Bishōjo game
A bishōjo game or gal game is "a type of Japanese video game centered on interactions with attractive girls".
Bishōjo games are similar to Choose Your Own Adventure books in the way of narrative, in which the game tells a story but the player may make choices to change how the story flows.
History
1980s
Bishōjo games began to appear in Japan in the beginning days of personal computers. The first bishōjo game commercialized in Japan appeared in 1982 as Night Life by Koei. The first bishōjo games were not too popular,. At the beginning of the genre, almost all the games were pornographic.A notable landmark was Jast's Tenshitachi no gogo, a precursor to the modern dating simulation. Among early bishōjo adventure games it had a degree of polish that previous games lacked. It was also the first to have recognizably modern anime-style artwork: its characters had very large eyes and a tiny nose and mouth but were otherwise basically normally proportioned, characteristics which today are found in virtually all bishōjo games. Prior to 1985, girls were generally drawn either as normally proportioned adults or super deformed children.
1990s
The industry gradually moved away from proprietary Japanese hardware to the burgeoning MS-DOS platform, and then later in the decade to Windows. Throughout the nineties, bishōjo games underwent an evolution from being one of the most technologically demanding types of games to one of the least. Thus, more than regular games, the main employees required by bishōjo game companies today are not programmers, but artists and writers.In the early nineties the atmosphere in Japan became more and more hostile towards bishōjo games. In 1989 serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki was arrested and was revealed to be a consumer of lolicon manga, causing widespread opposition to pornographic manga, otaku and anything similar. In November 1991 there was an incident where a middle-schooler shoplifted an adult bishōjo game Saori: the House of Beautiful Girls, resulting in increased police scrutiny for makers and retailers. Several prefectures began classifying games as obscene and pulling them off the shelves.
Faced with the threat of being forcibly censored out of existence by the government, in 1992 the bishōjo game industry formed the Computer Software Rinri Kikō, setting industry guidelines for acceptable content and packaging. This organization tamed down the most objectionable content in the "wild west" of the 1980s. Thus free from controversy and fueled by continuing improvement in technology, in the 1990s the bishōjo game industry underwent a decade-long boom.
The first major title of the 1990s was Tokimeki Memorial, released in 1994 by Konami which was on the verge of bankruptcy, the platonic dating sim becoming the first major bishōjo game since Koei's release of Night Life. In 1999, Kanon was released by Visual Arts/Key. While the title was another eroge title targeted at males for its sexual content, the players began to identify with the protagonist and the idea of overcoming "the emotional trials and tribulations of pure love." A late PlayStation 2 port removed the sexual content and sold better than the original, leading eventually to two anime adaptations.
A turning point was ELF's Dōkyūsei. Dōkyūsei, whose gameplay focused on meeting girls and seducing them, established the standard conventions of the dating simulation genre. Tokimeki Memorial, the first dating sim, featured good graphics, full voice acting, and a role-playing game-like gameplay system. To be accessible to a more mainstream audience, it contained no erotic elements, seeking instead to create a "romantic" atmosphere. Sega's popular bishōjo game series Sakura Wars also first saw publication in 1996 for the Sega Saturn; like Tokimeki Memorial, it contained no erotic elements. However, it was unique in that it contained not only adventure-game elements but also a combat system borrowed from tactical combat games such as Tactics Ogre.
Since the late nineties, there has been a trend towards better storytelling in mainstream bishōjo games. Particularly notable in this respect are Leaf's To Heart, and Key's Kanon. Even though their gameplay involved little more than scrolling through text, they became hits largely due to the quality of their writing and characterization. Both were first released on the PC with erotic scenes, which were subsequently removed in their console ports.
2000s
The bishōjo gaming industry has resisted the transition into 3D graphics because of the blocky and distorted nature of characters when viewed zoomed up close. In 2001 Tokimeki Memorial 3 became the first bishōjo game to break this trend. However, low sales make it likely that other companies will stick with the traditional 2D graphics.Today the industry has grown, with most publishers making releases for Windows, including download-only files. Some of the least pornographic and most successful also branching off into the console market. The main consoles used for bishōjo games in the nineties were the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast. More recently, the PlayStation 2 has been the console of choice with a growing number of games for the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS handhelds. Games ported to consoles usually have adult content removed.
