History VideoGame / LoveLiveSchoolIdolFestival

A sequel, ''Love Live! School idol festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE!'' will be released in Spring 2023. The sequel will add Liella! from ''Anime/LoveLiveSuperstar'' and the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club as major cast members and will feature even more songs from across the entire franchise. The original ''School Idol Festival'' will be [[DefunctOnlineVideoGames shut down]] on March 31, 2023 in preparation for the sequel's release.

A sequel, ''Love Live! School idol festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE!'' was announced on September 25th, 2022 and is currently in development. The sequel will add Liella! from ''Anime/LoveLiveSuperstar'' and the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club as major cast members and will feature even more songs from across the entire franchise. ''School Idol Festival'' will be [[DefunctOnlineVideoGames shut down]] on March 31, 2023 in preparation for the sequel's release.

* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: Both the songs and cards are color coded, Red for Smile, green for Pure and Blue for Cool.

A sequel, ''Love Live! School idol festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE!'' was announced on September 25th, 2022 and is currently in development. The sequel will add Liella! from ''Anime/LoveLiveSuperstar'' and the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club as major cast members and will feature even more songs from across the entire franchise.

* CutAndPasteTranslation: The English version [[http://www.nerdspan.com/english-love-live-school-idol-festival-removes-homosexual-references/ strips out]] a lot of ShipTease between the exclusively-female cast. Additionally, many lines that imply that the player character is female were changed to treat the player as male instead. [=KLab=] issued an apology and changed in-game text via a patch on June 30, 2015 that removes these changes.

A sequel, ''Love Live! School idol festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE!'' was announced on September 25th, 2022. The sequel will add Liella! from ''Anime/LoveLiveSuperstar'' as major cast members.

* NintendoHard: Most songs on Hard and especially Expert difficulties.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The game includes not only the μ's girls, but also original characters called "transfer students". The alpaca and some of the girls' mothers are also available as supporting cards. Eventually, Aqours, Nijigasaki High School Idol Club and Liella were added as well.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The game includes not only the μ's girls, but also original characters called "transfer students". The alpaca and some of the girls' mothers are also available as supporting cards. Eventually, Aqours and the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club were added as well.

* WeirdCrossover: A RunningGag with the game's AprilFoolsDay celebrations involves these. Crossover cards include those from ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' in 2020, ''Manga/CrayonShinChan'' in 2021, and ''Anime/CodeGeass'' in 2022.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: Every song in the story screen after the first requires you to be at or above a progressively higher level to unlock. As a result many of the series' [[{{Pun}} biggest hits]] require a lengthy grind to even be able to play outside of Score Match and Medley events. In the Japanese version, an update was applied at the end of July 2014 that halved the EXP requirement for every level at 100 and below, making it easier to access more of the Story section of songs. This same update was applied in May 2016 to the English version, with retroactive experience points given to players who joined before the update. In addition to halving the EXP requirement, it also added a simple unlock chain to get major songs from the anime and movie ahead of the ranks they'd normally be unlocked at. As of today, the modifications to the EXP requirements are different, but the halved ones are gone.

* DifficultySpike: Nawatobi on Expert mode goes from "I can handle this" in the first part to "OhCrap What the hell is this?" in the chorus.
** There are several difficulty spikes in this game: from standard songs to daily B-sides as a while, from Medium to Hard difficulty, from Hard to Expert, and finally from Expert to Master.

* CutAndPasteTranslation: The English version [[http://www.nerdspan.com/english-love-live-school-idol-festival-removes-homosexual-references/ strips out]] a lot of ShipTease between the [[SchoolgirlLesbians exclusively-female]] cast. Additionally, many lines that imply that the player character is female were changed to treat the player as male instead. [=KLab=] issued an apology and changed in-game text via a patch on June 30, 2015 that removes these changes.

* NumberOfTheBeast: A Full Combo on "Strawberry Trapper" on Master difficulty is 666 Combo.

** After an update to the English server, far more words became censored without any extra finesse added to the way the censor finds words. Because of this, all kinds of words from [='=]'''gree'''tings' to [='=]'''butt'''erfly' to 's'''ho'''uld' to 'gl'''ass'''es' and, inexplicably,'' [='=]'''Ho'''noka' '' were banned.[[note]]The word filter blocked out the word "ho," which not only bans '''Ho'''noka's name, but also the name of the game itself, ''LoveLive Sc'''ho'''ol Idol Festival,'' among many other completely innocuous words.[[/note]] They also banned the word 'gay', which is confusing given the outrage players had over the game's censorship of lines that implied lesbianism. This was later undone, and now you can see usernames like these all over the place.

