On-line Love Hina dating sim game

I stumbled across an interesting (on-line) dating sim game - based on the Love Hina series. Let me warn you that if you have played any sim games before, then you might find it a bit simple. But if you have an hour to spare and can get into something very silly, then this is a fun distraction.

http://rompalace.com/arcade/index.php?act=play&id=210

Though not super-complex, I'm surprized that somebody took the time and trouble to create this silly and amusing game. Keitaro's aunt summarizes everything like this: "Pretty much everyone is going to kick the s--- out of you. Well, have fun!". On my first day I successfully bought a carton of cigarettes, accepted the job of managing the dorm, and made friends with Shinobu. Apparently you rapidly become so exhausted that you can't even speak to a girl. On my second day just running into two unfriendly girls (Naru and Motoko) so terrified me that my HP (Health Points?) were down to 5%. Time to go to bed (and rechange my HPs) again--at least I haven't gotten the s--- kicked out of me yet!

Okay, now it's day 17 and I have gotten the shit kicked out of me five or ten times! I have yet to win a fight--"intelligence" is useless here, put your points on "Strength" and "Magic". These girls--even the ones which you supposedly are "friends" with--get increasingly abusive with time.

Have you been able to the Tokyo-U (go to the bridge where you first started) and then travel beyond. You can get increased str/int/power and $ there ... (it is a key to winning the game)

correction - Have you been able find Tokyo-U ....

No, I've just been fooling around at the Hina Inn. Thanks for the tip! Once I managed to beat Naru down to 15% strength before she floored me, though--not bad for Keitaro!

Am I the only one who has been getting a lot of "System Error" messages here at Mikomi lately?

I experienced some SQL errors lately, usually saying "already in a transaction". Reloading the page bypassed the problem so far.

... like this one:

DBD::mysql::db begin_work failed: Already in a transaction at /opt/www/anime/html/comp/record_hit line 8. context: ... 4: </%once> 5: <%init> 6: my( $page_vars ) = @_; 7: if ( $$page_vars{'hit'} and $session{'email'} ne 'anime@mikomi.org' ) { 8: $dbh->{'dbh'}->begin_work; 9: my($page_id) = $dbh->select('id','page',$$page_vars{'hit'})->fetchrow_array; 10: unless ( $page_id ) { 11: $dbh->insert('page',$$page_vars{'hit'}); 12: $page_id = $dbh->{'dbh'}->last_insert_id( undef, undef, undef, undef ); ... code stack: /opt/www/anime/html/comp/record_hit:8 /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/HTML/Mason/Component.pm:135 /opt/www/anime/html/autohandler:112 /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/HTML/Mason/Component.pm:135 raw error

Back to the game topic...

I got to say that the vast amount of profanity annoys the smeg out of me. "Hey! We know profanity. Lets use it a lot because that's what 'Love Hina' is all about -- profanity and violence." _

hey .. no complaints about the mention of a crack pipe and overt drug use?

This game creates eye cancer with its tiny display window. So the first thing I did was to make it playable in a way that suits my eyes:

1. save the HTML page of the game to your harddisk.

2. Edit this file: Replace "./swf/20600.swf" by "http://rompalace.com/arcade/swf/20600.swf" (otherwise you won't find the game itself as the reference to the Shockwave file is relative on the server).

3. Edit this file: Replace "width="400" height="300" in the same line as above to whatever suits your local screen (width="1250" height="940" in my case, as to make use of the full browser window).

4. Display the edited HTML file in your browser. When you'll be asked whether you trust this source (because it's now your local HTML file communicating with a remote Shockwave application), reply "yes".

5. Happy playing!

Ah... one more thing: You can right-click on the link in my previous posting, save this SWF file to your harddisk (same directory as HTML file), edit the corresponding line to just "20600.swf" (or create a subdirectory "swf" next to the HTML file and save the Shockwave file into that, then you don't need editing the HTML file at all), and then play the game without having to be online... (in case you're not using a flatrate of your ISP anyway, that is). The game itself doesn't seem to require an online connection (at least during the first couple of minutes...).

Jan-Chan -- I only did a few minutes of the game before quitting (partly for the tiny window and partly for the "we a gangsta" text) so I don't remember anything about drug usage. That would annoy me as well though.

Um... is the game really always aborted when you have done what will give you that powerful "t..............u" cheat code, or is this a problem for me only?

The profanity of the dialogues is indeed annoying, and half of the arcs end in an option for an undressing dialog of that particular girl (the other half provides cheat codes to play the remaining arcs faster). But that aside, they managed to use quite a few references from the game, and the game characters are at least highly consistent. Fighting is actually the worst thing you can do, as it costs your precious health points, i. e. time for healing them. Just imagine you are Keitarou, try to behave naturally (i. e. not annoy anyone), and you will have (a weird kind of) fun!

I've played all six arcs yesterday. Using the cheat codes you earn during the game makes working the other paths a lot easier of course (I managed to end one arc on day 3, without even dating any girl... a "fast" arc completion takes 60-90 minutes of real time). Passing that intelligence test at school pays out immensely (so don't do that if you want to play the game in normal mode)... but I'll be playing a "normal" game today now that I know what I have to do.

As everything else can be produced in the necessary amounts, the scarce ressource appears to be time, so completing an arc in a minimum of days seems to be the challenge (and requires thorough planning of what to do in which order). All arcs are of the same degree of difficulty, and none of these will make you do anything unreasonable to complete it. As for the window size I posted the method already; the Shockwave file is playable much better in this mode without any restrictions (and the graphics are nice, as they're obviously vector based and thus upscale without any loss of quality).

Look out for easter eggs with Evangelion references (there's two Evangelion based games from the same authors, thus they made references to them), one arc will even ask you to do that.

http://uploads.ungrounded.net/content.php?id=144166&name=144166_LHSIM.swf&title=Love Hina sim date RPG&date=1174190400&quality=b&uj=0&w=1240&h=900 - this URL will open the Love Hina game in full windowsize for a 1280x1024 screen. The parameters "w=" and "h=" at the end of this url allow you to set the windowsize to whatever suits your local machine best. (I found this site because I searched for the Evangelion games of the same author; I'll post them here as well once I played these.)

Searching this site of shockwave stuff, I found something thrilling for Love Hina Fans: Love Hina Episode 31, as I would suggest to name it.

This is not a game but just a video, with shockwave animations created to visualize the Love Hina epilogue (original Japanese seiyuu, English subtitles) that was released as audio-only on the original Love Hina Again OST and drama CD.

The video's credits say there will be four parts to cover the whole audio material (telling the story of the last three manga volumes, after the end of Love Hina Again) but this video was released in February, 2006 and the author didn't complete part 2 so far.

The EVA4 game made by the same people who made the Love Hina game is a lot less detailed, and outright stupid IMHO. It's not even worth trying, I guess... even more so as it has the same amount of profanity as its sequel has, just without the variety of game options.

And the EVA5 mentioned in the Love Hina game isn't even a game at all, it's a parody video with four Rei puppets on strings dancing to Weird Al Jankovic music... and some gory surprise at the end.

I sort of like this game...I think I will watch Love Hina because of it... Also for forum members who happen to read this post, type theincredibleyou in the cheat so you can move along with the game faster...

ok, i found 12 secrets...I guess I am slow today at work :-P