Welcome

So, you’re probably wondering why I’ve started a blog about an obscure Japanese developer that no longer exists. Well, let me tell you…Like all such stories, my obsession with Lovedelic began with a girl. Actually, that’s not true at all. It began with a game called Chibi-Robo. This brilliant GameCube game, released in 2005, captured my imagination from start to finish. It’s a brilliant, original game; full of the sort of charm and personality I’m not used to seeing in modern videogames. Naturally, once I’d finished Chibi-Robo, I wanted more and began researching the development team behind this masterpiece.

It turned out that Chibi-Robo was made by skip, a small developer in Tokyo who were responsible for the untranslated Giftpia as well as most of the Bit Generations games. There didn’t seem to be too much here to pique my interest, until I learned that the Director of Chibi-Robo, one Kenichi Nishi, had created several other games under various other developer names.

Nishi’s greatest works appeared to have been made while he worked at a company called, yes, Lovedelic. And with this piece of information in hand I knew that I had to track down and play as many of Nishi’s games as possible. I also endevoured to play those games made by other people who had worked at and left Lovedelic. These people had gone on to work at companies like Grasshopper Manufacture, Punchline and Vanpool. And as I dug a little deeper, I found that the games made by these other companies were equally as intriguing as Chibi-Robo.

Is this all beginning to get a little bit too convoluted? Exactly!

That’s why I decided to start this blog. There are very few websites out there that detail the games of Lovedelic and their spiritual descendants. There are great starting points, such as this handy set of reviews at RPGfan and there’s a (now discontinued) Japanese weblog that attempted to do much of what I’m trying to do here. But, as far as I’m aware, no such resource exists for English speaking gamers.

So here we are. As this blog evolves, I hope that it will become a comprehensive guide to the games of Lovedelic. I’ll be starting with basic information about the developer and its games but will also be posting my impressions and reviews of certain titles as I play them. I haven’t sampled all of them yet you see, so many readers will be learning with me.

I don’t think there’s much else to say (as I’ve already said loads) but if you have any suggestions or questions then please drop me a line. Any good questions I’ll make sure to respond to on this blog so that everyone can read the answer.