- The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is bishōjo game.
A bishōjo game (J. 美少女ゲーム bishōjo gēmu; often spelled bishoujo game), also known as a girl game/gal game is a type of Japanese video game centered around interactions with attractive anime-style girls. Although nearly all bishōjo games involve romantic or sex appeal of some kind, they may or may not be pornographic.
Bishōjo games are a uniquely Japanese phenomenon; they have virtually no parallel in the American or European video game industries. They form a sizeable fraction of the Japanese market; the most popular have sold over a million copies, and they make up the majority of offline PC games in Japan. Nevertheless, because of real or perceived cultural differences, few have been translated and no major mass-market release has yet been attempted outside of East Asia. Thus bishōjo games remain by far the least known of the major video game genres outside of Japan.
Notable subgenres of bishōjo games are ren'ai games (often called "dating sims") and H games (often called "hentai [sex] games").
Characteristics
Gameplay
 Magical Drop 3 is a bishōjo game where pictures of girls and other mostly comical characters form the backdrop for a fast-paced puzzle game. Because bishōjo elements can be grafted onto almost any type of game, gameplay in bishōjo games varies widely. For example, Gals Panic is a variant of the classic arcade game Qix where the objective is to uncover 80% or more of a picture of a girl. Magical Drop is a fast-paced puzzle game where the player makes chains of colored spheres, and the girls act only as a backdrop. In many cases, pictures of girls are used as a reward for skilled play, such as in strip Mahjong.
Alternatively, the bishōjo aspect can be integrated more tightly into the game: in most ren'ai games, the objective is to sweet-talk girls and increase their "love meter". In these the gameplay often resembles that of role-playing or adventure games. Many are highly linear and are essentially interactive romance novels for men (sometimes called visual novels).
The great majority of bishōjo games remain 2D even today, in contrast to the rest of the gaming industry which has largely moved to 3D. The main reason is that bishōjo game graphics portray primarily characters rather than landscapes, and for this purpose 2D bitmaps continue to look better than 3D models (which tend to be blocky when seen up close). The main advantage of 3D models in this context is smoother animation, but this is currently outweighed by their unpolished look and the additional production costs involved. Tokimeki Memorial 3 (2001) was the first bishōjo game to have all its characters in 3D, but it sold less than expected, perhaps discouraging future developers from making the leap. Many bishōjo games today are essentially a slideshow of 2D pictures plus voice and text.
Pornographic content
The amount and degree of pornography in bishōjo games also covers a wide spectrum. In the most mainstream and popular games, the girls are fully clothed, with the skimpiest clothing being swimsuits. The degree of explicitness then ranges from showing panties and bras, to softcore nudity, to explicit sex, to hardcore brutality and fetishism appealing to niche markets. The degree of pornography in a game can often be estimated from its atmosphere: most mainstream games have a bright atmosphere with sunny days and cute artwork, whereas the hardcore will usually be dark and gloomy.
Frequently, both clearly pornographic and clearly non-pornographic elements may coexist in the same game. For example, in the original PC version of To Heart, the ending scenes where a girl has been seduced are undoubtedly pornographic, not simply erotic, in the sense that they exist mainly for the titillation of the player. Nevertheless, these scenes were viewed as of sufficiently little importance that they were entirely removed for the PlayStation port of the game (which sold well). This sort of hybridization contrasts with the situation in America, where there is for example in the film industry a clear division between pornographers and regular filmmakers.
Players of non-pornographic bishōjo games, especially ren'ai games, often say that they enjoy them mainly for their stories, drama and characterization. This may be true, but another major point of appeal remains the pictures and voices of attractive women, even if clothed.
Portrayal of women
The portrayal of women in bishōjo games varies, but two generalizations can safely be made. First, the girls are nearly always "perfect", for a given game designer's definition of perfection. It would be exceptional, for instance, to see an obese, ugly girl in a bishōjo game. Second, they are highly feminine (according to prevailing Japanese gender roles): in the rare cases where a girl appears "boyish", she can be found to be cute and feminine in her heart of hearts.
There are two settings which stand out as being particularly common: Japanese high school and medieval, pseudo-European fantasy lands. This reflects their pervasiveness in Japanese pop culture (especially dōjinshi manga-derived forms), but another probable reason is the opportunity they provide to put girls in interesting clothing. High school allows dressing up in the much-beloved schoolgirl uniforms (which tend to be in unrealistically bright colors), and fantasy settings allow everything from sorceress robes to princess dresses, not to mention fantastical creatures such as fairies and catgirls. When a game takes place in some other setting, it is often to explore other fashion possibilities — for example, Pia Carrot was probably set in a restaurant in order to dress up its girls in elaborate waitress uniforms.
