Where the Hell Are All the Visual Novels on Xbox?

The power of reading truly is a wondrous skill. It amazes me how, in conjunction with our very imaginations, we can conjure up the most fantastical worlds. The absolute inane of ideas, bred by personal experience and meld with the power of time and extended periods of being alone in a room. The worlds I can experience just by reading a good book leaves me reeling in my own mind for hours at a time and it is one of my favourite hobbies, right next to video games. I am continuously amazed by the lives I can viscerally experience just by reading words on a page and I cherish both my linguistic functions and mind for it every single day—because no matter how pretty, “faithful”, and slash or expensive an adaptation of said written work comes out to be, it is rare for it to come close to how you think a scene should play out.

Think about it: you know what you like. I know what I like. Every breathing minute, your brain is filling in minute details that is simply “computationally expensive” to recognize and infer to unless we give every little thing in our lives a breathing moment of time. And we can’t! We’re bad multitaskers and, frankly speaking, who the hell wants to do more work at a given time? And no, you shouldn’t be happy about that—none of us are paid enough to engage our minds twenty-four seven. The burn out simply isn’t worth it.

Ah, but we don’t just fill in the blanks for our day-to-day lives—we love to do it for the media we consume. Read a book, play a grand role-playing game, watch a movie, listen to a song: you’ll experience a scenario, you’ll love or hate it, but you’ll subconsciously catch yourself thinking, “I think doing this would have made that even better.” Maybe a different camera angle, an extra guitar riff, a deeper force of kick from the protagonist straight to the big bad’s nads. Would such things make the work better? It’s subjective. You might suggest it to other fans of said work(s) on Reddit, or you might just take it to the grave. But by Ifrit’s tongue do those extra little details you think up of help build the very worlds the authors are trying to convey to you.

Look, I love books. I love games. What do you get when you mash them together? Visual Novels (“VN”)? Hm, well, I can’t really say. I figured a true visual novel would have no gameplay mechanics to speak of besides branching paths. Essentially, you just keep clicking or tapping til you reach an ending. But apparently the website VNDB.org, a database of visual novel software, isn’t quite sure what a visual novel is either as some titles are pure visual novel while others feature adventure or even shoot ‘em up mechanics. And that’s fine, okay, a VN can have that too… Except for certain games, I guess?

I’m not here to complain about the website as it is a valuable tool for finding even the most niche visual novels (and I use it to base my criteria on certain titles as well), so I digress! My point here is that VNs are an incredible way to experience written works—especially some of the many unique titles such as ‘Steins;Gate’, ‘The House in Fata Morgana’, ‘If My Heart Had Wings’, and more. I’ll throw ‘Fate stay/night’ on there since I almost finished reading it, if not to hear Sasuke Uchiha’s voice actor’s blood-curling screams when the main character inevitably finds their spine misaligned.

See, VNs combine visual imagery with text, music, and often voice acting. They then take what is traditionally all text, descriptors of environments, characters, developments, and help guide you towards a particular image of a scenario the writer and artists want you to see. You essentially get the best of both worlds: a visual and auditory guide to the story you’re experiencing but just lacking in the absolutes so that your imagination can run wild. Couple that with the ability to have multiple routes to a story, multiple endings, and you have a story that can go in more directions than just one.

I love a good visual novel and most recently, I finally began sauntering through TYPE-MOON’s ‘Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-‘, a remake of the original ‘Tsukihime’ that is also apparently not finished, meaning that my bucket list has been kicked forward a few more years. But I’ve been loving every minute of it thanks to a strong opening, beautiful computer graphics (“CG”, or still images used in a VN), and a strong voice talent that has done a phenomenal job getting me invested in a world of vampires, demonic creatures, and a young man with a power he wished he never had. Scenario Writer Nasu’s penchant for selling the details of characters through amusing situations or tense moments tear apart at not only the narrator but the reader as well. Words will fail, thoughts collapse, and very soon you’ll find yourself very alone when a character loses all sense of themselves. That, and the occasional bits of philosophy when you least expect it.

Unfortunately, I had to pull out my Nintendo Switch from storage to read Tsukihime. The game is only available on PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch at the moment, with a Winblows version dropping when I’ve finally made something of myself. Look, it’s been four years since the remake’s release, I’m not expecting anything anymore. And the Switch version is perfectly fine except for the rare but bizarre lag spikes and the fact that I can’t seem to read the gosh darn book without needing the awful Joycons connected. So, screw that, I thought, and now I’m reading this peak bit of fiction on my big TV with a capture card hooked up so I can snag a few pictures and share them with the lovely denizens of our public Discord server (which you can totally join, of course!).

After some lovely discussions on visual novels and even getting a long-time member into checking out Steins;Gate, it got the crew and I thinking: where the hell are the VNs, Xbox?

See, if you’re not already aware of this, there is a dearth of available VNs on the Xbox platform. Tsukihime is not available on Xbox. The House in Fata Morgana is not on Xbox. Steins;Gate is available on Xbox, but with a catch—it’s only out on the Xbox 360 and in Japanese. The localisation was ported to everything else under the sun except for the very console that the all-star VN launched on. Lovely. Which brings me to another point: the Xbox 360 had a lovely selection of visual, but almost none of them have been brought to the west for the platform (and understandably, may haven’t been localised either).

But the vast majority of VNs are easily available across PC, PlayStation, Nintendo consoles, and even iOS and Android! Many (if not all) of the major visual novel releases are missing on Xbox and if they are available, either require you to purchase them from another region’s store entirely (such as ‘Psycho Pass’) or aren’t available in other languages unlike the aforementioned consoles.

And that’s quite shameful, really. Just like shoot ‘em ups, the visual novel category of software left the Xbox platform and never quite came back. And look, it’s not like the number of VNs is zero on the platform—there are quite a few smash hits from indie developers to double-A makers like Spike Chunsoft’s plentiful visual novel slash adventure hybrids. I’ll link a few for you to check out below. Plus, it seems devil’s luck came to our side as recently, two visual novels have and are finally making their way to the Xbox platform: ‘Yurukill‘, ‘Napoleon Shoujo Episode.1 ~Fukanou to Iu Moji no Nai Shoujo~‘, and ‘Re:Burn the Bonfire of Taiwan‘.

Still, it’s not enough. That’s a whole category of fantastic (and fantastically awful) literature that is sorely lacking on Xbox, which in turn impacts available genres of experiences such as romance slash otome, mystery thrillers, slice of life, all that good stuff. That (along with shmups!) needs to change and I hope that someone at Xbox finally gets off their laurels and looks to secure some of the genre’s apex titles. My hope was that Xbox Game Pass would be used to bring games not typically played by the platform’s audience—and while that has been true with many amazing titles likely only available on Xbox thanks to the subscription service, there’s plenty of niche areas that still need love from the platform holder. You won’t reach one billion players off ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Sea of Thieves’ alone, y’know.

And before anything else, stop. I know what you’re thinking. You’re going for the low-hanging fruit, I can feel it in my joints. You’re about to say, “Xbox players can’t read!” with a grin slathered in a concoction containing lipids and fructose. And… Look, you’d be right. I mean, you’ve ever played with a ‘Dead by Daylight’ Xbox player? Or a console player in any crossplay-enabled game? Not reading is unfortunately an accepted part of our society unless you’re doomscrolling. But we’re better than that, aren’t we? Everyone should be given the opportunity to read some phenomenal novels, even Xbox players. And on the wee eve of Tokyo Game Show, it’s no better time to ask than now. ∎

I’ve prepped a short indie VN recommendation list on the next page—do check it out!