Characteristics
The industry of bishōjo games is closely related to the industry of anime and Japanese manga. While many of the games are pornographic, the majority feature romantic situations with suggestive material.Some dōjinshi groups produce bishōjo games, many with the objective to later form a real company or to be contracted by one of the great companies in the industry. Due to the short programming time and the relatively small amount of content required in a bishōjo game, barriers to enter this industry is somewhat low, and is the reason why every year dozens of new companies emerge.
A substantial part of the revenue of the industry comes from merchandising. Fans are often dedicated to particular characters within their favorite games, and are willing to pay premium prices for goods like posters, figurines and accessories representing them. Several conventions also exist where articles oriented to bishōjo fans are sold, like the popular dōjinshi market Comiket in Tokyo, Japan.
Due to the representation of female characters in the majority of bishōjo games, a great majority of the market is male. Nevertheless, from the year 2000, some developers began to expand their market, creating games directed to girls and presenting attractive young men in their cast. The most well-known and commercial of these titles is Konami's experiment Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side. There have even appeared a small number of erotic games that present man–man homosexual relations, which take their bases from the parallel subculture of yaoi anime and manga. Games targeted specifically at female players are not referred to as bishōjo games, but categorized under the broader genre of adventure or simulation by publishers, and commonly referred to as otome games or Boys' Love games by fans and reviewers.
Gameplay
Bishōjo game elements can be present in practically any type of video game, and gameplay in bishōjo games varies within the genre. There are still some basic formulas that define the genre. The basic characteristics of bishōjo games resemble those of Choose Your Own Adventure books. The basic appearance of a bishōjo game consists of an image in the upper portion, a text box in the lower portion and a static background that occasionally changes extending to the edge behind both of the other two areas. The background images are often reused for various scenes and text descriptors are used to help distinguish differences in the surrounding. In most of the games, the player does not see their avatar and instead see the game from a first person perspective. In addition, some games use various techniques, such as the screen shaking, flashing or going black, to give further immersion by demonstrating various conditions. The games' range of sound effects are also used to represent the avatar's eardrums. The characters of these games are less realistic and often limited to only several static facial expression, gestures and occasional eye blinks, of which the former two coincide with the text displayed at the bottom of the scene and are constantly reused.The basic storylines for these games center around a male protagonist whom the player controls, who interacts with various characters, notably females. Interaction occurs at several points where choices—seemingly trivial—are given to the player while life-altering choices are generally not. These choices eventually lead to various good or bad endings with one or more female characters.
Beating these games does not mean just getting various good endings, but also in some cases bad endings, as the goal is to unlock all of the bonus content. This makes getting the same ending twice and not unlocking any new content the way to lose such games. For example, Gals Panic is a variant of the classic game Qix where the objective is to uncover 75% or more of a picture of a girl. Money Idol Exchanger is a puzzle game comparable to the Magical Drop series. In some cases, images of girls are used as prizes for skilled play, as is the case in strip mahjong. In other games, the bishōjo aspect can be integrated more tightly into the game: in most dating sims, the objective is to select the correct conversation lines while speaking with a female character to increase their "love meter". This type of game resembles role-playing or adventure games. Many are very linear and are essentially interactive romance novels for men.
Most bishōjo games remain 2D. The main reason is that bishōjo games are centered mainly on characters instead of landscapes, and for this intention, 2D bitmaps continue to look better than 3D models. The main advantage of 3D models in this context is smoother and more realistic animation, although this is usually discarded by the unpolished look of the 3D characters, in addition to the additional cost of production for this type of work. Tokimeki Memorial 3 was the first bishōjo game to have all its characters modeled in 3D, although the sales were smaller than hoped, perhaps discouraging other developers from the possibility of changing bishōjo games from 2D to 3D. Many bishōjo games nowadays are essentially a slideshow of 2D pictures plus voice and text.