Girls in bishōjo games tend to be younger than would be preferred in the West. The majority of bishōjo games involve minors ranging from 14 to 17 years of age. (Games involving exclusively girls above twenty do exist, but they are sufficiently rare that they can be considered a niche market. More commonly, in a game containing a dozen female characters, one or two older girls will be thrown in for those players who prefer them.) Besides looking young, they also often act young: their voices are high-pitched, they are easily flustered and they throw childish temper tantrums. Note that this phenomenon is not limited to bishōjo games, but is relatively common in Japanese popular culture, where cuteness (kawaii) is widely prized.
Fictional girls which are endearingly childlike are described by the Japanese slang term moé (萌え), an often sought-after characteristic in a bishōjo game character. The intended appeal of such characters is usually not explicitly sexual: the idea is to present a cute, lovable character who is dependent on and supported by the player, in a little-sister/big-brother type relationship. Indeed, "little sister" characters are a recurring fixture of bishōjo games. A popular game emphasizing moé is Sister Princess, based on the premise of the player acquiring no fewer than 12 little sisters.
Bishōjo games almost always involve anime girls, not pictures of real-life girls. There are several reasons for this. First, anime girls were better suited to computer screens in the early days when colors were limited. Second, using anime allows hardcore bishōjo game studios to circumvent Japanese child pornography laws, which ban only pictures of real-life minors, not simulations (the same as in US law). Finally and most importantly, many young Japanese men prefer anime girls to real-life ones, a habit originating from the dōjin/otaku subculture that arose in the 1980s.
As for male characters, they rarely appear on the screen. The male character representing the player is almost never seen — when he does, his face is usually offscreen or otherwise hidden. There are often a few other token male characters representing the player's friends, but they appear only occasionally. Males in bishōjo games are not necessarily highly masculine but can be effeminate. Two common archetypes for the player's character are the meanspirited macho and the lovelorn weakling — both of whom manage to be adored by women despite their flaws. Girls in bishōjo games are frequently kind to the player and open to his advances beyond what would be expected in real life.
The bishōjo game industry
The bishōjo game industry is tightly linked with the Japanese anime and manga industry. They share many of the same conventions: for example, it is common in both anime and bishōjo games to have a brief opening video stylishly presenting the star characters, and anime and manga are also frequently pornographic. Many popular games have been converted to anime and manga (see ren'ai game for a brief list), and many games are spinoffs of bishōjo anime. The three industries draw on the same pool of talent, the Japanese dōjin community, and the same core base of repeat customers, the dedicated fans sometimes called "otaku".
Many dōjin groups produce bishōjo games, many with the goal of later forming a real company or being hired by one of the big names in the industry. Owing to the little programming time and low level of skills required, the barrier to entry is low in the industry, so dozens of new companies appear every year. However, as in many entertainment industries there is a "winner takes all" dynamic in mainstream bishōjo games, where a few top studios take in all the sales and the rest are left with almost nothing. In order to survive, companies need to either be much better than their competitors, or cater to a niche market. This explains the continuing production of hardcore bishōjo games despite the much smaller market for these games.
A substantial amount of the industry's revenue 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, dolls, and accessories representing them. These are often sold at conventions such as Comic Market and bishōjo-oriented retail outlets such as Gamers.
For obvious reasons, the market for bishōjo games is almost entirely male. However, starting about in 2000 a few developers have attempted to expand the market by creating games targeted at girls and featuring a cast of attractive boys (bishōnen). The most well-known and mainstream of these is Konami's experiment Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's side (2002). There have also appeared a small number of erotic games featuring male-male homosexual relationships (yaoi games), which take their roots from the parallel yaoi manga subculture. However, at present the female population represents no more than a small niche for the industry.
Bishōjo games for the PC are generally sold in special stores or sections of stores reserved for customers 18 years old or above. However, console bishōjo games, which are less explicit, are sold alongside regular video games. Today, dozens of new bishōjo games are released every month, and virtually every video game store in Japan holds a sizeable stock of them. They are usually priced rather steeply, initially at approximately 8,000–10,000 yen (roughly $75–$95) each, though later they can be bought more cheaply second-hand and in bargain bins.
