Tokimeki Memorial 3

Overview

Tokimeki Memorial 3: Yakusoku no Ano Basho de is the third mainline installment in the Tokimeki Memorial series of dating sims developed by Konami for the PlayStation 2. The title was meant to be a turning point for the franchise with the game transitioning from the 2D presentation of the past games to polygonal 3D models using cel-shading. Konami released Tokimeki Memorial 3 in Japan on December 20, 2001 but the game was met with poor sales, essentially killing the mainline franchise until the release of Tokimeki Memorial 4 in 2009.

Game Fund: Tokimeki Memorial

Tokimeki Memorial 3's development was kickstarted thanks to an early form of crowd-funding that Konami called "Game Fund". In October of 2000 Konami announced that they would be partnering with banking investment firm Mizuho Securities and online securities company Monex to begin a program called Game Fund where fans and other parties could invest money into the development and marketing of their upcoming video games. The first use of this program was "Game Fund: Tokimeki Memorial" which would fund the development of Tokimeki Memorial 3 and a new title in the franchise which would later turn out to be Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side. People could make a minimal ¥100,000 ($1,000) investment towards Tokimeki Memorial 3's development with the opportunity to make ¥5,500 back per unit sold if the game sold over 800,000 copies, although they could also loose money if the game performed poorly just like any investment. Fans who invested more than the minimal amount would have their name put in the credits and if they invested more than ¥200,000 they would receive a special Game Fund limited edition version of Tokimeki Memorial 3. Game Fund: Tokimeki Memorial began on November 9, 2000 and raised ¥770 million from 2,738 investors by the time the campaign ended on December 20th, which was short of Konami's initial ¥1.2 billion goal. While Game Fund was technically successful enough to get Tokimeki Memorial 3 made, the subsequent commercial failure of the game led to investors loosing money on the project. This combined with the negative fan reception to the third game, who disliked the change in art style, simplified game systems, and smaller cast, lead to Konami shelving the mainline Tokimeki franchise for many years and never using Game Fund for another project.

Resources

1. Before Kickstarter: How Konami made dating-sim fans into investors (Venture Beat, 2012).