There used to be a website called Home of the Underdogs where you could download Abandonware games. Abandonware is software that has been abandoned by it's creators and as such is not supported or put up for sale, with the implication that any interest in enforcing copyright laws for the product has also been abandoned. It's a morally questionable concept.
Regardless, I was young and bored and horny, and I wanted to find some interactive sex game. Masturbation was exciting, like some incredible new toy. It seemed like nature's way of apologising for all the horrors of growing up.
I was looking on Home of the Underdogs and I found this:
A Japanese game translated into English as "True Love". This was a bit surprising as most games are not called things like "True Love". They are called things like "BATTLE SQUADRON 9: TALES OF KL'RETH" and involve you in complex tales of shooting men in the face until there are no more men to shoot in the face.
"True Love" is a dating simulation. You have to make choices regarding how your character spends his days, with certain choices leading you to meet certain beautiful girls, and certain more choices allowing you to hopefully end up in a sexual relationship with one of them. I'd never heard of such a thing.
These games, unbeknownst to me at the time, were written in such a way as to make the girls seems perfect. They were basically trashy romance novels for boys.
And I devoured them like a starving man in a desert. It seemed like they were made just for me.
Please understand I was not popular at school. I was one of those kids who kept to himself but hated every second of every damn day of the place. I also was one of those kids who developed an interest in the opposite sex from a very early age. I was obsessed with a girl in primary school for about 4 years and have a vivid memory of a physical attraction towards her when I was 7 - not that I knew about sex but I just felt like I wanted her physically somehow.
Here was something that spoke to my needs. Finally something about girls and not about shooting men in the face. I could relate. Also, there was something about the characters. The heroes in these games looked like this:
Look at this guy. He's slim. Skinny even. He doesn't want to shoot people in the face. At the time, in my school, aside from his relaxed demeanor, he was unlikely to be in with the people. He'd be off to the side somewhere, trying to figure out his place in this damn world, quiet, strong, inquisitive, not involved in all that macho posturing. Yeah, this was me, this was where I was headed.
And guys like him would be shown ending up with girls like this:
What is that falling around her? Snow? Drops of pure magic? Look at her carefree gesture and how her school uniform looks strange and otherworldly. Check out her face which simultaneously expresses emotion whilst being vague enough to project your fantasies upon. She might as well be an angel. I was being told stories of people who looked like me falling for, and ending up with, girls like her. They were more than stories - it was a promise; the promise that said "people like you do get the girls in the end. This can be your future"
So I was hooked. Back then, there were very few games that had been translated from Japanese, so I basically played "True Love", another one called "Season of The Sakura", and another which I might dedicate another post to as it resonated with me more strongly than any other story in any medium before or since. That one is really something special, I think, and is a bit different than what I'm talking about here.
But there was another important element and this was also something that I had not experienced so strongly before this point in any form of film/tv/otherwise. The overriding sense in these stories was that life is fine. Even as the characters are going through some difficult times, the strong atmosphere created in the images, writing and music (music played constantly in the background of these games) was one of serenity, as if the whole thing was orchestrated somehow, or otherwise had meaning, and this vague but very palpable sense was benevolent - it's like these stories took place in a world that loved you. The Japanese do this very well. They sort of took over the reins of Disney in that sense.
And these games did have sex in them, but it was lovely sex, usually the result of some long courtship and completely the "making love" kind of sex. Best of all, it was explicit. I couldn't believe these things were together; it was like another world - one where I had been consulted. Someone knew that there were people out there who wanted to be told love stories with the sex included instead of some fade to black and - oh look it's the morning after and they're having coffee.
Well, that's not entirely true. Some of them were sleazy and horrible, but the ones I were interested in weren't.
Anyway, this basically kickstarted it all. I developed an interest in Japan as a country and I fantasized about going there and meeting some beautiful Japanese girl. Somewhere in all this, I discovered Zen. It wasn't until I was 22/23 that I started practicing, but it's funny to me that I can directly trace it as far back as looking for porn when I was 15.
Appropriate that the game to begin it all was called "True Love", I think.
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