That makes it an AVG (or ADV), not a VN. A VN is when the text is displayed over the full screen, ‡ la ToHeart.
Ah ok, I wasn’t aware of the difference - on the Lemmasoft forums, the term VN is used (incorrectly) to refer to any game that uses background+sprite+text gameplay. In reality, almost all of the games from there are AVGs.
sighs
IIRC, we talked about the matter in this board already, but, heck, to quote a post I made on the Ponju boards:
I mean, didn’t anyone on the Lemmasoft forums ever wondered why games on getchu (for instance) are marked as being ADV? Let’s take at random some new games: ?11eyes???, marked as a “???ADV”, ???2???, a “???AVG”, ??? -kiss on my deity-?, a “???ADV”, ???, a “???ADV”, ?G???, a “???ADV”, etc. In fact, just checking the upcoming games should be enough. Of course, checking in erogee magazines would give the same results.
Heh… the whole Dating Sim/Hentai Game/Ren’ai/ADV/Visual Novel confusion will never go away. :lol:
Major game magazines still lump them all under the classification of Dating Sim. Whenever I when to a production meeting, the executives always called them “dating sims” too. Given how badly the few attempts always fared profit wise, it was like a curse word (in their eyes these are titles like Thousand Arms and Brooktown High). 
I’ve given up on my Crusade to correct people what’s a VN or ADV… I just call 'em all dating sims (for non adult) and eroge (for adult). I know its insulting - its like calling Fire Emblem or Disgaea an RPG - but I’ve given up trying to swim up a waterfall. 
I was talking about Japanese erogee magazines, of course, the ‘erogee’ bit being a big hint.
I stopped fighting against the “hentai games” when it was about ren’ai games, but since the ren’ai fan community is emerging, I hope to correct the VN/ADV bit at least.
The term “Adventure game” has a fairly well-known meaning in English. It’s the term used for games that involve the player freely roaming around a map, solving puzzles without much time pressure. The term probably originates in the 1976-77 game Colossal Cave Adventure, and it applies well to a lot of games, including Zork, Space Quest, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Myst, just to name a few games in this genre.
These games tend to be quite different from what the Japanese call ADV games, and so it doesn’t make sense to overload the English term “Adventure Game” to include them. Instead, common usage is to overload the term Visual Novel to refer to both ADV-style and NVL-style games. That seems acceptable to me, as to me there isn’t much distinction between the two styles of game… in Ren’Py, going from one style to another can be a one line change.
The terms Dating Sim, Bishoujo Game, and Ren’Ai Game all seem to be orthogonal to the term visual novel. One could have a Dating Sim SHMUP or a Bishoujo Game RPG (Raidy?), for example.
This wouldn’t be the first Japanese term that changed meaning when imported into English: words like Otaku (english definition: anime fan) and Hentai (anime porn) both come to mind.
As a note, such games are commonly referred as “point-and-click” adventure games, because the concept of “adventure games” itself has evolved from then.
Why not? A definition evolves; the English term of “shooter”, for instance, evolved as “shooters” evolved along time, when remaining games “where you shoot stuff”.
Well, NVL being a subset of pure ADV, obviously both looks alike. OTOH, it just sounds wrong to me to call a “novel” something that doesn’t feel like it at all.
And we all know the hell that posed in the community for years, if only between the Japanese-proficient and non-Japanese proficient people.
No, actually, I wasn’t aware of that.
Well Colossal Cave Adventure probably predates the invention of the point-and-click metaphor, as do many other text adventures. But the fundamental thing that seems to define an adventure game is the ability to freely roam about, which isn’t really present in visual novels. (More precisely, visual novels tend to have a DAG-structured narrative, while adventure games have an arbitrary graph.)
But why? A visual novel is a fairly different medium from an adventure game, it makes sense to use different terms so we can distinguish them.
But that’s the thing… I don’t see how a game feels less like a novel because it’s presented a line at a time rather than a screen at a time. I don’t see Yume Miru Kusuri or Ever17 as any less novel-like than Kana and Crescendo. So I don’t have any problem calling all those games visual novels, as well as other games in the form.
I’ll also point out that while it’s easy to turn a nvl-mode game into an adv-mode game, or vice versa, it would be hard to turn an adventure game into a visual novel, or a visual novel into an adventure game, and something would be lost in either conversion. (There have been several instances of text adventure games turned into graphical ones.)
