I just got the Visual Novel game Little Busters! working on my Macbook through Wine. However, since the process was far from easy, I thought I’d share how I did in case someone else wants to play Visual Novels too. Note that this guide is made for Key/Visual Art’s Visual Novels, like Clannad, Kanon, Air, Little Busters, Rewrite, etc. and other game makers’ games may not work at all. You should check them up in this database before trying to run them, if they’re gold or platinum, they’re playable. Note that you also need an Intel mac, any mac with G3, G5 or G5 processors (pre-2005) runs of the PPC architecture which makes Wine impossible to run. Some of the steps requires Administrator Access, if you have different accounts on your computer you may need to switch between them occasionally. I will tell you what account you need to be logged in to for each step.

Note that this guide uses examples for installing the game Little Busters, other games may place the installed files in other locations, if that’s the case,

Step 1: Getting the necessary files

1.1: X11 and Wine (this step requires you to be logged in as an Administrator)
To install a Visual Novel, you need a number of things. For a start, you need Wine and X11 to run Windows .EXE-files. To install X11, you can either grab it from the OSX Installation disc or from here. Then, you need MacPorts to install Linux/UNIX-packages from the Command Line, grab that from here and follow the installation instructions (it’s not just installing the package!). After you have installed Macports, open Application->Utilities->Terminal. Then type the following command (Copy it exactly! A typo will make the command fail!) and press Enter:

clear;sudo port selfupdate;sudo port install wine-devel winetricks cabextract +universal;sudo port upgrade all

Congratulations, you can now run windows applications! However, before we start doing that, we need to make said windows applications work. Type this command into the terminal (some parts are supposed to end with an “Installation Failed” message) WARNING! This step will fail if you’re not logged in as yourself!:

clear;winetricks corefonts;winetricks comctl32 comctl32.ocx d3dx9 d3dx9_28 d3dx9_36 dinput8 directmusic directplay dotnet20sp2 fontfix vb6run


The script will install much of the components required to use most Windows applications for you, just sit back and watch, however, do not leave the computer since it will occasionally ask you to accept a license agreement or ask for confirmation (Notice the gray ugly windows-style boxes? Those are actually Windows applications!). When this is done, you can theoretically run most Windows applications unless they are too complicated. However, to make it play anything in Japanese, you need to fix some more…

1.2: Japanese Fonts (from now on, make sure you are logged into the account you are planning on playing on)
To run Japanese games, your computer need to be able to render Japanese text, of course. If you try without these installed, you will just get ASCII-gibberish and there’s a large chance of the application crashing or acting strange. To enable Japanese fonts, grab this file and type this command (don’t type the [[DROP HERE]] part, instead, drag the downloaded file from Finder to the terminal when you get to that part to make it paste the full path to the file in there):

cd ~/Desktop/;LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine [[DROP HERE]];mv -fv ./*.ttf ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts/

This will install the required fonts. However, we’re not ready to play just yet.

Step 2: Preparing the game itself
Step 2.1: Installing the Game
This is just what it sounds like: Install the game. If you have the physical disc, insert it. If you have an ISO or DMG with the contents of it, double-click on it to mount it. Then type the following command into the Terminal to open up the installer:

cd "/Volumes/LB";clear;LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ./Autorun*.EXE

If your Installation Disc is called something else than “LB”, you must replace it with the name of your disc. Note that it is case sentitive, so “LB” is not the same as “lb”, “Lb” or “lB” and so on. If the name is long, you can replace cd "/Volumes/LB" with cd /Volumes/[first few letters of the disc name]* where you insert enough letters in the disc name to make sure there’s no other devices (Hard drives, Web Servers, Discs, etc.) that begins with the same letters. Make sure you replace any spaces with “\ ” without the quotation marks.

Step 2.2: Patching the Game Engine

When you have installed it (make sure you use the default location!), type this command and see if it mentions a file called “REALLIVE.EXE”:

clear;ls -lA ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/

If it does, grab this patch for it. Place the downloaded EXE-file on your desktop and rename it to “Patch.exe” for the sake of simplicity (again, case sensitive). Then run this command:

cp ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/REALLIVE.EXE ~/Desktop/;cd ~/Desktop/;LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ./Patch.exe

And choose to patch the file “REALLIVE.EXE” that will be located on your desktop. When it’s finished, run this command:

mv -f ./REALLIVE.EXE ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/;rm -f ./Patch.exe;rm -f ./REALLIVE*

This will update the game engine and make it possible to actually run the game, as well as removing the used patch (remove the “rm -f ./Patch.exe” part if you want to keep it). Now, if you have a Language Patch, name it “LangPatch.exe” and place it on the desktop, and run this command:

clear;cd ~/Desktop/;LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ./LangPatch.exe

Repeat this step for any additional patches.

