"You're kidding. They make non-porn versions of games like that? Wow. That's... really sad."
The
Dating Sim is a type of game designed to set up goals, usually in the forms of schedules and stats corresponding to social skills, which must be achieved to discover a story focused entirely around the
Character Development of the player's chosen
girl, get
into her pants, or both. This leads to
Multiple Endings, though some
Dating Sims make it possible to see several of these "endings" in a single playthrough.
Some
Dating Sims have been made into
harem anime, though the result is usually
nothing special due to
the removal of sex and the fact that the narrative can no longer focus on any single girl.
Because there is almost no market for true Dating Sim games outside of Japan, it's a frequent misunderstanding among western gamers that "
Visual Novel" and "Dating Sim" are interchangeable, when they are quite different game styles. (See for example, the difference between the
Ace Attorney series, which is very close to a
Visual Novel style of gameplay, and the
DOA Xtreme series, which is the closest to a true
Dating Sim with mass-market appeal in the US.)
Examples
Parodies
- Excel Saga, naturally, did an episode parodying these. In a Running Gag, the male characters suddenly find themselves in a game with several options, the last generally being "Put It In."
- "Who puts a BOMB in a DATING GAME?!!"
- Likewise, one episode of Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai featured a world that partially functioned as a Dating Sim (with an all-girl cast and drawn in a Moe style), to the point of Sasshi requesting a replay so he could end up with a different girl.
- Galaxy Angel (ONLY the games; the anime is something altogether different)
- Super Paper Mario parodies the genre in a pre-Boss Battle cutscene. When the boss, a geeky chameleon named Francis, meets Princess Peach, the game turns into a dating sim with Francis playing it and the player providing her responses. Princess Peach quickly becomes annoyed at the concept, and sics Boomer on the Nerr2Babe Interface - which has the side effect of nuking Francis' video card. Cue the boss battle, folks.
- Final Fantasy VII has an ongoing pastiche of one, which leads to dating one of four characters (one of which is The Lancer and extremely male) at a minor scene later on. Interestingly, all of them contain some character and plot development - Aeris's scene foreshadows Cloud's Tomato In The Mirror moment later on, Tifa's serves as proof that she Can Not Spit It Out, Yuffie's is the only one in which Cloud actually gets a kiss, and Barret's is part non-sequitur rant, part self-parodying Ho Yay, and culminates in Cloud being (bizarrely) accused of being a paedophile.
- In Genshiken, shameless Otaku Madarame spends almost a whole episode in a room alone with Dungeon Masters Girlfriend Saki, trying to work up the courage to talk to her. This is emphasised by dream sequences in which he imagines her as a character in a Dating Sim, complete with Art Shift - and repeatedly ends up clicking 'Do nothing'. He bemoans in his internal monologue how real life has more choices than just three, and how it's not always obvious which one to make.
- In Axis Powers Hetalia, Korea asks if China likes him. China is about to respond with no, but stops when he sees a little box above Korea that says that any response will lead to sex.
- In Full Metal Panic, Sousuke's classmates attempt to prepare him for a date by having him play a Dating Sim. His military-wired mind causes him to be blatantly honest to the girl, upsetting her and losing the game, much to his consternation.
- La Mulana, upon acquiring certain MSX ROMs, lets you play what at first appears to be an MSX version of Tokimeki Memorial, and the heroine, Shiori, is talking about how she'd like to take her friendship with Taihei (your character) to the next level until she comments that she had a toothache since this morning. Taihei then discovers a piece of fake skin on the ground, and Shiori then reveals herself to be a Snatcher. After satrical dialogue on women in dating sims, you're thrown into a battle against Shiori while being careful not to shoot the "game mascot", Gyonin (A.K.A. Metal Fish MSX3 Turbo R Plus). After the whole ordeal is over, another girl named Nijino runs up... only to reveal herself as a Snatcher as well.
Here We Go Again Syntax error in 1220
- A recent DMFA bonus arc mocks this without mercy.
- This is the main point of Experimental Comic Kotone.
