today's discovery: Sentimental Graffiti Kouryaku Dokuhon, an unauthorised "strategy guide" for the Bubsy of dating sims, Sentimental Graffiti, that apparently contains no official materials whatsoever and was written and published before the game came out by someone who hadn't actually played the game, and thus the entire book is basically fanfiction about how the game might play out based on whatever info packs the publisher had made public
@Persona left a comment on your post
That’s incredible, were guides that easy to publish back then? Or do you think the publishers were just banking on the game being successful enough to coast on the zeitgeist?
A bit of both... I compare Sentimental Graffiti to Bubsy in the sense that it was a middling game that was marketed to high hell and ended up bursting the bubble for its particular genre—it sold okay and isn't as bad as its reputation might suggest, but it definitely killed publishers' ability to sell galge off hype alone.