Step 3: Running the Game
Step 3.1: Creating the Script
To actually run the game, there are several steps involved. To make this a easy as possible, we will be creating a script that does most of the work for you.

Open a text editor of choice (any editor works, like the built in one, which I’ll be using), and create a new file in your home folder (/Users/<yourname>) with a name along the lines of “littlebusters.sh”. The name can be anything, but it should end in “.sh”, and should only contain characters a-z and underscore( _ ). If you have a disc, type this into it:

if [ -e /Volumes/<< The full name of your CD >> ]
then
echo "The CD is inserted, starting game..."
LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/REALLIVE.EXE
else
echo "The CD is not inserted!"
fi

Replace << The full name of your CD >> with the name of your CD (Case-Insensitive). If you have an ISO or DMG, use this code instead:

if [ -e /Volumes/<< The full name of the disc image >> ]
then echo "The Disc Image is mounted, starting game..."
else echo "Attempting to mount the Disc Image..."
hdiutil attach << The full path to the disc image >>
fi

LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/REALLIVE.EXE

Replace << The full name of the disc image >> with the full name of the disc image as it shows up in the Finder sidebar when it’s mounted, and replace << The full path to the disc image >> with the full path to the Disc Image file (Note that if you move it, you need to change this). You can get the path by dropping the file into the text editing area in most cases (like the Built-in Text Editor).

Then run this command:

chmod 755 ~/*.sh

Done!

Step 4: Play!
To play the game, open up X11. You should get a large white terminal. If you don’t, press Command+N. Type this into the terminal to launch the game:

~/<filename>.sh

Where you replace <filename> with whatever you named the script you created in the last step. So if you named the script littlebusters.sh, you type ~/littlebusters.sh. It should print a few messages, and start the game.

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Lucky Star can be described with two words: Epic Randomness. It’s 8 hours of hilarious random, character-driven, top-class humor. There’s essentially no plot, zero character growth, a ton of references to other Animes and the entire show just oozes of quality. The so-called story centers around Konata Izumi, who is something as uncommon as a female otaku and too lazy to study despite she is pretty smart, and her life. That’s the entire story, did you expect something more from a show described as “epic randomness”?

Lucky Star’s main strength doesn’t lie in it’s nonexistent story, but in it’s characters. The main character, Konata Izumi, is 17 years old, but looks like 12. She’s too lazy to study, despite she is pretty smart, and doesn’t join any sports clubs despite being very athletic, because if she did she would miss her Anime shows. Konata is well-known as “the queen of comedy” for good reasons – she’s simply the funniest character ever made, and one of the most easily recognizable ones too. She makes completely epic faces, has one of the most unique voices ever (she’s voiced by Aya Hirano who has done Haruhi in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Misa Amane in Death Note and Lucy Heartfilia in Fairy Tail among others), that is, she always sounds like she’s talking through her nose while having a cold, which is a lot cuter and funnier than it seems. Konata’s best friends are the twins Kagami and Tsukasa Hiiragi, who are essentially Kyou and Ryou Fujibashi from Clannad. Kagami is is a typical Tsundere (acting tough while she’s actually soft on the inside), or a “Dere-Tsun” as Shiraishi classifies her as later. Kagami (aka “The Great Kagamin”) is constantly being made fun of by Konata, and while she isn’t made fun of she acts as the Straight Man. Her twin sister Tsukasa on the other hand is more like Konata in that she enjoys reading and playing games a lot more than studying, but unlike Konata she doesn’t study because she loses focus not because she’s lazy. She also tend to sleep in all day (she sleepwalks and turns her alarm clock off), is extremely unlucky and generally feels that the entire universe is dead set against her. Then there’s their overly smart classmate Miyuki Takara, who just like Hanekawa from Bakemonogatari “just happens to know” everything, and who according to Konata is “a wandering pillar of moé” with her unreal clumsy cuteness. Later in it also introduces Yukari Takara (or “Yu-chan” for short), who is a first year high school student who looks and acts like a grade schooler, who is the only person Konata can feel superior to and she is generally clueless about everything. Along with Yu-chan there is her best friend Minami Iwasaki who has the most obsessive flat-chest complex ever seen (if you’ve played Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, think Etna and Flonne together) and who is essentially Korone from Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou in all other aspects – except for the fact that Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou was 3 years later. Some other notable characters are Konata’s father who openly admits that he’s a pedo, a cop that drives like a car thief, the homeroom teacher who has formed a guild with Konata in an MMO, and an american transfer student who lapses into english or pretends not to understand what people are saying when it’s convenient, a Doijin author who writes perverted Doujins based on her friends because she can’t find anything else to write. Also, Soujirou (Konata’s dad) is the only male character in the entire show not counting Shiraishi Minoru and Daisuke Ono, the former who has a total of two lines in the actual show and mostly appears in Lucky Channel, and the latter who only appears in Lucky Channel.

