"The birth of the dating sims legacy"

Just a note for those who is not familiar with the term ''dating sim'' and it's history. It is a simulation that gives you a certain time period to date different girls and build a relationship with ''1'' girl to make her confess her love to you(or you confess to her). The style is somewhat similar to the popular life simulation game ''The Sims'' but more detailed in the creation of a relationship between a male and a female and you can actually understand what they are saying(even though most of them are in Japanese). Dating sims can go way back to the PC9800 era(it's a very old version of the Japanese personal computer) where it's mostly hentai(animated pornography). Tokimeki Memorial from Konami was the first of it's kind to actually break the barrier to split hentai and dating sims apart and able to bring it onto the console. Tokimeki Memorial(short for TM) created a whole new genre for console gaming and PC gaming industries to dwell upon and many of those companies followed the trend(eg. Sega's Sakura Taisen, NEC's Fantastic Fortune and Sentimental Graffiti, Natsume's Harvest Moon and alot more.)
Now, onto the review!

Graphic 8/10: The characters are fantastically drawn and all the girls looks really good(and yes, there's a fan club for each of them still flowing around somewhere on this world dedicated to each of the girls in this game). However, considering that this game is the 3rd remake port to another console(First PC-engine, then Saturn, then SNES then to PSX), the in game graphics is nothing to marvel about. However, everything looks sharper and better compared to it's previous ports. The backgrounds reflects the season changes and climate changes which is a plus. Overall, the graphics does not have any 3d graphics to impress anyone in the 21st century but it was quite a break through during the time period when the game first came out.

Sound/Voice/Music 10/10: The anime intro song and the epilogue song was fantastically written, all background music fits into the environment in terms of the season and climate changes, and the happy ending music was really heart breaking. I almost break into tears just watching the endings. The seiyuus(Japanese voice actress) that was acting out the voices for the characters in this game is the main selling point of this game. All the seiyuus really fit into the personality and characteristics for each of the characters in this game. It's almost like they were born for that role(they were all cute and you don't feel a tiny bit of awkwardness in their voice acting). As for the sound effects, there's not that much sound effects here but all the background sound effects are there(crowd moving, people chatting, the ding sound, etc) and then there's the annoying bomb sound(you will know what I mean when you play the game) which really was there to annoy you(and you will probably be really angry like me and have the urge to break your TV and your Playstation when you hear that sound). Overall, a perfect job done by Konami and created a whole new standard for dating sim gaming by giving voices to the character in games(it usually doesn't happen before this game due to system limitations and budget)

Gameplay 8/10: The gameplay is generally split into 2 parts. The first part is generally stats building and trying to improve on your overall abilities(like literature, fitnesse, chemistry knowledge, etc). During the beginning of each week you are allowed to choose on one of the topic to study/train upon(it's a 6 day interval) and then during the weekend(Sunday)you to date the girl you like(strange that you can make phonecalls only during the weekends and that 1 phone call will waste 1 whole day). It might sound kinda wierd but from the amounts of detail in this game it's only normal that they designed the game to be like this(you have to realize that this game is only 1 CD and it contains tons of voice scripts which takes a whole lot of space and prevents the game designers to give you more options to use during gameplay). The dating part of this game is very simple but you will not be able to succeed unless you have a standard knowledge of Japanese and their culture. There's also some mini-games that proves really fun and really gives you a relief from the intense reading during standard gameplay. The game gives you 3 years(which is the amount of time to complete highschool in Japan) and during the time you must try to create a relationship with anyone of the 13(+2) girls to get a happy ending, otherwise it's the bad ending. The gameplay is nothing intense and kinda boring at some point as it gets kinda tedious trying to improve stats over and over. However, there's some special events in this game to cover up this flaw and prevents this game from being too bland to play.

Replayability 10/10: Ok, let's face it, there's 13 girls and 2 secret characters for you to go for. That means you have to replay the game 15 times to get all the endings. I don't know about other games but this game certainly packs the most replayability ever imagine in console gaming history at that time period(and each ending requires around 10 hours to complete, so that's 150 hours minimum)...even though it doesn't provide as much ending as the well known Princess Maker series(50+ endings, 10 hour eachX50=500 hours), the emotional impact from the ending in Tokimeki Memorial was more significant then Princess Maker(just imagine that you finally get a girl to confess to you after all these years of living without a girlfriend-->and not to give anyone the wrong ideas, I am not that old yet and still in my early 20's)

Overall 9/10:
As the birth of a new game genre in console gaming, this game was by no means a perfect creation that everyone should play. It still has the flaw of gameplay being bland and there just isn't enough special events to make this game more entertaining to play throughout the 3 year game period. However, it was a really good start that provides a footstone for other gaming companies to follow and improve upon.

Quite sadly for the US audience, this game was never ported over to US by Konami and I doubt they ever would due to the following reasons--->
Reason #1: They cannot find enough voice actress in the US to act out all the characters in this game.
Reason #2: Cultural differences.
Reason #3: If they only translate the game into English, then they have to pay extra copyright fees to the seiyuus.
Reason #4: Related to Reason #3, the market isn't big enough for such a unique game genre and they won't make enough money to worth the trouble.
Reason #5: Most of the profits is not from the game but from the merchandise that was spawned from this game. If they were to port this game to the US, they have to do alot of work by trying to find a company in the US to publish these merchandise and video game side products isn't at all popular in the US

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/24/01, Updated 10/24/01