Trace Plus
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Nov 22, 2010 15:06 JST
- Tags: 2ch, Comparison, Copyright, Keitai, Konami, Love Plus, Plagiarism, Visual Novels
Virtual schoolgirl courting sim Love Plus is either being subjected to the highest form of flattery or the lowest form of plagiarism.
Love Plus likely needs no introduction, but mobile phone game developer GREE’s new title “HimeKoi” (“Princess Love”) likely does.
Rather than being a virtual girlfriend on the DS it is mobile phone visual novel, but has otherwise been noted as being hauntingly similar to Love Plus.
The HimeKoi promotional material:
The 2ch-created comparisons:
There was some initial suspicion that the characters and art were merely created by the same artist responsible for the Love Plus originals, but in a Twitter updated Mino Taro himself explicitly denied any involvement with the game.
In addition to the suspected artistic plagiarism, the actual game itself appears to be a lift of Love Plus – a dating game on a mobile device with three schoolgirls, each with similar design to Love Plus, seems too much to ascribe to the low-level copying which goes on all the time in the gaming industry, 2ch reasons.
All this suggests the usual excuse of Japanese enterprises caught ripping someone off (i.e. blame it on a freelance artist and have the art replaced after being discovered) might not wash as the entire product looks to be a very deliberate and quite well made (even going so far as to have quality seiyuu) Zynga-esque remake…
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Wow that was a quick subject change. Nice save.
What was it before?
The 'HimeKoi' girls aren't nearly as pretty as the Love Plus girls.. If they were gonna trace, they could have done a better job of it. :\
In GREE's shit
Love plus is better.
Same as WoW will own every other MMO out there, even if somebody will make something better later after all.
...Well, a bit off topic... but yeah, in this case it's really just a 2nd grade replica.
Hm. Was Himekoi made in China? If so, it's expected they'd have the "just steal it" creation mindset.
Another chinese quality game?
They really don't look all that similar. Sure the faces look somewhat similar but is that really a shock? I'm sure if you compared any two manga/anime characters you would find some similarities between them.
This gets the Nick Simmons seal of approval.
Ah, well....
One had to come around, sooner or later.
i was expecting this to happen sooner than it did but now that it happened my expectations have been fulfilled
Prepare for rage fest from fans(or husbands if they love the game that much) GREE(D), no marriage for you girls due to copying
Look at it from another side. Now there's an option to play Love+ like game on a cell phone. And if not for copying, I doubt there would be any half decent game of that type on the phones.
People who owns DS and Love+ can play it. People who dont.... now can play it too (something similar at least). A win situation to me.
Not that I care.
Iphone or similar mobile fans will have something to brag about.
I dunno. I reckon this is more indicative of the generic nature of these games in general. Taking simplified characters and rotating three separate pictures to fit over a fourth - well of course there will be similarities!
This looks like it was inspired by the success of Love Plus to stand on its shoulders (and maybe even dry hump its leg), but direct plagiarism? Dubious claim imho.
Well, that could be said for the characters maybe. There's bound to be some similarities between their art eventually. But when you add in the fact that the game itself also seems like nothing more than a bad copy? It just seems like too much to be a mere "coincidence."
Then again, that's just my opinion.
How many variations are possible on a dating sim/interactive novel though? The protagonist and the girl have to "meet cute" as they used to say in the theatre business, and with schoolgirls that usually means at school or at a school activity. Also, for the promo art, there are basically a set of standard poses, and the samples are all head shots, so there's always going to be some similarity. It IS interesting that the poses, head shapes and eyes all go together, but no anime artist is going to spend an extra penstroke on the shape of the face.
If the dialogs and the decision tree that lead to getting/not getting the girl match closely, that's another matter. They should at least be able to vary the plot enough to make it seem different.
Well, I too think it's more of the matter of imitating Love Plus's art to attract players just as how it was successful in the former. Cell phone games are, after all have the reputation of copying the success of other successful games.
On the art style, who can point fingers when One Piece & Fairy Tail have the exact same art style yet being done by different artists? Sometimes this is perceived as the duplicates being under the apprenticeship of one same artist; on another, said companies are just doing it because they know it'd sell better that way and are lazy to come up with their own unique art direction.
It's worth noting that the girls look cuter.
Interactivity-wise, I'm sure it's a step backward.
Yes, specifically saying that pony tail one.
Know what'd make otaku come with this game? Being on a cellphone, interactivity function like phone calls with the girls are sure to sell.
Serously, 2ch users have too much free time...
2ch has lots of people,remember the no. of people that voted for that guy in Inazuma Eleven?
Because number of 2ch users is 11,700,000 people.
The girl in yellow uniform for certain reason reminds me of Kashiwagi Yuki from AKB48..
I'll give the guy the benefit of the doubt, the only thing I see thats remotely similar is the eyes. If anything he probably traced/referenced the eyes and thats it.
The eyes... THE EYES!!! THEY ARE BACK!!!
Love Plus Hookers strike again. They like that type of villains who reborn in every new season. ^_^
The eyes really give it away.
I don't see it. I see SOME similarities but I think calling it plagiarism is kind of a stretch.
but the game offers some of the same things,and the three girl setting
And all First Person Shooters are pretty much identical to each other. What's your point ?
erm...most of this dating games doesn't have mobile functions(messaging) and the 3 girls have somewhat the same kind of eyes
well, most anime characters uses a stamp for a face neways right?
the copying is excused because I get to hear kagami and saten saying they love me.
Heard me some sweet Noto Mamiko
H artist often trace the JAV pose
2ch, defending the uniqueness(!?) of their waifu
how DARE THEY?
Oh... OH! I see it! The EYES!
Srsly, they look alike no more than bunch of generic japanese idols.
Trace or not, who care. Which one make profit, that's all the matter.
I'm sure there's enough lonely pathetic japanese nerds out there for both games,lol
Still prefer the original,
Rinko,Manaka and Nene-san FTW!
Nene will always still be the superior one for being the 2D girl who snatched a man from a 3D woman, leaving them ended up signing a divorce.
Stupid 2ch-ners should be happy they have now 2 game to play and 6 waifus to choose from :)
The only real similarity I see here is the eyes--and even then, it's enough to raise eyebrows, but not enough to scream "Plagiarism".
If anything else, they tried to make it look similar on purpose.
...and honestly? Though this may sound like blasphemy, I find these girls cuter. WAAAY cuter.
I'm not really seeing it, both sets of characters have very similar faces, even to each other. If I had some time, I would also do a overlay of each character from the same game's faces, as well as some random characters from anime.
Pointed chins, big doe like eyes, minimal facial features otherwise, all pretty much stock and trade when you are drawing an anime style girl.
the writer of this news, is jobless shit person.
try to find another work pliss
The writer of this post can't even spell "please" correctly.
Try not to skip your English class, kid.
Your avatar is raep bait.
His post is troll bait.
who's your avatar? i'm falling in love..
Victorique De Blois from Gosick;
The Perfect Gothloli Package.