, stylized as ''Chu♥lip'', is an
adventure
An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...
/
simulation
A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...
video game developed by
Punchline
A punch line (a. k. a. punch-line or punchline) concludes a joke; it is intended to make people laugh. It is the third and final part of the typical joke structure. It follows the introductory framing of the joke and the narrative which sets up ...
and released on October 3, 2002 in Japan by
Victor Interactive Software
was a Japanese video game software publisher and developer, established on October 1, 1996 as a division of Victor Entertainment. Their first game was ''Fish Eyes'' and their last game was ''Fish Eyes 3''.
Some of their games used the brand.
Hi ...
for the
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October 2000, in Europe on 24 November 2000, and in Australia on 3 ...
. After numerous delays, the game was released in North America by
Natsume on February 13, 2007 as a
GameStop
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. , the company operates 4,5 ...
-exclusive title. It was released on the
PlayStation Network
PlayStation Network (PSN) is a digital media entertainment service provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Launched in November 2006, PSN was originally conceived for the PlayStation video game consoles, but soon extended to encompass smartp ...
as a "PS2 Classic" on December 4, 2012, exclusively in North America.
''Chulip'' puts the player in the role of a young man who has just moved to a new town and next door to the girl of his dreams. Although she wants nothing to do with him due to his family's poor economic status, he decides to write her a heartfelt
love letter
A love letter is an expression of love in written form. However delivered, the letter may be anything from a short and simple message of love to a lengthy explanation and description of feelings.
History
One of the oldest references to a lo ...
. When the letter is stolen, it is up to the protagonist to travel around the village and retrieve all of its pieces. The gameplay of ''Chulip'' revolves around improving the player's reputation with the citizens in order to access all parts of the town. To do this, the player must impress each member of the community and then kiss them.
''Chulip'' was directed by Yoshirou Kimura, a former employee of
Love-de-Lic
was a Japanese video game developer founded in 1995 by Kenichi Nishi. Its staff included many former employees of Square. After producing three games, the company disbanded in 2000. Many staff members joined other small and independent game compan ...
. Kimura wanted the game's focus to be on kissing in public, a more Western-accepted custom, within a Japanese setting. ''Chulip'' suffered dismal sales, while its overall critical reception has been negative to average. Most reviews cited the game's quirkiness and charm as its strong points yet criticized its tedious gameplay mechanics.
Plot
''Chulip'' opens with a dream sequence in which the unnamed, male protagonist kisses the girl he loves under the talking "Lover's Tree" on a green hill. The dream takes its course, the tree ends the sequence saying they lived happily ever after.
However, once the protagonist wakes up, he and his father are just moving into Long Life Town, which appears very much like a small, Japanese village. Coincidentally, the girl of his dreams lives in this town, but she flatly rejects him due to his status as coming from a very poor family.
Taking his father's advice, the hero decides to
kiss
A kiss is the touch or pressing of one's lips against another person or an object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely. Depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, romance, sexual attraction, ...
the odd citizens of the town in order to strengthen his heart and improve his reputation. En route to doing so, he also resolves to write a love letter to his crush. When this treasured set of papers is stolen, he must search Long Life Town for the missing pieces.
The hero's journey involves numerous bizarre incidents that lead him to cheating his way to the top of a major corporation, making contact with
aliens
Alien primarily refers to:
* Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country
** Enemy alien, the above in times of war
* Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth
** Specifically, intelligent extrate ...
, and acting as a defense lawyer in court.
Once the three pieces of the love letter (the ink, paper, and pen) are collected, he writes and mails it to the girl. The game's ending shows the two meeting and kissing beneath the Lover's Tree, as the protagonist had dreamed.
Gameplay
''Chulip'' is an
adventure
An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...
/
simulation
A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...
game
in which the player must improve the hero's reputation in the community of Long Life Town by kissing its various citizens. The player's
health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...
is represented by a number of hearts. To gain more hearts the player has to find and kiss other characters in the game.
Finding out how and when to kiss other characters is a puzzle in of itself. The game and each of its
non-player character
A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster o ...
s (NPCs) follow a 24-hour day schedule. In the daytime, many of the NPCs of the game are walking around the streets. To succeed in kissing an NPC, the player is required to wait for the correct time where they will be happy and press the corresponding button.
The player must sometimes complete a certain task for that NPC. Choosing the wrong time to kiss will often result in the player getting hit and losing health. Exploring Long Life Town presents the player with numerous environmental hazards discovered by
trial and error
Trial and error is a fundamental method of problem-solving characterized by repeated, varied attempts which are continued until success, or until the practicer stops trying.
According to W.H. Thorpe, the term was devised by C. Lloyd Morgan (1 ...
