/vr/ - Retro Games

>>2082195

Boku No Natsuyasumi: Summer Holiday 20th Century is an isometric 3D adventure game that takes you back to nostalgic summer vacations of your childhood. You play as a Japanese child enjoying his break in his relatives' country home.

The game is divided into days of a month. Each day you wake up and go on adventures, whether it's exploring the environment, running errands for other characters, swimming, playing, capturing bugs, or climbing trees. At the end of each day you write down what you did in your diary, creating a lovely page of child scribbles and drawings.

As a twist, the game is really about the protagonist as an adult reminiscing about this idyllic period of his childhood, and at the end of the game you get to peruse each diary page of your vacation.

The game uses pre-rendered backgrounds based on real-world photographs which much look much more lush and inviting that you would expect, and it has an amazing sense of place and a great degree of charm. Japanese knowledge will be required if you want to get involved with the story to any degree, but otherwise it can be played with help from a guide.

It's amazing that there is no one working on translating this game considering the amount of praise it has received online over the past years, so hopefully someone will pick it up eventually. The series is successful in Japan and has spawned sequels for the PS2 and 3, as well as a PSP spin-off which has similar gameplay and visuals but puts you in the role of a parent raising a family.