#the world wasn't ready for Izumi and Nanana :'B | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

itsamepatches · 1 year

Text

Tokimeki Idol: Start-ING and End-ING

Hey there, everyone! This has been a semi-formal post about "Tokimeki Idol" I've been wanting to make for quite some time, but I wanted to make sure I, at least, unlocked all of the songs before I began working on this. I don't know why I wanted to do this so badly (except maybe analyze its positives and negatives and giving insight for those curious about this game), but it's here, so...enjoy! :B - Patches

By the way, because it has an offline version, Tokimeki Idol is available to play, so I will insert links to download it: Google Play: here! QooApp: here! iOS: here!

Curious about the music? Check out the official playlist!

Official Twitter Official Website

And now...

Tokimeki Idol: Starting-ING and Ending-ING

***************

Once upon a time, back in the early 1990s, there was a series of unique games released by Konami which became notable in the “dating sim” genre due to being nonlinear – that is, it was a dating sim which could be played any way the player wanted to. They could choose what skill they wanted their character to develop during the course of the game, they could pursue a romance with the popular character or the unpopular character. In the end, there was going to be a confession of love once that final school period concluded. That was Tokimeki Memorial. Of course, there’s more to it than just that, but I'm just giving a really brief context about the Tokimeki franchise. In fact, this series became such a smash it, that it sprouted spin-offs (Tokimeki Memorial – Girls Side), manga, a live action movie (just called “Tokimeki Memorial” like a majority of the manga titles), OVA(s), and anime series (Tokimeki Memorial Online)!

So amongst those spin-offs, there was one, in particular that seemed to come and go, and quite frankly, I want to talk about this from a perspective of somebody who enjoys this type of game in particular. You see, dear reader, back in late 2017, Konami streamed a game introduction video for a different kind of Tokimeki series; however, it would be in a much different setting than “dating sim” (or, uh, “puzzle” game in other cases):

It was going to be a music game – an idol one. Its name: Tokimeki Idol.

Also being referred to as an “idol communication game”, the player is responsible for 15 up-and-coming idols at a music school. Just for fun, the cast consisted of

Nanami Yamashita as Akane Tachikawa

Natsumi Kawaida as Natsumi Kawaguchi

Eri Inagawa as Nanana Katagiri

Reina Kondo as Nonoka Kusakabe

Akane Fujikawa as Izumi Izumi

Yurika Takagi as Koyukimura Sanada

Minori Suzuki as Minato Tsukishima

Natsumi Hioka as Akiha Yuki

Yū Wakui as Francesca Tanaka

Saori Hizashi as Noriko Hibino

Marika Hayase as Haruko Asagiri

Yoshino Aoyama as Tsubasa Aoyama

Honoka Inoue as Midori Tachikawa

Azusa Iwakura as Misaki Himari

Aki Kanada as Rare Mita

The game, consisting of wonderful performers/seiyuu and potential wonderful characters, was to be released in "winter" of that year; however, its official release was actually March 20, 2018.

And now...it's time for the plot, a little more info about our awesome 15 girls, the songs, gameplay, the game's lifespan, and the positives and negatives!

Plot and Characters!

Plot: You, Producer-san, are sent to help out 15 students at a music academy become the top idol(s) called Princess Republic Private Music Academy. As you guys climb up the ranking pyramid (the highest position being SSS and the lowest is F), you'll get to know your idol friends. It's nothing dramatic, if truth be told, but because of its short lifespan, who knows where things would've lead; however, if I had to take a guess, it would've stayed in the "slice-of-life/idol" genre.

(!! Sources: Tokimeki Idol Wiki )

Characters!!

Unit: C# (also the main trio) Akiha Yuki: Aiming to be top idol, her motto is “Always energetic with a smile!” Acts upon her ideas immediately and often gets those around her involved as well. She's wanted to become a idol ever since she was in elementary school. Her goal is to become an idol who can make everyone smile. Minato Tsukishima: An average girl who likes playing piano and singing. She doesn't know very much about idols. She was accepted into the idol course without intending to apply, so sometimes she’s a bit embarrassed about performing. She has played the piano ever since she was young. Francesca Tanaka: Her nickname is 'Frannie'. She's a dependable honor student who’s tough on herself and others. Francesca's father is Italian, and her Mother is Japanese, but Francesca was born and raised in Japan.

