Cross Days
Encyclopedia
is a Japanese erotic visual novel
developed by 0verflow
and published by Stack, released on March 19, 2010 for Windows
. It was subsequently redeveloped as a DVD game by AiCherry and for the PlayStation Portable
by PalaceGame. Cross Days is the third installation of the School Days
line of series, succeeding Summer Days
.
Following the game's release, Cross Days made transitions into other media. A manga serialized in the Kadokawa Shoten
magazine Monthly Comp Ace
was circulated from April 26 to August 10, collected into two volumes by the company. A concurrent radio drama
broadcast during development and the game's original soundtrack was published by Lantis
, as were three novels and other print.
Like its predecessors, Cross Days is presented with, considerably improved, limited animation
. The game is audibly stereophonic with lip-synched voice acting, sound effects and background music.
figurine of Kotonoha. Enterbrain
notably followed up on the game in their December 2008 issue of Tech Gian, published October 21, showing first ever screenshots, reporting on the story and characters, and mentioning that Cross Days would contain 3D animation with a meticulously reworked plot and male protagonist. ASCII Media Works
and Gakken
later published similar articles in their respective issues of Dengeki G's Magazine
, Dengeki Hime
and Megami Magazine
on October 30.
Promotion began shortly after. Besides periodically keeping the public informed on development and characters, 0verflow consecutively released downloadable, non-playable benchmarks
of the game from November 1 to May 4, 2009. After briefly selling telephone cards at Dream Party 2008 in Osaka
on November 16, the company began pre-orders on November 21, giving out limited character bookmarks to customers. Stores doing likewise reportedly filled reservations in days. Peculiarly, on December 5, 0verflow announced that a set of USB teledildonics
, collectively known as SOM, would be compatible with Cross Days, manufactured by Goods Land. Trial versions of the game, released to about 125 select retailers, were disclosed by 0verflow on December 26 and at Comiket
75.
On January 8, 2009, 0verflow announced that, like School Days, Lantis
would be airing a weekly, episodic Internet radio drama of the game's characters, titled Radio Cross Days, starting on January 8. Broadcasts were made regularly on Thursdays, finishing up on March 25, 2010 with 64 sessions aired.
had been released with retail versions of the game. A 372 KB replacement was provided via download. The following day another patch was released to bring copies of the game up to version 1.00a.
networks. 0verflow responded by discreetly releasing trojan horses
, disguised as the game, in conjunction. Users duped into running the bogus installers had private and personal data collected and published to a blog for public access; NetAgent, a property rights company, reported that at least 5,510 people were tricked. Those wishing to have their information removed could do so after acknowledging to viewers that they had attempted to download the game illegally. Interestingly, the intrusive nature of the virus was found to be stated in the installer's software license agreement
.
In spite of the otherwise effective countermeasure, a third-party iteration of the trojan was discovered in conjunction with its original, behaving identical to it but demanding compensation for copyright damages. NetAgent reported that at least 661 had been tricked with a payout of at least ¥3,833,800 or roughly $49,912.62. Avast!
was later found to trigger false-positives in legitimate copies.
on April 26. The series was circulated until August 10, published by Kadokawa Shoten
into a two volumes released November 26, 2011 and June 25, 2011 respectively.
s by different authors but whose cover art was drawn by Goto and illustrated by Jet Yowatari, each retelling the story of the game. Cross Days, a novel, was published by Harvest Books on September 15, written by Mutsuki Mizusaki. Another novel titled was released on October 22, 2010 by Shueisha
, authored by Hiro Akizuki. The final novel, was written by Yoko Kagura, author for the manga adaption, and was published on October 29 by Kill Time Communication.
Radio Cross Days was the second and final audio compilations made for the game. It was announced for release by 0verflow on March 26, 2010 and published by Lantis. The set consisted of two separate discs, each holding thirty-two segments of broadcast comprising the sixty-four total that were aired.
and Zippo
lighters.
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
developed by 0verflow
0verflow
, erroneously Overflow, is a Japanese video game division of Stack Ltd. specializing in the production of mature interactive fiction. The company is best known for its popular game franchise School Days, which has spawned numerous multimedia adaptions and two sequels...
and published by Stack, released on March 19, 2010 for Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. It was subsequently redeveloped as a DVD game by AiCherry and for the PlayStation Portable
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
by PalaceGame. Cross Days is the third installation of the School Days
School Days (visual novel)
is a Japanese adult visual novel developed by 0verflow and published by Stack, and was originally released for the PC on April 28, 2005. It was subsequently released as a DVD TV game by Stack, followed by an all-ages port titled School Days L×H published by Interchannel for the PlayStation 2, in...
line of series, succeeding Summer Days
Summer Days
is a Japanese erotic visual novel developed by 0verflow and published by Stack, released on June 23, 2006 for Windows. It was later adapted into a DVDi by AiCherry, released on April 11, 2008. The original computer game is notorious for being released in a highly unstable condition littered with...
