Another game that appeared on the Japanese Saturn has received a modern remake — and even better, it now has an official English localization for the first time.
It’s Dōkyūsei, the romantic adventure game that practically kicked off the ‘90s dating sim craze in Japan. Shiravune published the English version on Thursday (2022-04-14) on Steam with updated visuals and various quality of life improvements.
In Dōkyūsei, players have three in-game weeks to roam around town and flirt with 14 different women — all at once. Their events must be triggered by being in the right place at the right time, although the remake provides a new schedule to keep track of it all as well as multiple save slots. Players then choose the woman they like the best to see her ending.
Titled “Dōkyūsei: Bangin’ Summer,” it can be bought for $15.99 after a 20% launch discount here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1689910/Dkysei_Bangin_Summer/
Original developer Elf first released Dōkyūsei on the PC-9801, a Japanese computer, in 1992 before porting it to the Saturn as “Doukyuusei if” in 1996.
Dating sims certainly existed before then but Dōkyūsei brought something new to the genre by giving its characters, well, more character, according to Brad Austrin, who runs a website about obscure video games called Game Vecanti.
“Before Dōkyūsei, most heroines in 18+ titles lacked depth, existing solely to reward the player with sex,” Austrin said on Twitter. “Dōkyūsei challenged this by drilling deeper. Heroines had their own problems and stories. Your relationship with them would deepen as you continued to encounter them.”
A spinoff and a sequel, Kakyuusei and Doukyuusei 2, came to the Saturn the following year. All three are yellow-label-rated games intended for mature audiences thanks to their scenes depicting pixel art nudity.
The pornographic scenes have been excised from Dōkyūsei’s Steam release, although a version of the game with the scenes intact can be bought from Johren, a retailer that specializes in NSFW games. That site also offers a free downloadable patch that restores the scenes in the Steam version.
The Saturn is famous for its visual novel and dating sim games, which number in the dozens — none of which ever officially left Japan, of course.
But in that sea of dating games, Doukyuusei if stood out as one of the highest selling entries into the genre on the Saturn with more than 220,000 sales, according to Famitsu magazine. That made it the sixth highest selling dating sim on the platform.
Brad Austrin said another of the Saturn’s high-profile dating sims, Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You, was influenced by Dōkyūsei. Both games have players get to know their bevy of women rather than being simpler eroge titles.
They even feature similarities in character design between the two games’ main love interests.
While a port of Tokimeki Memorial beat Dōkyūsei to the Saturn market by a few weeks, its original incarnation on the PC Engine came about a year and a half after Dōkyūsei on the PC-9801.
Also, the gameplay mechanic of wandering around an area from a top-down perspective until the player happens upon an event with a girl is prominent in 1996 seminal Saturn hit Sakura Wars and its 1998 sequel.
Danthrax is a contributor to the Shiro Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the ’90s, he didn’t get a Saturn until 2018. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the console’s library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and has helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.
Be the first to comment