Tokimeki Memorial

Tokimeki Memorial
Cover to the original PC Engine game.
Developer(s)	Konami
Publisher(s)	Konami
Designer(s)	Koji Igarashi (Programmer)[1]
Writer(s)	Koji Igarashi (Scenario Writer)
Composer(s)	Mikio Saito Seiya Murai Miki Higashino Hiro Noguchi
Series	Tokimeki Memorial series
Platform(s)	Game Boy Color, mobile phones, PC, PC Engine, PlayStation, PlayStation Portable, Sega Saturn, Super Famicom, Nintendo DS
Release date(s)	JPNMay 27, 1994 (PCE) JPN October 13, 1995 (PS) JPNFebruary 9, 1996 (SFC) JPNJuly 19, 1996 (SS) JPNDecember 4, 1997 (PC) JPNFebruary 11, 1999 (GB) JPN2004 (phones) JPNMarch 9, 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.

Tokimeki Memorial was first released for the PC Engine on May 27, 1994. It was remade as Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You on the PlayStation and Sega Saturn in 1995 with a new opening video, improved graphics and sound, and new minigames.

In 1996, it was released again on the Super Famicom 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 Engine 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.

Reception

Tokimeki Memorial was voted as the 23rd best video game of all time in a 2006 reader poll by Japanese magazine Famitsu.^[2]

References