Sega love story game for Nintendo DS to be available at Japan launch

TOKYO--In a recent interview with the Japanese Web site Dengeki Online, Sega reveals a number of new details on its upcoming DS title "Kimi no tame nara Shineru" (which is abbreviated Kimishine). Translated into English, the title means "I could die for you" or "I would die for you." Sega hopes to release the game at the December 2 launch of the system, if possible.

As reported earlier, the player in Kimishine takes the role of an average boy who is attracted to a nice-looking girl that happens to be surrounded by good-looking men. The game depicts the love story of the boy, who's willing to risk his life to get the attention of the girl. During the game, players will touch the screen as they try to get friendly with the girl.

Kimishine plays with unique silhouette-based graphics that use a color style straight out of the 1970s, and there doesn't seem to be much dialogue or text in the game. Even more interesting is that Kimishine will be played with just the touch screen, aside from using the start button to pause the game.

Kimishine was announced at E3 2004 under the code name of "Project Rub." The project name comes from the fact that the English words "rub" and "love" are pronounced identically in Japanese. As the early name implies, one of the main things you'll be doing is rubbing the screen, not just tapping it.

The director is Takumi Yoshinaga of Sonic Team, best known as the director of Space Channel 5. The game's producer is Yojiro Ogawa, whose past games include PSO III: Card Revolution. A female planner from Sonic Team named Emiko Sunaga is also working on the title, and although it's rare to hear of female staff working on games in Japan, nearly half of the developers on Kimishine are women.