History
1980s
 Lolita 2, a 1983 game by PSK. The game had content which would be considered unacceptable today. Bishōjo games began appearing in Japan in the very earliest days of personal computing. Arguably the first bishōjo game was 1982's Night Life by Koei (Kōei) (though it bore little resemblance to their form today). Nearly all early games in the genre were pornographic. The first bishōjo games were not widely popular, being limited to graphics of 16 colors or less.
A notable landmark was Jast's Tenshitachi no gogo (1985), a precursor to the modern ren'ai game. 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.
Some games involved elements of forcing and brutality. These came to national attention in Japan in 1986 with the release by dB-soft of 177, a game where the player takes the role of a rapist. (The game's title originates from the number of the Japanese law criminalizing rape.) 177 was not actually the first game designed around this premise, but it was unusually explicit. The game caused debate in the Japanese parliament and was eventually recalled and re-released with the most controversial scenes removed.
A little-known fact is that some major mainstream Japanese game companies got their start by publishing shady bishōjo games. Koei is best known today for action/strategy games like Dynasty Warriors, and Enix for role-playing games like Dragon Quest. But one thing they do not mention on their websites is that they both released half a dozen pornographic games in the 1980s. For example, one of Enix's was a 1983 game entitled Lolita Syndrome, which consisted of five mini-games with cutely drawn girls appearing to be about ten years old. One of these mini-games involved throwing knives to remove the girl's clothes.
Some of the main industry players in the 1980s were Koei, Enix, PSK, ASCII and Jast. The two main systems for playing bishōjo games throughout the eighties were the FM-7 and PC-8801 and variants (the latter being dominant), early computers that were never released outside of Japan. In the late eighties, some games were also released for the MSX.
1990s
The industry gradually moved away from proprietary computers to the burgeoning DOS platform, and then later in the decade to Windows (with a few games also made for other platforms like the Macintosh). Throughout the nineties, bishōjo games underwent an evolution from being one of the most technologically demanding types of games (because their detailed 2D graphics required a large amount of storage space by the standards of early computers) to one of the least (they rarely use 3D graphics). 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, 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 (meaning "Ethics Organization for Computer Software", and often abbreviated EOCS or Sofu-rin), 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.
A turning point was Elf's Dōkyūsei (1992). Dōkyūsei, whose gameplay focused on meeting girls and seducing them, established the standard conventions of the ren'ai game genre. Another major release was Konami's port of Tokimeki Memorial to the PlayStation in 1995, which sold over a million copies. 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 (1997), and Key's Kanon (1999). 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.
Today the industry has grown very large, with most publishers making releases for Windows, but 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 and today are the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast.) Indeed, with regular Japanese game publishers focusing almost entirely on the console and arcade markets, and with American PC games being unpopular in Japan, today the majority of retail single-player PC games in Japan are bishōjo games. However, unlike the rest of the Japanese game industry, this genre has never cracked any major foreign markets.
Bishōjo games in the West
A number of bishōjo games have been translated into English, but none have ever had a widespread commercial release. The first translation releases in the mid-90s failed to sell well, discouraging further translations for several years. But the increasing popularity of anime and manga in the West resulted in greater interest for bishōjo games, and 2003 and 2004 saw more new releases of bishōjo games translated to English than ever before. However, possibly owing to the high cost of licensing hit games, the games so far translated have been obscure in Japan.
History
The first English releases in the 1990s were all for MS-DOS and were all H games. The marketing usually heavily emphasized pornographic scenes, often disproportionately to the actual fraction of the game consisting of them. These releases included JAST USA's True Love (in 1994), Season of the Sakura and Three Sisters' Story (in 1996). They failed to sell in large numbers.
Gainax's Princess Maker 2 was localized for America in 1996, but most American publishers refused to publish the game; the only one that accepted was a mismanaged operation that soon went bankrupt. The translated version was completed but never commercially released.
After a few years of inactivity there was a resurgence in English translations, with games like X-Change and Tokimeki Check-In!. Buoyed by the increasing popularity and demand, companies like JAST USA, G-Collections and Peach Princess started acquiring, translating and releasing more games for Windows systems, as well as re-releasing some of their early translations in collection packs, ported to be compatible with 32-bit Windows. A notable release from this era is Kana Imōto, which has a small cult following. Hirameki International released the first English-translated bishōjo games not containing sex scenes, in a DVD-based format called AnimePlay.
Nonetheless, the selection of bishōjo games available to those who do not speak Japanese leaves much to be desired, with none of the popular hits like Tokimeki Memorial having been translated so far. Of the mainstream bishōjo games, some fan translation projects have been started (of Kanon, for instance), but these are usually abandoned and none have yet been completed.