In case you have problems keeping up with the show, they added the mentioned “Lucky Channel”, which is apparently supposed to be an explanatory corner. However, they left the role as “navigator” to Akira Kogami, who is a child idol who frequently falls out of character, to the point of it appearing like a split personality, whenever she gets annoyed the slightest. She also wants to appear in the real show, but after finally managing to get an appearance, she catches a cold that week. Along with Akira, there’s Minoru Shiraishi (a real voice-actor playing himself), who just ends up being ordered around by Akira or shouted at by her whenever she gets annoyed at something. They’re apparently there to introduce new characters and explain stuff, but Akira always either gets annoyed at some detail, gets jealous of the character they’re introducing or goes out of character for some other reason. Lucky Channel is also filled with 4th wall-jokes, starting with Akira’s wish to be in the real show up to when she sprouts water onto the camera lens and the cameraman wiping it off with a piece of cloth, or even the background falling apart.

The entire series is crammed full of references and parodies, like Konata doing her own MMO-version of the song Bokuen Desho Desho from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, “Solo-Hunting Desho Desho… (hm hm hm hm hm hm) Will make you strong… (hm hm hm hm)”, and suddently getting a backpack with wings and saying “Uguu~” (Ayu in Kanon), Kagami being Hatsune Miku(Vocaloid2) and Cinderella at the same time, or Konata spening an entire episode talking like an 18th century upperclass-lady because she’s reading Marimite (short for “Maria-sama ga Miteru”). Unlike a lot of other shows, like Hayate no Gokoku! or Seitokai no Ichizon, you don’t have to get the references to have fun, the only exception being the parody of Cinderella, and having seen Haruhi is recommended since there’s scenes that’ll make even less sense than usual otherwise, so you can watch this without having to watch a lot of other shows. Of couse, it gets funnier if you get at least a few of the references, but since there’s tons of them I wouldn’t expect anyone outside of Japan to get them all.

To say that the art style is unique would be an understatement. Everyone looks like a doll and everything is chibified and cute, and all facial expressions (especially Konata’s) are over-the-top and exaggerated to say the least. The backgrounds are generally abstract or one-colored, but never feels rushed or out-of-place. It also has a certain liking of bright colors, something which is evident from just about every character design. It all fits neatly into the overall unserious tone of the series. The soundtrack is not on par with masterpieces like Clannad or Pandora Hearts, but always creates the right atmosphere (that is, create an 8 hours long unserious atmosphere without equal) without ever being repetitive or annoying. The opening theme, Motteke! Sailor Fuku, is the most hyper song since Love Hina’s Sakura Saku, and is extremely upbeat, fast and fits perfectly into the series. The ending themes are different every time, and is always parodies on existing Anime songs. Actually, Lucky Star’s only fault is that it has an end. And after it ends, there’a 45 minutes long OVA too.

Watch it here, or grab the PSP/iPhone-files here. To put it on an iPhone, read here for instructions.

Gallery
Click on the thumbnails to view the full pictures in Lightbox

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Instead of writing separate posts for each First Glance this season, I’ll write them all in a single post since it gets less crowded that way. I might also mention that since I don’t have much time to write during summer (normally I write on my phone on the bus, but during summer I mostly bike) I’ll be taking a break from the Mahou Sensei Negima! coverage and my Fairy Tail coverage won’t start until autumn when school starts again.

Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi
Translates to “Ookami-san and Seven Companions”(Ookami means wolf), also known as just “Ookami” since the full title is so long. Or the parody variations “Ookami-chan” or “Ookami-tan” because this title just begs to be made fun of.

