Last Modified: March 29th, 2006
This text has been dedicated to the public domain, with 'The Past' section based on research from shii.org and other sources.
The term itself, eroge, refers to a computer or video game (produced primarily in Japan) featuring sexually explicit or at least implied sexual content. When the games are sold or referred to in western countries, they are often called hentai games or h-games for short which contrary to belief, is never used to refer to the genre of game in the home country of Japan. Almost all of the games are based on computer generated artwork (also known as HCG) which gives the game the intended style of modern anime and manga in order to appeal to players. The artwork and the games themselves are both widely available in Japan, and (although not as commonplace) they are sold on the internet and in select shops to gamers in other countries - including but not limited to; Korea, China, United Kingdom, United States of America, France and Germany. Piracy of the games is also common, with entire games being distributed and, more commonly, the artwork from the games being made available online for those who have not bought the game or not followed the correct path to reach certain scenes.
The term eroge is a conjuction of the words 'erotic' and 'game' which has had some controversy over who first created it, some claim it was the programmers who first worked on the games as they often had long titles and therefore they would shorten them when talking about development games, whereas some say that the term was created by fans of the genre (along with members of staff at games shops) who saw the games being released and gave them a title to seperate them from other such games at the time in order to let users know what they were purchasing before hand. The term has now become popular in both Japan and Western countries, along with the predominantly western terms such as "h-games", "erogames" and "hentai games". Some games are referred to both in Japan and in the Western world as 'visual novels', these are usually games with minimal levels of erotic content and are some of the more well known games of the genre.
Although eroge are commonplace in Japan and put on games store shelves next to well selling titles for consoles such as the Gamecube or Playstation, they are still seen as somewhat perverted by most of the western world. Much of this view comes from the stereotype of 'otakus' who many westerners see in a negative light due to the way they have been portrayed by both the Japanese and the western media (most notably with the hikkikomori phenomenon of the early 2000's). Nowdays, attitudes are changing as the games become more popular in other countries as companies have begun to translate them and release them professionally. Although some still regard the games as only focusing on fetish sex and other explicit material, thanks to the growing popularity of anime and manga around the world, many people are now seeing that modern games focus more on the interaction and relationships between characters rather than erotic scenes.
With recent games (referred to as visual novels), they are less interactive and require only choices which has meant that it is easier for companies to translate them, even though there can be up to 80,000 lines of text to translate in just one storyline of a single game. Many online stores which focus on anime and manga are now starting to create sections selling both uncensored and translated versions and the original Japanese versions of games (usually ones that have not been licensed or are unlikely ever to be licensed). Some fan groups have attempted to translate games, although in most cases this has not been successful due to differences between project members, lack of free time and the huge amount of work translating the Japanese text is. One of the most successful companies currently translating and releasing eroge into the English-speaking market is Peach Princess with titles such as Gibo - Stepmother's Sin and Brave Soul.
It was the early 1980s and American companies such as IBM and Apple were dominating the market place of the home computer and computers in general. Japanese corporations could only sit back and watch the billions of dollars they were making from these ventures until they began to produce rivals to the American technology. Sharp, founded in 1912 and only just becoming known in the western markets thanks to their sponsorship of the Manchester United football team, began by launching the X1 series which was based on the Z80 CPU. It was followed by the X68000 and competed with the PC-88 series from NEC and the FM-7 series from Fujitsu. The PC-88 was arguably the most popular out of the three, even though it was only released in Japan and it only had 16 colours with no sound support, it was based on the Zilog Z80. It was on these three platforms that the eroge genre was created.
The first games that could be classed as eroge were very basic, with a simple storyline featuring minimal characters and usually featuring rape, molestation and extreme bondage. These games sold well and helped make the PC-88 machine popular within the market place, although the high prices of the games (around 8500-8800yen, approximately $80-85) quickly killed demand for games that had no real replay factors and simply gathered dust once they had been played through by the user once or twice. In order to keep sales up, developers had to adapt the genre and include more storylines and new elements. This was done by studios such as ASCII and Elf who adopted elements of the role playing genre in order to keep gamers interested for longer periods of time and increase the replay value of the games that they were selling, however the games still lacked interesting storylines due to them mainly being written by programmers rather than authors.
