Qiang is a little guy with spiky hair who, when he wakes up in the 
morning, starts rambling on about something without any regard for whether 
anyone is listening, and continues until he falls asleep at night. At 
first Andy and I were taken aback at his extroversion, but we soon became 
endeared to it. Drew and Sean are more soft-spoken and tended to hang out 
in the background adding comments occasionally. The three of them, my 
roommate Tets, Andy and I, when our schedules all matched up and we were 
all in our little apartment, made a motley crew. Sleeping arrangements 
were like Tetris, and we all raced to fall asleep before Tets started his 
infamously chainsaw-like snoring. Tets may be the most interesting person 
I've ever met, but if I start trying to describe him I'd need another very 
long essay.

I had stared at these items a number of times in stores by myself before, 
but this time I had three outside voices encouraging me to get them and 
making it much easier for me to rationalize the purchase to myself. Qiang 
especially, his brand-new huge pink 2000 yen Tokimeki Memorial 3 Limited 
Edition box under his arm, acted as the little devil on my shoulder 
telling me to buy the games.

It rained, but the store clerk had draped little plastic bags over the 
products in my shopping bags so that they wouldn't get wet. We wandered 
around a bit more in The Juke, looking at some more shops and waiting for 
the rain to die down. When we made the 25 minute walk back to our 
apartment, my hands hurt from carrying the heavy bags. It was a welcome 
pain, though, when I thought about how every heavy pound of mass in that 
bag equaled so many hours of fun.

Andy and I made a pretty big deal about the quantification of fun. When 
making plans, we were very precise about maximizing the possible fun given 
our options. We would itemize all of our possible fun sources, the lengths 
of time available to us, and other obligations we needed to work around, 
and then build intricate agendas to achieve fun efficiency.

This mentality 
gave birth to Andy's Theory Of Fun: "The more fun you are having, the 
less it matters how much sleep you get". It's true, too. When he first 
postulated it, we thought it seemed pretty accurate, and all experiments 
since have supported it. Think about it: If you are spending unfun days, 
doing nothing but going to school or work and tending to obligations, you 
will wake up tired and feel tired all day even if you get nine hours of 
sleep. However, if you are on vacation or are otherwise in a situation 
that provides prodigious quantities of fun, you can get by on as little as 
two to five hours of sleep a day. We used Andy's Theory Of Fun as the 
pivotal element in our plans to maximize fun. Andy would say, "All right, 
you do your homework now and I'll finish up some stuff for work. Then 
we'll go to Saboten and get bentous that we can eat while we watch 
Pussuma!. Then we'll have four hours for Sakura Taisen before we need to 
get to bed, and we'll be fine with just four hours of sleep because of 
Andy's Theory Of Fun." Actually, most plans were much more complicated 
than that and often included lots of excuses and rationalizations for 
shirking responsibilities.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Andy wouldn't have rationed out Sakura 
Taisen time because at this point he didn't know I'd bought it yet. Let's 
return to the night I made that fateful purchase. As soon as we got home, 
Qiang and I both peformed the sacred ritual of opening new video games. 
Qiang put in TokiMemo 3 and played it a bit; we all cheered him on and 
tried to help him solve the game's bafflingly difficult 
wear-the-appropriate-clothes-for-the-situation system. After a while I put 
in ST1 just to get a taste of the game. The game did not make an immediate 
impression on me as being particularly great or not; mostly I was alarmed 
that the conversation system was timer-based: if you do not answer in 
time, characters will get upset at you.

I suppose I should explain what kind of game Sakura Taisen is. At its 
simplest, it is a love-sim/strategic-mech-combat hybrid. Yeah. You are the 
male commander of an all-female battalion of steam-powered-robot pilots 
in Japan in the 1920s. You have to earn these girls' trust in the 
story-portions of the game so that they will perform well in the 
battle-portions of the game. As an added effect of your living and working
with these girls for a year, you will probably fall in love with one of them
by the end of the game, and the path of the game will change depending on who
you choose.

What you don't get from that simplistic, objective description, and what 
Andy and I had no idea of before we got into it, is that Sakura Taisen is 
no ordinary video game.