“Long, Long ago… Well, not that long ago actually, there was a place called Otogibana City. And in that city, there was a school called Otogi Academy. The director of this school was a dirty old geezer named Aragami Lamp. I mean old man. He also happens to be a big shot in the Aragami Syndicate that controls the city. And this is the club he formed, the Otogi Academy Student Mutual Assistance Association, also known as the Otogi Bank. In return for fulfilling requests, they have their clients return their obligations to them as necessary. And that is the setting of our story”
—Narrator, Episode 2

That quote from the Narrator summarizes the setting pretty well. The club called Otogi Bank, because it’s real name is too long, help clients with requests of all possible natures from love confessions to assassinations (yes, seriously!). The pay is simply to owe the Otogi Bank a favor. They then cash in this favor in ways that makes Loan Sharks go green out of jealously (another quote). The main characters of the story are Ryouko Ookami (“Ookami-san”), whose name means “Wolf”, and who handles most of the tasks involving beating someone up. Ryouko is a typical Tsundere (and a Dere-Tsun if we’re following Sebastian’s definition from Lucky Star), and she’s not particularly good at hiding either her softer side or her interest. Then we have her roommate and best friend Ringo Akai, whose name is a pun on Apple and Red Riding Hood. She is obviously based on the latter, and is about what you’d get if you’d combine Komoe from Toaru Majutsu no Index and Kitsune from Love Hina. And she’s just as fun as this sounds (thought less manipulative, fortunately). Then there’s Ryoushi Morino who is the only guy to ever have fallen for Ryouko, and who is more or less forced into the club by Ringo both because she, like Kitsune, thought it would be fun to get Ryouko and Ryoushi together, and because the Otogi Bank needed some male members (everyone except the president and Tarou Urashima are girls) – Ryoushi is a hunter and is a master at hiding his presence and shooting people with a Slingshot from the shadows. He also has Antrophobia (fear of being stared at) and Scopophobia (fear of being seen) and his way of ending his sentences with “~su” which just adds to his cuteness. The Narrator also deserves a special a mention. She’s voiced by the same person who did Kuroko Shirai in Toaru Majutsu no Index and Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, and isn’t a passive narrator who just explains what happens but frequently comments on the situation (commonly it’s remarks about Ringo and Ryouko’s flatness), or gets overly engaged in what happens. Seems she kept a bit of Kuroko’s personality from doing her voice for two “seasons” (soon to be three).

Ookami also makes fun of a lot of classic folktales, for example Cinderella’s tennis shoes (and Cinderella’s running spinkick!?) and two of the members of the Otogi Bank are Tarou Urashima from the japanese Dragon King’s Palace legend, and Orihime from the Tanabata legend – Tarou flirts with everyone (“He’s not just a corny womanizer for show” is the Narrator’s comment), and Orihime has a crush on him and “deals with him” every time he flirts with someone else (and she acts a lot like Chizuru from Mahou Sensei Negima! minus the Mutsumi-part of her personality). And did I mention the Graphics are gorgeous?

If the plot starts going anywhere this could very well be a 9 or 10 out of 10 rating, right now it’s about 8/10.

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin
Also known as “Occult Academy” in english is both a serious horror/mystery story and a comedy. A bit like Ken Akamatsu’s stories, it keeps serious without taking itself overly seriously. If you’ve read Mahou Sensei Negima! or Love Hina you know what I mean.

The series begins with Maya Kumashiro travelling to the school where her father is the headmaster after he died. There, one of the teachers has found a casette which contains a parting message to his students, which she plays to everyone in the school. Due to the headmaster reciting a spell for reviving the dead since he confused it with another spell, he revives his own body from the coffin and the zombified version of him starts rampaging around the school until Maya, together with an “Occult Dowser”, the school mechanic and two friends stop him. While this could be a completely serious “arc” (can you call it that when it’s just a single episode?), OA turns it more towards being the ultimate clumsiness to accidentally revive himself. It’s more comedy than serious plot and Maya’s faces are completely epic. At the end of this episode, Maya announces that she hates the occult, when a naked guy falls from the sky without any explanation. Apparently he’s a time traveller who came from the future to prevent the world from being destroyed in 2012 (see The Nostradamus Prophecies). By destroying a certain object that could be located anywhere inside the school, they can prevent a dimensional rift from opening and letting out aliens that will destroy the world – and apparently that was also exactly what Maya’s father had been doing.

Occult Academy (“OA” for short) reminds a bit of Durarara!! in both the art style and the general atmosphere – and since Durarara!! was a complete masterpiece that’s more than welcome. As I mentioned, the story doesn’t take itself overly seriously while still keeping a serious plot going. It could be described as what you’d get if you’d combine Death Note and Durarara!! with a bit of comedy added in. So far the story hasn’t really started up, instead it keeps suggesting and foreshadowing like D.N.Angel (the Manga version, the Anime sucked and didn’t do either a single bit!) or Canaan. If it keeps the pace and story going, this could easily be one of the best shows of the season. 9/10

Nurarihyon no Mago
The pointless english title is “Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan” (that’s not even a translation!) is essentially the Manga version of D.N.Angel combined with Harry Potter and a bit of demons added in. Also, I tend to call it “Noriyasu no Mago” because I can’t pronounce the title.

