Tokimeki Memorial

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For the series as a whole, see Tokimeki Memorial (series).
Tokimeki Memorial

Cover to the original PC Engine game.
Developer(s) Konami
Publisher(s) Konami
Designer(s) Koji Igarashi (Programmer, Scenario Writer)
Series Tokimeki Memorial series
Platform(s) Game Boy Color, mobile phones, PC, PC Engine, PlayStation, PlayStation Portable, Sega Saturn, Super Famicom
Release date JPN 27 May 1994 (PCE)

JPN 13 October 1995 (PS)
JPN 9 February 1996 (SFC)
JPN 19 July 1996 (SS)
JPN 4 December 1997 (PC)
JPN 11 February 1999 (GB)
JPN 2004 (phones)
JPN 9 March 2006 (PSP)

Genre(s) Dating sim
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) CERO: B (Ages 12 and over)

Tokimeki Memorial (ときめきメモリアル Tokimeki Memoriaru?, lit. "Heartbeat Memorial") is a dating sim by Konami and the first game in the Tokimeki Memorial series.

Screenshot of the original PC Engine game showing the statistics integral to the gameplay.
Screenshot of the original PC Engine game showing the statistics integral to the gameplay.

Tokimeki Memorial was first released for the PC Engine on May 27, 1994. It became unexpectedly successful, due to its good graphics and voice acting, and was released again as Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You ~ on the PlayStation (Sony Computer Entertainment) and the Sega Saturn (Sega) in 1995 with a new opening video, improved graphics and sound, and new minigames.

In 1996, it was released again on the Super Famicom (internationally known as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System) (Nintendo) as Tokimeki Memorial: Densetsu no Ki no Shita de, and although drastically reduced in graphic and sound quality (the only voice clips were available during loading), included an exclusive CD with a radio drama and new arrangement of the ending theme, Futari no Toki this time sung by the majority of the girls, instead of just Shiori Fujisaki (the heroine of the first game).

Again, in 1999, the game was re-released on the Game Boy Color in two versions, Tokimeki Memorial Sports Version: Kotei no Photograph and Tokimeki Memorial Culture Version: Komorebi no Melody, dividing 10 of the characters between the two games and adding three new winnable characters, Patricia McGrath, Naomi Munakata, and Kyoko Izumi. The Game Boy Color versions also featured a Beatmania mini-game, compatibility with the Super Game Boy, a screen saver mode, and a two-player versus minigame.

In 2004, exactly the 10th anniversary of the original PC release, the game was released once again on mobile phones in Japan, and in 2006, exactly the 10th anniversary of the Super Famicom release, was ported to the PlayStation Portable portable system, which is virtually identical to the PlayStation version.

The first game in the series is particularly notable for its "bomb" feature, where neglected, infrequently-dated girls would eventually become angry and gossip to their friends, severely reducing love meters across the board. In the middle of the game, when the number of known girls was high, these "bombs" became the primary concern of the player, forcing careful planning and strategies like round-robin dating. Although the feature was still present in the later games, it was considerably reduced in importance and the difficulty in avoiding it.

[edit] Reception

Tokimeki Memorial was voted as the 23rd best video game of all time in a 2006 reader poll by Japanese magazine Famitsu.[1]

[edit] References