.
Following the game's release, Cross Days made transitions into other media. A manga serialized in the Kadokawa Shoten
Kadokawa Shoten
is a well-known Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. Kadokawa has published both manga novels and magazines, such as Newtype magazine...
magazine Monthly Comp Ace
Comp Ace
is a Japanese computer game and manga magazine published by Kadokawa Shoten. Comp Ace began as a special edition version of another one of Kadokawa Shoten's magazines, Comptiq. The first issue was released on March 26, 2005, and was published quarterly for the first three volumes which had cover...
was circulated from April 26 to August 10, collected into two volumes by the company. A concurrent radio drama
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...
broadcast during development and the game's original soundtrack was published by Lantis
Lantis (company)
is a Japanese company that specializes as a music publisher label for Japanese musicians, anime soundtracks and video game soundtracks. It was established on November 26, 1999, and in May 2006, it was bought by, and became a subsidiary of, Bandai Visual...
, as were three novels and other print.
Gameplay
Cross Days, in typical visual novel fashion, is essentially played by watching and listening to episodic sequences of story and then selecting, or ignoring, clickable actions or responses when they are presented to the player. These choices are intricately linked to alternating routes of plot, moderately changing the direction of the story as each is made, ultimately leading to erotic scenes between characters and one of various endings. In order for the player to watch all the possible endings, he or she will effectively have to replay through the game several times, making different selections along the way.Like its predecessors, Cross Days is presented with, considerably improved, limited animation
Limited animation
Limited animation is a process of making animated cartoons that does not redraw entire frames but variably reuses common parts between frames. One of its major trademarks is the stylized design in all forms and shapes, which in the early days was referred to as modern design...
. The game is audibly stereophonic with lip-synched voice acting, sound effects and background music.
Plot
Yuuki Ashikaga is a high school freshman in his second semester, who from his regular visits to the library, grows enamored by Kotonoha Katsura, a fellow classman who frequents to read. Despite being in a relationship, she genuinely reciprocates his interest. However things become complicated when his sister, Chie, introduces him to Roka Kitsuregawa, a friend of hers who also shares a connection with him. In an attempt to make herself seem harder to get, Roka claims that she is equally interested in Makoto Itou, another schoolmate. Her lie is unsuccessful, as Yuuki, aware that Makoto is Kotonoha's boyfriend, decides to ask her about the affair.Setting
Unlike in Summer Days, the story in Cross Days is not rewritten as a spin-off of the original story, but occurs during the events of it, making the game a parallel series to School Days. As such, the undisclosed location of the story remains the same with focus made prominently on campus. All signature characters and their established relationships appear in the game, with six new cast members.Characters
- The main protagonist of the game, Yuuki is a student in year one of class one, bright, reserved and a member of the school book club. His ordinary life takes an unusual turn when he is caught between the hearts of two girls and the confusion that ensues when one claims to like the boyfriend of the other. A generally mannered character, Yuuki suffers from an inferiority complex and is thus easily manipulated, especially by his older sister.
- Roka Kitsuregawa is a student in year one of class two who is a member of the girl's basketball team. She initially comes upon Yuuki in the library, and following a more developed introduction, becomes attracted to him. Like her crush, Roka is also short and petite, standing roughly his height and equally tender.
Development
Cross Days was officially announced by 0verflow on their website on October 12, 2008; the game would be released as a regular edition and limited edition bundled with a PVCPVC
Polyvinyl chloride is a plastic.PVC may also refer to:*Param Vir Chakra, India's highest military honor*Peripheral venous catheter, a small, flexible tube placed into a peripheral vein in order to administer medication or fluids...
figurine of Kotonoha. Enterbrain
Enterbrain
is a Japanese magazine publisher established on April 1, 2000. Enterbrain magazines are generally focused on video games and computer entertainment as well as video game and strategy guides. In addition, the company publishes a small selection of anime artbooks. Enterbrain is based in Tokyo, Japan...
