That is basically the reason. It was translated when GC was an independent company. They went under, and Peter bought them up.
Peter’s got a very low tolerance for loli content, so the game was discontinued.
Eh, wasn’t this just a case of the contract just expiring, rather than a discontinuation based on the loli content? I mean, it’s a pretty old game, and it’s been around here in the west for awhile–The game itself was made in 2003, GCollections released it here in 2004, and it was delisted in 2009. That’s a pretty long time for a print run, especially for the VN market here. By the time it was delisted, it had already been 2 years since Peter acquired GC.
Plus, didn’t Zerocool become defunct? I thought they had a website of their own, but I can’t seem to find it. Erogescape lists them as having released only two games in its existence, with the most recent one being in 2004.
Don’t expect games with loli to come out from any company controlled by Peter Payne.
Mangagamer, on the other hand, isn’t affiliated with Peter at all. You might want to check their catalog.
And while yes, JKC disappearing in 2009 is probably a function of “that’s when the game sold out” … many other titles that are in similar situations are still in print. Sweet Basil is gone, but Snow Drop is still available for sale, in both download and CD ROM editions. And Snow Drop is like the second game ever released by Peach Princess. GC’s game DOR (a truly ancient game) is still available in download form. Yet JKC is discontinued.
What about Demonbane?
You’ve overanalyzing this. I wouldn’t be suprised if those other games disappeared in a few years as well. The disappearance of a licensor does not inherrenty invalidate a contract to an existing license–It means that if JAST has to renew the license, they won’t be able to do it again. It’s also possible that Zerocool became disinterested in giving out licenses, or GC’s sales of the title might have not even been high enough to justify a renewal.
True enough. Jast has also sold Nocturnal Illusion. So I guess I should clarify.
The loli in question in Jewel Knight Crusaders is extremely loli. Demonbane focuses on a strong story, and loli content isn’t the focus: a strong story decreases the likelihood of legal trouble (due to the obscenity standard). JKC is basically a yarugee and heavily emphasises the loli h-content, and IMO, should a prosecutor find out about the game, it might cause a prosecution. Jast USA and J-List both avoid stocking items that might cause legal issues.
If you’re a fan of loli h-content, and you want very young-looking characters, you are probably not going to find what you’re looking for in Jast USA products.
I doubt that I am. Download editions of titles can remain available indefinitely, so long as whoever owns the rights is still around. And (if I’m understanding this right) the Japanese holding company that started G-C is still around; they just haven’t got any developers anymore. Games like DOR are still available in download form; the CD-ROM versions were discontinued, probably for low sales.
I highly doubt games like DOR and the original X-change (which are both unvoiced) would sell better than JKC; and almost every other title from the G-C catalog has been made available as a downloadable title. In fact, I think JKC is the only flat-out discontinued game in the entire GC lineup.
The contract rights to the downloadable GC titles might even be renegotiated as a block. It makes sense; they’re all old games. It makes sense to leave them in print - even a very low number of copies is still pure profit. But it doesn’t make sense to waste a lot of time arguing over individual games.
Yes, it is true a lot of the older games are being discontinued on CD-ROM as the final print run sells out, due to age and slowing sales. There’s even a sticky thread listing them. However, every single game that has had physical copies discontinued, was shifted to digital download-only. With three exceptions: Jewel Knights Crusaders, and the two Memorial Collections (Milky House and Jast USA). And Jast is planning on eventually relaunching the Memorial Collections as downloadables, there are just technical issues with such old games that are holding this up.
That leaves JKC in a crowd by itself.
So how exactly are you even sure the loli content in JKC is the reason why it was discontinued in the first place? The title was discontinued nearly two years after JAST got GC’s titles (he could’ve discontinued it as soon as he got the company), and it happened a year before the Rapelay scandal and the Handley verdict was announced (when the shit truly hit the fan). Did he even say anything other than the fact that it’s going to be discontinued?
