What got you into VN?

[gekiganwing]

musical74 stated, "I'm a gamer and like games that have actual stories behind them... there was a anime-style game from NES days that I thought was interesting and it was funny how events would pan out. You're supposed to rescue a gal at one point but if you take your sweet time about doing so she lets you know I THINK the game was Dragon Power but don't remember..."

I probably wouldn't have gotten into dating sims if I hadn't already attempted to get into a number of odd, offbeat fandoms. My first truly nerdy fandom (baseball doesn't count!) was NES games, especially RPGs and action/adventure games with puzzles and characters which grew in abilities. I got to experience the first three games in several legendary franchises: Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, and Zelda. The common element between them: complex gameplay + story.

By the way, Dragon Power was the de-licensed version of a Famicom game based on Dragon Ball. Back in the pre-Web days of console games, there were a number of games with licenses added or subtracted, and it was sometimes tough to tell. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Power

Back on topic... I *almost* bought Harvest Moon for SNES, and thought about it from time to time. About two years later, I heard about Thousand Arms (which is almost ten years old now...), and gave it a chance. I liked the relationship parts of the game much more than the RPG gameplay, which had lousy combat and a lot of awkward pauses. So I guess that was the beginning for me.

That was the same year that a wise friend gave me a tape of Slayers TV, which lead to me becoming an anime fanboy.

Prior to purchasing a discounted copy of Three Sisters Story, several things happened. First, I read a few reviews at Animetric and Hentai Neko, and browsed through the reviews at Densetsu.com. Second, I got a competent laptop with a modern version of Windows. Third, I decided to give adult anime a chance, because until then, I'd assumed that I'd find it repulsive. But I ended up liking three of the five which I tried. (Can Can Bunny was decent. First Loves [based on Kakyuusei] wasn't bad. And I had a few positive things to say about Buttobi CPU.) The end result: I found Three Sisters intriguing, even though it didn't appeal much to me.

I might have left the world of ren'ai if I hadn't read Kana -Little Sister- the year after that. It helped me to realize that hey, this weird little genre could be thoughtful and interesting.

Since then, I've become something of a shoujo advocate. I'm weary of boy x girls harem stories, and I'd like to see something else. Yo-Jin-Bo wasn't perfect, but it was a start. So when people start talking about it, I say "MOAR!"

[Fawkes - Feathered Melody]

I was a late adopter of the Key anime series Kanon (The old one with the HUGE chins) and joined in around the time the AIR anime was going on. It was strictly an anime following for me at the time since I couldn't speak Japanese and didn't have access to the games. It was Narcissu that really threw me into the visual novel community as well as the other free novels that came out of Al|together. They were my first exposure to the storytelling methods of visual novels.

[DaFool]

Can't remember if I posted this somewhere already, but I first became aware of visual novels through bishoujo fansubs, which added karaoke to various visual novel openings. I think the group was somehow related to No Name Losers, who subbed the Mizuiro 2003 OVA. Also insani was a major factor with Narcissu's release.

[Enerccio]

I think this was here already...
Well I joined scene cuz of one memorial game - X-change 3 After that few games like True Love, few more translated eroge, then Japanese eroge with translation, then Japanese eroge in Japanese, and also a lot of normal 17+ visual novels (now mostly them cuz of PS2 licensing).
And so one day when I though about then I decided that I will try to make them and voilà, I am here.

[Guest]

Hmmm... I'd actually heard about the concept of VNs quite some time ago but apart from a bit of interest, was never motivated enough to try them for various reasons.

Until, I found this thread at Adventure Gamers which discussed about Japanese Adventure Games and decided to really look at it a few days ago. Then, I tried Ever17 which was so impressive that I headed over to J-list and purchased a few visual novels. (Yes, it costs a bomb to import to Asia and J-list was the most reasonable choice I found).

This is the thread(don't worry, it's not spamming but for those interested):
http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/s ... hp?t=21569

[Lucifiel]

@#$@#$@$ The previous post was by me: I forgot to log in. If someone could help me join the two posts?

[Hakura0]

Awhile ago I had a sort of plot idea, but didn't know quite what to put it down as, and one of my IM friends suggested a visual novel. I looked it up on wikipedia, and eventually found Ren'Py through google. I still haven't gotten a game made yet, but I've enjoyed playing others'.

