Bishoujo Games

Seeing a lot of annoying arguments on the net (ten years after I thought the argument was settled) about what constitutes a ‘bishoujo game’ and/or some other word typically used to describe bishoujo games. Here’s the break-down for everyone who’s late to the party.

Visual Novel: Any ‘game’ that’s basically an interactive story- photos, text, and sometimes audio and even animations. Interactions are usually just a handful of pop-up options that are given to you when you reach certain ‘forks’ in the story (the options available might be something like “walk home”, “pick up groceries”, “visit the planetarium”, etc…). Depending on the choices you make, the events that occur through the storyline can be completely different. Think of it as a visual representation of “choose your own adventure” children’s novels if you’ve ever read one.

Ren’ai Game: Romance/Love Game, also called ‘Dating Sims’ in the states- this is a subcategory of visual novels in which the goal is to achieve ‘dating’ status with one of the characters. These games can be either romantic or sexual in nature, or both.

Bishoujo Game: Also called ‘Galge’ or ‘Gal Games’. ‘Bishoujo’ means ‘beautiful girl’ and so a bishoujo game is a subcategory of dating sim in which the goal as a male protagonist is to date one of several beautiful girls/women available in the game. There’s a secondary category to this called a GL Game (Girl’s Love or Yuri Game) in which both the protagonist and available partners for her are female.

Bishounen Game: These types of games come in two varieties- Otome (Maiden) Games, also called GxB for GirlXBoy, and Boy’s Love (BL) Games. The former refers to the reversal of a bishoujo games, the player is in the role of a female protagonist that is trying to achieve a romance status with one of several male characters in the game. The latter, Boy’s Love (or Yaoi Game), refers to a game in which both the protagonist and his romantic interests are male.

Eroge: A catch-all terms that refers to any anime-style game that has heavy sexual content- short for Erotic Game. H-Game, Ecchi Game, and Hentai Game are all different ways of saying it, but although this includes adult-oriented visual novels, it’s by no means limited to them, and can be used to refer to games in many other genres as well, such as fighting games, shooters, etc…

So, to simplify things for everyone who is now thoroughly confused, it’s quite possible for a title to fit into more than one of these categories, especially seeing as how many are sub-categories of something else. The game Crescendo, as an example, is an eroge, visual novel, dating sim, AND a bishoujo game. If you were to translate each of those, in a sense, you see that the game is an adult only (eroge) visual novel that features dating (dating sim) young beautiful girls (bishoujo game).

Hope this clears some things up.

~Misk

[PERMALINK] - @1 year ago with 1 note
(± )
#bishoujo game #ren'ai game #dating sim #eroge #video games #visual novel 

Some screens from the Fate/Stay Night reproduction movie. For those who don’t know, Fate/Stay Night is a visual novel from TypeMoon (ie: interactive story game) that allows you make choices to influence how the story will progress, and ultimately end. This was later made into a 24 episode anime series using the main path (the ‘true ending’) to the game, though a bit was changed/left out to make the story flow better in the new format. A Fate/Stay Night movie was just released in theatres in Japan last week called ‘Unlimited Blade Works’ that follows a different ‘game path’ from the one originally used for the anime, and in preparation for that they made the ‘reproduction movie’, which sums up the animated series in two hours so people wouldn’t have to have played the original game, or watched the original anime, in order to follow along with the movie.

I’m typically not a fan of ‘shortened version movies’, especially after Air TV and countless others amongst my favourite titles were made forcefully into movies that weren’t nearly as good as the originals. My opinion on this one isn’t much different sadly- it’s about eight times faster moving than the TV series, and there were already things cut out from the plot when making the game into an anime to begin with. In other words, there’s a crapload of stuff you’re missing. That’s fine if you’re using the movie as a refresher and don’t have time to replay / rewatch the originals, but as an introduction to the story this is a terrible choice in my opinion. That said, there’s a few new scenes and sequences if you don’t blink and miss them, and the opening/ending songs are great (the OP is the same song from the TV series, but a different version, and the ending is completely new).

That’s really all I have to say about it- I can’t wait to watch ‘Unlimited Blade Works’ though, I hope they make it as good in movie format as the path was in the game.

[PERMALINK] - @2 years ago with 1 note
(± )
#anime #Fate/Stay Night #Fate/Stay Night TV Reproduction #bishoujo game 
Bishoujo Games

Seeing a lot of annoying arguments on the net (ten years after I thought the argument was settled) about what constitutes a ‘bishoujo game’ and/or some other word typically used to describe bishoujo games. Here’s the break-down for everyone who’s late to the party.

Visual Novel: Any ‘game’ that’s basically an interactive story- photos, text, and sometimes audio and even animations. Interactions are usually just a handful of pop-up options that are given to you when you reach certain ‘forks’ in the story (the options available might be something like “walk home”, “pick up groceries”, “visit the planetarium”, etc…). Depending on the choices you make, the events that occur through the storyline can be completely different. Think of it as a visual representation of “choose your own adventure” children’s novels if you’ve ever read one.

Ren’ai Game: Romance/Love Game, also called ‘Dating Sims’ in the states- this is a subcategory of visual novels in which the goal is to achieve ‘dating’ status with one of the characters. These games can be either romantic or sexual in nature, or both.

Bishoujo Game: Also called ‘Galge’ or ‘Gal Games’. ‘Bishoujo’ means ‘beautiful girl’ and so a bishoujo game is a subcategory of dating sim in which the goal as a male protagonist is to date one of several beautiful girls/women available in the game. There’s a secondary category to this called a GL Game (Girl’s Love or Yuri Game) in which both the protagonist and available partners for her are female.

Bishounen Game: These types of games come in two varieties- Otome (Maiden) Games, also called GxB for GirlXBoy, and Boy’s Love (BL) Games. The former refers to the reversal of a bishoujo games, the player is in the role of a female protagonist that is trying to achieve a romance status with one of several male characters in the game. The latter, Boy’s Love (or Yaoi Game), refers to a game in which both the protagonist and his romantic interests are male.

Eroge: A catch-all terms that refers to any anime-style game that has heavy sexual content- short for Erotic Game. H-Game, Ecchi Game, and Hentai Game are all different ways of saying it, but although this includes adult-oriented visual novels, it’s by no means limited to them, and can be used to refer to games in many other genres as well, such as fighting games, shooters, etc…

So, to simplify things for everyone who is now thoroughly confused, it’s quite possible for a title to fit into more than one of these categories, especially seeing as how many are sub-categories of something else. The game Crescendo, as an example, is an eroge, visual novel, dating sim, AND a bishoujo game. If you were to translate each of those, in a sense, you see that the game is an adult only (eroge) visual novel that features dating (dating sim) young beautiful girls (bishoujo game).

Hope this clears some things up.

~Misk

[PERMALINK] - 1 year ago
#bishoujo game #ren'ai game #dating sim #eroge #video games #visual novel 
[PERMALINK] - 2 years ago
#anime #Fate/Stay Night #Fate/Stay Night TV Reproduction #bishoujo game