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17 Responses to “Top 100 best selling galge titles of all time”

1. Nemo_N Says:
   April 4th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

   Any idea what caused the lowering in the sale numbers over the time? The novelty wearing out? More games being produced? Lower quality?

2. Narcissist Says:
   April 4th, 2009 at 4:08 pm

   ^ A combination of the two last mentioned plus piracy and increased PC popularity, I would say.

3. jyuichi Says:
   April 4th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

   Hokago RenAi Club (73)….. I have that for PC (english edition: Casual Romance Club), its pretty fun. :)

4. TJR Says:
   April 4th, 2009 at 5:40 pm

   Part of the problem may be the saturation.

   However, the game market in general is significantly smaller than it was a decade ago (by 2002, we already saw a 70% decrease in software sales when compared to 1997, and things are much worse now. Japanese game publishers no longer expect much from the domestic market). We can expect niche genres to be even worse off than mainstream releases.

5. Adrian Veidt Says:
   April 4th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

   See how all the titles in Zepy’s list completely lack sex.

   Varied as they are, they all lack the reproductive function.

   ~

   This means war. Buy accordingly.

6. Zepy Says:
   April 4th, 2009 at 10:38 pm

   One of the factors was probably the sharp increase in PC ownership in Japan in the late 90s, PC ownership was pretty low back then, and with a PC the the guys that wanted porn would buy eroge instead of galge.

   Also more games started having stronger romance themes after the galge boom, like FF8. So it meant that players that just wanted light romance stories could already get their fix by playing other games, while many of the guys that wanted something more might be looking at eroge now, so there was little room left for galge.

   And the release of To Heart. The visual novel boom completely killed the concept of “game”, and a number of people couldn’t accept the direction the industry was heading where these games aren’t really games anymore.

7. Anonymous Says:
   April 4th, 2009 at 10:57 pm

   I’m rather surprised to see no Galaxy Angel on that list. Since it got two sequels and at least one spin-off game and dozens of TV series and pachinko and pachislot machines, I assumed it must had been somewhat popular…

8. Anonymous Says:
   April 5th, 2009 at 7:46 am

   holy fuck, that image brings back memories.

   needs more game though. although certain visual novels are pure fucking win, i miss the tokimemo/senti/*kyuusei/etc types.

9. Zepy Says:
   April 5th, 2009 at 7:49 am

   Galaxy Angel’s games only started after the boom ended though, and we’re in the age where galge that can sell more than 10,000 would be doing pretty good.

   Galaxy Angel actually did pretty well in that regard, because many of their games actually sold more than 20,000 (but nothing broke 30,000 i think). Actually it’s more surprising they’re still releasing games even now! I think a new GA2 just got released a few weeks back.

10. Anonymous Says:
    April 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    Oh yes, I totally forgot about Galaxy Angel II, which in itself spans three game titles already with that recent release you mentioned! I hope they increased the difficulty of the battles like Sakura Taisen did. Challenge and good game mechanics are the only values with which the galge genre could survive in this era of visual novels and simulation games!!

    Personally I stopped following the series when they changed the cast of main characters, just like my interest in Sakura Taisen mellowed out with the third and fourth title. I’m only going to give Sakura Taisen V a chance if they release it in the US (there are such rumors). I never played any of the later Tokimemo titles either, besides some spin-offs with the original Kirameki girls…

    Come to think of it, just pretend there was no boom that ended: assuming there never was a boom, then the charts clearly demonstrate that sequels for the same system with a whole new cast of characters generally fare less good than their predecessor, like Tokimeki Memorial and Pia Carrot demonstrate! And at the same time it demonstrates how Sakura Taisen 2, which brought back all of the girls from the first title, actually sold 140,000 copies more than the original one (counting the DC ports but not the PS2 remake)!! Anyone spots other franchises showing similiar behavior? I only spot Sister Princess defying my theory… >__< (I wonder how much copies of the DC ports of the first game were sold, maybe they’d close parts of the big gap between both titles).

    Okay okay, I know that I’m just trying to deceive myself. Zepy’s arguments about visual novels and eroge sound more convincing. I actually appreciate visual novels myself, but it still makes me sad to think that the galge genre is killed by it while we speak. As Zepy said, those games were still games at heart, many of them were even quite challenging. Even many of the PC98 eroge were, and they borrowed from a wider set of conventional genres. Like those eroRPGs, haven’t seen many of them around lately, although the all-ages-market is flooded by RPGs more than ever…

11. 5p. Says:
    April 6th, 2009 at 12:32 am

    Another factor could be because the two big franchises ended with near-landmines (Tokimemo 3, Sakura 4 and 5), resulting in disenchantment among the fanbase. It’s peculiar, because both of them had sequels that were arguably stronger than the original games, but sold worse (Tokimemo 2, Sakura 3).

    - Hmm, now that I think about it, couldn’t you arguably classify Harvest Moon as an almost-galge, albeit from a slightly different direction?

    Also, I’m curious to see what the sales figures for Kakyuusei look like after you factor in the PC (ero) sales.

12. Rincewind Says:
    April 6th, 2009 at 7:59 am

    ¡Shiori!
    The Tokimemo franchise needs more “for boys” titles. Or a Yuri option in the “For Girls” titles. ><

13. Anonymous Says:
    April 7th, 2009 at 3:42 am

    Yeah, I also wondered why they released TWO girl’s side tokimemos for the NDS instead of doing one for girls and one for boys. And then they rereleased the first one with full voice acting and added content. Probably they’ll do the same with the second one. Galge is really a dying genre it seems…

    Come to think of it, aren’t romance games and the likes featuring bishounen on the rise again?? That dancing game by Cave even made it to the states!! The number of GxB visual novels and eroge seems to be still extremely small, too…

14. Anonymous Says:
    April 7th, 2009 at 7:06 am

    welcome to the new millenium, get used to it

15. Random Otaku Says:
    April 7th, 2009 at 10:34 am

    Just over 225k for the first 10 places in the list? So galge games are far more of a niche market than I thought (or made to think?). Interesting.

16. I love Orihime! Says:
    April 8th, 2009 at 9:59 am

    I love the Sakura Taisen series! I love Orihime! It’s sad that these types of games are not as popular anymore.

    The only types of games that the US usually sees are:
    shooters, sports, racing and Guitar Hero.

    There really aren’t that many hack&slash games anymore.

    And, the US doesn’t have hardly any of these Galge games.

    I love the Sega Saturn! Too bad it did so poorly in the US. It has quite a few of my very favourite games.

    I also enjoyed the graphic novel type adventure. Well, not exactly manga type. But, it was a very mature mystery story game. Eve Burst Error! Lots of hot and cute women in the game! A very intriguing storyline with lots of intrigue and betrayals. Along with many surprises.

    I should try to get Eve the Lost One and Eve Zero some time.

    Anyways, I’m glad that Sakura Taisen series was a huge winner and seller. But, sad that the newer games in the series don’t have that same sales power.

    I hope Japan doesn’t become like here. Where originality, variety and uniqueness are out of style.

17. I love Orihime! Says:
    April 8th, 2009 at 10:04 am

    Oh, sorry for the double post.

    But, I love anime and manga. And, I sense that anime isn’t as popular in the US as it was say 5 to 10 years ago.

    Manga seems to be very popular. I see a huge shelf of it at the local Barnes and Nobles.

    There doesn’t seem to be many anime on Blue Ray here. Although, I did see a series (argh) of 26 episodes of an anime on one Blue Ray selling at B&N.

    Manga has lots of romance and shoujo stories. If Manga is so popular. Why aren’t Galge games more popular?

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