.
For instance, attempting to use the town's playground equipment or being suddenly shot at by the night-patrolling policeman will cause instant death. One mission ends in the player being struck by lightning, removing more than ten hearts and resulting in a
game over if the player does not have sufficient health.
Some denizens of ''Chulip'' only come out of their underground, living apartments through holes in the ground at certain times of the day. If the player looks through these holes, clues are given in regard to when they come out or when to kiss them.
After an NPC comes out of the ground, the player has a very limited opportunity to give them a kiss. If the player successfully kisses enough NPCs and returns home to sleep, the hero's father will recite his progress and the Lover's Tree will give the player more hearts and an improved reputation if he advances.
Secondary to improving his reputation, the player must track down all the pieces to the "Love Letter Set" by traveling throughout Long Life Town.
As the story progresses, the player gains access to new areas of the game world via train, which include many more underground residents and hazards. Saving takes place in various bathrooms.
Development
''Chulip'' was developed by a team of 12 to 14 people at
Punchline
A punch line (a. k. a. punch-line or punchline) concludes a joke; it is intended to make people laugh. It is the third and final part of the typical joke structure. It follows the introductory framing of the joke and the narrative which sets up ...
.
The game took two and a half years to complete after its initial planning; one year and three months were devoted to
programming.
Director Yoshirou Kimura started work on the project as he helped his colleagues at
Love-de-Lic
was a Japanese video game developer founded in 1995 by Kenichi Nishi. Its staff included many former employees of Square. After producing three games, the company disbanded in 2000. Many staff members joined other small and independent game compan ...
finish that company's final game, ''
L.O.L.: Lack of Love''.
Production of ''Chulip'' began in the earliest days of the
PS2
The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October 2000, in Europe on 24 November 2000, and in Australia o ...
, making it a challenge for the development team who only had experience with the original
PlayStation
is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divisi ...
. Kimura valued his team members' opinions and ideas while working on it. "It was challenging and interesting at the same time to program a game for a new console," he stated. "We were definitely eager to see what we could do with it."
The original idea for ''Chulip'' came when Kimura visited
Western countries
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania. and saw couples
kissing in public, a custom not often performed among Japanese people.
Kimura came up with the game's title after attending a party in Tokyo. As the intoxicated partygoers talked about video games, they began to humorously say "''chu-shite''" (lit. "kiss me"). The title ''Chulip'' is a play on words: a cross between ''chu'' (the Japanese
onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
for the sound of a kiss) and the English word
lip
The lips are the visible body part at the mouth of many animals, including humans. Lips are soft, movable, and serve as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. Human lips are a tactile sensory organ, and can be ...
, as well as the Japanese rendering of the word
tulip
Tulips (''Tulipa'') are a genus of spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes (having bulbs as storage organs). The flowers are usually large, showy and brightly coloured, generally red, pink, yellow, or white (usually in warm ...
.
Kimura eventually spoke with
Marvelous Entertainment
(MMV) was a multinational corporation that produced animation, music, video games and television series. MMV is known for its involvement in the ''Story of Seasons'' series. They merged with AQ Interactive in 2011 and became Marvelous AQL; the ...
's
Yosuhiro Wada about creating a game mixing a "flare of
''Moon'' and Japan a little while ago (say about
40 years ago)".
Kimura wanted ''Chulip'' to be localized to show the world certain aspects of Japanese culture and "all the kind of interesting stuff that you can see every day".
He also wanted to display a real, modern
truancy
Truancy is any intentional, unjustified, unauthorised, or illegal absence from compulsory education. It is a deliberate absence by a student's own free will (though sometimes adults or parents will allow and/or ignore it) and usually does not refe ...
problem for Japanese students with the game's cast of underground dwellers.
Norikazu Yasunaga designed many of the game's mechanics. According to Kimura, "for efficient procedure,
asunaga/nowiki> set it up so that the personality and the characteristics for each NPC had to be one-by-one". The character designs were done by Ryuji Nouguchi, who used items from Kimura's personal scrapbook and "made them funny". The musical score to ''Chulip'' was composed by Hirofumi Taniguchi, another former member of Love-de-Lic. The soundtrack was released by King Records in Japan on a single disc on November 22, 2002. Songs 35 through 44 represent the "Tsurukame Movie Soundtrack", consisting of music for each of the game's short films, while songs 45 and 46 are bonus tracks.
Publisher Natsume licensed the game for a projected North American release in early 2004. The game was then shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo
E3 (short for Electronic Entertainment Expo or Electronic Entertainment Experience in 2021) is a trade event for the video game industry. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) organizes and presents E3, which many developers, publisher ...
that year. Natsume realized early on that it would be an extremely obscure title and thus planned on releasing it at a low retail price. The game was delayed, and Natsume assured that it would be released sometime in 2005. After more delays, ''Chulip'' was ultimately released in North America on February 13, 2007, the day before Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, throu ...