Let me get back to the story. Singaporean folks went back to Singapore, 
and I headed over to Andy's apartment with a "surprise". He had a vague 
idea of what it was going to be, but I don't think he was expecting me to 
show up with a bag containing a Dreamcast, the LEs of the first two games, 
and the special controller. From the first time we put the game in, Sakura 
Taisen became the focus of our days, and indeed of our entire friendship.

Andy, a fierce Dreamcast fan if ever there was one, was very happy that I'd
decided to buy his favorite system. To be honest, I had been turned off by its 
Street-Fighter-unfriendly controller and the Windows CE logo on the unit.

Anyway, we played Sakura Taisen every day. When we weren't playing, we 
were trying to figure out how we could play more. One by one, we met the 
game's characters and became familiar with their situations. Ogami, the 
barely-there protagonist, exists as a vessel for your own 
superimposed personality, but is still somehow so cool. At first, most of 
the other characters had something preventing them from being totally 
likable, and a few were downright irritating. Of course, it was just 
the game conveying a sense of unbelonging and unfamiliarity, which is 
exactly what one would feel when transfered into an already-existing 
top-secret battalion. In retrospect, it seems impossible that any of those 
characters were ever strangers to us, or that we ever disliked any of them. 

As we met the characters, got to know them, and went through the story's 
trials with them, we became closer to them than I think you can become to, 
say, movie or book characters. In a movie or book, regardless of how much 
you may identify with someone, you are not a part of the story yourself. 
In Sakura Taisen, you are making major decisions and the other characters 
are depending on you. Movie characters don't die when *you* 
screw up, and book characters don't swoon when *you* save 
their lives. Furthermore, there is the love-sim aspect. By 
the time we had met the game's six main girls, I was sure of which one I 
wanted to pursue. Andy had his own preferences but insisted that it was my 
game and that we should follow my path. Kouran is the geeky engineer from 
China who maintains the battalion's giant combat robots. She's a lot of 
what I dig in a girl; once she showed up it took me about fifteen 
seconds to decide that I liked her. So we chose to focus on her. One of 
the biggest joys of Sakura Taisen is that, while there are many characters 
and you are bound to like them all, there is a special excitement when 
your girl of choice is on-screen, and when you might have a chance to find 
a special event involving her and possibly earn "trust points" with her. 
It's part of the appeal of the game that you really feel like what is 
happening, is happening just for you. There are many dozens of scenes 
we never saw because they were along story paths we never chose. What you 
do in the game truly makes a difference, and there is a thrill every time 
you hear the chime indicating the increase of a girl's trust for you, or 
every time you unlock some special scene that could only be found via the 
specific path you took. Sakura, Iris, Sumire, Maria, and Kanna all also had their 
own charms.

We liked the game. Before we wee halfway through it, Andy prepared for me 
a surprise of his own: when I walked into his apartment one night, there 
on the bean-shaped coffee table were lined up the boxes for my Dreamcast 
and the first two Sakura Taisen LEs, plus the LEs for Sakura Taisen 3 ad 
4, plus four more Dreamcast games and a Dreamcast S-Video adapter. He'd 
bought them all for me, as an early Christmas present. The four other 
games were ones he remembered from when he first got his Dreamcast: Sonic 
Adventure was a surprisingly dazzling game considering its age. Space 
Channel Five was the most gloriously kitschy thing I'd seen in a long time 
and struck me as what Pizzicato Five would come up with if they made a 
video game. Sega Rally 2 was a racing game, which I tend not to dig, but 
its Game Over screen with the guy singing, "Game Over, Yeahhhhhh!!" still 
cracks me up. The last game there was Shenmue, Andy's favorite game of all 
time until I showed him Xenosaga. He figured that since I'd showed him my 
favorite game, he ought to show me his. Shenmue was put aside to be our 
next quest after finishing all four Sakura Taisen games, and the others 
would serve as gaming-snacks for when we didn't have the time or the 
required attention span for a Sakura Taisen session. Seeing all the Limited 
Editions lined up on the table there psychologically satisfied some part of me 
that loves to see collectible items in their collected state.

