also, while looking up shots of the tokimemo 1 girls during this exact event (shockingly hard to do; mostly girl's side and switch port shots now), i fucking busted a gut discovering how shiori looks if you end up talking to her while she's pissed at you tokimemo, a game that contains multitudes 😌

you ever think about how dating sim sprite art immediately peaked with the sports day getups for the original tokimeki memorial crew back in 1994 and then we never reached that summit again for the next thirty-plus years

Ah, those beautiful, halcyon days when the FTC was headed up for five minutes by someone who actually gave a shit and tried to make a difference and then American and Japanese capitalism did their thing anyway. Whomst among us could've ever seen outcomes like this coming? Surely not I. Surely not I.

Today in Sentimental Graffiti'ing: Taking a shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagasaki NOT to see girls, but to spend a week doing odd jobs to rebuild your savings because you did the math and you'll make more money than you would if you stayed at home doing cheaper gigs. Video games are funny, dude. 😌

you can also, at minimum, double your innate coolness by pairing that jacket with your own hot pink shiori zippo lighter when you take a smoke outside the local convenience store still irrationally mad for not having this yet after all these years, i really gotta fix it so i can be doubly cool, too

reminder that the shiori fujisaki jean jacket is real and she's only visible from the inside, so you and she can be together in peace whenever you go outside

Okay, I gotta post something on-brand again or else I'm genuinely gonna lose my mind after all that, so here's a date 'em up girl in a happi, on the house. Because there's genuinely nothing hotter in this country, if not this earth, than a lady in a happi. You can thank me later when this is over. 😌

Pretty damning condemnation of Phil Spencer's batting average with his acquisitions after it's all said and done when it's the game they acquired years before the rest of their Game Pass portfolio that's apparently kept the rest of the division afloat all these years. Shocking? No, but still grim.

Posting this as much for myself to remember to actually have my TV tuned in, but: t-minus 55 minutes until the world is blessed with new old Ghost in the Shell. Maybe 2026 is an all right time to be alive after all. 🥹

Wakana, Kyoto local, circa 1998: "I hope you didn't run into too many people on the way. The crowds can get awful this time of year because of the Gion Matsuri." Me, playing 30 years later as a regular shopper in that exact area: Haha, hahaha, girl, you're gonna wish you still had those crowds. 💀

The beauty of Sentimental Graffiti's loop is in a single weekend, you'll take a night train to your manic pixie gf Rei Ayanami in Nagasaki, a bus to Fukuoka to talk about mini discs with your punk rock gf, and then a plane back home to schedule your next date with your archer gf before she sleeps.

Bought a book that teaches how to be successful at pachinko while dating as a lesbian. Already learning important life lessons like, "kissing girls will improve your luck stat," so, 1800 yen well spent already if you ask me. 😌

In the classic PS2 pachinko RPG PachiPara 13, you graduate high school with no job prospects in a stagnant economy with blatant wealth inequality. Trapped in poverty, you live in a shed in a back yard with three roommates and your only income is gambling, the lynchpin of the entire financial system.

I posted about this about a month ago, but last year in Japan, Sony did two waves of gachapon keychains with box arts of games they published. The PS1/PS2 stuff was mostly Japan Studio stuff. But when they got to PS3/PS4, well... 💀 (The mystery game is Ghost of Tsushima, for those wondering lol)

Someday, she's gonna say the word. I need you all to believe in her and Our Shared Dream more than you ever have before. 🥹🙏

Family Mart pizza-man, my garbage beloved, reunited at last at 11 at night. Every single individual component of you sucks, your dough, your viscous sauce, your almost nonexistent goopy cheese. And yet when I needed you most tonight, you were there for me once again, and for that, I thank you. 🙏

I'm in the part of the learning process with this game where I'm often doing worse than when I initially started as I try to play more deliberately, but the deeper I get, the more I just want that PCB and the more crocodile tears I cry in turn. Man, what a cool little game this is. 🥹

Anyway, let there be no doubt about where Sentimental Graffiti sits in *my* personal dating sim pantheon, because I pass by this retail marketing poster for it multiple times a day in the apartment stairwell I like to call, The Galge Hall of Fame. 😌

The original is a game of tremendous history within dating sims and that's without even get into the massive amount of marketing put into it (serialized newspaper novellas, retail pre-release demos!). I have a soft spot for it and am a proud defender. Perhaps it's time I covered it on the blog. 🤔

And lastly, Seishun Quiz, a dating sim/quiz game-hybrid and Toshiyuki Kubooka's first game with Namco pre-Idolmaster. This is also a PS1 board, believe it or not. Gorgeously animated and super charming, it's my fave PCB that isn't a Tetris. Hopefully it'll run at playable speeds in MAME one day. 🥹🙏

Dancing Eyes, the PCB I frankly probably paid too much money for, again, how little I've powered it on. I can't say I particularly enjoy playing this, but I have a soft spot for the visuals of PS1-based boards and this at least has some of the goofier levels you'll find among horny Qix-'em-ups. 🐄

TGM1, my eternal beloved. Got this board for like $30 in Tokyo back in 2015 right before GDQ made it skyrocket in popularity and with it, its going price. Anyway, big mode is by no means my specialty, but I was doing all right for myself until I got done in by a cursed half step, as it goes. 😩

Got out the supergun to do some test captures for a thing I might do for the blog. Took me like three hours to color calibrate because arcade PCBs do be like that, so I'm gonna do a brief thread of multiple boards in my collection to make the most of this progress, starting with Neo Turf Masters. 😌

Pictured: the state of my retirement account in 2027. This is what I invest in when you pay me to localize your Japanese video games into English. (Again, I'm sorry for permanently removing a CPS2 from circulation for the sake of a dating sim the rest of you will never give the time of day for. 😔)

A long overdue entry on the old Credits Shelf finally came in. Didn't end up with a copy at launch for various reasons and then the game has seemingly fallen in and out of print until VGP came through. Couldn't not get it as the one responsible for a certain "FnV" line with Falcom's only bleep. 😌

And if I'm allowed to do a second QRT, like, go play some of the artsier games. There aren't a ton, but they show a different side to Nintendo's legacy on it. Doshin is partly responsible for me becoming a localizer and Cubivore can now be played in full on the hardware it was made for, which rules.

The main downside to playing it in 2026, such that you can call it that, is its visuals, which combine prerendered sprites with 3D geometry, look crusty on non-CRTs, especially emulated. Absolutely benefits from quality CRT filters that meld it all together as intended and make it look coherent.

I say this with some regularity and it's not a controversial take among fans, but Shiren 2 (probably the N64's only full-throated roguelike?) remains one of the best Shiren games to date. Solid, if lengthy tutorial sequence, cute story, and real cool post-game dungeons. Now playable in English, too!

I expected the Japanese prices for the Steam Machine to be pretty grim for obvious reasons, but this is deader than dead on arrival, phew. The 2TB bundle is like $200 more than the US price. Did these ship out from the US and are getting tariffed AGAIN upon arrival in Japan? Really puzzling. 🤔

Anyway, game looks stunning on this OLED. If you're like me and never got a Switch OLED because, say, you thought the next gen was coming sooner than it did, it's a really great way to revisit those games portably on a fantastic screen and, as of right now, for less than an actual Switch OLED. 😌