[herenvardo]

I've been role-playing for many years... I mean paper&dice role-playing. I've also played many computer RPGs, but was not the same: while it was actually good saving all the GAC0 calculation stuff several times per combat, on computer games the narrative part of the game (the essence of the game, IMO) was most often lost. So I started searching for narrative rpgs, and later for simply narrative games, until I stepped into Moonlight Walks. It was not exactly what I was looking for (it has the 'narration' part, but not too much playability). Digging deeper I found Ren'py (ok, that's not going too much deeper) and the web about nanoreno. Nano'06 was about to start, and I thought why not give it a try? So, in a few moments I was registering here on the forums, announcing my participation in nano, and engaging in a project using an engine I knew nothing about, with the tighest deadline I've ever faced. My team couldn't make for the deadline and the project was finally dropped, but that's another story.

So, almost two years after, here I am, engaged into an even more ambicious project and trying to help everybody I can.

[Raikiri]

Why, hentai of course. More specifically, it was games like True Love, Season of Sakura and Nocturnal Illusion (can't remember in which order I played them) as well as a couple of other JAST games that got me interested initially.

Couple of years later, I watched the Fate/Stay Night anime. One thing led to another, and in the end Tsukihime inspired me to write my own VNs. A few hours of googling (during which time I found and almost instantly rejected the Blade engine) I ended up here about a year ago.

Edit: just took a look under my avatar and saw that, as of today, I've been a member here for a year... And I'm still far from done with my first game.

[Hyperguy]

I did start with dating sims, then H visual novels and finally found out there *were* non-H VNs and quickly found out about Blade Engine at that time too.

Ditto.

[Kura]

I actually just found out visual novels (as I know them now) very recently. In fact, my join date for this fourm is probably right about when I discovered them.

I've loosely known about dating sims for a while. Probably my first exposure to them was Megatokyo about four years ago, and being a long-time anime fan they came up every now and then. Some time or another, I played a few free online ones, including one Ren'py game that I didn't know was Ren'py at the time (a mini dating sim based on a webcomic). I must not have been very familiar with the idea of other ren'ai games besides stat-based dating sims, though, because I thought I was being innovative when I started thinking about a--gasp!-- story/dialog-driven dating sim involving characters in my story. My original idea of that game was that it would be HTML based, in a format inspired by the Relena Torture Game and, of all things, the Neopets Adventure Maker, or whatever it's called. Of course, I didn't put much serious thought into it, and it never really occured to me how hard to manage that would be. Also, I've been lurking on JayIsGames.com for a good year or so now, and I've loved games that were more "interactive multimedia story", like Inanimate Alice.

Fast forward to this winter. I still had only a casual knowledge of dating sims and no familiarity with the term "visual novel". The idea of a dating sim centering on one of my characters came up as a joke, but as I gave it more thought I decided that I seriously wanted to make it. This led to Googling "how to make a dating sim game", which got me Ren'py, and then this forum, which I browsed and became quite interested in, and played a few games I found here. I've still only played very few, though.

[azureXtwilight]

Well, as for me, I'd rather said that console games started it.
One day, I love playing a lot of RPGs and started to think, "I'm bored with those fighting" and trying to look for a narrative story instead. And so I read this magazine called hotgame and It said something about dating sim.

That's where I started, then after some time exploring the net, here I am. XD

[LVUER]

Hmmm... the first VN I've ever play may be Season of the Sakura. I really like it especially it features characters that I know (Rei, Asuka, Hikaru, Fuu, etc). Chrono Trigger has a huge impacts on me since it stimulates me to start reading a lot of things (in English). The VN that TRULY got me into VN is Heart de Roomate. It changes my life.

[honoreixix]

i saw Act Cadenza once on a convention...

my friend told me not to watch Tsukihime because of a sad ending...

I watched it because he told me not to...

eventually we found out about VN's...

[bloodywyvern]

Hm, well I have to say my very first visual novel was Ori, Ochi, Onoe. I came across it randomly at some point (had no idea where it came from either) and just played through it ending after ending. I think I missed one or two at that point though...

I enjoyed it immensely and it was a great game to peak my interest. Despite that I still had no idea about the actual genre, while I had played more, to me they were just another form of games. From there I moved on to Fate/Stay Night and Tsukihime...and well...after you play those it's kind of hard -not- to love visual novels. That's how I got to my current addiction, my next goal, Kanon.