, exclusively to GameStop
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. , the company operates 4,5 ...
stores. The North American version was supposed to feature updated graphics and an "accurately meticulous" translation of Japanese text. Natsume claimed that Punchline's busy schedule resulted in such a long delay for the localization and that it also prevented them from making any graphical changes.
Reception and legacy
''Chulip'' received mostly average critical scores upon its release in North America. The game currently holds a 57% on the aggregate websites GameRankings
GameRankings was a video gaming review aggregator that was founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It indexed over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games. GameRankings was discontinued in December 2019, with its staff bei ...
and Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
. The ambitious gameplay of ''Chulip'' has been almost universally criticized. Ray Barnholt of 1UP.com, Ryan Davis of GameSpot
''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...
, Micah Seff of IGN
''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...
, and Gus Mastrapa of ''X-Play
''Xplay'' (previously ''GameSpot TV'' and ''Extended Play'') is a TV program about video games. The program, known for its reviews and comedy skits, airs on '' G4'' in the United States and had aired on ''G4 Canada'' in Canada (and briefly on YT ...
'' all labeled the often-unclear progression presented to the player as "frustrating" and "tedious", requiring an excessive amount of patience. Mastrapa summarized, "Since the game is on 24-hour clock a missed opportunity means having to wait until the next day to take another crack. Add the fact that your inexperienced, young avatar can die from heartbreak, resulting in a 'game over' screen and the loss of unsaved progress and you've got a recipe for annoyance." Barnholt, Davis, and Seff did positively credit Natsume for the inclusion of the mini-strategy guide. Despite faulting the "indistinct objectives", Davis found gratification in successful kisses. "The whole kissing thing is absolutely fantastic in concept," Davis stated, "And there's something unsettling about your character's encouraged promiscuity." However, ''Game Informer
''Game Informer'' (''GI'', most often stylized ''gameinformer'' from the 2010s onward) is an American monthly video game magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of video games and associated consoles. It debuted in August 1991 w ...
'' writer Ben Reeves described the game as one of the most poorly designed games he has ever played due to its lack of in-game direction and frequency of game overs. In January 2008, ''Game Informer'' listed ''Chulip'' one of the worst games of 2007.
Reviewers have praised ''Chulip'' for a charming presentation, quirky characters, and absurd, Japanese humor. Admitting that the game had some blurry or pixelated textures and cramped environments, both Seff and Davis noted the peculiar art style of ''Chulip'' to be aesthetically pleasing. Seff specifically found the game "surprisingly easy on the eyes" and to feature unique character designs, "wacky" dialogue, and an art style comparable to other titles like the ''Mother
]
A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given childbirth, birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the cas ...
'' series and ''Katamari Damacy
() is a third-person puzzle-action video game developed and published by Namco for the PlayStation 2. It was released in Japan in March 2004 and in North America in September 2004. Designer Keita Takahashi struggled to pitch the game to Namco' ...
''. Davis was amused by the script and the townsfolk's gibberish
Gibberish, also called jibber-jabber or gobbledygook, is speech that is (or appears to be) nonsense. It may include speech sounds that are not actual words, pseudowords, or language games and specialized jargon that seems nonsensical to outsider ...
speech, and was satisfied with largely a cappella
''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...
soundtrack. Seff was unimpressed by the game's audio, remarking the music as "entirely boring".
According to Media Create
is a Japanese company that gathers and analyzes data from the digital entertainment industry, specifically focusing on the Japanese console gaming market. Business operations include publishing, market research and consulting. It is a popular webs ...
information, ''Chulip'' sold only 6,645 units during its first week of release in Japan. Despite such low sales, ''Chulip'' was re-released in Japan two separate times, first as part of the "Victor the Best" selection on April 24, 2003 and second as part of the "Super Best Collection" on July 6, 2006. Many of ''Chulip''s key development members and their design philosophies were carried over to the 2009 Wii
The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other Regional lockout, regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major ho ...
game '' Little King's Story''. That year, Kimura stated that he would like to make a sequel to ''Chulip''. He was also contemplating creating a version set in an American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
location such as The Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
with a protagonist that is African-American, Caucasian, or other ethnicity.
References
External links
*
*{{moby game, id=/chulip, name=''Chulip''
2002 video games
Adventure games
Life simulation games
Natsume (company) games
PlayStation 2 games
PlayStation Network games
Romance video games
Video games developed in Japan
Single-player video games