Studio Key and their games/anime

[Mmy-sama]

I'm guessing that at least some of you have heard about studio key and their projects (Kanon, Air, Clannad...). Anyway, since this forum is not getting much traffic as of late, a thread on this subject would be benificial. Also, does anyone know about some of their earlier projects before kanon? Or for that matter he status of the new Air anime? Anyone?

[Sai]

There was nothing before Kanon as far as I know. Unless Key went under a different company name before Kanon, but they don't seem to acknowledge any previous games regardless on their products listing page, so I guess not.

Key's official homepage (Products page):
http://key.visualarts.gr.jp/product/index.htm

The only thing you may not be aware of (since you don't mention it) is their latest release, Planetarian. It's more of an interactive book (called a Kinetic Novel) though I think. Not as large as their previous games or something like that (it also has a different art style to their previous games if that's relevant).
Official homepage: http://key.visualarts.gr.jp/product/pla ... /index.htm

If you're interested, insani.org has translated the demo for Planetarian. You can obtain that here:
http://planetarian.insani.org/

For more translated demos, of other games, see their homepage:
http://www.insani.org/

In regard to the upcoming anime TV series and Movie:

Movie release date:
February 5, 2005

TV Series release date:
January 6, 2005 24:30 (12:30am Jan 7, 2005)
12 episodes

Source of above information:
http://www.cjas.org/~zalas/AIR/ (has a lot of information in regard to the series and movie)

You can also check out the following:
http://www.bs-i.co.jp/anime/AIR/ (TV series official homepage)
http://www.air2004.com/ (movie official homepage)
http://animenfo.com/animetitle,1475,mlmoin,air.html (Details page)
http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/468.html (Promo downloads I think)

In terms of the games, I believe they're popular but I've not played them yet. I do think it's great though they released CLANNAD as originally non-adult though, I would like to play that someday (but lack of knowledge with reagrd to Japanese language is a problem). And the non-adult/"all-ages" versions to Kanon and AIR. Kanon has a translation patch available thanks to http://www.haeleth.net/ (although not complete, it does translate a lot).

[Piroshiki]

Ah, Key, how do I love thee... *eyes his nick*

The core members of Key - Hinoue Itaru (chara designer), Maeda Jun (scenario writer) and Orito Shinji (music composer) - used to work for Tactics. They are responsible for One ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~ (1998), possibly one of my favorite games ever. Err... I don't know if it's ok to post links with adult content here, so I'll link to the official page for the PSOne (all-age) port by Kid instead...

http://www.kid-game.co.jp/kid/game/game ... isetu.html

And before One, they worked on Moon (1997). But again, the official homepage has adult content, and this time there is no port that I know of (it being, well, a kichiku game). Never played the game, either.

[Mmy-sama]

Are you sure those release dates for the AIR anime are accurate? They seems pretty early to me. But for all I know they could have been working on this for months beforehand.

And about Keys core memebers previously working for another company, I'm sure that just caused a bit of confusion among some of us less informed folk. I was recently told that ONE was actually Keys first game, before kanon. If it was made by another company, but by the same people who spearhead Key, I'm sure it'll be confused with Keys titles and its most likely just as good as any of them. So, thanks for all the information people!

[PyTom]

I think we can be pretty sure about the release date for at least the TV-show version of air, as it has been shown on tv, translated, and watched by me, in roughly that order.

A short review is that the show kept me interested, but didn't really reveal enough to give me a clue about where it's going.