Name: CROSS†CHANNEL
Developer: FlyingShine
Release date: September 26, 2003
Related links: Galge, Getchu, Walkthrough, Walkthrough (English)

Opening

Cross Channel is an ADV by FlyingShine that follows Kurosu Taichi, a member of the Broadcasting Club at a school for troubled kids, Gunjou. Stuff happens. Unfortunately, any more than that and I’ll be spoiling the story. This review will be free of major spoilers. This was quite a hard game to review since I really couldn’t say much without ruining the story.

I was lazy, so this review is based off the English translation. I didn’t bother extracting the images, so the shots are lower quality screencaps. This will probably be the norm. To see what’s in the box, go to the unboxing.

Scenario

This is likely be my shortest ever section on scenario since elaborating will ruin the story. More than anything, the story is about one’s relationship with oneself and others. The ability to love yourself, the need to be connected with others, and what you impose on each other.

“What friends require from each other is nothing.”

With all their personal problems, the students at Gunjou are all extremely unsociable. The Broadcasting Club members have grown apart, and Taichi just wants to bring them back together to have some fun memories, but things are obviously not as easy as they seem…

What Taichi wants

This is one of those games where you must complete everyone’s path for the true end, but Cross Channel does it in its own way. This isn’t a game about romance. Don’t play it for that. Lots of sex scenes seem sudden and are unnecessary.

Another warning. This game is dense and confusing. The writing is often purposely confusing and random. Be prepared to be frustrated or have headaches.

“Everyone is born alone and dies alone.”

Characters

Kurosu Taichi

Quite a pervert

Taichi has the most serious problems out of anyone in the school. What’s his problem? Well, I can’t tell you. Play it and find out.

Other than that, Taichi is probably one of the biggest perverts I’ve ever seen. He takes every opportunity he can to sexually harass the girls in the game.

He’s

always

skirt-flipping

Hasekura Youko

She’s always watching.

My favorite character. Youko is cold and never shows any emotion. To everyone in the club except Taichi, she’s their respected Senpai. She’s known Taichi since they were kids, so she’s always watching over him. She’s extremely perceptive, smart, and strong. She’s not one you want to cross.

This is pretty much her only expression.

Not only is she overprotective of Taichi, she also gets VERY jealous. She’ll even resort to using flashbangs to stop Taichi from doing something she doesn’t want.

A jealous Youko. How cute.

Youko and Taichi are very physically intimate. She won’t even mind giving him a BJ to wake him up. But they’re not even going out.

Wouldn’t you love to wake up to this?

Yamanobe Miki

Delicious flat chest

Miki is probably my second character. She’s Taichi student in perversion, and she’s the only one who doesn’t get flustered or upset by his sexual harassment. She’s also the most loli out of all the sexable girls, but she’s not a true loli. She even admits it.

She says awesome lines like this.

Miki is a girl who comes from a poor family, and like most other girls in these games that come from poor families, she’s on the energetic side, though I wouldn’t say she’s a genki girl. She sounds extremely cute, and I just want to bring her home~~

She seems tsurupeta.

Kirihara Touko

The legendary Kirihara blade.

Touko is your typical tsundere. I usually like tsundere, but for some reason, I didn’t find her that appealing. She’s a rich girl who eats caviar on a daily basis, doesn’t know what canned food is, and has never been to a konbini.

Her typical tsuntsun face, but feed her…

and she turns super deredere.

I think that’s one of the main reasons I don’t like her. She turns extremely deredere, and she does it pretty much literally overnight. Tsundere are only cute when they retain some of their original self.

Miyasumi Misato

Nice view

Misato is the president of the club, and she’s Taichi’s senpai. She’s an onee-chan type of character, and she’s a bit airheaded. Her redeeming quality is having the biggest breasts in the game. She’s Tomoki’s sister, even though their last names are different.

She’s probably the only one in the game who can do this.

Sakura Kiri

Kiri is my least favorite character out of the bunch. She hates Taichi pretty much throughout the game, and even ignores logic when it disproves her reason for hating him. She has a grudge that she can’t seem to let go of. Also, she’s cold to pretty much everyone except Miki since they’re best friends. Though she looks it, she’s not really the athletic type.

