Now that I have an IPS mod in my Wonderswan Color that's doing great and lets me actually plan on the couch in this apartment without the glare from my ceiling light completely blinding me, I made a beeline for a less discussed game, at least within English-speaking circles: a black-and-white port of NEC character raising sim Tanjou: Debut, which we'll just call Debut for convenience's sake, since that's what the PS1 sequel stuck with anyway.
In news that I'm sure will shock absolutely nobody, especially those who follow me, Debut was originally a PC-98 game, which is pretty abundantly apparent both in its general window and menu design, as well as the artwork itself, which, to my eye at least, largely looks scaled drawn and retouched, rather than redrawn outright, complete with that tell-tale dithering that's characteristic of so many releases on that hardware doing their best to go beyond its stark 16-color palette limit. This is hardly a bad thing, mind you; the results speak for themselves! It's something that was also seen in Konami's forever astounding GBC ports of Tokimeki Memorial, a pair of games I have an enormous soft spot for, but in this case, I think the transition was made overall more smoothly, surely thanks in no small part to the Wonderswan itself boasting a higher resolution than the humble original Game Boy, which Tokimeki Memorial Pocket was also designed to run on.
Anyway, much like its sequel, which I also recently covered here, the original Debut is also a character raising sim set in the world of Japanese idols, except in this original game, instead of one android idol to look after, you're coaching three regular old human ones, spunky Aki Itou (the red-haired one in the box art), subdued Saori Fujimura (the one farthest to the right), and peppy Kumi Tanaka (the one directly facing the viewer). I'm only a few months in, but the jury's still out on this particular difference. While it thematically makes sense to have players take charge of an entire idol unit, it makes for a lot of stats to have to keep straight and plan around in your head; doubly so if you try to pay attention to the rival idols' stats which are also made explicit.
More interestingly, though, is the mechanics of the character raising itself. While it largely resembles preceeding games like NEC's own Sotsugyou, as well as Gainax's pivotal Princess Maker games, unlike a lot of other character raising games of this vintage, you actually can't set everyone's schedules for every single day. Instead, at the start of the week, the idols will come up with their own schedule, which you're then allowed to override to a limited extent. While they'll sometimes volunteer themselves for proper training sessions, other times, they'll try to sneak in opportunities to run off and screw around, meaning you have to do your best to keep their worst inhibitions in check while hopefully preventing them from burning out or having an emotional breakdown.
There are parts of the overall gameplay flow that I wish would've been further streamlined in consideration of the new platform here, but all told, it plays well for what it is. Like pretty much all character raising sims of this vintage, it does virtually nothing to explain itself up-front, expecting you to read the manual ahead of time, which I made sure to do as a precaution even after having played a good amount of the sequel recently. Even so, the manual only really explains the sort of stuff that I'd already more or less intuited based on past experience and there's a lot more under the hood that I'm still finding to be more opaque than I'd like. I'm probably going to end up consulting a Japanese walkthrough to at least get some additional tips, but I can certainly see how this game garnered its own modest fandom in its time. For a game with very minimal amounts of actual dialogue, it still does a good job of expressing the girls' personalities, both in terms of presentation and actual mechanics, and I've found myself getting invested in certain moments for sure. In a bid to improve Saori's self-esteem, for example, I had her square off in a quiz show against Lin Lei, the number one idol in the entire game, who she managed to squarely trounce. The experience was apparently traumatic enough for the latter for her to actually go on hiatus from work for several weeks, ostensibly impeding her own stat growth, which felt pretty damn good, suffice to say.
Either way, even if I have my doubts that I'll ultimately end up falling in love with this, it's certainly one of the better made games of its kind for its age and it's easy to tell what the developers at Namco saw in it when they iterated on its systems and overall gameplay loop significantly for the original Idolmaster. The original Sotsugyou was also similarly ported to the Wonderswan and while it tends to be a somewhat pricier game to obtain, I'll probably pick it up at some point down the line, as well. Even if the other versions of these games likely have more to offer these days, like with Tokimemo Pocket, there really is something to be said for the breeziness that comes with bringing a good character raising sim to a handheld platform. And it turns out, the Wonderswan makes for a mighty fine host for them, too. 