Unit: Rhythmixxx Natsumi Kawaguchi: A cheerful girl who loves festivals. Since Natsumi is good at dancing, she wants to do work that involves it, which explains why she became a idol. She claims that nobody else looks better in a happi. As a talented dancer, she’s been rivals with Tsubasa since middle school. Tsubasa Aoyama: Tsubasa is a serious, but good person who likes dancing, and has confidence in her dancing skills and stamina. Tsubasa thinks dancing is beautiful, and wants to do all she can to aim for the top. She has a straight-laced personality and hasn’t been able to shake Natsumi since middle school. She’s also particularly good at housework. Koyukimura Sanada: A friendly and relaxed “Yamato nadeshiko” type who loves period dramas and eating. Raised in the country so she’s also good at field work. Her poor stamina is top-class. With the influence of her grandfather, she became fond of historical dramas.

Unit: So Fantastic Nanana Katagiri: A girl with an unique sensibility, who is happy as long as she can have songs and her guitar. Her mysterious phrases seem to be influenced by her favorite teacher... Noriko Hibino: Her hobbies are appreciating movies and quizzes. She seems to be enjoying the pattern of her days being swayed by Nanana as they are. Midori Tachikawa: A cheerful and hardworking girl, who loves to move her body. She admires Nanana and is the younger twin sister of Akane.

Unit: Cookie Paradise Akane Tachikawa: A girl that moves at her own pace, whose usual speech, conduct and actions appears to be joking or teasing but with a still soothing essence. She is the older twin sister of Midori. Nonoka Kusakabe: Her hobby is making sweets, and she has a kind-hearted and quiet disposition. She’s Frannie’s childhood friend, and joined the idol course to follow her. Izumi Izumi (the gremlin): A game-loving girl who dreams of being a nationally-recognized game idol. She’s extremely into retro games and is particularly good at shooting games. Misaki Himari: The senior of everybody, who is an actress since elementary school. She loves animals and also works as a member of the animal breeding committee at school.

Unit: Virtual Kiss Haruko Asagiri: A zero student, who set up the idol department together with the president. A "older sister" character who is gentle and calm, but that hides a hot enthusiasm inside. Rare Mita: She usually has a reserved and spiritless atmosphere, but a switch turns on when it comes to work. She is in the original class (“Class Zero”) of the school’s idol course along with Haruko.

You (The Producer): Because this is a Tokimeki spin-off, it's to be (unfortunately) expected that The Producer is a guy (thanks to a thought from Ahika that goes "I'm interested in what type of woman he likes"; however, that does not seem to be the case, looking into the "title" choices --

"One thing that immediately stood out to me is that while in most other idol games the Producer character is explicitly male, in Tokidoru you choose your title/suffix out of 25 options (including "none") with the last option being explicitly female: お姉さん (onee-chan)" - as tip from Twitter pointed out.

And...

Neko Senpai: The best, more important character of the game. After feeding them, Neko Senpai gives you takoyaki as a thanks, which can be used to up the bond between you and a girl of your choice once you give it to her. I would give my life to Neko Senpai.

Phew, so there are our members! So along with their general info, there's also a bonus for each of them, "what she wants to hear from the producer (the player)". Some are kinda neutral like Minato wondering if coffee's good because that's what The Producer drinks, to Akiha's which I mentioned earlier, to Nanana wondering if we like her and what it is that we like about her.

As mentioned at the start, once time passes between The Producer and the girls, you'll get to know more about them and vice-versa. It's all about the bond and making it in the world of idols!

Gameplay!!!

If you've played a music/idol game with characters, then you probably know how the gameplay is: get together a team of five, play a few songs, level up yourself and the characters.

[!! Source: "Dreaming-ING" gameplay; Inari Kotone - YouTube]

Even though I said the gameplay is basic, I still found it enjoyable overall. And yes, you can either have the MV playing or a still 2D image as your background as you play (which the latter is good for me because I can easily get distracted, not gonna lie).

