One of the benefits of being an English speaker learning Japanese is the high number of foreign loan words in use here, which let us get away with using words like interactive, compliance and universal design as-is without bothering to learn the Japanese terms. Sometimes the meanings are slightly different: a good example is tension, which means excitement and fun when used in Japanese, rather than stress or strain. Of course, the Japanese take foreign loan words from languages other than English, so it can be a challenge when you encounter words like アルバイト arubaito (part time job, from the German arbeit), アンケート ankeeto (questionnaire, from the French enquette), or モード modo (meaning fashion, from French). In an episode of Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun (a great series if you haven’t seen it), the handsome-but-shy Mikoto is asked by the school art club to be their デッサン dessan model, which is French for sketch or drawing. So when you study Japanese, you get to learn other languages as well!
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Windows 95, which I tend to think of the final “coming of age” of the computer industry. I remember those days fondly because that was when I was getting my start as an entrepreneur licensingvisual novels from Japanese companies for sale in English, starting with the now-classic titles like Three Sisters’ Story and Season of the Sakura. Things were really different back in those days. DOS support was still important, and I remember having tons of knowledge about how to debug problems with sound cards stored in my head (ugh). When a Japanese eroge company makes a game, there are several established distribution companies who’ll sell it for them, but there were no such companies in the U.S., so we had to make our own H-game distributor in San Diego. While shrinkwrapped package versions of our games have always been an important part of our product lineup, the rise of convenient Internet download versions enabled more customers to try our titles, and late last year we launched a great new version of the JAST USA website with instant download of software (no delay for processing), a long-requested feature. Now we’re opening a new chapter, with the all-ages version of Littlewitch Romanesque being released on Steam. Follow the launch on the JAST USA Twitter account, Tumblr and Facebook page!
The day is finally here: the launch of our first game on Steam. Littlewitch Romanesque is an amazing “bring-up game” in which you must teach two young witches-in-training how to use magic spells and go on quests, and win love and romance from the various colorful characters in the game. The title goes way beyond most visual novels with its high quality gameplay, which combines both strategy and amazing visuals. The game offers 30+ hours of gameplay, 300+ CGs by the dreamy art by Oyari Ashito, 79 quests to complete, and 20 endings to unlock, plus full support for Steam Trading Cards, Steam Cloud and more. We hope you’ll help make this great new release a success, and we’re having a 10% launch sale for the first week to help! Ships Friday at 5 pm Pacific time. Visit the STEAM site now!