Finished my first run of Debut on the Wonderswan and, first off, before I get to anything else, I just wanna say, the PC-98 art conversions remain immaculate throughout the entire game. Whatever gripes I might have with the game (and they're not that big overall), it is genuinely rewarding to earn new CGs as the girls achieve major milestones in their idol careers. It's neat to see art of this sort coming out of a handheld this small! No other portable hardware released to this point could really do anything like this with this much fidelity!
Anyway, the game itself is still opaque for my tastes, which is par for the course for a raising sim this old, but I did start coming to grips with optimal strategies for managing the girls' schedules and making the most of days off. I ended up ranking third place out of six total, but was more or less within spitting distance of first and second, which, hey, I'll take for a first go. Like other games such as Princess Maker, the cool thing is that there are a bunch of different endings for each of the girls showing what they go on to do depending on their final stats, each of which have their own CGs, so even if you don't truly "beat" the game, you're still rewarded for your time, which is nice.
And again, while this probably isn't objectively the best or most widely liked version today, the menus do control well and the game unfolds at a brisk pace, which is definitely a big point in its favor. I'm definitely keen to do another run or two, although I'm probably gonna buy a guide for some version or other just to get some more concrete answers about certain aspects surrounding the mechanics I'm having trouble pinning down, even with online resources.
All told, I'm glad I got this and am genuinely looking forward to picking up Sotsugyou as well at some point in the future.
Ended up cranking out another run of this game in about two days while listening to Starfield coverage in the background and this time managed to get the trio to the top of the popularity rankings! I don't think I got the actual best ending, which I believe is contingent upon them staying in their idol careers afterwards, but hey, I'll take it.
This run was honestly funner than the last because it finally answered some pressing questions I still had about the mechanics after beating it that first time, namely:
- How do I stop the girls from sneakily moving into my house without my realizing it and causing a scandal when the press discovers it? (This is really a thing.)
Turns out that's mostly by save scumming and occasionally checking in on them through one extremely vaguely worded option that does nothing else but waste your time throughout the rest of the game. - How do I prevent the girls from becoming arrogant due to an overly high confidence stat?
Actually let them goof around sometimes when they put stuff like karaoke in the schedule instead of instinctively overriding it with training all the time. - When's the best time to challenge rival idols to quiz show matches? (If you beat them, the other idol takes a month off and drops out of that month's main job that'll rack up additional popularity points.)
When you're within about 30 points or less of the idol ranked above you so that one good job will push you over the top.
That last point in particular proved to be the ultimate key to my victory. While you want to engage in quiz show challenges sparingly in order to maximize the amount of extra training you can get in on days off, going into October, my group was in third place and about 50 popularity points away from first place. Knowing that the first place idol would either maintain or widen her gap with second place even if I overtook the latter, I took it upon myself to challenge her to quiz shows two months in a row, so she couldn't engage in any additional jobs during the endgame and by god, it worked! Really, that's the satisfaction that comes with a good Japanese character raising sim game; you learn the mechanics, you begin to formulate plans as you come to grips with those mechanics, and then you execute and refine them. There's genuine payoff to be had when your mid to long-term gambles actually succeed and that was definitely true in this case as well!
Debut still ultimately isn't my favorite one of these games. It really could do with at least some Tokimemo 1-style interstitials to break up the pace and get you more emotionally invested in the task at hand, something which Idolmaster ultimately rectified about 12 years after this game originally released on Japanese PCs. But it gets a lot of the fundamentals right, especially in this version specifically that plays super briskly, and it's enough for me to probably now try to go all the way and get that best ending where they're not only the most popular at the end, but also continue to idols. So expect probably one more post about this when I hopefully make that happen? We'll see!
