Description¶

Aoyama Love Stories was an in-development "Interactive Trendy Drama" at Konami, originally for the Playstation but later for Windows^[1]. It was never released, and seems to have never been discussed in English on the currently searchable internet, prior to "discovery" in the Action Button fan community.

Discovery and Speculation¶

I encountered a post^[2] by Chris Chapman^[3] about "The Playstation" Magazine, a Japanese 90s gaming magazine, which he explained he found on the Internet Archive. I decided to flick through an issue or two and pull out any Dating Sim stuff I could find and share it in The Bunker™. In Issue 85^[4] (1997-12-12) in amoungst a number of Dating Sim articles I found a page about Aoyama Love Stories. I didn't recognize it, and couldn't find anything on Mobygames or VNDB. I started casting my net wider, but the short list of Google-hits for the English version of the name turned up nothing that seemed related. I eventually checked out Japanese Wikipedia^[1:1] only to discover that the game never released. Both the mag and wiki articles refer to it as a "インタラクティブ・トレンディドラマ" "Interactive Trendy Drama". It's worth noting that in 1996 the incredibly successful TV Drama Long Vacation aired and I speculate that Konami, enjoying the smash-hit of Tokimeki Memorial, was looking for more opportunities with Romance games, and see a mega-hit TV drama air and think "I bet we can make a video game that appeals to similar sensibilities." Tokimemo was apparently very successful with women despite its het-male-centric perspective, Long Vacation was apparently extremely successful amoungst women; it was a sensible audience-expansion opportunity. The game seems to be about working 20-somethings, and an official pairing rather than a classic Dating Sim "many love interests design." It's interesting to me to consider what a video game inspired by TV romance drama may have been. --DistractedMOSFET

The Playstation magazine page, you can click for high-res.

Todo?¶

Currently both the magazine and wiki articles haven't been read closely due to language barrier. It could be interesting to see if the game is mentioned in other magazines from around this time.

Footnotes¶