Rikuo Nura is a boy who is 3/4 Human and 1/4 Demon (“Yokai” actually, but that’s essentially the same thing). He is also the heir to a clan of demons (again actually Yokai), which his Demon quarter fully approves but his human part has no interest in inheriting anything, and just wants to be normal. Said Demon Quarter is essentially Dark Mousy from D.N.Angel all over again, just as his human form is a cuter and less whiny version of the main character Daisuke Niwa, again from D.N.Angel.

That’s about all there is to the base plot, but the execution is so awesome it’s almost scary. It has the same kind of atmosphere as the Manga version of D.N.Angel, and more or less revives the whole Supernatural genre which has been lying untouched for a while. It has a lot of colorful characters, and switches between being really badass and really funny seamlessly. Yuki (means Snow in Japanese), the Ice demon who looks a lot like the Pokémon Frosslass, has a really good voice acting and a cute somewhat moé-ish personality, and is also pretty clumsy (Rikuo spills his coffee over his pants and screams “Aaaah! Hot!”, Yuki tries to cool him down by blowing an icy wind at him, but accidentally freezes him into a solid block of ice instead is one example of that). The only part of the sountrack that really caught my attention was a theme that plays in the background about 60-70% of the show and that sounds almost identical to the main theme of the Harry Potter films. Along with the great animation – the quality is certainly along the lines of Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou or Toaru Majutsu no Index, which is really good, but not as good as for example Clannad and Clannad ~After Story~. Also, if you’ve read D.N.Angel, you’ll find similarities (or ripoffs) everywhere from character designs to plot to “split personalities” with their own bodies. If this keeps the quality up, it could easily reach 10/10 once the plot starts. Currently it’s 9/10.

Mitsudomoe
No! No! NO! You can’t do something like this! Perverted humor that passes “funny” and over to the “annoying” and “disgusting” side with a cast consisting of sixth-graders spells “EPIC FAILURE” with big letters. Don’t watch this. 0/10 – Unwatchable

Shukufuku no Campanella
I first tried to translate this title myself, but confused “Shukufuku” (blessing or blessed) with “Seppufuku” (a sort of compromise-solution to a love-triangle). Just in case you wanted to know. You may also want to know that this is incredibly boring. It’s not as much of an epic fail as Mitsudomoe is, but I was seriously about to fall asleep after the first episode. Think a show with several main characters who are essentially Mutsumi from Love Hina. Without Keitaro and Naru to balance her, that’s just annoying. People are also genuinely stupid (but not like in Angel Beats! where they are stupid in a funny way, this is the kind of stupid that’s just annoying), the “plot” (if you can even call it that) is slow and likes to over-explain things since they apparently takes the viewers for idiots. Don’t watch this, it’s just a waste of time. Watch something better, like Ookami-chan. But Kurogane thought it was funny, so if you give it a chance, I won’t blame you. 2/10 – Don’t bother

Gakuen Mokushiroku HIGHSCHOOL OF THE DEAD
More epic failures. Sure, HOTD has pretty visuals, but there’s a bit too much zombies, indiscriminate slaughter and fanservice/ecchi for me. I didn’t even bother watching the first episode to the end which may be giving up to early on my part, but I really hate ecchi shows if it isn’t a really good series apart from it (Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou) or if it’s written by Ken Akamatsu (Love Hina, Mahou Sensei Negima, A.I. Love You). ?/10 – Didn’t give it a chance

Asobi ni Iku yo!
“Let’s go play” in english, is one of the ecchi shows I can actually stand.

A guy named Kio Kakazu one day finds an alien with cat ears and tail, and has her live at his place. At the same time, an FBI group and a cult of alien maniacs are after the alien.

Not the world’s best story, but it’s really well made. In the start of the first episode, there’s a girl who solo-raids a ship filled with soldiers without taking a single hit, then survives an explosion that blows said ship up without a scratch. This scene serves mostly to show of the graphics. The story makes no sense, but isn’t as bad as most other shows of this type is. The graphics are well-made, the body motions are exceptionally fluent. The soundtrack isn’t very noteworthy, but serves it’s purpose. If the story starts making sense, it could raise the score greatly. Right now it’s just 7/10
(EDIT: After watching the 2nd episode, the rating suddently raised to 8/10)

Screenshots by Random Curiosity. Used with permission.