Sentimental Graffiti is a dating sim I find myself thinking about a lot, even if it's not one I talk about publicly all that much. People treat the mainline Tokimeki Memorial games as the holy grail within the genre to get fan translated, and in some ways they are (mostly, 3 be damned), but they're still such a small sampling of what was going on in their heyday as to not be truly representative of what dating sims were about and how they could play. If there's one other game people should really be making a beeline to translate, it should probably be this. It's a fascinating case study well worth examining 25 years on. It's probably the biggest direct competition Tokimeki Memorial ever faced in its early years, backed by more publisher support from the outset and spawning reams of character merchandise in its own right. (I'd probably make the argument that in terms of actual mindshare and numbers, Sakura Taisen was probably the bigger overall threat to Konami despite the games inhabiting largely different genres, but I digress.) It's a group of veteran PC developers who had worked on formative pre-Tokimemo galge essentially having their say on a genre that their work helped give rise to, bringing to bear a level of direct experience and insight that frankly few others working in the space had, including the original Tokimemo team itself. And most crucially, it was a game that played vastly differently despite sharing some core concepts like a calendar system, demonstrating that the most successful alternatives to Tokimemo tended to be the ones that played the least like it, not least because it's really god damn hard to make a successful character raising game, so if you couldn't beat 'em, it was best not to join 'em in the first place.
Sentimental Graffiti is just a cool one of these games to play, man. The interplay between your budget, stamina, and schedule as you try to traverse Japan to manage all these dates leads you to make some fascinating decisions throughout a run. Got no money, but have a date in 36 hours a couple of prefectures over and some extra stamina to bear? Try sticking out your thumb and hoping a trucker will let you hitch a ride in the back most of the way there without paying the price too much with your body. Need to go from one end of the archipelago to another in as little time as possible to keep your promises to a pair of girls in the same weekend? Better be ready to pony up for that plane or bullet train ticket, pal. Ran out of money and can't move on to your next destination? Guess you're hanging out where you're staying and doing part time work for a weekend or two. There's also a lot more prescribed story content to top it off compared to a lot of its contemporaries, but there are still enough events that can spontaneously happen outside of major beats such as running into girls outside their main turf or them paying a surprise visit at your home in Tokyo that it still makes the narrative trajectory feel relatively organic. (It also doesn't hurt that the writing itself is a cut above pretty much all of its peers at that time.)
It's probably the sort of game that's not really Japanese game YouTuber essayist fodder, which is a shame. For as much as its sequel would go on to completely torch things (and I mean torch it; there's a reason the series didn't maintain this initial momentum for long), the first game is so well-executed of a first outing and a compelling demonstration of just how much more dating sims were capable of if they didn't leave themselves beholden to Tokimemo, it's definitely a game that I feel merits playing for those who really want to explore the ins and outs of the genre history.
Maybe it's time to churn out another proper dating sim essay. 🤔