In addition to playing music, there were also events and stories to unlock consisting of the units, a specific character, or several specific characters. What was neat is that there was also a VR mode - one general and one through the eyes of something tiny, furry, and cute. I actually forgot to try that mode out; however, from the comments I've seen for it, it worked well.

Music!!!!

Music selection is mixed: 1) Some are originals (such as "Dreaming-ING"), 2) Some are (cleverly) covers of songs related to the Tokimeki franchise (ex: Izumi's cover of "Fifnel's Space Suit" *original version can be listening to here*) and 3) others are songs from other Konami games (Vampire Killer, TwinBee, etc -- they can all be found here)

There's a bit of a variety here, but at the same time, I wonder how many more songs from other Konami games would they have put in this game instead of covers or originals. Not like there was anything wrong with that third category, of course.

Knowing the background story of the Tokimeki franchise, I can't help but love the cover of "Motto! Motto! Tokimeki" (an opening song for Tokimeki Memorial) being sung by Koyukimura, and honestly she sounds adorable. Another song, an original, I need to give a shout-out to: "Magic Hour", sung by Nanana.

Overall, the selection is good. Moving on to another critical thing in regards to idol games:

Cards!!!!!

Have a favourite character or two? There's a chance that there might be a card (or two, or ten, or all of them) that you might wanna get because you love them, the outfit they're wearing, or both of those things.

In Tokimeki Idol, their card rankings go like this: N, R, SR, and SSR with SSR being the highest, of course.

Aaaand, here is an example of the cards! Cute as heck! The costumes in this game are mostly good*, but the SSR cards sometimes feel a little underwhelming. I'll talk about them a little bit more once I'm through with this introduction. Which is right about...now.

(*except for the god-awful "cowgirl" costume and the semi-fanservice swimsuits. Hard pass.)

? Reception ?

As expected, there were some positives, and negatives, about Tokimeki Idol. I couldn't find much "reception" or reviews about it besides a few brief ones on QooApp's page:

"The characters are cute!" "The music is great!" "VR mode is awesome!"

"The game feels buggy" "content was boring" "it takes a lot of space (sizes between 2 gb and 5 gb)"

For some people, this whole game seemed iffy to them because of who was attached to it (Konami, who was still stewing in controversy with "P.T." and Kojima...oh, and also the pinball games) and apparently, Konami's mobile game record had been an issue as well, with some not even passing a year and a half. Unfortunately, Tokimeki Idol would become its latest victim, despite the Tokimeki named attached to it.

November 15, 2018...

[Important ① ] "Tokimeki Idol" has continued to operate with the support of many customers, but due to various circumstances, it will be canceled on January 15, 2019 (Tuesday). We have decided to end the management service at 14:00.

So close, and yet so far was that first year anniversary which would've been March 20, 2019. Why did it happen? Not enough money was made because there weren't enough whales (doesn't help when you only make your game available in Japan and not try to make it global despite being a rather rich video game company but hey that could be said for a lot of other games who fell like that)? Lack of players because there wasn't much going on, content-wise? Another bad move on Konami's part? Who knows. The fact the tweet said "various circumstances", there was obviously more than one issue happening behind the scenes which we'll probably never find out.

In addition to the announcement of its closure, a 2.0 offline version would be released. It would be possible to do, pretty much, anything you could in the online version except for the lack of new stories, events, and having a "friend" help you out when you play a live.

As expected, fans of the young game were dismayed, some people thought it wasn't too surprising, given Konami's mobile games record, then there was that one person who probably rambled about how the "idol games" have long since sailed just so they can complain about idols in general because they have nothing better to do, I guess.

Remember I mentioned how I enjoyed the cover of "Motto! Motto! Tokimeki"? Upon digging up older tweets by the official Twitter page, I discovered it was the final song added to the game. Weird how that works, huh? It's almost fitting, reminding the players/The Producers of its roots - the Tokimeki universe.

And so, on January 15th, 2019 (Japan time), the ending-ing arrived:

[Thank you for playing] "Tokimeki Idol" has ended its operation service at 14:00 on Tuesday, January 15, 2019. We would like to thank everyone who has played the game so far. We hope that you will continue to update to the "offline version ver.2.0".

Epilogue-ING

And here we are today, November 6th, 2022 -- just a few days shy of the announcement's 3rd...uh, anniversary? Oops. This wasn't intentional, I swear.