notably followed up on the game in their December 2008 issue of Tech Gian, published October 21, showing first ever screenshots, reporting on the story and characters, and mentioning that Cross Days would contain 3D animation with a meticulously reworked plot and male protagonist. ASCII Media Works
ASCII Media Works
is a Japanese publishing company in the Kadokawa Group which formed on April 1, 2008 as a result of a merger between ASCII and MediaWorks where MediaWorks legally absorbed ASCII. Despite this, the former president of ASCII, Kiyoshi Takano, became the president of ASCII Media Works. The company...
and Gakken
Gakken
is a Japanese publishing company founded in 1947 by Hideto Furuoka, which also produces educational toys. Their annual sales is reported at ¥ 821 billion ....
later published similar articles in their respective issues of Dengeki G's Magazine
Dengeki G's Magazine
is a Japanese magazine published by ASCII Media Works and sold monthly on the thirtieth that primarily contains information on bishōjo games, but also includes an entire section on anime based on bishōjo games, and serializes manga and light novels based on such games. The "G's" in the title...
, Dengeki Hime
Dengeki Hime
is a Japanese magazine published monthly by ASCII Media Works publishing information mainly on adult visual novels. The magazine started as a special issue of the now discontinued Dengeki Oh in 1997, and in 2001 it became its own entity. Originally, it held information on boys love series but...
and Megami Magazine
Megami Magazine
is a Japanese monthly magazine which focuses on bishōjo characters from anime and Japanese computer and console games. It is known for having many posters, pinups and large pictures among the articles. Digital Manga Publishing released compilations of what it determined to be the best of the...
on October 30.
Promotion began shortly after. Besides periodically keeping the public informed on development and characters, 0verflow consecutively released downloadable, non-playable benchmarks
Benchmark (computing)
In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it...
of the game from November 1 to May 4, 2009. After briefly selling telephone cards at Dream Party 2008 in Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
on November 16, the company began pre-orders on November 21, giving out limited character bookmarks to customers. Stores doing likewise reportedly filled reservations in days. Peculiarly, on December 5, 0verflow announced that a set of USB teledildonics
Teledildonics
Teledildonics are electronic sex toys that can be controlled by a computer to reach orgasm. Promoters of these devices have claimed since the 1980s they are the "next big thing" in cybersex technology...
, collectively known as SOM, would be compatible with Cross Days, manufactured by Goods Land. Trial versions of the game, released to about 125 select retailers, were disclosed by 0verflow on December 26 and at Comiket
Comiket
, otherwise known as the , is the world's largest self-published comic book fair, held twice a year in Tokyo, Japan. The first Comiket was held on December 21, 1975, with only about 32 participating circles and an estimated 600 attendees. Attendance has since swelled to over a half million people....
75.
On January 8, 2009, 0verflow announced that, like School Days, Lantis
Lantis (company)
is a Japanese company that specializes as a music publisher label for Japanese musicians, anime soundtracks and video game soundtracks. It was established on November 26, 1999, and in May 2006, it was bought by, and became a subsidiary of, Bandai Visual...
would be airing a weekly, episodic Internet radio drama of the game's characters, titled Radio Cross Days, starting on January 8. Broadcasts were made regularly on Thursdays, finishing up on March 25, 2010 with 64 sessions aired.
Patches
On March 29, 2010 0verflow announced that an outdated DLLDLL
DLL may refer to:* Data link layer, a layer in the OSI network architecture model* Delay-locked loop, a device to reduce clock skew in digital circuits* Doubly linked list, a data structure in computer programming...
had been released with retail versions of the game. A 372 KB replacement was provided via download. The following day another patch was released to bring copies of the game up to version 1.00a.
Trojan scare
Shortly after Cross Days was released, unlicensed copies of the game began to aggressively circulate Japanese peer-to-peerPeer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
networks. 0verflow responded by discreetly releasing trojan horses
Trojan horse (computing)
A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but steals information or harms the system. The term is derived from the Trojan Horse story in Greek mythology.-Malware:A destructive program that masquerades as a benign...
, disguised as the game, in conjunction. Users duped into running the bogus installers had private and personal data collected and published to a blog for public access; NetAgent, a property rights company, reported that at least 5,510 people were tricked. Those wishing to have their information removed could do so after acknowledging to viewers that they had attempted to download the game illegally. Interestingly, the intrusive nature of the virus was found to be stated in the installer's software license agreement
Software license agreement
A software license agreement is a contract between the "licensor" and purchaser of the right to use software. The license may define ways under which the copy can be used, in addition to the automatic rights of the buyer including the first sale doctrine and .Many form contracts are only contained...