** Averted with getting all Perfects, which is not recorded by the game at all. The most you'll get is a Full Combo and discovering the highest possible score with your current team.

* HarderThanHard; Expert mode, only available on some songs (now it has been completed). On top of that, Expert charts used to only appear in the "B-Sides" folder, and therefore were available only on a time-limited basis or as part of ''School Idol Diary'' events. A new difficulty called Master, which is actually, and several times harder than Expert Mode, was added to the Japanese version of the game on July 5, 2016 and in the English version in .

** The earliest cards in the set are notorious for this, most of all [[https://schoolido.lu/cards/79/UR-Kousaka-Honoka-Initial-Smile/#disqus_thread Honoka's initial UR]], which they had to redraw because the original print made it look like [[https://decaf.kouhi.me/lovelive/index.php?title=File:Honoka_smile_ur79_old.jpg she had a broken neck]].

* ArtEvolution: The early cards were frequently OffModel and featured [[RummageSaleReject questionable outfits]], to the point that μ’s initial UR's are notorious in the fandom. By the time Aquors was introduced, the art team had better refined their craft into the CostumePorn the game is well known and lauded for.

After seven years in service, it was announced in early 2021 that the English version of the game would be officially migrating to the Japanese servers in March 2021 with most data carried over, thereby "ending" the service of the English servers. The game now features bilingual support for the same server, with all future content being identical regardless of whether or not you are using the Japanese or English version of the game.

** A side effect of the server migration in March 2021 is that because the English version was a fair bit behind the Japanese version prior to the migration, all of the English server players essentially "skipped" any of the banners that they did not get before the merge.

An arcade spin-off known as ''Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~'' was released in 2016. ''SIF AC'' features the same core gameplay as the original game, but also introduces systematic and aesthetic expansions such as full 3D CGI performances to accompany gameplay and a physical card system in which the player can collect cards and use them with the game to alter gameplay and performances. It uses Creator/{{Taito}}'s [=NESiCA=] cards and infrastructure to allow players to save their play data. During the "Aqours ONLINE Love Live! ~Lost World~" concert in October 2020, it was announced that the ''Next Stage'' version of ''after school ACTIVITY~'' will be receiving an Main/UpdatedReRelease in the form of ''Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY: Wai Wai! Home Meeting!!~'' which will be released for the UsefulNotes/Playstation4 on March 24 2021. It will feature new exclusive modes and content not seen in the arcade version. This iteration of the game will also be the first SIFAC title to be released outside of Japan, with localizations announced for the North American, Korean and Chinese markets. It will release alongside the Japanese version.

A server merge of both Japan and Global versions will be done in the middle of March 2021.

* TemporaryOnlineContent: Some special UR cards are only obtainable by logging in five days within a certain time period, after that they become unavailable, not showing up even in the Sticker Shop.

An arcade spin-off known as ''Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~'' was released in 2016. ''SIF AC'' features the same core gameplay as the original game, but also introduces systematic and aesthetic expansions such as full 3D CGI performances to accompany gameplay and a physical card system in which the player can collect cards and use them with the game to alter gameplay and performances. It uses Creator/{{Taito}}'s [=NESiCA=] cards and infrastructure to allow players to save their play data. During the "Aqours ONLINE Love Live! ~Lost World~" concert in October 2020, it was announced that the ''Next Stage'' version of ''after school ACTIVITY~'' will be receiving an Main/UpdatedReRelease in the form of ''Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY: Wai Wai! Home Meeting!!~'' which will be released for the UsefulNotes/Playstation4 on March 24 2021. It will feature new exclusive modes and content not seen in the arcade version. This iteration of the game will also be the first SIFAC game to be released outside of Japan, with localizations announced for the North American and Chinese markets that will release alongside the Japanese version.

An arcade spin-off known as ''Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~'' was released in 2016. ''SIF AC'' features the same core gameplay as the original game, but also introduces systematic and aesthetic expansions such as full 3D CGI performances to accompany gameplay and a physical card system in which the player can collect cards and use them with the game to alter gameplay and performances. It uses Creator/{{Taito}}'s [=NESiCA=] cards and infrastructure to allow players to save their play data. During the "Aqours ONLINE Love Live! ~Lost World~" concert in October of 2020, it was announced that the ''Next Stage'' version of ''after school ACTIVITY~'' will be receiving an Main/UpdatedReRelease in the form of ''Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY: Wai Wai! Home Meeting!!~'' which will be released for the UsefulNotes/Playstation4. It will feature new exclusive content not seen in the arcade version. This iteration of the game will also be the first SIFAC title to be released outside of Japan, with an English localization (no doubt due to the global success of other games in the Love Live! franchise) being confirmed to be in development, announced alongside the Japanese version.