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 2.) Chrontendo - History of Japanese Adventure Games 1982 to 1989: 1989 to 2010: 3.) Game Developer Research Institute - 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 6.) Mobygames - Novel Ware 7.) Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals by Hiroki Azuma 8.) Pixelated Audio - Staff Roll: Manabu Saito – PA101 9.) Shmuplations - Chunsoft 30th Anniversary Interview 10.) Shmuplations - The Possibilities of Adventure Games 11.) Shmuplations - What is Game Design? Three Perspectives 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 Mystery House – PC88: テキスト８８ \ Portopia PC-6001 Footage: scrumhalf03 Colossal Cave Adventure: Glade Swope Deadline: AppleAdventures Star Arthur Densetsu I: Xanadu(X1)普通にプレイ Miko to Akemi no Jungle Adventures: ミゾぐち Demons Ring: T GAMEs K The Death Trap: World of Longplays Will: The Death Trap II: World of Longplays Yami no Ketsuzoku: ヒーホー君 38-man Kilo no Kokuu (Just the Novel Ware logo) Door Door Footage: PC-6601 Commercials: Portopia Commercial: KazuyaGames NEC PC-6001 Commercial: agomoai_CM NEC PC-98 Commercial: Yukio Kitazawa Study of Dragon Quest: DAIAMOND3rd First Dragon Quest Commercial: TheWorldDBZ SHARP X1F CM: Qa1uoh Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All Commercial: DetectiveNameko 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. 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.