The sim with people with disabilities was featured in a Sociological Images post: http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/07/18/disabled-girls-video-game/. I haven’t played it myself.

Regarding the sheep-counting CDs, I think at this point I’ve been outed as a drama CD fangirl, so I’d be a fraud if I didn’t have at least one of those for sleepless nights/general hilarity. I find some of them very effective (Hiroshi Kamiya) and some very ineffective (Daisuke Kishio shrieks in the middle of his, which is both funny and counter to the point). They released “good night” CDs for Vampire Knight, too, and I know at least one otome game (Under the Moon) has a sheep-counting CD of its own. It’s so odd. I wonder if Japan is trying to cultivate a new generation of girls who are too lazy to even count their own sheep when CUTE BOYS COULD DO IT FOR THEM.

Great article, as always- the reviews here are getting better and more comprehensive all the time. Seriously, who else would have even known about the sheep-counting CDs? (Although personally, those are sounds I would never be able to fall asleep to…)

I’m sure I don’t know the future of dating sims, but there’s a pretty strong tradition of franchising already (many current dating sims for girls are branch-offs of popular series of dating sims for boys, such as Tokimeki and DC Symphony or whatever the hell that’s called, and every dating sim worth its salt has books and drama CDs associated with it). But I do think this kind of intense marketing strategy, where a crapload of projects are spaced out very deliberately in order to extend the brand for as long as possible, and where nontraditional audiences are targeted (in this case, women, since dating sims for girls barely existed before a few years ago) is probably going to become more common…and that nontraditional audience point is pretty much the reason why I wrote this review in the first place. It’s a sign of a more aware marketplace.

Speaking of nontraditional audiences, a dating sim for boys recently came out in Japan where you play a disabled boy who goes to a school and is surrounded by cute, disabled girls whom you try to woo. I heard it’s actually pretty tasteful, and is yet more proof that Japan understands the concept of LOTS of audiences, some more traditional than others. This is in stark contrast to Hollywood, which assumes there are about four kinds of people on earth and everyone who is NOT one of those types WANTS to be one of those types. But that’s a rant for another time.