http://www.gae.co.jp/game/cosmetick_2/index.html
This title is being released in May as Imagine: Makeup Artist. Its a Global A game – the My World My Way folks. I have a sneaking guess Imagine Boutique Owner might be Happy My Sweets, another Global A game where you play a young girl running a bakery/curio shop.
that would be nice to see a major game developer release a few of these games but will they release the any with mature content(h-scenes)
Certainly not with the Imagine games since their bread and butter audience in the states are 8 year old girls willing to accept a ‘new’ version of petz – or a petz ripoff ever 2-3 months.
I do certainly think ubisoft would have a broader market for some of these if they only marketed them better. Then again for every real game with an imagine title there are 3-4 pet vet games. The ice skating and ballet titles are actually from the kira kira princess/otohime debut line of games from cave, but unless you knew that, there’s nothing to inform you of it. You just would need to know what you are looking at with a screen shot or two or with the small global a or spike name printed under ubi’s on the back.
Surprisingly, the sequel to Imagine: Master Chef was released by ubi as something named “Happy Cooking” wonder if in that case the JP licensor asked for some differentiation.
It certainly may seem odd for a guy to post about such titles and even play them, but if word gets out that there is an audience beyond children for such games then a jump from here to say Memories Off or the Ever 17 line done for the PSP becomes more viable. For every time a company takes a chance down this route, they do something stupid – the engine for Tokimeki Memo being used for Brooktown High or serious translation/editing issues with Lux Pain or Jake Hunter.
Of course what I am really hoping for is Atlus or NIS to take a on say Tears to Tiara…I think the upcoming holiday release in the states of Sakura Taisen 5 will be a determiner if such things as that have hope.
I know I would feel less dorky about playing the figure skating and dancing games if they weren’t stuck under the Imagine label.
Also, if they didn’t still kinda suck. Princess Debut is a nice improvement over the skating game, but it’s still painfully repetitive and not challenging in the right ways, and the skating game was more so. Of course, the real reason I gave up playing Imagine Figure Skater was blogged here…
(I did spot the Ballet Star game when I was searching for girl games that mainstream people tend not to review and figured it was from the same line, but I’d never heard anyone talk about it.)
Papillon said,
Yeah, that’s annoying. Even though there’s more than a few girl-friendly and family-friendly games in English these days, they don’t receive much press. This is a problem that’s echoed in TVTropes’ entry “Most Gamers are Male.” Gaming fandom is sort of what anime fandom would’ve been if there was no Fushigi Yugi, no Utena, no Cardcaptor Sakura…
Michelous said,
No, I don’t think the DS games in question got a CERO B or C rating in Japan.
I just glanced over Global A’s company entry on GameFAQs. The company has published a variety of games, from several Dungeon Maker games to a Cho Aniki game. Their game Cosmetic Paradise is already scheduled for localization, but the site doesn’t say which company.
Meanwhile, the entry on GameFAQs for Imagine Makeup Artist just states that the developer is Ubisoft. So I’m not sure if it’s connected to Happy My Sweets.
Makeup Artist is definitely Cosmetic Paradise 2, sorry if I confused with my initial post. I’ve got the display artwork at the shop to prove it. Still trying to confirm what Boutique Owner is or is not. Only based the hypothesis on the game description, the time frame around Makeup Artist and that Happy My Sweets was ALSO rumored to be in localization.