Dokyusei 2 (PC-98)

Dōkyūsei 2 is the direct sequel to ELF’s pioneering dating-sim Dōkyūsei, shipping for the NEC PC-9801 on 31 January 1995. The story compresses the 17 days of a third-year winter break (22 Dec – 7 Jan) into a free-roaming schedule where you juggle classes, part-time jobs and encounters with 15 heroines, each bound to her own real-time timetable. Winning a route means deducing where—as well as when—to meet her next, a design that became the template for later dating sims. Two retail packages existed: an HD-install-only edition on 11 floppies and a floppy-bootable edition on 13 floppies; both also came in 3.5″ and 5.25″ media. New features over the 1992 original include twice-as-many girls, larger maps that span ski slopes to shopping arcades, voiced cut-ins, and a lush FM soundtrack by Manabu Kunieda (later released as a two-disc album). The game’s success spawned the Dōkyūsei 2 SP “Sotsugyōsei” expansion plus Valentine-themed bonus disks, and a 12-episode OVA (1996-1998). Even today it is still cited—sometimes above Tokimeki Memorial—as the genre’s formative masterpiece.