Old VN buy and download

[Ketirs]

Hello everyone! I'm new here
This place feels really nice, you can say "like home", ha-ha

So, the point of this theme is - Whether or not people want to buy old VN's (I mean, that was released before 2004)?

I found myself, that VN I wanted to buy isn't on sale anymore, and not likely it would be again.

[Yuuko]

I have few "old" VNs (1995-2005) but I have downloaded all of them. (I know few sites where to find old VNs but I can't share them here) I would buy old and new VNs if it were easier. It's such a pain dealing with shipping and customs.

Oh and welcome to Fuwa too

[Narcosis]

Generally speaking, everything beyond a certain period of time is hard to get - with physical distribution only, games finally went out of print and since their publishers either do not exist, or don't hold publishing rights anymore, it's impossible for them to reappear on the market. Even when possible, they often do not come back simply because the interest in old games (retro market) is very small and new releases are both economically and financially infeasible. Used copies are often the only way to obtain those games.

 

Luckily, with the advent of digital distribution, it's currently a lot easier for both developers and publishers to re-release older games. A lot of them are available as downloadable versions on Getchu and most have a quite affordable price tag.

[Ketirs]

Sure thing, but you know, I kind of want to buy such titles like tsukihime, or kanon and air (yeah, I like Nasuversus and KEY афт ) but soon was disappoint with no variants. On the other side, what do you think, if there were a possibility to buy them (and so support all the people that "bring it to life"), would people be interested?

[Narcosis]

Like with everything, interest wanes away with time. Unlike other mediums, like art or books which are mostly timeless, games are preety much bound to the hardware they were made for and require machines to be run on. It makes them more susceptible to fall into obscurity, unless really popular. In my opinion, things rarely die though, since there are always fans of nearly everything that will do anything they can just to ensure, that future generations will be able to experience them.

 

Regarding possibilities, as of late a lot of old vn's that used to be really popular, or a part of well established franchise, are being remade. Rance series are a good example - they came out years ago, mostly for the previous NEC PC's and now, they are getting both new graphics, enchanced gameplay and rewritten scenarios. It's partially because Alice Soft wants to keep the legend of Rance alive and adjust them to the quality level of their newly released games, but also because a lot of modern gamers wants to experience the whole story without being forced to hunt for outdated software. Therefore - yes - it's possible, but highly dependant on game's circumstances.

[Fred the Barber]

Sure thing, but you know, I kind of want to buy such titles like tsukihime, or kanon and air (yeah, I like Nasuversus and KEY афт ) but soon was disappoint with no variants. On the other side, what do you think, if there were a possibility to buy them (and so support all the people that "bring it to life"), would people be interested?

 

You can get Kanon and Air easily on J-List, shrinkwrapped and new. They're not exactly cheap, given how old they are, and newer releases will cost you a lot more, but if it's Key, you can pretty much bet that you can import it from J-List. Unfortunately, their import selection beyond Key is super limited...

 

So, I completely agree that there are a lot of VNs I would like to buy but have been completely unable to. I was proud of myself for getting a (new, shrinkwrapped) G-Senjou no Maou off of Mandarake recently, but that's about as adventurous as I've been in finding Japanese sources for importing VNs. I'm doing my best to try to support the medium (I have either an imported or legally-licensed downloaded copy of every VN I've ever played except Comyu), but it's really not easy in the US. Piracy, on the other hand, is unfortunately trivial...

[Ketirs]

You can get Kanon and Air easily on J-List, shrinkwrapped and new. They're not exactly cheap, given how old they are, and newer releases will cost you a lot more, but if it's Key, you can pretty much bet that you can import it from J-List. Unfortunately, their import selection beyond Key is super limited...

 

So, I completely agree that there are a lot of VNs I would like to buy but have been completely unable to. I was proud of myself for getting a (new, shrinkwrapped) G-Senjou no Maou off of Mandarake recently, but that's about as adventurous as I've been in finding Japanese sources for importing VNs. I'm doing my best to try to support the medium (I have either an imported or legally-licensed downloaded copy of every VN I've ever played except Comyu), but it's really not easy in the US. Piracy, on the other hand, is unfortunately trivial...

[Fred the Barber]

Fortunately, it seems like higher-quality VNs are getting licensed more now than they used to be (until a year or two ago, it seems like it was pretty much just nukige as far as the eye could see, with very rare exceptions like Steins;Gate that mostly serve to prove the rule). But the only way that's going to keep going is if it is commercially viable. To wrap it up neatly, if we want to actually increase the availability of VNs in the US, the best thing is probably to just get as many people as possible to go buy Grisaia. If Grisaia sells, it should be taken as a sign that there actually is a market out there that can support localization to English for top-notch VNs, and then the companies responsible for those translations will be in a better position to cut deals with the larger VN development houses to license them. If it doesn't sell, then the market probably isn't there, and we'll all end up staring at this image, with nobody to blame but ourselves: