The Origins of Visual Novels

Last year I wrote a blog post about the origins of visual novels and how I believe the term is often misused in the West to classify games that are “Japanese adventure games”. I had originally thought of the idea as a video but I quickly realized that it would be a lot of work, especially since I didn’t know how to record gameplay footage at the time nor use any editing software outside of Windows Movie Maker, so I just made it a blog post instead. However, this year, I made a resolution to teach myself some basic editing skills and turn my blog post into an informative video. After two months of work you have the video before you. Hopefully you find it interesting and hopefully I didn’t get too many of my facts wrong. If I did let me know, I always enjoy learning more about the history of this genre. Some of the programs I used to make the video were OBS Studio to record gameplay footage, Davinci Resolve for editing and Audacity for voice recording. The video contains the following music composed by Chris Zabriskie: "Out of the Skies Under the Earth" "Candlepower" "Chance Luck Errors in Nature Fate Destruction As a Finale" "Virtues Inherited Vices Passed On" "Is That You or Are You You" "Cylinder Seven" "CGI Snake" "NirvanaVEVO" "There's Probably No Time" "A New Day in a New Sector" And "Tilbury Fair” composed by Radix and LED ------------------------------------------------------------------ The sources of my information were: 1.) Bungle Bungle - The official website of Tatsuya Takahashi and Tooru Minazuki bungle.cocolog-nifty.com/work/ 2.) Chrontendo - History of Japanese Adventure Games 1982 to 1989:    • Chrontendo Episode 31   1989 to 2010:    • Chrontendo Episode 32   3.) Game Developer Research Institute - System Sacom gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/System_Sacom 4.) Japanese Wikipedia: サウンドノベル, ビジュアルノベル and システムサコム 5.) Kotaro Uchikoshi’s GDC 2013 Presentation archive.org/details/GDC2013Uchikoshi 6.) Mobygames - Novel Ware www.mobygames.com/game-group/novel-ware-games 7.) Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals by Hiroki Azuma 8.) Pixelated Audio - Staff Roll: Manabu Saito – PA101 pixelatedaudio.com/staffroll-saito/ 9.) Shmuplations - Chunsoft 30th Anniversary Interview shmuplations.com/chunsoft30th/ 10.) Shmuplations - The Possibilities of Adventure Games shmuplations.com/adventuregames/ 11.) Shmuplations - What is Game Design? Three Perspectives shmuplations.com/whatisgamedesign/ Other Helpful Resources I used: Visual Novel Database VNBReview ボクの事件簿 VGDensetsu ------------------------------------------------------------------ Third-Party Video Sources Gameplay: Ace Attorney: World of Longplays    • Nintendo DS Longplay [014] Phoenix Wr...   Mystery House – PC88: テキスト８８ www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm13878778\ Portopia PC-6001 Footage: scrumhalf03 www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm18319842 Colossal Cave Adventure: Glade Swope    • Colossal Cave Adventure play-through   Deadline: AppleAdventures    • Deadline walkthrough (Apple II - Info...   Star Arthur Densetsu I: Xanadu(X1)普通にプレイ www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm4694321 Miko to Akemi no Jungle Adventures: ミゾぐち www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm21236726 Demons Ring: T GAMEs K    • Video   The Death Trap: World of Longplays    • PC-88 Longplay [003] The Death Trap   Will: The Death Trap II: World of Longplays    • PC-88 Longplay [004] Will: Death Trap 2   Yami no Ketsuzoku: ヒーホー君    • 闇の血族 1/6   38-man Kilo no Kokuu (Just the Novel Ware logo) gyusyabu.ddo.jp/MP3/1989/38.html Door Door Footage: PC-6601    • PC-6001mk2/6601 ドアドアmkII  電源投入～プログラムロ...   Commercials: Portopia Commercial: KazuyaGames    • Video   NEC PC-6001 Commercial: agomoai_CM    • CM　NEC　パーソナルコンピュータ　PC-6001mkⅡ　1983年   NEC PC-98 Commercial: Yukio Kitazawa    • 【TVCM】NECパソコン PC98『「檸檬」という字が書けますか？』   Study of Dragon Quest: DAIAMOND3rd    • Video   First Dragon Quest Commercial: TheWorldDBZ    • 【初代】ドラゴンクエスト CM   SHARP X1F CM: Qa1uoh    • SHARP X1F CM   Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All Commercial: DetectiveNameko    • CM　カプコン　逆転裁判2　（GBA） [ Phoenix Wright:...   Clip of Koichi Nakamura was taken from an episode of a TV series called “パソコンサンデー” (PC Sunday) uploaded by ATRAGON.    • Video   Other third-party footage in the video was taken from official trailers for various games. If anyone has an issue with me using their footage please let me know.

• #gaming
• #visual_novel
• #history