Our ritual continued. Each night we'd plan our activities, put in the 
game, and watch the opening movie. Part of the fun was learning the 
gloriously catchy theme song. Each disc of the game opened with a slightly 
different movie and a different verse of the theme song sung by a 
different character.

The game itself is divided into episodes, like 
an anime series. Each episode follows a pattern: first a quiet 
period during which you can wander around and deal with the battalion's 
front-organization, a theater troupe. Build sets, clean up the prop room, 
or help the girls with their lines for the next big play. Often a 
chapter focuses on some problem with one particular girl.

The way you interact with the characters is a system called LIPS, which stands for 
something ridiculous and contrived. As silly as the name is, 
the system is fun. When you encounter one of the girls, you have 
a cursor that you can move around the screen and activate to do 
different things. Near the girl's mouth, the cursor becomes a talking 
mouth and you can talk to her. Near her face, it becomes an eye so 
that you can look at her. Before you ask, yes, moving the cursor over 
certain bits of a girl turns it into a blushing face. I've always been too 
afraid to use that one. Anyway, while you are talking, at key points 
in the conversation, a Time-LIPS dialog will appear: you must choose 
from up to three possible responses, and these responses are the main 
way you can affect how the girls perceive you. This system is actually 
a lot more fun than it sounds, and some of the LIPS situations were even 
more exciting than the battles.

Later in the chapter, something catastrophic happens, usually involving
some huge robots or monsters attacking some part of Tokyo. There is an 
eyecatch screen just like in an anime, you have a chance to check the 
trust levels of each of the girls and save your game, and then you sortie in your
steam-powered Koubu, defend the city, and reconcile your battalion's
personal problems as well.

The battle system is a pretty standard turn-based strategy system: you 
have a menu of commands for each unit, like attack, defend, and move. Characters 
have hissatsuwaza (deathblows) that probably looked really spectacular when the 
Saturn was in its heyday (ST and ST2 were originally for Saturn and later were 
ported to Dreamcast). The battles are really where the game shows its age, but 
that we didn't care is a testament to how great the game is.

Before long we reached the turning point, and the game we thought was 
already as cool as any game could be, got cooler. I'm trying not to give 
too much away, in case this essay encourages you to play the games yourself some 
day. It was probably around that turning point that we realized that this was no 
ordinary game, and that the series would probably find itself solidly 
locked into our top three game series of all time.

We finished the first game, and had our first official discussion session. 
We talked over a meal, probably hamburgs or steaks at the local 
hamburg/steak joint, and gave each other our impressions of the game as a 
whole. We were both pretty overwhelmed at how much fun it was. We were 
excited to be able to experience the whole phenomenon game-by-game as it 
unfolded, because we were not very familiar with the series yet. Most 
of all we were thrilled at the thought that this was only the first game 
and that the series was only going to get better. 

We jumped straight into ST2, possibly the very same night we finished ST1. 
Looking back, ST2 was probably my favorite of the series. Technically it 
was a small improvement over the first game: it added Variable LIPS in 
which the answers change while you are trying to decide what to say, and 
it added a little "Taichou-meter" (Taichou is your position: the head of a 
military unit) that keeps track of what kind of personality you have in interacting
with your battalion. The battle system is pretty much the same, except with 
the addition of an option to change the overall strategy of your units to 
be faster, more defensive, more offensive, or balanced. 

Part 2 introduced 2 more characters, Orihime and Reni. Both seemed to push the 
limits of the initially-difficult-character-who-grows-on-you precedent that the 
game had set for itself. Most of the game was just a continued exploration of what 
the first game had introduced. A couple more characters, a couple of game system 
enhancements, and a slightly longer story. The game's length and the way it took 
its time to look more closely at the characters and the game world are probably 
what made it so fun for me. Any game where you get to take a vacation in the 
middle and just hang out at a hot spring resort with the characters is right up my 
alley.

We continued on through ST2 with more and more amazement at how much fun it was. 
We pursued Kouran again, and contrary to my girlfriend's perception of the game as 
a bawdy cheat-fest, it took all the way until the very end of the second game to 
get so much as a tiny smooch.

