Developer(s) Konami Director(s) Yoshiaki Nagata Writer(s) Koji Igarashi | Publisher(s) Konami Programmer(s) Asuty S. | |
Composer(s) Mikio Saito
Seiya Murai
Miki Higashino
Hiro Noguchi | ||
Tokimeki Memorial (ときめきメモリアル, Tokimeki Memoriaru, lit. "Heartbeat Memorial") is a dating sim video game developed and published by Konami. The first game in the Tokimeki Memorial series, it was first released on the PC Engine in May 1994.
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Tokimeki Memorial 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.
Release history
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 (1995), Sega Saturn (1996) and PC (1997) with a new opening video, improved graphics and sound, and new minigames.
In 1996, it was ported to 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).
In 1999 the game was ported again to 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, the game was ported to mobile phones in Japan, and in 2006, was ported to the PlayStation Portable portable system, which is virtually identical to the PlayStation version. In 2009, the PlayStation version of Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You was released on the Japanese PlayStation Store to celebrate the franchise's 15th anniversary.
Reception
Tokimeki Memorial was voted as the 23rd best video game of all time in a 2006 reader poll by Japanese magazine Famitsu.