.
In spite of the otherwise effective countermeasure, a third-party iteration of the trojan was discovered in conjunction with its original, behaving identical to it but demanding compensation for copyright damages. NetAgent reported that at least 661 had been tricked with a payout of at least ¥3,833,800 or roughly $49,912.62. Avast!
Avast!
Avast! is an antivirus computer program developed by AVAST Software a.s. , a company based in Prague, Czech Republic. It was first released in 1988 although back then it was just a tool to remove the Vienna malware...
was later found to trigger false-positives in legitimate copies.
Reception
Cross Days was met with critically mixed reception. Prior to its release date on March 19, 2010, the game had been postponed a total of six times: February 27, 2009, April 24, June 26, November 20, December 18, and January 29, 2010. Like Summer Days, the much anticipated game was released to several promotional campaigns, many of which were intercity screening venues that spanned operation from March 5 to 14. It premiered as the third most sold game on Getchu.com during this time, ranking twelfth for the first half of the year and thirty-first for the whole.Manga
Based on the premise of the game, Cross Days was published into a manga. Written by Yoko Kagura and illustrated by Homare Sakazuki, 0verflow announced on April 4, 2010 that it would make its serialization debut in Monthly Comp AceComp Ace
is a Japanese computer game and manga magazine published by Kadokawa Shoten. Comp Ace began as a special edition version of another one of Kadokawa Shoten's magazines, Comptiq. The first issue was released on March 26, 2005, and was published quarterly for the first three volumes which had cover...
on April 26. The series was circulated until August 10, published by Kadokawa Shoten
Kadokawa Shoten
is a well-known Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. Kadokawa has published both manga novels and magazines, such as Newtype magazine...
into a two volumes released November 26, 2011 and June 25, 2011 respectively.
Books and publications
In addition to the manga, Cross Days was made into other print. The first of these was a strategy guide and artwork book by Junji Goto, character artist for 0verflow, titled and published by Kinema Junpousha on August 7, 2010. The subsequent three releases were light novelLight novel
A is a style of Japanese novel primarily targeting junior high and high school students . The term "light novel" is a wasei-eigo, or a Japanese term formed from words in the English language. Light novels are often called or for short...
s by different authors but whose cover art was drawn by Goto and illustrated by Jet Yowatari, each retelling the story of the game. Cross Days, a novel, was published by Harvest Books on September 15, written by Mutsuki Mizusaki. Another novel titled was released on October 22, 2010 by Shueisha
Shueisha
is a major publisher in Japan. The company was founded in 1925 as the entertainment-related publishing division of Japanese publisher Shogakukan. The following year, Shueisha became a separate, independent company. Magazines published by Shueisha include Weekly Shōnen Jump, Weekly Young Jump,...
, authored by Hiro Akizuki. The final novel, was written by Yoko Kagura, author for the manga adaption, and was published on October 29 by Kill Time Communication.
Audio CDs
In a fashion similar to its predecessors, the original soundtrack of Cross Days was reproduced for distribution alongside the game, initially scheduled for February 27, 2009. As this was the first of the later six postponements however, the album was republished and deferred to June 26. Following the second delay, the soundtrack was held indefinitely until 0verflow announced on April 16, 2010 that it would be released April 24. Containing the game's theme songs and background music, the album consisted of one disc and twenty-five tracks.Radio Cross Days was the second and final audio compilations made for the game. It was announced for release by 0verflow on March 26, 2010 and published by Lantis. The set consisted of two separate discs, each holding thirty-two segments of broadcast comprising the sixty-four total that were aired.
Merchandise
Considerable effort was made to market and promote Cross Days before and after its release, including the sale of brand merchandise. Besides the figurine bundled with the limited edition, 0verflow and partners sold wall scrolls, shower curtains, cushion mousepads, dakimakuraDakimakura
A ' is a type of large pillow from Japan. The word is often translated in English simply as "hug pillow". From a semantic standpoint, dakimakura are no different from Western orthopedic body pillows, and are commonly used by Japanese youth as "security objects"...
and Zippo
Zippo
A Zippo lighter is a refillable, metal lighter manufactured by Zippo Manufacturing Company of Bradford, Pennsylvania, U.S. Thousands of different styles and designs have been made in the seven decades since their introduction including military ones for specific regiments.-Establishment:George G...
lighters.