Decay

Anime Expo runs from July 2nd - 5th in Los Angeles, and all three major english VN publishers will be present and announcing new products. This is the biggest convention of the year for VNs, and contains the highest concentration of new announcements, it's pretty exciting! Here's who will be there and what to expect from them: JAST JAST's panel comes first at 10PM PDT on Thursday. Nobody is really sure what to expect from JAST, but they have claimed that they will be announcing some stuff there. The safe guess is a new Alcot game (moege dev, makers of My Girlfriend is the President and Clover Days), which is something they teased around six months ago. The more far-fetched guess is Muramasa by Nitro+. It seems like this is going to happen eventually, but JAST has also said they want to wait until projects are further along before announcing them, to avoid Hanachirasu and Sumaga incidents in the future. If you're attending, JAST's booth is #1319. And it's over! JAST announced Flowers, an all-ages yuri/mystery VN, for fall 2015 which is kind of crazy since everyone thought MangaGamer would be the ones to handle that. Also SoniComi, which was translated and edited by the power duo of Tulip Goddess Maria and Ritobito, so actually look forward to that "soon". Seinarukana will also be out Fall 2015... supposedly. The Alcot game they teased earlier in the year was a no-show, but JAST seemed to imply that they may have more to announce at Comic-con so there is still hope for the moege lovers out there. Sekai Project SP comes second, their panel is at 7PM PDT on Saturday. I know even less of what to expect from SP than JAST. I believe Key is attending AX as well. I would not be surprised by the announcement of another Key game being licensed, be it LB, Rewrite, or maybe even Angel Beats?? They planned to work with Doki on Clannad before that was dashed by the community's desire for a total retranslation, and Doki teased some Little Busters news sometime this summer, so LB may be the most likely suspect. They will also probably announce some doujin games, as is Sekai Project's habit. Interestingly, they just set up a Japanese twitter account and is tweeting about AX in it. It would be a humorous twist if they announce they'll be translating some OELVNs into Japanese. SP's booth is #1720. Panel summary: Sekai Project continues to impress with their ability to license popular titles. They've managed to grab the highly lucrative Akabei Soft partnership, and will start by releasing G-Senjou no Maou this summer. They've licensed Root Double, a popular survival story made by the director of the Infinity games. They've also announced Chrono Clock for release "soon", which establishes a new partnership with the respected eroge developer Purple Software. Additional news: There will be a remake for the entire Narcissu trilogy, including part 3 in english for the first time, World End Economica Ep. 2 is releasing this month, and Clannad is releasing in November. MangaGamer MangaGamer is last, hosting their panel at 9PM PDT on Saturday. Ryukishi07 of Higurashi and Umineko fame is attending the panel with them, likely to talk about Higurashi's western release. It may be too soon to announce another license deal with him, but who knows, it could happen. MangaGamer has teased four announcements, including three whole new partners. They have separately teased an announcement of a yuri game, and have recently conspicuously posted pictures of SonoHana merchandise at their booth (although they're known to sell goods from completely unrelated VNs). My guess: The one announcement from a current partner is going to be Tsuriotsu from Navel, but really, it could be anything. MG's booth is #919. AND THAT'S ALL SHE WROTE! The big announcement of the MangaGamer panel was their partnership with Alice Soft, starting with Beat Blades Haruka. Other announcements included Himawari, a sci-fi work known in Japan for its intricate storytelling, A Kiss For The Petals - Remember How We Met is an all-ages yuri VN coming to Steam from the popular SonoHana yuri series, and MangaGamer will be updating and releasing the Witch Hunt translation of Umineko for sale, with new character sprites. Other news was that Sweet Sweat in Summer will be out this month, Kara no Shoujo 2 will be out this fall, and they're aiming for an end of 2015 release for Gahkthun. Honorable mentions: Degica is attending and talked about their upcoming Muv-Luv kickstarter, which will go live late August or early September. Aksys Games announced that Zero Escape 3 is in the works and will be available in Summer 2016. So what are you guys excited about? What do you think is going to happen? If you're attending, feel free to talk about your experiences on the show floor, although keep in mind this thread is about visual novels. I will be updating this post as new information comes out. Your wildest dreams didn't come true? Remember, Otakon is later this month and MG and others will have more announcements there, too.

But that would take effort, and who wants that?

After they made that first tweet, dovac posted on reddit about how it was a bad idea to be so open about having an 18+ version before the kickstarter concludes. Kickstarter really doesn't like erotic content on their site. This may be them just covering their tracks so they don't get on kickstarter's bad side.

Finished the Ayu route in Kanon. Yep, certainly seems weaker than Key's other games so far.

Nothing particularly interesting has come out in the last couple months. The last big release was probably Princess Evangile. There seems to be a lot of potential releases for late summer and autumn, though.

I don't doubt it. If this is successful, why wouldn't they keep going?

That's good news, and pretty surprising to me. I'm glad that they're doing that part of it right.

Gone. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. edit: To be clear, that was from some random completely uninvolved user who has no idea how VNDB works. There is no release date. If there was, it would show up on TLwiki first.

My opinion: "Who cares?" I use the two interchangeably because it really doesn't matter. I couldn't possibly think of a less important issue.

Yes. Same resolution and dimensions.

Because of restrictions imposed by the platform holder and CERO? Despite the censored CGs, it still got a CERO D. It probably would have received a Z if they used the uncensored CGs and generally they want to avoid that kind of thing. Age rating doesn't matter on Steam, and they might not bother rating it at all.

The point is to make it sellable on Steam. It takes no extra effort to use uncensored CGs over the censored ones where it doesn't matter.

While I really don't think they will ever release an 18+ version, that doesn't mean that they will use the censored CGs from the all-ages release.

The violence will almost certainly stay, there is no reason for them to remove that. This is probably not the place to talk about sensitive spoilers about MLA's story, don't take my jokey off-hand remark about the h-scenes too seriously.

You have to install DirectX 9. For Win7 and below: https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/Download/details.aspx?id=35

Many people do because we don't already have a patch for that. But eh... I've never really jonesed as much for that one as many others seem to do. They are already talking about a Steam version and haven't mentioned anything else. Although really, the h-scenes are 99% inconsequential to the plot, and regarding that last bit, we'd be better off without it. edit: I will also say that Degica is a relatively respected company who does serious business with a lot of non-gaming-related partners. If they released uncensored eroge in any capacity, that would probably deliver a hit to their reputation that they definitely don't want. I can't see them releasing an 18+ version at all.

I don't know what the holdup was, but kimonozo might not have had anything to do with it, because apparently they were in talks for close to a year and nothing happened. The story I heard was that negotiations were just taking longer than Ixrec had patience for and he released his translation as a patch, torpedoing the whole thing.

So Herkz is saying they MIGHT be using Ixrec's translation. Hopefully this turns out okay.

Source or it didn't happen. You can't just post stuff like this. I'd be surprised if they use Ixrec's translation considering he's the reason why MangaGamer's talks with Age fell through.

There was off-screen sex in both Clannad and Rewrite, but there are no 18+ versions of those nor will there ever be.