as Miho in another way than before - and this change of mind is mutual. Though Kenichi hasn’t yet decided for himself whom he likes more, both girls look up tpo each other for different reasons: Yoshimi feels inferior to Miho regarding sexual appeal (Yoshimi actually is a tomboy with short red hair) as well as the fact that Miho was so far in that triangle closer to Kenichi, while Miho thinks of herself as more childish than the more mature (and also more busty) Yoshi-nee plus Yoshimi is better in cooking.
Another main character is Hikaru, who is one year younger than Kenichi and Miho. She belongs to the same after-lesson-club as Kenichi and secretly is infatuated with him.
The fifth main character (Takahito) is a member of the same club, but usually tends to keep to himself. He has no sense of humor and seems rather cold/unsociable.
Besides those main characters, there are also many side-cast characters. The character that I chose as my avatar is one of them: Mimi. She is a very close friend of Hikaru and supports her in her quest for Kenichi’s heart.
Other side-characters are Miho’s cute little sister Konomi, Yoshimi’s best female friend Yukino and Touko-sensei, the advisory teacher of Kenichi, Hikaru and Takahito’s after-lesson-club.
Speaking of after-lesson-activities: Miho, Yoshimi, Yukino and Mimi together are group who aspire to become the pop-idols of the school. Alas they are currently overshadowed by the fame of another idol-group at the same school (who actually doesn’t appear in this game at all).
The story starts at a weekend-day close to the summer-holidays. While our pop-idols-to-come can use at that day the music-room for their own practices without the still-star-group interfering, Touko-sensei announced for her group the unveiling of an ancient relic that another teacher discovered.
A series of events (that range between comical and dramatical) lead to the unvealing of the relict with only our five main characters being present in the room, while the others are somewhere else on the schoolground. And besides just taking a good look at the artifact, these five even accidentally completed the ritual to activate it - which results in the schoolbuilding and everybody inside it being put into another reality where nothing outside the school’s fences exists and the five people who were present in the room occasionally und uncontrollably swap their bodies. For example, right after the relic has been activated (and vanished during that activation), Kenichi’s conscience awaked in Yoshimi’s body, while Miho’s ego was in Kenichi’s body and Yoshimi’s in Miho’s.
While these things already are inconvenient enough, there still is more: outside the schoolgates, there is only a mist visible - and as Touko-sensei explained after the event happend, everybody who ever enters that mist will disappear without trace. However, while time passes, the mist draws closer to the building and in the end will probably swallow it.
Thus, our antagonists have to deal with different bodies - as well as the fact that another one temporarily inhabits one’s own body. That may not sound too spectacular - at least until the first one (actually Kenichi in Yoshimi’s body) feels the urge of his body’s bladder! Things go even more sexual from here - even more because of the fact that the certain death by the touch of the misc is closing in during the following 48 hours. True love and carnal desires blend into an exiting spectacle.
So far the good news about this game. Now the paragraph with the bitter news: because this game is already more than 4 years old (release date: February 2003), it can only be obtained in used-game-shops or online-auctions - and the next even more painful one: it is not localized to the english language. It only exists as its japanese original. And hence there is yet no commonly known affiliation between ELF/Silky’s and the Payne-Empire, I fear there is no much hope for this ever coming over.
[ 10-04-2007, 03:41 PM: Message edited by: Unicorn ]
and it’s making me reallllly sad.
, I still remember your old reviews