Translations to languages other than English are occasionally seen, but have been very rare, except in Russia, where localisation costs are low and pirate publishers are not concerned with licensing fees.
Reactions
Especially in the United States, the popular discussion of bishōjo games is heavily colored by discomfort with and disapproval of pornography. The discussion tends to be highly polarized, with critics on one side condemning the entire genre as vapid pornography, and enthusiasts on the other angrily denying it. However, the question does not cause as much controversy in Japan.
Were a mainstream, mass-market bishōjo game release attempted in the U.S., it would likely cause some amount of public controversy. Princess Maker 2's never-released localization gave a foretaste of this: a few newspaper editorials accused the game of sexism, and a pre-release screenshot containing nudity caused a small uproar in the media. Princess Maker attracted negative attention because it was marketed as a mainstream video game: other releases have so far avoided it by presenting themselves entirely as pornography.
The web comic Megatokyo, which is popular among American anime fans, was inspired in large part by ren'ai games. Megatokyo is interesting in that it idealizes bishōjo games but simultaneously expresses another criticism commonly levelled against them in the West: that players resort to them as a form of escapism because they are socially inept. (This type of criticism is also found in Japan, though in a quite different form: see otaku.)
Subgenres
There are a number of terms roughly equivalent to "bishōjo game" in use, both in Japanese and English, and there is considerable disagreement and confusion about their proper use. There is no clear consensus on the precise meaning of many of the terms below. The naming difficulties reflect the fluid boundaries of the genre, as well as embarrassment caused by the pornographic nature of some of these games.
In general, "bishōjo game" (or, equivalently, "girl game" or "gal game") can be considered the most general term, and other names designate subgenres. Here are the most common terms currently in use:
- Bishōjo game (or Girl game, Gal game) — This term designates any game involving pretty anime girls, and as such is more general than all the others. The Japanese word "bishōjo" literally means "pretty young girl". (The only problem with it is that it does not really encompass games involving attractive boys, such as Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's side or Boy's Love games. These are quite rare, however. With this caveat, "bishōjo game" is the most general term.) "Girl game" and "gal game" can be considered equivalent to "bishōjo game" in casual use.
- Boy's Love game, BL game — Girls' "bishōjo" game where teenage boys and young adult males engage in homosexual relationships. Most such games are visual novels (see below). See also Yaoi game.
- Dating sim — Strictly speaking, this term designates the small subgenre of bishōjo games specifically focused on dating, the most famous being Tokimeki Memorial. However, this term is frequently stretched by English speakers to describe any ren'ai game.
- H game, Erogē (エロゲー), Hentai (変態) game — These terms are used in English to designate bishōjo games with explicit erotic or pornographic elements. "H" is a letter used in Japanese to refer to sexual content, and "erogē" is an abbreviation of "erotic game". "Hentai", meaning "pervert" in Japanese, is not used to describe these games in Japanese, but it is common in English. In Japan, H games are almost always sold for the PC, because console manufacturers such as Sony and Nintendo generally refuse to license pornographic games for their systems.
- Ren'ai game (恋愛ゲーム) or Love ADV game, Love sim — "Ren'ai" is the Japanese word for romance. This term describes adventure games focusing on romantic interactions with anime girls. This term is generally used to describe games which have little or no pornography, or for which erotic content is not the main focus of the game. To describe hardcore pornographic games, H game is preferred.
- Raiser sim — This is a subgenre where the goal is to "raise" a female character, training and educating her to improve her (usually numerically quantified) attributes. This resembles role-playing games except that the goal is to improve another character rather than yourself, not unlike a Digital Pet. The classic example is Princess Maker, where the player's task is to raise a girl into a queen. Another is the N64 game Wonder Project J2 with an orphaned robot girl. Many hardcore bishōjo games also start from this premise, in which case the character to be "raised" is usually some kind of sexual slave.
- Visual novel — This is used to designate a type of ren'ai game which is particularly story-focused, or containing novel-like narration in its writing. Often text appears on the entire screen (covering the background image) instead of sitting in a small textbox at the bottom of the screen, as is more common. Examples of visual novels include To Heart (only available in Japanese) and Kana Imōto (translated to English). Occasionally the phrase "visual novel" is extended to apply not just to ren'ai games but to any kind of novel-like game (such as Radical Dreamers).
Also, note that many Japanese games which are not strictly bishōjo games contain elements of the genre. Many mainstream Japanese role-playing games feature attractive anime girls (such as Final Fantasy VII 's Tifa Lockheart), but they are usually not considered bishōjo games unless this is a central aspect of the game.