After ST2 we were both pretty flabbergasted at how much fun was still waiting for 
us. Not only were we only halfway through the series, but we were about to play 
the technically-far-superior Sakura Taisen 3 and 4. ST3 was the first ST game 
native to Dreamcast and on top of that it left the beloved setting and cast of the 
first two games for a whole new story in Paris. Starting Sakura Taisen 3 was 
disorienting in the best way. Full-screen, very high-resolution character 
portraits, gorgeous voices and music through Andy's big stereo system, the ritz of 
Paris as compared to Tokyo the thrill of meeting a whole new cast one by one, and even 
a brand new theme song were pretty much a massive overdose of fun and we both died.

No, we didn't die. But the technical and thematic leaps forward seemed too good to be true, 
and there was a kind of giddy disbelief at how much fun we were getting 
ourselves into. If you hadn't noticed yet, yes, we are geeks.

We met all the new characters of the Paris cast: Erica, Glycine, 
Coquelicot, Lobelia, and our new interest, Hanabi. Hanabi is the only 
Japanese character in the new cast. She's a quiet, gentle type, but is 
also a master of archery with a sad past. ST3 also introduced some 
all-new LIPS system types, like the analog-LIPS in which you have to use
the analog stick to indicate how strongly you say something. Most
noticably, though, part 3 added the ARMS battle system. ARMS is still
turn-based like the previous systems, but is in gorgeous 3D and is based
on an AP gauge (kind of like Xenogears/Xenosaga) rather than a flat
2-actions-per-turn limit.

The opening to Disc 2 of Sakura Taisen 3 might have been the single 
greatest moment of the whole series. I don't want to ruin it for 
you, but Andy and I just looked at each other and freaked out. We
were very pleased.

So we played through ST3 quite happily. This was the new generation of our game and we 
were not disappointed. When it was over, we were more excited about ST4 than we had 
been about any of the games. We knew that part 4 united the Paris and Tokyo casts for 
a total of 13 girls, each with her own story path. We opened up the LE box and admired 
the cell-phone strap with 16 different metal attachments, looked in the game box 
itself and found... One GD-ROM. We had been expecting at least three, possibly four 
discs. It was an utter mystery. Did they find some crazy new compression scheme that 
let them put four times the data on one disc? Was the bonus disc somehow involved? 
Had they taken out the FMVs in favor of more gameplay? What was going on? We did the 
only thing we could do: we put in that sole disc and started playing.

Seeing the full cast in glorious high resolution and fighting with everyone in the 
lovely 3D ARMS system was a thrill. One nice thing was that nearly every line in the 
whole game was voiced. It wasn't too long before we realized that Sakura Taisen 4 is 
less of a game and more of a final shout-out to the fans. The main theme of the game is 
how great Ogami, the protagonist, is, and by extension, how great you, the player, 
are. The characters are constantly talking about how well you've done leading the 
battalion over the years and how they couldn't have done it without you. You can almost 
see the Red, Overworks, and Sega employees bowing to you and saying, "Thanks so much 
for buying our games".

Apparently ST3 was supposed to be the last game in the series, 
but fans were clamoring for one last go with all of their favorite characters. 
Therefore there's also an increased emphasis on pleasing the player: the game is 
actually very short, but can be played through differently with each of the 13 girls. 
Like all of the sequels, it remembers what you did in previous games, and the story 
changes: since you had to choose a Tokyo girl in ST1 and ST2, and a Paris girl in ST3, 
ST4 makes you ultimately choose one or the other, and the one you leave behind gives 
you a little speech about how she understands and is happy for you. There's also plenty 
of eye candy and the near-full voicing satisfies fans' seiyuu-appetites.

At first we were not sure what we thought of ST4, and Andy was particularly worried 
about its quality as a ST game. In the end, though, we both really appreciated its 
purpose and were glad to have it. It really is a great synthesis of everything that 
makes up the series, and thus it is the game I tend to use to demonstrate the games to 
people.