Nanaka

Nanaka is a mysterious girl who usually shows up out of nowhere to run Taichi down with her bike. She seems to know Taichi’s name, even though it’s Taichi’s first time meeting her. She often says mysterious things and seems to know a lot about what’s going on. She’s genki, which I usually dislike, but I can tolerate Nanaka for some reason. She’s not a sexable character.

Shima Tomoki

Tomoki is Misato’s brother. Though he’s serious siscon, he’s fighting with his sister and they rarely talk. They even participate in different clubs so they don’t need to interact. He’s a serious guy and tries to help everyone out later.

Sakuraba Hiroshi

One of the least significant characters in the game. As a rich kid, he’s usually pretty laid back and spontaneous. He’s the type of guy who loves curry bread but hates curry.

System

The game is getting old, so the engine it runs on seems outdated now. There’s no way to replay voices (hence the lack of voice clips). It has all the usual features like CG album, H-scene playback, and BGM player. It has 100 save files, but you can’t put comments on them.

Translation

The overall text flows pretty well, and there aren’t any major errors. There are still loads of minor grammatical errors, but 99.9% of people won’t notice them. The original text is supposed to be vague and hard to follow, so the translation follows it.

There’s also a lot of translation notes in the game to explain a lot of obscure things. It was pretty helpful.

Overall

The game is definitely one most people should experience, but it’s also not a game recommended for newbies to the genre. It’s ridiculously difficult to follow at times and it defies a lot of conventions of the genre. Its story is well fleshed-out. Each character’s motives are usually clear by the end, and that’s a pretty important aspect of the game. Finding out the past of each character and why they all behave the way they do. That’s why my character profiles are sparse on info.

The game is a very heavy, and I recommend it for people who are looking for a more psychological game. If you’re looking for a pure love game, look elsewhere.

But I also never truly cared about any of the characters in the game. This combined with hard to follow text brought the game down a notch for me.

“See you next week.”

Score

My scale will probably be a lot different from most other people’s scale. My scores will be from 1 to 5, integer only. I don’t understand why people need to use a 10 point (or shit, a 100 point) scale. Do you really care about the difference between a game that gets a 3 or a 4 out of 10? Can you really tell me the difference between a 8.5 and an 8.6? Decimals are usually assigned purely on a whim. My score also is based on the overall game. My enjoyment of the game is the primary deciding factor. No subscores are given.

I also give games scores based on what they’re trying to be. For example, I won’t ding a slice of life game for not having  an epic story. It’s simply not what the game is supposed to be.

The meaning of my scores and their rough equivalent in a 1-10 scale.

5 – Excellent. Must play (9-10)
4 – Good. Play if you’re a fan of the genre (8)
3 – Average. Play if something about the game really attracts you. (7)
2 – Below average. Only play if there’s something about the game that really really interests you. You need to have a die hard fetish for it or something to make it worthwhile. (6)
1 – Crap. Avoid no matter what. (1-5)

4/5

Where to buy: Erogeshop

Random comments: Sorry for the low quality pictures in the beginning. I didn’t realize saving at jpg would make it that bad. I’ll try to reupload some as png. Note: quotes from the game are from memory and may not be exact.

Update: I added info about two more characters. Also, I’m currently tweaking the layout and style of the review, so the page may change if you come back later.

UPDATE: Review here.

Primary is taking longer than I thought, but I’m taking a break from it since I’m getting tired of it. That means it’s time to move on to a new game, Cross Channel. This is supposed to be good, so it’ll be a nice change of pace.

The front cover

I forgot which side was which (I don’t have the game with me)

Back cover

Instruction manual

Unfortunately, Cross Channel did not come with anything in the box other than the instruction manual and the game disks. From what I’ve seen, there wasn’t a first edition of the game, so there are no special bonuses.

At least the manual is in full color.

Character descriptions

System disk on the left, data disk on the right

Cross Channel is old.  Old enough that the game comes on CDs (remember those days?). I’ll probably write a review later. No promises on when though, since I’m currently juggling quite a few games along with Real Life™.

Where to buy: Erogeshop