The History of Hentai Games, Part 1
I’m sometimes asked about the history of J-List, and how this wonky, fun company got started, and how we got involved with hentai games. The year was 1995, a year after the Netscape IPO but before anyone had heard of Google, and I was casting around for something unique to do that involved the Internet. I happened across some fans raving about a hentai game which they would download and play in Japanese, clicking wildly on the screen hoping for tiddies to appear. (Though we didn’t call them tiddies back then.)
In The Beginning
I got the idea of licensing these hentai games and localizing them for the English market. I picked up a phone book and started contacting game companies. The first one I had success with was JAST, a company that had made one of the first hentai visual novels ever, called 天使達の午後 (Tenshi-tachi no Gogo), also known as Afternoon of the Angels. This resulted in my first three hentai games and set the stage for publishing a huge number of fun 18+ PC games over the years.
And so the groundwork for JAST USA was laid, but making something that was this far outside the norm for the day would take years. I needed a way to float until the PC visual novel market was ready, so I decided to start a second company to sell anime related goods directly from Japan. I had already been selling used music CDs as a side hobby through USENET by uploading a big Excel lists and asking people to tell me which CDs they wanted to claim. This “Japan List” is where i got the name “J-List” from.
Price Drop on Some of our Favorite Hentai Games
We recently made a big permanent price drop on a lot of our best games, and I thought I would do a post about them, highlighting which ones I thought were particularly worth your time. All of these games are just $9.95, making them an outstanding bargain. All games are compatible with any version of Windows you might be running, and all games are uncensored and translated into English.
Over the years we’ve published something like 80 games, the vast majority of which are visual novels. Because people want alternative choices, we snatched up any game that involved RPG or strategy elements whenever we found one. One title was Pretty Soldier Wars, a strategy combat game.
Evil tentacle monsters from space are attacking the city, especially all the cute women. They need your help!
There are nine different characters you can use for your team, each with different abilities and melee or long-range missile attacks. In between the combat missions, of which there are nine levels, you get to go on dates with the various girls in your squad, who are actually androids. Have fun!
One of the first hentai games we publish that was a big hit was the X-Change series, about a guy who gets changed into a girl through a chemistry accident. Yin Yang! X Change Alternative is the off-shoot series for Yin-Yang!, which is a bit more modern and a lot of fun. The story is similar: you play a guy named Kaoru who gets changed into a girl because of your unique DNA, and have many sexy adventures as a female.
Mmm, yellow pantsu, I love those…
One of the major routes involves Mizuki, your classmate, who steals medicine designed to turn your back into a boy, and drinks it. Naturally, this causes her to become the greatest ‘futa’ character in any game we’ve published, I’m pretty sure. If you like futanari, this is your game.
One of the biggest hits in our history has been The Sagara Family, a really well executed harem game in which you go to live with the widow Sagara and her four daughters in order to attend university. They haven’t had a man around the house for years, and are kind of nervous around you, but curious, too.
One night, the mother gets drunk and has sex with you, thinking you’re her dead husband. After you started doing it, you decide to continue your relationship in secret. Naturally, the daughters all find out and start plotting ways to take you for themselves.
This is the youngest girl, who likes to troll you while you help her with her homework. In a game like The Sagara Family, each girl gets her own story route, and naturally there’s a “harem route” you can enjoy as well. Also, this game—and all titles by this artist—feature animated sex scenes.
Everybody loves catgirls, so why not make a harem hentai game about them? That’s the premise of Let’s Meow Meow.
In this game, you save a cat from being hit by a car, and to reward you the God of Cats gives you your very own living, breathing catgirl, to do anything you want with.
In addition to the catgirl character, there are several other girls with various furry animal features. There’s also a tsundere human girl who wants you for herself. Have fun with all of them.
Secret Wives’ Club was another fun hentai game. In this title, you become the “sexual trainer” of three rich, bored married women whose husbands are no longer interested in having sex with them.
There are three girls: a lusty woman you had an affair with once, a busty and kindhearted woman, plus a young wife who lacks sexual experience because her husband doesn’t have much, either.
In the game, you “train” the women any way you choose. You can be soft and gentle, train them with bondage or anal play, anything you like. The girls have “stats” which rise and fall depending on what you do with the women. In each of the roots you have the opportunity for the women to choose you, divorcing their husbands and marrying you instead.
Finally there’s Brave Soul, a game I recommend a lot at anime conventions. It features character designs by Mogudan, who went on to become quite a famous hentai illustrator after making this game.
Brave Soul is a full-fledged hentai RPG with tons of gameplay and story to unlock, with a fully realized D&D-like game system. The game tried very hard to copy major titles like Diablo, though of course at a lower technical level.
In the game, you form parties with the various female characters (and a dragon who is your sidekick), visit four different towns, then go on various missions to gain levels and money, plus the usual magic items and so on. At the end of every mission is a question you must respond to, which will cause the girls in your party to gain or lose “love points” for you.
Get enough “love points” and you can go on dates with the girls when you visit towns with them, eventually having sex with them at inns. One good thing about Brave Soul is the story, which is really very good, with several secret characters revealed as you play the game. Actually, you have to play the game through several times to unlock all the content, so you’ll be playing quite a lot. Happily, once you clear the game once, you get to restart with your leveled-up character, so it’s really fun. In addition to the ecchi aspects of the game, the main boss you have to defeat (again and again, once to clear each girl’s true ending) is also enjoyable, though retro.
Anyway, that was an overview of six hentai games that I think are really outstanding, and which are only $9.95, either through the J-List or JAST USA websites. We hope you’ll pick up a few titles!
