Tokimeki Memorial (video game)
The game is considered one of the major titles in the dating sim genre, and eschews the sexual content of other games in the genre. Gameplay. "Tokimeki Memorial" is a dating sim game in which the player controls a male freshman from Kirameki High School. The game is particularly notable for its "bomb" feature, where neglected, infrequently-dated girls would eventually become angry and gossip to their friends, severely reducing love meters across the board. In the middle of the game, when the number of known girls is high, these "bombs" became the primary concern of  the player, forcing careful planning and strategies like round-robin dating. Although the feature was still present in the later games, these games considerably reduced its importance and the difficulty in avoiding it. Players pick options as responses when promoted by the characters in the game. Development. The dating simulator genre was preceded by the raising simulation genre best codified by the "Princess Maker" series by Gainax, which focused on child raising rather than dating. Writer Koji Igarashi says when he was tasked with writing the story for the game, he got assistance from his girlfriend at the time who  would later become his wife. She gave him advice on how to write the story to the game, while he would play "", the game she was working on at the time. Igarashi requested to not work on a sequel to the game, and instead was allowed to request to work on the next "Castlevania" game instead. The goal of the developers was to hearken back to high school days. Konami director Akihiko Nagata said "the person who created the game wanted to have experiences like this back in his high school days". Release history. The original was released for the  PC Engine in 1994. It was remade as Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You on the PlayStation (1995), Sega Saturn (1996) and PC (1997) with a new opening video, improved graphics and sound, and new minigames. In 1996, it was ported to the Super Famicom as Tokimeki Memorial: Densetsu no Ki no Shita de, and although drastically reduced in graphic and sound quality (the only voice clips were available during loading), included an exclusive CD with a radio drama and new arrangement of the ending theme, "Futari no Toki", this time sung by the majority of the girls, instead of just  Shiori Fujisaki (the heroine of the first game). A fan translation of this version into English, re-titled Heartthrob Memorial: Under the Tree of Legends, was released in March 2022. In 1999, the game was ported again to the Game Boy Color in two versions, Tokimeki Memorial Sports Version: Kotei no Photograph and Tokimeki Memorial Culture Version: Komorebi no Melody, dividing 10 of the characters between the two games and adding three new winnable characters, Patricia McGrath, Naomi Munakata, and Kyoko Izumi. The Game Boy Color versions also featured a Beatmania mini-game, compatibility with the Super Game Boy, a  screen saver mode, and a two-player "versus" minigame. The game received a sequel the same year. Konami announced a mobile game version of "Tokimeki Memorial" for the i-mode mobile platform in 1999, and it was expected to release in January 2000. In 2004, "Tokimeki Memorial" was released for mobile phones in Japan, and in 2006, was ported to the PlayStation Portable portable system, which is virtually identical to the PlayStation version. In 2009, the PlayStation version of "Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You" was released on the Japanese PlayStation Store to celebrate the franchise's 15th anniversary. In 2017 , the release of the mobile game "Tokimeki Idol" was released. Reception. "Tokimeki Memorial" sold 1.1 million copies by 1996. The game, a classic of the dating sim genre, was voted as the 23rd Favorite video game of all-time in a 2006 reader poll by Japanese magazine "Famitsu". "Tokimeki Memorial" popularized the use of social statistics-raising mechanics in games for following decades. The game received a wave of notoriety in the west after a long form video essay by Tim Rogers went viral.