I don’t know about hell. Certainly Otaku and Hentai are (in the English usage) useful terms, as they convey a level of meaning that would otherwise take several words to express. It’s not like every English word borrowed by Japanese has its meaning kept completely intact.
You might already know this too, but Fate/stay night has a voice patch if you own Realta Nua thanks to the new patch…!
But, now I’m poor… after getting F/SN DVD, Realta Nua and the now out of print anime… :oops:
I think I might play Yin-Yang! X-Change… I only did one route so far~ It’s a pretty game, good art, good acting… I really like the first half more than the second 
When day to day events happened slowly; when things sped up and days and weeks passed at a time, I lost a little interest. But, enjoyed the ending~!
Either that or E17 or Uta now that I have voices…! Hmm…
As for the clarification discussion I’m being oblivious to uh… I like to think of VNs as digital stories with not much interaction except for a few choices here and there. I know that it is incorrect, but calling Utawarerumono a S-RPG is too much. Yes a quarter of the game includes a few strategy battles, but a majority of the game is something akin to an limited choice ADV if I understand correctly.
I’d rather see the game described as 25% S-RPG and 75% ADV, rather than being grouped into one or the other…
I think the term Visual Novel is less misleading to outsiders than Adventure Games. But then again more people are familiar with the term Adventure Games…
EDIT: Actually I don’t think I’m helping lol so just forget what I said…
Will check out the differences with the pc game of Popotan and the ps2 one. Just found a copy of the latter for under $45 (that includes S&H)
Terms vary depending on who’s using them and what’s standard usage within that group. Obviously, if you’re hanging out with people who speak Japanese, your usage of Japanese is going to differ from what’s used among groups of people who just love Hiro on Heroes or people who are hung up on an anime where some character ends every statement in “puu”.
I market Fatal Hearts as a “visual novel adventure” because it is an adventure game, it has puzzles, but it’s also using the text-and-sprite presentation of the japanese games. The average consumer may not know what ‘visual novel’ means precisely, but they can guess that it has something to do with reading and looking at pictures. 
If you try to market a VN-type without puzzles as an adventure game, you’re intentionally confusing people for no purpose other than your personal taste in language.
Sure, but my problem is that IMO language is for communication and it defeats that purpose to use the same words with different meanings, when it’s aimed to the same (limited) population – in our case, erogamers.
Yes, I did hear about this one, as well as the uncensored patch a few people have in the works.
Interesting! Now there’s something I didn’t know…
ToHeart2 -AnotherDays-.
Lain-sama, this is making soooo nostalgic and wanting to replay both ToHeart and ToHeart2! Of course, this feeling isn’t as good as when I played Triangle Hearts 2, then Triangle Hearts 3 ~Sweet Songs Forever~ then the toybox, then all the DVD omake, because for all its wonderfulness, the ToHeart franchise doesn’t succeed as well as the Triangle Hearts series as far as world integration and nostalgic feelings are concerned, but…
The Wired be compiled! How long was it since I first played ToHeart? Well over a decade! So, heh…
So… is Komaki Ikuno really a no win girl? I haven’t been following the news on this game, ever since hearing that. Figured it be like the Dies Irae thing and all that.
I should be picking it up sometime this year, but since it lacks twincest and/or violent sex, kinda on my “second tier” list.
That would be a waste.
Maybe she is one of that girls with a non-h route. I was told there’s a couple of them in this game.
Just finished the sagara family.
Good game… better than expected but it would have been far more enjoyable without the rapes (I will never stand that…) and with a real story.
It’s the first time I see animated H-scenes and I think it was a good idea to add something like that in the game.
Hum… now I’d like to play other games from the same creators…
If you want more animated games from ZYX, try DO YOU LIKE HORNY BUNNIES 1&2, if you didn’t yet. But don’t expect any plot. :roll:
CHAIN has some plot, but unfortunately has some rape scenes too. 
Absolutely avoid VIRGIN ROSTER and TSUKI, they’re rape fests with the former being far worse than the later. :shock:
The future release AMOROUS PROFESSOR CHERRY doesn’t look to have any rape scenes. Possible good material, just like SAGARA FAMILY.
Dunno if LIGHTING WARRIOR RAIDY is animated or not. :?