Notices by 獣耳会社ｗａｎ (wan@poa.st), page 9

...who introduced her to anime, computer-animated images of anthropomorphic creatures.

“Haha, constrictor cunni.”

Fig. 449:

@PurpCat @ChristiJunior @Soma @Vidmastereon The general direction of all of this is that after the year 2000, a lot of sub-par writers who knew nothing about gaming were shuttled into games writing to replace the old guard (many of whom did know and care about games) as vaunted culture critics of gaming’s brave new respectable wave instead of, ugh, “blood and guns”. (And boobs – from, ugh, Japan.)

This suited American publishers down to the ground because this new crop were incredibly compliant to PR men and willing to shift the goalposts wherever they were encouraged to in the name of their parents not being ashamed of them any more. And so: A decades-long cultural embargo against Japanese games and Japanese things in general.

@PurpCat @ChristiJunior @Soma @Vidmastereon Found it – here’s the page from EDGE’s Christmas issue of 2003 (issue 131):

So here we are then, looking smart, clean-shaven and with fresh breath for a date with a Final Fantasy girl… …and YES! Here she is in a very, very short skirt. It’s an adolescent forum-botherer’s dream come true.

Here’s a theory, if you’ll indulge Edge for a moment. When Ms Gainsborough shuffled off her Final Fantasy immortal coil, her passing didn’t pass into videogame legend because of Square’s complex and involving narrative, or any emotional sophistication on the part of the developer. It came down to this plaintive, imaginary cry from an archetypal adolescent gamer: “OMG OMG! Now I will never see her boObs!” Or maybe that was just Edge. Whatever, all bets are off, because now there’s another way to get your Aeris kicks, aside from soft-focus tribute fan art or necrophiliac fan fiction. Final Fantasy Memorial is a Japanese dating game which gives players the opportunity to woo a selection of Final Fantasy girls, including the (presumably - although given this is the internet there are no guarantees - resurrected) darling of VIl. It looks like it offers the same sort of experience as Tokimeki Memorial (hence the title, Edge supposes), so expect to put in countless hours of thankless toil in the pursuit of a single instant of happiness, a lot like chasing dates in real life. Or the Final Fantasy series, for that matter. A coincidence? More information at: http://x.sakura.ne.jp/-yung/f/ffm/

Note the careful line walked, where they don’t say it’s an obscure doujin game (and therefore unlicensed) but also don’t not say it. To us, the sakura.ne.jp link is a dead giveaway but the average game magazine reader of 2003 had no idea.

On its own this would be quite minor, but this was after a big editorial shakeup at the magazine had caused almost all of its existing staff to walk out a few months prior; IIRC, its coverage of Japanese games after this point quickly turned to a steady drumbeat of how bad they were, how Japan’s best days were long behind it, and how terrible it was that they were still making games for people who played games – a classical narrative arc with which you’re doubtless familiar.