Despite the game now being offline, there is still activity going on including new singles, consistent tweets on their Twitter account, and even lives to this day!

In honesty, that makes me happy, because I saw potential in this game.

Anyway, yes, you - the curious reader - can still obtain this game and play it. Even though there might be a bit of a language barrier, there are guides and threads out there that'll give you a hand.

The Tokimeki Idol Wikia: this place contains general information about the game, a well-translated guide for the game, and much more. This was the place where I got 80% of the photos used in this post. Thank you, Admin Subaru!

Twitter: An introductory thread made by tip on Twitter, a person I quoted earlier. Tip gives an insight about the game for those curious. (I think this might have been the one which convinced me to play Tokidol too, now that I think about it.)

As a "fun" side-note, on May 21st, 2019 -- months after Tokimeki Idol went under -- Konami tried again with another music mobile game, an all-male one called "Dance Killer Trick!!! -Boys, be DANCING!-".

(...)

It shut down August 5th, 2020, went into offline mode, but if you haven't downloaded it by November 1st of 2022 and you own an Android, you won't be able to play it at all for some dumb reason, so seeing that disaster makes me realize why some people don't like Konami. Yeesh.

"So, what do you think of it though?" Sure, I'll tell you, share my thoughts about what could've went wrong, stuff like that. :B

Patches' Thoughts (The Ending-ING, for real)

I enjoyed the time playing Tokimeki Idol, and I wonder why I never had the chance to play it while it was still online -- probably because I had a lot of shite going on in my life at the time, or because of its short lifespan so I didn't have much time to follow people on websites who knew of it as well. If it had been available globally (like on Google Play, for example), I would've ran into it like I did with the very obscure "Dance Sparkle Girls Tournament" (which was beta "Maika Fantasia"). Regardless of how and when I played, I loved it.

My favourite characters: Nanana (#1), Izumi, and Natsumi.

One of my favourite gameplay maps is probably - from what I can think from the top of my head- "GRADIUS -Four Suite for Two Pianos-" on Expert.

I love the Halloween and Christmas cards, and special shout-out to the Kirameki High School uniform for being an outfit choice - obvious, but I still love it. The cowgirl costumes and go far, far away, though.

I mentioned it earlier, but yeah, the SSR cards feel a little underwhelming, possibly because everybody is standing in place instead of being in some kind of "fantastic" pose with a livelier background. On one hand, I guess Konami wanted to use those models as much as they could, but on the other hand...

...on the other hand, they had 2D art. Where does this style appear? On the title screen (there are several title screen images), CD covers, most of their merchandise, and whenever you reach a new bond level in-game with them. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with using the 3D models (heck, they're cute), but I feel as though having the cards use the 2D art would've helped with the cards' overall presentation.

Fans of idol mobages "ooh", "ahh", and SCREAM IN ALL CAPS over their favourite getting an awesome card with lively colours, an awesome outfit, or both of those things. I understand not everybody will feel the same way like I do about the cards, but I'm thinking of a reason why the poor game seemed to have fallen hard so early in its run.

(games: IdolM@ster Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage; Love Live School Idol Festival *1*)

Like, goodness no, it doesn't have to be super spectacular, but having the girls static with a faint background as the rarest card in the game doesn't give me a huge "wow" factor like these two games above can evoke.

Could it have been the stories that didn't grab people's attention? I, truth be told, have not read any of them, but I have a feeling that it isn't too thrilling. Because they didn't get any other form of media such as an anime or manga, the game and drama cd tracks are all these girls have, and if they got far with those or not is anybody's guess ;;

Another thing I brought up much earlier was how it stayed only in Japan during its run, people such as myself, had to use other means to play the game; however, I understand that expecting a global release so soon is too much, especially if they're not making much of a profit from it. I could see a release in the near future, had this game done well enough. It shouldn't be an issue for a company like Konami, but hey...look at Bandai/Namco with their games despite having enough money to possibly release their games globally,,,*cough*

All in all, I like the game, you might like it as well. I say, if you've got the store on your device (about 1 GB), I say: go for it, you might like it.

Thanks, Tokimeki Idol! Let's meet again!