~Tanuki Note: A belated happy new year to all! We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. We have been VERY hard at work here at Okashi Studios lately, which is partly why we haven't been as active here on our website. I am working on preparing a significant update on game progress right now, and if all goes well, I'll be posting something new to the front page in the coming days.

Meanwhile, here's something nice and random to entertain you while you're waiting...

Written by Okashi staff writer, Megan (she loves her pomegranate juice!)

I love ren-ai games. Simply put, pretty much any will draw my attention, to some extent. Visual novels are my favourites, but I also enjoy the type commonly called 'dating sims', Angelique being my favourite of these.

However one of my friends asked me one day, "Why do you play them? Aren't they all the same game?"

Oh no, no, they certainly aren't! Even games taking place in the same location can be radically different. Compare Bloody Bride and Tokemeki Memorial for instance, both taking place mostly in a high school. One has you playing as an effeminate vampire prince trying to net a human wife with mutual, consenting blood drinking, the other is your standard high school scene.

But I admit, I can see how somebody not a fan of these sort of games could see them as all being the "same" despite the utter lack of truth of this.

So it got me to thinking...

I am very proud to say it. I love my PC-Engine.

It has some of the best games ever made on it- Princess Maker, Graduation, Tengai Makyou, Gotzendiener, and.... Lords of Thunder. Now, Lords of Thunder was a shooter. It was much like other shooters at the time, and a very fun game.

Why do I bring it up, you ask?

Well, it set itself apart from other shooters with one main thing.

The music.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of playing Lords of Thunder, the music was all metal, of a particular genre that's been dubbed 'game metal'.

You start the game. The title screen comes up and this metal starts blaring and you think, "Ohhh yeah, this is gonna be great." But it doesn't end there. All of the music's metal. Even the shop music. You go into the shop and there's some woman in robes and all who meekly greets you, and the music's just blaring this wailing guitar riff. Ohhh yeah.

So my suggestion.

Metal ren'ai game.

I'm totally serious.

We'd have a set of perfectly normal seeming girls, each with their own proper metal theme. One would be some sort of melodic death, and we'd have another with black metal, and the quiet outcast of them gets this Tristania-style gothic metal.

And they'd all look normal. Like, school uniforms, nothing too wild about them.

You on the other hand would be some sort of twenty-sword wielding bloodthirsty raging demon from the Makai- or Neifelheim, if you prefer your metal Viking. With really flat, straight hair and skin so pale it glows and the ability to make peoples' heads explode. You'd have an uninterested look that'd make everybody fear talking to you but some of them would want to constantly come and 'cheer you up'. That could be a minigame right there. Avoiding annoying people who want to 'cheer you up'. The more people you flick off in totally metal ways, the more your svartness meter goes up. This does nothing to affect the game.

You'd be going to high school with the rest of these girls and none of them would ever find it odd.

But the music. It's always metal and never stops. You're in your room doing the studying activity and there's totally going to be this gravelly-voiced vocalist (or shrieking, if you prefer your metal black) in the background singing "STUUUUDY STUUUUUUDY DOOOO THE MAAAAATHS RAAAAWR".

You think you'll get a break when you go to bed, but no. No.

It'll start quiet but you'll have this growing rift as you watch you character sleep that's all "dum dum dum dum dumdumdumdumdumDUMDUMDUMDUMRAAAAAAAAAAAH" And it hits this high note and wails. That's when your character wakes up and goes to school.

You'd have a special guitar controller a la Guitar Hero that you play on randomly at intervals of the game. You're rated by the level of distortion of your guitar and the amount it's tuned down to rate the type of metal you just played. This somehow has secret bearings on which girl likes you. It just DOES. The highest level is when you hit "tr00" and at that point can make ANY chick in the game suddenly love you and your skills.

The game's gotta end sometime though.

Finally when you fetch the girl of your dreams... she'll lean in to kiss you. All your hard work and several hours of gameplay have paid off!

She kisses you!

Love has happened!

Then Luca Turelli rides by on his horse and throws a sword into the sun!

Explosion!

The game is complete.

....Actually, wait. Maybe I didn't think this one out so well. This is starting to sound ridiculous. I'm a failure.

Oh well.

I'd still play it.