A handful of screenshots from a PS1 game I've been playing in my downtime lately by the name of Fire Woman Matoi-gumi. It's a really nifty little high school simulator that takes place entirely within the confines of the school itself where you're basically given free reign to spend a school year building up your character however you like and hang out with whoever you want. I might write about it and its neat character growth system sometime later, but at the very least, I wanted to post a handful of screenshots because the pixel art in this game is something else. Surprisingly crisp and detailed in a way that honestly reminds me more of modern day homages to this era of games than anything else, if that makes sense, and with a ton of cute, bespoke situational animations to boot. It may not shock some of you to hear that this was originally a PC-FX game and, indeed, if there was one platform in the mid-90s that tended to trade in this specific sort of sprite-based fidelity, it was definitely that.
All of which is to say, lord help me, I thought I was going to make it through life without a PC-FX darkening my doorstep, but I guess that's going to have to change one of these days as a matter of due diligence or some such. 😩
Checking in to say that a few days later, I'm still playing the hell out of this game and that I'm pretty much in love with it at this point? There are a lot of little things you can choose to engage with around the school at your discretion and they're presented in such a way—that is to say, they just exist in the world without the game overtly directing you towards them—that this game clearly assumes you have the manual on hand, which is very much so par for the course for simulations of this vintage. But since you're given carte blanche to do just about anything you like for the entire school year and are routinely rewarded for it with new content that responds to those paths you take, it doesn't feel punishing to simply poke around at different systems and parts of the school and see where things lead. Since you can also do only one major action per day, days go by pretty breezily even if there is some room for improvement when viewing certain aspects of the menu design, etc. through a more modern lens.
Probably my favorite choice this game makes systemically involves the game's GPS (the "Gal Positioning System," as it's officially known), which you have from the very start of the game. It tells you where you'll find each of the girls on any given day, which is great, because the campus is frankly pretty gigantic, especially for a sprite-based game, so the expectation is that you'll warp around directly to them the majority of the time. On most days, the girls tend to have their set spots that they'll hang out at after school, namely either their club if they belong to one or just their humble little spot they like to kill time at. Sometimes you'll see little sweat icons attached to them on the map that indicate they're in some sort of trouble, which you can, again, address at your own discretion to further pursue their subplots. But if you pay attention, you'll notice that they'll rove around the school and checking in on them then will always reward you in some way, even if it's just a bespoke little vignette involving another character. In a game with even less of a central, prescribed narrative than a lot of its similarly open-ended, contemporary peers in the dating sim and adventure game-adjacent spheres, it goes a long way to giving these characters concrete identities and charm despite its relatively sparse dialogue.
As you can see above, there's also a simple, but neat little combat system that I've found to be surprisingly engaging. Basically, going to certain clubs or practicing certain sports consistently enough (unlike Tokimeki Memorial, you're never locked in to any one activity; you can and are in fact encouraged to bounce around and see what the school has to offer), you'll both build up your character's overall health and unlock combat skills. Up to six of these skills can be equipped at any given time, assigned to each of the face buttons, plus L1 and R1. Some of them are pretty straightforward and practical enough, while others are more ostentatious, such as a leg spreading jump kick you can learn from one of the cheerleaders (Google tells me this is a called a "toe touch jump") and a spring loaded boxing glove that deploys when your character bends his elbow in, Loony Tunes-style.
The more grounded ones tend to be pretty representative of these activities in the real world, too, so if you want to be able to, say, parry enemy attacks, it's a smart idea to train with the Aikido club for a little while. The combat itself unfolds in a round based format where you have several seconds to choose up to four skills to deploy, which your character will then attempt to pull off at the same time as the enemy also takes their turn. However, your attacks can and will be interrupted by enemies who are able to get the initiative on you, so it's incumbent on you to figure out what sorts of moves they tend to favor and then counter them as best as you can. For example, the Matoi-gumi spar off with each other monthly, which you learn is in your interests to take part in because beating individual members will unlock their signature moves for their own use. One member, Hiromi, kept giving me grief at these gatherings because she can briefly erect a circular barrier that electrifies people upon contact. It wasn't until I spent time at the karate club and learned a block that's specifically designed to be unbreakable for its short duration that I was then able to combat this barrier, as that brief invincibility didn't trigger the shock like a conventional block did, after which I could then go on the offensive. All told, it's not a system that I would describe as especially deep, but it does go a long way to encourage you to explore the school and its different extracurriculars beyond following individual characters and their whims as they roam around.
As far as I can tell, this is a game that's gotten virtually no foreign (or at least, English-language) coverage online beyond maybe a smattering of basic screenshots on platform-dedicated sites. That's not particularly surprising given the language barrier and type of game that it is, but it is a reminder of just. how. broad the Japanese PS1 library is, that even after all of these years of playing more than my fair of dating and even just social sims more broadly, I'm still finding new and interesting games that further expand my understanding of the widespread design experimentation in this period and how, even with a lot of evolutionary dead-ends like this game, it ultimately led to the sorts of systems that can now make some Japanese games global multi-million sellers. This probably isn't the last you've heard from me on this game regardless, but take it from me: if you have the means and the patience to deal with a little intentional aimless as you find your bearings, give this game a shot. You'll find a surprisingly endearing cast of characters in game that's not all that talkative, wrapped up in a framework that's pretty much all its own.