The eroge studio Elf redefined the genre in 1992 with their smash-hit Dokyusei (often considered to be one of the first dating games). The company was founded on the 27th of April 1989 in the capital city of Tokyo and had been releasing eroge for some time, although it was Dokyusei that finally put them on the map. The game was unique to other titles of the time because it did not focus solely on the sexual content, but mainly on the fact that you had to first date and seduce one of the female characters that you chose (therefore making the game more interactive, with the choice of different girls adding replay value). The game was so successful that it was not only sequelled (along with a following series, Kakyusei), it was also adapted for television and turned into hentai anime OAVs. Although Dokyusei was one of the first games to present a choice of which girl and therefore storyline to follow, the game Otogirisou (released on the Super Famicon machine, known in the western world as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, SNES) was the first to introduce multiple endings depending on which choices the player made throughout the game. The concept was labelled as a 'sound novel'.
In 1996, the newly formed company, Leaf took the idea of the 'sound novel' and built on it, creating the game Shizuku and branding it is a 'Visual Novel' (a term that now defines games of the genre). Shizuku followed the lines of the games of the past, focusing solely on rape, but the company progressed after releasing it and produced the game 'To Heart' in 1997 which once again redefined the genre thanks to it's modern graphics, high quality soundtrack (which even gained popularity outside of the game and was played in clubs and venues across Japan) and gameplay that was both smooth and enjoyable. The company continued to produce popular games and is now (with it's main competitor and rival, Key) considered as one of the most successful visual novel producers in operation, despite recent controversy of them using the Xvid video codec in some of their games which has forced them to release their source code for the games under the GPL license.
The genre as a whole was once again turned on it's head by the newly formed studio 'Key' who had split from their previous studio due to disputes over how much storyline an eroge needs to be popular. They became independent and continued to work on their own projects, releasing the visual novel Kanon in 1999 to critical acclaim and much commercial success. The game had taken much of the sexual content out of the eroge genre, and an all-ages version of the game was released on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000 and the Sony Playstation 2 in 2003. Due to the game being successful without having what many developers thought was the key to success of games, erotic content, Kanon has gone on to become a genre-defining game amongst eroges and was adapted into both anime and manga. The game also launched the studio, Key, and they produced popular follow-up titles such as Air and CLANNAD.
With the current standard of eroge being set by such games as Kanon, Air, To Heart and Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien; many studios are now using this format in order to appeal to a wider market with their products. A common trait by many of the big production companies in recent years is to reuse characters from their most popular games in order to add appeal to their upcoming games, examples of this would be the game 'Muv-Luv' and it's successor 'Muv-Luv Alternative' released by agesoft which features most of the original female cast of the game 'Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien' which was incredibly successful in Japan and recieved an anime adaption (which has recently been licensed for distribution in the United States by the company 'Funimation'). The genre of the eroge seems to be reaching a peak in levels of popularity (both in Japan and other countries) in the mid 2000's and this can be contributed to the mass proliferation of anime, manga and even the effects of the Japanese culture on the world (for example the drift racing phenomenon which originated in Japan and has now gained worldwide attention and popularity).
With in the introduction of anime-only television channels in countries such as America, some have stated that it is only a matter of time until western developers and publishers realise the profits that there is to be made in the genre of eroges and begin producing their own in order to compete (a somewhat role reversal of the situation in the 1980's) with the domination that Japanese companies have over this consistantly growing marketplace. It is questionable, however, how successful any western-produced games will be as many fans of the genre, in both Japan and America, are very loyal and percieve that only games produced in Japan are authentic eroge and that any produced by western companies are simply trying to imitate what the Japanese developers have spent years evolving. This issue has been brought to a head after recent American cartoons which appear to emulate the art style of Japanese anime in order to appeal to viewers who are interested in that style of entertainment. It is questionable as to whether the market will see any western-produced eroge being released, although it is not impossible due to the huge amount of money being made by creating the games
Along with games produced for the computer, companies are also now realising that there is a high sales potential in games that are released on popular console formats such as the Sony Playstation series and previously the Sega DreamCast. However, to appeal to the main user demographic of these machines the producers have to drop much if not all of the erotic content from the game which puts these versions on the borderline of actually being classed as eroge. Many of the most popular eroge in the recent years have recieved ports to different fomats, and even multiple formats (with some games being released on the Playstation 2, Microsoft Xbox, Playstation Portable along with the original PC version). It is rare for the console ports of eroge to be translated for western markets, due to the lack of the erotic content which western publishers use as one of their main selling points for many of the games that they release.
