№ 35: Tokimeki Memorial Taisen Puzzle-dama (1995, Konami) — Arcade Apocalypse Ochimonogatari
Channel: bedsores
Date: 2023-10-11

we treat ourselves to girls, girls, girls -- as gorgeously rendered on the Sega Saturn. we close-read the illegible, we play the unplayable, and i get to throw in a reference to a toonami spot most of you are too young to remember. streamed 9/20/23

Although the arcade can be only a pale imitation of the Saturn version: wow!! Some of the best presentation and writing i can imagine in a puzzle game, sullied and scrambled by the truly awful puzzle mechanics for anyone placing in more than a passing interest. Konami was pumping out TPD games at an alarming rate, and everyone was copying them, but it wasn't *it*. It's a cash-grab series that took an exit off the puzzle highway to a one-way dead-end road. People learned, as time passed, not to go there. I only rarely get an urge to replay a game while editing, but I find myself lusting for the progression, the characterization seeping through each scene of this game, sad as i would be to reply through the dull ball game. Each girl begins in a tokimeki state, and proceeds through a series of challenges to deliver her letter of confession to her true love. I thought during stream that the girls were fighting over the main character, but in normal mode mostly they're just hanging out, talking shit, and finding pretenses to puzzle battle. It's an honest, refreshing joy to see them pass the bechdel test with such flying colors, and I wish I could hang out with them! But taisen puzzle-dama is, at the end of the day, unhangoutitudinous.

miharu pic by moksha. art of me by Minasheep! (https://twitter.com/lammyheaven, https://twitch.tv/minasheep) next up is № 36: (1995, Metro). i hope you'll join us!