Finally we were done with the whole series. It was a little sad to think that it was 
over, but it was a good feeling of accomplishment to have finished all of the games
before I had to go back to the US. We also knew that the games still contained 
considerable quantities of fun in the form of replayability and extras, and that there 
were still ST animes, comics, and side-games.

Andy rented the first anime series and we watched it. It was a nice supplement to the 
game, and filled in some of the spaces betwene the stories. I'd like to write for a 
minute about Sakura Taisen fans who have never played the games. It baffles me how 
anyone could get into ST just from watching the animes created to fill in gaps between 
the games. It's like building a house out of mortar. Or something. I also have to shake 
my head at reviews of the anime that treat it like a stand-alone piece of 
entertainment, and thus complain of "too many characters with too little introduction" 
in an anime that exists solely as a product for game fans who wanted to see more of 
characters they already loved. I guess the main problem is that an anime like Sakura 
Taisen should never have been brought to the West in the first place, since we don't 
have any of the games. I guess people don't care enough to notice.

After many days and nights of gaming, many many trips to Lawson for "drinkis" and 
"snackis", a couple of trips to yakiniku for Thanksgiving and Christmas, a few 
incidents of Andy freaking out at some great part in a game and trying to commit 
seppuku with his cell phone, a couple of instances of Andy catching me subconsciously 
making weird noises under my breath "because I was having so much fun", and more than 
one time at which we played so long that we both fell asleep at the blinking cursor, it 
was time for me to go home.

Now I'm back in the US, but my ST experience has not ended. First I went through the 
games' extras, which are way deeper than I'd imagined. Each game includes a mode in 
which you can just wander around talking to characters and enjoying the extras you've 
unlocked. You can listen to any of the music in the game, watch any cinema sequence, 
play any of the many great mini-games (one for each girl), or just hang out with your 
favorite characters. In addition, each game has some special additional features. ST1 
has a hanafuda tournament, in which you play the Japanese card game against all of the 
game's characters to unlock rewards. ST2 has a daifugou tournament. ST3, though, is a 
treasure trove of extras. The amount of bonus material in this game is overwhelming. A 
full-fledged fighting game, three whole casino games in which you can play against 
dozens of characters in several modes, with a partner of your choice, to earn chips 
with which you buy more secret features, playable "drama" side-chapters with multiple 
endings, and a downloadable-to-VMU pocket game for each girl, are just some of the 
things you have to play with after you've beaten the game proper. I actually still 
haven't gotten through it all, and so I don't even know what's in store for me in ST4's 
extras.

In March, a remake of ST1 was released for the PlayStation 2. I had Andy get me the 
First Printing Limited Edition, of course, which came with a DVD history of the series, 
a very nice pocket-watch, and a huge pink heart-shaped alarm clock for preordering. 
Yes. It was fun to play an updated and expanded ST1; I could write pages comparing it 
with the original, but I think I'll just say it was very fun and leave it. The PS2 
version is apparently intended as a catch-up device for people new to the series who 
will want to play next year's Sakura Taisen 5, which will be on the PS2. Sega seems set 
on making Sakura Taisen into a more popular, mainstream kind of franchise, and that 
includes both adding action games to the series and bringing the series to the USA. I'm 
not really sure how I feel about that, and I try not to think about the likelihood of 
Sakura Taisen 5 sitting on the rack at Wal-Mart next to a Spongebob Squarepants game.

This summer I took a little trip back to Japan to hang out with Andy one last time 
before he and I both got too busy with work and before his wife moved back in with him 
and ruined any chances of us having all-night gaming sessions. We visited the Sakura 
Taisen shop and cafe in Ikebukuro, the Taishou Romandou. That a niche video game series 
can have its very own store pleases me to no end. We went, we bought silly trinkets, we 
ate dishes associated with our characters, we signed the guestbook with silly drawings, 
and we took photographs against the store's policy.

Lately I've taken to collecting some ST trinkets like figures and plastic models. 
I've collected all of the gachagachas (capsule figures) including the apparently quite 
rare ST3 series, and I'm currently working on building a model of Kouran's Koubu. 
Hanabi's Koubu-F is next.

I guess that brings us to the present. Oh boy, I love presents.