We don’t know what went down with Zerocool. They weren’t even around in 2008-2009, so even if JAST wanted to continue releasing it, they wouldn’t be able to negotiate with them to renew the license or modify it to allow for a digital release (you can’t legally make a digital release if the licensing contract only covers a physical release). Also, if I recall correctly, JAST doesn’t even have its own programmers, so if they wanted to convert a game to a digital format (with the appropriate DRM), they would need technical assistance from the programmers who work for the original developer/publisher–If they’re no longer around, how would JAST be able to do the digital conversion on its own?
You’re looking too far into Hisui’s route–If extremely controversial content is the only surefire thing that could prevent a reprint or a digital release, then why didn’t Pete discontinue the scat-ridden Water Closet? You really think he considers that sort of that stuff any less questionable or legally safer than loli?ll
Hell, what prevented JAST from just removing/censoring Hisui’s scenes if it’s such an issue? I recall hearing that GC initially intended to do so when they acquired the license to the game way back (before they changed their mind).
X-Change and X-change R should be discontinued and replaced with the “R” versions, with voice and improved graphics. It really wouldn’t take too much work, since most of the script is the same as the original game.
my guess is they are just out and trying to get to a new download version ready
It’s pretty clear JAST has an aversion for loli content. Luckily, they’re still releasing games like Demonbane and Family Project, which can be considered borderline (and even Sumaga was deemed “probably acceptable”). There’s also Mangagamer, who have shown with titles like Shuffle and Koihime Musou that they’re willing to release games with strong loli content.
But we should face the facts that JAST will not release a loli-focused game in the current political climate. While Mangagamer is coming close with Koihime Musou, even they will probably shy away from games like Nanami to Konomi no Oshiete A.B.C: http://www.getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=202001 . It’s just how the politics of the situation pan out. As long as the average person thinks lolicon materials cause sexual crimes against children (and by extension, permitting laws to be passed without challenge that stigmatize it), you’re not going to see such games distributed in legitimate channels. It doesn’t matter that there’s little rational reason (e.g., evidence of harm) to ban such materials. You don’t need a rational argument when emotional appeals suffice, as evidenced by statements like this (a quote from a thread I was following on another forum):
You do realize the guy who created 2girls1cup was arrested and fined due to obscenity violations, right?
Sure. Perhaps they wouldn’t release any new titles with that sort of content as of right now. Heck, that’s why I won’t consider buying Demonbane until it’s confirmed devoid of edits/censorship. They’ve shown that they have the potential to mess with content, and their recent delay of Demonbane only increases that risk, since prolonging the release schedule means they have a bigger window of opportunity to do edit content should anything new occur (KK would’ve never been censored had they not delayed its release for an entire fucking year).
However, we’re not talking about the current “political environment”. JKC was discontinued in January 2009, even before the “political climate” got to where it was now. That’s why I’m highly skeptical that the loli content was the sole factor in its discontinuation.
Despite their aversion to such content, JAST had been selling the game for two years after they absorbed GCollections. On top of that, Zerocool (the original creator) has shown no signs of being in business at all–Their website has been down for years, and all the eroge listings show that they haven’t even released a single title since 2004. According to Getchu, Zerocool’s entire lineup only consists of two games, one of which happens to be JKC. There probably was something going on behind the scenes as opposed to just JAST discontinuing it “because of the loli”–How could have JAST been in any position to make a license renegotiation if Zerocool wasn’t in business? If it really was the case, every other game with similar loli content would be discontinued.
Hell, when I went to Katsucon 2010 earlier this year, I even saw some remaining copies of JKC being sold in plain sight at a stand that sells JAST/GC games, despite this so-called “political climate”. Why do you guys get so obsessed with politics, anyways?
Besides, it wasn’t even a loli-focused game to begin with–There were three other characters with gigantic breasts.
Heh, I wonder if those were the same ones I saw at Comic Con this year. Gotta agree though that it’s unlikely that it’s due to politics in this case. In fact, considering it’s been out of print as long as it has and they still have copies for conventions, I have to wonder if another reason might simply be that the game didn’t do that well in the first place. Of course we’ll never know for sure considering they won’t release sales data so that’s just speculation.