Current issues include piracy (an issue which is explored fully in the future section of this article) and the censorship which companies have to implement in order to avoid prosecution under Japanese obscenity laws which were assisted in creation by Americans and dictated to the country after their defeat in World War 2. The law got it's first real test in 1957 when it ruled a translation of the D.H Lawrence novel 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' obscene, and it was most recently used to sentence the illustrator and author of Misshitsu (Honey Room) to one year in jail for not censoring his work. Although the original Japanese releases feature mosaics over sexually explicit content, the producers now retain the uncensored art in order to allow the translators to use it to add value to the western translations by making them 100% uncensored, which has also created demand within Japan for the uncensored HCG scenes to be released on the internet or at least patched into the original language games.
A directory of information regarding many of the recent eroge releases and the most popular from the past is being created on this site, which allows fans and players alike to understand more about the game they are playing and in some cases give closure and additional information about any sequels or prequels that may have been released. This is being done due to the lack of information as most of the paraphernalia regarding the games is in Japanese only or has not been published online which means that English speaking fans have no background information on characters, the studio who produced the game, or if any adaptions have been made to continue the storyline. The games that have entries are listed below.
A number of fan-produced games have been released (in Japan only) to moderate success. Dojin games are most commonly patches or otherwise adaptions of existing games or characters which have had storylines or features changed in order to please fans of the original game or series who did not enjoy the endings or storylines that were made available to them whilst they were playing through it. An example of this would be the fan-adaption of the game 'Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien' which removed the crash (one of the main points in the plot) which hospitalised the character of Haruka and dramtically affected the storyline of the game. The adaption also removed all references to the crash and was dubbed by those who played it as the 'happy edition' (due to the original plot being seen as somewhat sad and emotional). Although dojin adaptions of games and inclusions of popular characters are reasonably common, there has not been many full independant games produced by fans which can be contributed to the large amount of time and effort which goes into producing an eroge, along with the huge amount of artwork which can take months and even years to complete, especially when not working as a team of art designers, which many game studios use.
Tsukihime (released late in the year 2000) is by far the most well known fan-produced game as it sold far beyond expectations and also recieved an anime adaption, along with a recent manga adaption. The game also launched the group that produced it, TYPE-MOON, into the spotlight and allowed them to create a second title professionally (the 2004 release Fate/Stay Night which also sold extremely well and has been adapted into an anime which started airing weekly on the 6th of January 2006). Examples such as this have inspired some amateur game developers to set up their own groups in order to produce eroge and hopefully get noticed, although sometimes it is to create games which fill the micro-niches that exist (including games featuring only BBW female characters, or 'futanari' (transsexuals)). However, none of these groups have so far recieved major attention from the gaming population as TYPE-MOON did with their original and follow up releases. It has been suggested that these fan-led projects inspired some of the fan groups that currently work on projects to translate eroges, although this claim has proven baseless due to the fact that eroge were being translated by fans before the release of Tsukihime in 2000.
The future of eroge within the market of gaming looks to be very secure, with the market growing year on year thanks to the improvements in gameplay, the increase in technology to enhance artwork, and the growth of the popularity of the genre as a whole across the world which is increasing thanks to the proliferation of anime and manga as licensing companies have started airing them on TV, releasing DVDs and publishing magazines in Western markets. Many companies who produce eroge are now expanding and putting much more effort into their games, which means that they take longer to be released but they also take a lot longer to complete and they include a huge replay value for gamers who purchase the games.
The growth in popularity of the internet has also helped the genre grow as it allows gamers to find more eroge that they would like to play in the genre that they prefer. The internet has also created new distribution and delivery methods for the games which destroy the taboo that goes with buying sexual related products in real stores as online stores are now offering mail-order and even download services as ways of obtaining the games that people purchase. The market for eroge will most definitely continue to grow as the years go by and as the studios that produce them continue to evolve and thrive.
One issue that developers are having to face more and more, and one that will come to head in the near future is the copyright protection of the game and the issue of piracy which is rife within both the Japanese market and the English market, as due to the lack of widespread availabilty of the games, many users choose to pirate them rather than legally purchase them. One such method that has been tried has included locking the games in formats only used by the game companies themselves which seems to have had moderate success so far. The issue is currently being investigated by many games studios in order for them to be able to make an informed decision on how to combat piracy effectively in the future.
hentai.co.uk. 2006.