When I finally pulled the trigger on my wallet and purchased Sony Playstation 1 in the late 1990s, I wasn't exactly the most adventurous player. I was more than happy to tackle the awesome challenges of Marbles and Tetris. Then, when I felt a little more peckish, I even strove for something like Sim City which never worked out all that well for me since I actually had the responsibilities of my day job as an English conversation teacher.
Then, when one of my otaku friends stayed over at my Ichikawa apartment for a few days, he lent me some of his games which were more in the single-person adventure genre...something that I had never dared try. And that included the dating sim "Tokimeki Memorial"（ときめきメモリアル）. I gather that from the large number of YouTube videos devoted to it, it has become a classic of its type. My first reaction was somewhat more subdued...more along the lines of "Man, date nights at the library aren't your thing?".
I only tried it out for a few minutes before closing it up. To be honest, if I'd actually try to play it through, I probably would have ended up like Nozaki and Mikorin above.
Well, we meet again, "Tokimeki Memorial". And strangely enough, I find out that another acquaintance on KKP, singer Masayo Kawaguchi（川口雅代）, did pop up here as one of the seiyuu for the game...specifically as the character Ayako Katagiri（片桐彩子）. That's quite the revelation because I remember her when she started out as a City Pop singer in the early 1980s. In fact, all of her entries on the blog thus far are centered on her album "Salute" in 1981 such as the track "Melty".
My anime buddy once told me that when it comes to anison, for whatever reason, a lot of them were arranged in a fashion that is five to ten years older than the year when they were released. So, a 1990s anison could sound like something from the 1980s. Perhaps that's also the case with "Suki na Mama de Suki de Ii" (It's OK to Love It As You Like It) which was a track on the audio CD "Gekkan Tokimeki Memorial No. 3"（月刊ときめきメモリアル(3)...Monthly Tokimeki Memorial No. 3）, released in October 1996.
And that's where I'm a bit confused. For one thing, according to the video above, Kawaguchi recorded "Suki na Mama de Suki de Ii" although I found her voice quite different from what her vocals had been like back in 1981 and I don't think it's just the passage of time. I found this other YouTube video below with the same song and yet it's supposedly sung by fellow "Tokimeki Memorial" castmate Mami Kingetsu（金月真美）. So who is who?
In any case, the song itself is very pleasant. It's a nice pop tune with a bit of Latin swagger. But if someone could give me the story on who really sang "Suki na Mama de Suki de Ii", that would be wonderful. Ah, and before I forget, Minako Aoyagi（青柳美奈子）was the lyricist while Toshikazu Minami（南利一）was the composer.
In 199o if I played games at all they were either on my Super Famicom are something in the arcade. After I started my first Job in Japan I did go out and buy a Play Station 2 and it served me as a DVD player and a game system. I guess the older sounding games create a kind of fake nostalgia for those playing the games?
ReplyDeleteHello, Brian. I've heard the term "fake nostalgia" used for a lot of new City Pop fans who hadn't even been born in the 20th century. Perhaps that might translate to those playing the old games, partially because of the soundtrack.
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