I’m pretty sure there are no Jast/PP/G-C games with characters as loli as the one in JKC. She’s quite young-looking in comparison to the other characters in that game. Her character design, juxtaposed against the others, makes her look very young.
(I just looked it up to be sure, and I was misremembering slightly – I was under the impression the loli in that game was totally flat-chested; I was incorrect.)
If you can point to a game that’s still in print that has a similar heavily-loli character, then that will of course be different. But I don’t think there are any.
Edit: Of course, there’s Matsuri in Family Project. That’s the game Jast censored, and even so, there’s no sleeping with Matsuri while she’s still underaged.
And in the original Come See Me Tonight, Kobato’s normal character design is quite young, but in the h-scenes, she’s normally-aged.
?? POV summaries of JAST/GC/PP-localised games (incl. upcoming) from EGS:
??? ???(??? ???) (D.O.???) ? 64?POV???
?? 136? A 111? B 15? C 10?
??? (NitroPlus) ? 21?POV???
?? 58? A 46? B 10? C 2?
??? (ruf) ? 4?POV???
?? 21? A 12? B 8? C 1?
PRINCESS WALTZ (PULLTOP) ? 5?POV???
?? 6? A 3? B 1? C 2?
??? (apricot)
???3??A?1??B?1??C?1?
??? ??? (ETERNAL) ? 2?POV???
???2??A?2??B?0??C?0?
??? (ZyX)
???2??A?1??B?0??C?1?
???BLAZE (TOP)
???2??A?0??B?2??C?0??
???2 (TOP)
???1??A?1??B?0??C?0?
?? ??? (D.O.???) ? 1?POV???
???1??A?0??B?0??C?1?
???(???)
???1??A?0??B?0??C?1??
A little surprised none of the Crowd games registered at all. Weren’t people here complaining about a loli being censored from XC3? Apparently nobody on EGS even noticed the loli. ‘How to ??? ???’ has the POV tag but as far as I can tell JAST/GC/PP haven’t localised it (can be difficult to tell, though, because they change the names quite often)
What struck me about the game was the unavoidable protagonist rape in the beginning. The combination of protagonist rape and loli was a bit unsettling, and actually turned me off the game. From what I can tell, Jewel Knights Crusaders is in a league of its own as far as offensive potential goes. Also from what I can tell, it doesn’t have redeeming factors such as a plot basis / strong story that “justify” the content (e.g., the rape scene in Crescendo).
It would be useful if you also included the number of people who voted on the game, since popular games will obviously have more POV points.
Err, Virgin Roster, Tsuki Possession and Teacher 2 have gone also.
The protagonist rape theory was what I had in mind when I saw Virgin Roster, Tsuki and Teacher 2 went missing. The case with JKC might be the same.
On the other hand, there are protagonist rape scenes in Idols Galore as well, so… Do you guys think this title will also go missing?
Eh, I’m not fully sure about that theory either. Hitomi’s still available on PP and Sensei 2 is available in JList as a downloadable title.
Sensei 2 had some pretty realistic rape scenes if I do say so myself. Come to think about it, practically all the scenes in that game are nonconsensual and inflicted by the protagonist. If graphic unavoidable protagonist rape is grounds for putting a game out of print, Sensei 2 should have gone first, and it hasn’t happened.
Yeah, it hardly seems likely, but I’d like to add another point: in Tsuki and Virgin Roster, rape is basically the whole point, while in Sensei 2, Hitomi and Idols Galore it is not the main idea, even though it ends up this way. I was actually pretty pissed when I got Idols Galore, cause I didn’t expect it to be so heavy on rape scenes.
Uh, now I realize that my point makes little sense since JKC is also not solely rape-themed. Oops. Either way, all games listed above are the ones I hope to never see again.
Rape bus. That is all.