is an

action game An action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction time. The genre includes a large variety of sub-genres, such as fighting games, beat 'em ups, shooter games, rhythm games and ...

developed and published by

Sega is a Japanese video game company and subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings headquartered in Tokyo. It produces several List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises for arcade game, arcades and video game cons ...

for the

SG-1000 The is a home video game console manufactured by Sega. It was Sega's first entry into the home video game hardware business. Developed in response to a downturn in arcades starting in 1982, the SG-1000 was created on the advice of Hayao Nak ...

console in 1985. The game follows a girl as she gathers flowers to win the love of a boy. It was the debut work of Sega programmers

Yuji Naka , credited in some games as YU2, is a Japanese video game designer and programmer. He is the co-creator of the ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' series and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until his departure in 2006. Naka joined Sega in 1984 and w ...

and Hiroshi Kawaguchi. Naka went on to co-create the ''

Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game series and media franchise created by the Japanese developers Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima, and Hirokazu Yasuhara for Sega. The franchise follows Sonic the Hedgehog (character), Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battle ...

'' series and Kawaguchi would later compose music for popular Sega arcade games.

Gameplay

''Girl's Garden'' is an arcade-style action game. The player controls a young girl named Papri as she collects flowers to win the affection of a boy. During each round, the player must collect a certain number of flowers and return them to the boy before time expires and the boy meets another girl. The stages are maze-like and populated with hostile enemies including bears. Papri has a limited set of

power-up In video games, a power-up is an object that adds temporary benefits or extra abilities to the player character as a Game mechanics, game mechanic. This is in contrast to an Item (game), item, which may or may not have a permanent benefit that ca ...

s to help avoid enemies.

Development

''Girl's Garden'' was the first game developed for Sega by programmers

and Hiroshi Kawaguchi.
Translation
by Shmuplations. ). After Naka joined Sega in April 1984, he was asked by his supervisor to try developing games for girls as part of his initial month of training. Naka collaborated with Kawaguchi, another new programmer to Sega, and showed their progress on ''Girl's Garden'' to their supervisor after about two months. Their boss decided it was good enough to be worked into a full game and sold for the

. Development on ''Girl's Garden'' lasted five months. Hardware limitations made scrolling the screen and displaying many sprites difficult. As the system could only render four sprites per scanline, Naka and Kawaguchi instead drew the enemy bears to the background. It was difficult to scroll the background layer while also moving the bears around the screen and animating the blooming flowers. The music and sounds were programmed by Tohru Nakabayashi and Katsuhiro Hayashi. It took three months to manufacture the ROM chips. Sega produced around 80,000 copies of ''Girl's Garden'', half of which were sold. According to contemporary game publication ''Game Machine'', the game was released in January 1985. In 1998, ''Sega Saturn Magazine'' (Japan) wrote that it was released in December 1984. In a 2002 interview, Naka argued that the game's development and manufacturing time meant it could not have possibly been released in 1984. He believed the game was released in February 1985, and recalled his supervisors warning him that games do not sell well in February.

Legacy

Writing for ''USgamer,'' Jeremy Parish called ''Girl's Garden'' a simple "inoffensive, inessential" game, and Bob Mackey wrote that it was "one of the more technically impressive games" for the SG-1000. ''Girl's Garden'' was re-released briefly on

GameTap GameTap was an online video game service established by Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) in 2006. It provided users with video games and game-related video content. The service was acquired by French online video game service Metaboli in 2008 as ...

in 2006. It could also be unlocked in the '' Sega 3D Fukkoku Archives 3: Final Stage'' compilation for the

Nintendo 3DS The is a foldable dual-screen handheld game console produced by Nintendo. Announced in March 2010 as the successor to the Nintendo DS, the console was released originally on February 26, 2011 and went through various revisions in its lifetime, ...

if the player had save data for '' Sega 3D Fukkoku Archives''. The game has been considered for release on Sega Forever. Naka continued with Sega and went on to become one of the most renowned programmers in the gaming industry. He is most well known for programming ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' (1991) and heading Sega's

Sonic Team , doing business as , is a Japanese video game developer owned by Sega. Sonic Team is best known for its ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' series and games such as '' Nights into Dreams'' and '' Phantasy Star Online''. The initial team, formed in 1990, c ...

division. Kawaguchi went on to become a music composer at Sega, writing music for arcade games like ''

Hang-On is an arcade racing game released by Sega in 1985 and later ported to the Master System. In the game, the player controls a motorcycle against time and other computer-controlled bikes. It was one of the first arcade games to use 16-bit computi ...

'' (1985) and '' Out Run'' (1986).

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Girl's Garden 1985 video games Action games Japan-exclusive video games Sega video games SG-1000 games Video games about plants Video games featuring female protagonists Video games produced by Yuji Naka Works about flowers Video games developed in Japan Single-player video games