Tokimeki Memorial “Boys Side”
I saw a discussion on a YouTube video recently where someone asked about a “Tokimeki Memorial Boy’s Side” game, and an avid fan of the Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side games said (quite rudely) that there are no “boy version” Tokimeki Memorial games.
Actually, the Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side series is an off-shoot of the original Tokimeki Memorial series, which is, in fact, a series of games for boys.
The original Tokimeki Memorial game was released in May 1994, and serves as the building block for the rest of the TokiMemo games to follow. Stat building, dating, and everything were already there. The dreaded “bombs” that we get for failing to date the boys often enough? That was one of the key features of the original game, and they were even harder to deal with back then. The main difference is that you play as a guy, you get to date girls and have male best friends.
Tokimeki Memorial was a relatively popular series, although the third game (which was the first to feature cel-shaded graphics instead 2D artwork) was not received as well as the first two. A total of four games in this series have been released to date, and there have also been several spin-offs as well as a Tokimeki Memorial online game (which was unfortunately shut down in 2007). The last Tokimeki Memorial game released so far is Tokimeki Memorial 4, which was released in 2009.
I’ve never played any of the Tokimeki Memorial games myself, but I’m actually open to trying them out for the sake of seeing the origins of a video game series that I’ve been addicted to since I first played TMGS1. I just hope they don’t have those stupid mini-games like the Valentine’s Day chocolate-mixing thing and the “Borrowing Game”, because that those make me want to fling my DS at something.
The official (Japanese) site for Tokimeki Memorial can be found at: http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/tokimeki/
El Santos is a marketing & advertising professional by day and gamer/bookworm/tarot reader by night. She’s prone to sudden fits of fangirling over her varied interests: video games, fiction, art, folkore, anime, and tarot. She currently lives with her husband and 2 rescue cats.
