Yu-No: Kono Yo no Hate de Koi o Utau Shoujo (0)

Overview

YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World is a / game released in 1996, developed and published by for the . It was written and produced by , while its FM-synth was composed by ; they had previously worked on titles such as (1995), and both Kanno and Umemoto later died in 2011 at the age of 37.

YU-NO was also ported to the in 1997 and to as part of the Elf Classics collection in 2000. The game was later adapted into an OVA (Original Video Animation) as well as a and several . A of YU-NO is currently being developed by and will feature new character designs by , the artist behind the games.

Gameplay

The gameplay uses a interface to interact with the game world, in contrast to most other visual novels which rely more on text commands. The plot revolves around the protagonist between various in order to solve the mystery of his parents' disappearance. Although parallel worlds are not an unfamiliar concept in science fiction, the game uses concepts from physics, mathematics, philosophy, history and to construct a unique fictional universe. In particular, the "A.D.M.S." or "Auto Diverge Mapping System," which visually displays the branching parallel worlds or as a tree, aids the player in navigation. The game also includes controversial references to themes such as and .

Legacy

The game was an important milestone for and games in , setting the standard that subsequent visual novels would follow. The way Kanno presented the plot, encouraging players to complete different and view all the in order to gain a better understanding of the overarching narrative, was influential, particularly the way in which all the branching plot-lines are presented as . The original musical score composed by Umemoto was also influential on the musical style used by subsequent games in the genre.

Among visual novels better known in the West, the game's influence can be seen in 's games (such as , , and , all of which were adapted into popular ), titles such as and (both also adapted into popular anime), and the series, for example.

The A.D.M.S. system representing different timelines has also influenced subsequent adventure games as well as popular ranging from to and . The gameplay element of requiring players to travel through time-space to solve puzzles was also original, with its influence evident in subsequent time-travel adventure games such as , , and Steins;Gate.

Fan Translation

YU-NO contains one of the largest video game scripts ever written with almost 100,000 lines of dialogue and over four million characters of Japanese text. An ambitious English fan translation for the PC version of YU-NO was completed by a team from TLWiki on September 29, 2011. The translated script uses over a million words of English text. The translation team also added several enhancements to the PC port, including the voice acting and extra scenarios from the Saturn release as well as the uncensored content from the original PC-98 version.

External Links

• - Written by Audun Sorlie