Desire

Desire is a mysterious visual novel set on a remote tropical island housing a private corporation's research facility. Journalist Albert and young Makoto arrive there each for their own reason, and gradually stumble upon experiments dealing with human memory and consciousness. The story unfolds across two scenarios, and only their combination reveals what really happened on the island — and why no one is meant to leave it.

The game builds on the dual-perspective principle later made famous by EVE Burst Error: you see one event from both heroes' points of view, and details that make no sense in one storyline gain meaning in the other. Interaction happens through a command menu and screen exploration, with emphasis on careful reading and on choosing the right moment to switch to the other character. Decisions are few but crucial, and the game expects you to play through it more than once before piecing together the full picture. The island itself acts as a closed setting with a limited number of locations and characters, so the player quickly gets oriented and can focus on figuring out who to actually trust. Tension doesn't come from action but from small inconsistencies between what individual characters claim, and from how the same scene differs depending on who is experiencing it.

On the PC-98, Desire was among the titles that showed a visual novel need not be just a sequence of images. It blends sci-fi thriller, melodrama, and horror, shifting tone depending on which character you're following. The graphics rely on large portraits and atmospheric island scenery, while the music offers calm, slightly oppressive themes. The title was ported to the Saturn, PlayStation, and other systems, and alongside the studio C's Ware's other games it helped establish the template for the Japanese story-driven adventure of the nineties. Today it plays slowly, and its strength lies in the gradual unveiling of its mystery; anyone who enjoys a slow-building secret will find one of the platform's classics here.