Oldest Visual Novel?

What is the oldest visual novel? I just thought it might be interesting to know.

According to VNDB, it's this, from 1983. And guess what? It's an eroge!

I am not surprised at all.

Yikes...That's...not what I expected...

...what the hell is this perverted crap?

And people are wondering why visual novels don't have a big Western fanbase... Old habits die hard, I guess.

Of course, Visual Novels got formed over a long time, through many trop makers and codifiers.

At first, there were interactive video games with erotic content, later they got text boxes, less interactivity, around the year 2000, they already started to use the text boxes to tell more complex stories, and in the past 5-6 years, they started to drop the eroge part.

The art of that thing makes it hard for me to believe it's from 1983, unless only the cover is like that and the stuff inside are badly drawn sprites under heavy limitations.

Or it isn't for a computer.

^^ Visual novels are 30 years old at best. That's a really, really young age for a medium. Even novels are still considered young by literary standards. And despite what titles like Clannad, Aoishiro and Ever17 might imply, erotic content in visual novels is nowhere near subsiding. It's because sex romps are just more profitable. A visual novel with a fantastic story might sell well, but the cost to make good visual novels is pretty high compared to a lot of crap that's churned out, leading to overall decay in favour of money-makers.

In other words, it's a lot like what's being complained about of nearly every medium today.

So, I decided to search in the database and noticed that this VN is, at last now, marked as 'unknown' date of release.

If you get the ones we do know the date, the first would be... this (1983-o6). Which gets no information or whatever. Googleing a bit I discovered it is an Eroge and, guess what, tentacles. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse eh?

In the bright side, the second oldest VN is this one (1983-10), from just 4 months latter. It is a mystery game and it doesn't seem to have any H at all. In fact, it can even be played by Anglophone people, as a English patch has been unofficially released for the Famicom version.

edited 6th May '11 5:48:32 PM by Heatth

I find tentacles far less worse than bestiality for some reason.

Me too. Tentacles as the first ever Eroge VN bother me for other reason: it fuel the 'anime is all tentacels and high school girls' crap.

Btw, I just realized what this other game is. Is one of the most famous detective games in Japan history. To the point I even know the culprit, due to Memetic Mutation and It Was His Sled. And it is apparently the first ever Detective Video Game.

edited 6th May '11 5:53:45 PM by Heatth

(Most of the post below is copied from my earlier 'Finding Ur Examples' message.)

The Wikipedia article on visual novels currently states, "Some of Japan's earliest adventure games were erotic bishoujo games developed by Koei. In 1982, they released Night Life, the first commercial erotic computer game. It was a graphic adventure, with sexually explicit images."

Enix published The Portopia Serial Murder Case, as well as Lolita Syndrome. A couple years later, Square created an adult computer game called Alpha. Today, none of Square Enix or Koei's products are adults only.

The oldest game tagged as a dating simulation on vndb.org is a vintage computer game from Enix, called Tokyo Nanpa Street. I'm not sure if it has adult content, but the word 'nanpa' has been used in adult media.

As for raising sims with relationship elements, I'm not sure if anything was created before Gainax's 1991 version of Princess Maker. If I'm wrong, correct me.

Otome games as we know them began with the 1994 Super Famicom version of Koei's worksafe game Angelique.

According to a list on the Boys Love Games Headquarters message board (not very active lately), BL games began in 1999 with Joinac Gas's doujin game Graduation, and a commercial game called Boy x Boy Shiritsu Kouryougakuen Seishinryou.

Bara games began with the 2000 game Hotaru.

I'm not sure what the first game with *just* Girls Love content was.

Regarding visual novels published in English, three games which may qualify were released in 1994. These include two Sega CD games: The Space Adventure (based on Space Adventure Cobra), and Snatcher — as well as the computer game Knights of Xentar, which was a censored version of Dragon Knight 3.

Finally, visual novels originally written in English... I believe the first was Sinkha: Hyleyn. It was released simultaneously in English, French, and Italian in 2002. (I think that the trope maker for original English language visual novels was the 2003 freeware game Tales of Lemma.)

The Portopia Serial Murder Case? Oh yeah, that was pretty popular in Japan.

edited 9th Jan '13 3:44:47 PM by CompassionateSadist

I'm not surprised. In fact, I was totally expecting it and I am okay with this.

Although I do wish the whole stigma of VN = porn didn't exist. Not because I don't like porn, but because that makes it harder to get some at all, nevermind get them translated.

This doesn't fully answer what the first VN was, but it's an interesting read on the history of eroge nonetheless:

http://shii.org/geekstories/eroge.html

Yeah, I remember that article, that's what I referred to.

There was no first visual novel. Those 80's games that VNDB keeps track of, were more like as it describes, erotic video games, "where you just rape a girl that pops up on the screen."

Then Dokyusei, (still a Dating Sim RPG), added the idea of choosing between the girls, instead of raping them all. (proto-routes)

Then Otogirisou was the first game with a proper plot of multiple endings.

Then there were sound novels, which here means Visual Novels without character sprites.

Then Shizuku added character sprites.

Then To Heart started the High School love story main plot instead of rape.

Then creators invented utsuge in the form of "ONE", and went to form Key and popularize them.

edited 22nd May '11 11:22:23 AM by EternalSeptember

So essentially, visual novels are just another genre of video game?

Uh, yeah. Where is the surprise? You could call it another genre of Literature as well.

Dammit. I was looking for some clarification on this whole thing, as in my liveblog of Shuffle I still have no idea whether to say I'm playing it or reading it. (To summarize the issue anecdotally) :/

I have the same issue. Usually, I say I am "reading a game". Strict Visual Novels don't 'feel' like "games" at all to me, so I think on them as Exactly What It Says on the Tin: novels in a visual media.

I personally think that in their current form, they are an independent medium, and I'm campaigning for categorizing them as one, I was also the one who suggested to split them from our Video Games folders on this wiki.

Visual Novels are a storytelling-based medium, like animation, literature, or film, while Video Games are a storytelling-enhanced medium, like music, toys, or advertisements.

That's a rather fundamental difference, I think.

I fully agree. I was with you through the majority of the Visual Novels coverage on TVTropes Wiki thread, remember (we need to get back to this project)?

However, you can't deny Visual Novel has it root on Video Gaming. And, to this day, it is still very linked to it. It gest even fuzzier when you throw Visual Novel Adventure Game into the mix. Same for traditional Visual Novel Dating Sim. Therefore, I think it is not wrong to call it a genre of Video Game, as long you remember to point it is a genre of Literature as well.

edited 30th May '11 4:05:54 AM by Heatth