Popular Japanese slang
A thriving fan community has grown around bishōjo games in Japan, and many slang terms and inside jokes have appeared. The following terms are some slang expressions relating to bishōjo games commonly used on the Internet (as of August 2004), which may serve to illustrate the frequently lighthearted tone of discussion among fans. (Note that most of the following terms are at present exclusively Japanese, and little-known or used in English.)
- Bokukko (ボクっ娘, boku-girl) — A tomboyish, energetic girl who calls herself by the pronoun boku (normally used by a young preteen male).
- Ha-kagi (葉鍵, leaf-key) — A short term referring to two famous bishōjo game studios which many fans hold up above all others, Key and Leaf.
- Meganekko (メガネっ娘, glasses-girl) — A girl who wears large glasses all the time and is usually shy and bookish. She can be beautiful to start with, but often she will seem plain at first and turn out to be a stunning beauty once her glasses are removed. This is sometimes parodied by having a girl drop or lift her glasses, but unexpectedly not become more attractive — much to the disappointment of everyone around.
- Meido (メイド, maid) — A girl maid who dresses in Gothic Lolita style.
- Moé (萌え) — A term used to describe a genre of works featuring a "ideally" cute girl, or the cuteness itself.
- Oniichan (お兄ちゃん, big brother) — A term of address often used by female characters towards the male lead. Many games involve little sisters, often friends who became step-sisters after their parents' marriage, so the literal meaning of "big brother" applies. In Japanese, though, oniichan is commonly used when a girl is addressing an older boy, regardless of relation, so it isn't necessarily incestuous at all. Since many games use pre-recorded voice actors and players can often input their own name, oniichan became a popular way to refer to the player without actually using his name.
- Naki game (泣きゲー, crying game) — A game with a tragic story which moves some players to tears. These usually contain few if any pornographic scenes, as these would be likely to interfere with the sad atmosphere. Kanon and Air are often described as naki games.
- -tan — The honorific -chan as slurred by a child. It is used to denote cute childish characters. See for example OS-tan.
- Tsumi game (積みゲー, stacked game) — Games that are bought, but then left for a long time unopened and unplayed for some reason.
- Ugu (うぐぅ) — The famously cute catchphrase of the popular character Tsukimiya Ayu from Kanon, a nonsense sound she uses constantly with a meaning somewhat resembling "hmmm" or "argh".
- Utsu game (鬱ゲー, depressing game) — A game where girls die or worse not because of something the player did, but as a part of an unchangeable story line. Also used to describe games with a jarring or anticlimactic ending.
- Yaoi — A term used to describe works with an implied or explicit homosexual relationship between males. Female homosexuality in hentai, manga, and dōjinshi is referred to as Yuri.
- Yari game (やりゲー, doing-it game) — An H game where the only reason to play the game is to collect all sexually explicit pictures, because the story is sloppy and unimaginative. Some designers intentionally make yari games by storing all relevant pictures in a folder that can be reviewed after the game is cleared.
- 12nin no Imōto (１２人の妹, twelve sisters) — From Sister Princess, where the main character has 12 sisters each with a distinct character. An absurd idea, it was almost a parody of itself and the phrase quickly turned into an inside joke. Some anime and manga have scenes where a male character blithely asks a female character whether she might, by any chance, have twelve sisters.
See also
References
- Anonymous. Kisei-mae no sekai (http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~cag90280/1980/1980.htm). 2000. (Warning: contains nudity. Gallery of scans of covers of 1980s games, with descriptions in Japanese.)
- Kinsella, Sharon. "Otaku and the amateur manga movement". Journal of Japanese Studies Vol. 24, no. 2 (Summer 1998). A draft version is on the web at [1] (http://www.kinsellaresearch.com/nerd.html).
- Trzepacz, Tim. "Gainax's premier computer game was set to come to the US. So what happened?" (http://www.softegg.com/products/pm2/pm2.html).
- Yukino, Yoshi. "Girl Games Come of Age" (http://www.freetype.net/features/games/galgame/). 2000.
External links
- MegaTokyo ren'ai game FAQ (http://s93010867.onlinehome.us/xfer/dsvn_faq_rev01.2.html) — How to obtain and use bishōjo games outside of Japan
- Insert Credit (http://www.insertcredit.com) — A video game news site which often covers bishōjo games
- Freetype (http://www.freetype.net) — Bishōjo game reviews and opening movie downloads
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