[If you’re here through a Google search, there’s no hentai here; I’m writing about the games. If you want to know about the games or read some gaming musings in general, stick around!]
Can Can Bunny [きゃんきゃんバニー kya n kya n bani] is a visual novel series originating on the PC88 in 1989, was created by Cocktail Soft and published by Kindle Image Develop (KID) on the Saturn. It’s about a loner protagonist, whose identity changes from game to game, looking to get into the jeans of the fairer sex. The protagonist is approached by the magical bunny fairy Ariko who helps him with his “luck.”
Three titles were created for the Can Can Bunny series before the fourth, Can Can Bunny Premiere, would introduce a new goddess Swatty (who, possibly ironic to the game’s title, is no longer a bunny, and is like an extravagant Devil Hunter Yohko with her wrapped twin tails). This game along with it’s sequel Can Can Bunny Premiere 2 would be the games that made their way to the Sega Saturn; the series only console releases sans a third game titled Can Can Bunny Extra.
So what is Can Can Bunny? It’s basically a visual novel, but more like a quick simulation-type game that fast paced rather than spending hours to traverse a narrative. In the games, you’re presented with a set of scenes (effectively with a girl or two) and you have to proceed with the correct menu choices to properly seduce the girl. The choices are your typical ‘look’, ‘talk’, that sort of thing. You also have to physically write down telephone numbers, as part of the evening scenes with Swatty involve you CALLING GIRLS ON A LAND LINE. Kids these days will never understand how people got by before cellphones…
Premiere is a near port of the PC88 game with some visual enhancements for the Saturn. Oddly enough there is no voice over work present (I’ve discovered a good deal of KID games for the Saturn lacked voice overs, probably due to budgets, and they’re typically identifiable being on one game disk.). However the game has some of the absolute catchiest music. Just check out the track used in the restaurant scene;
This was also one of the first X Rated ‘red’ Saturn titles. That’s right; it was an adults-only Saturn title. Approximately two dozen Saturn titles in Japan were given an X rating over the console’s run, including the Saturn port of Mortal Kombat II. I’ve written about existence of the +18 ‘yellow’ titles, but +18 ‘yellow’ was given to a lot of games even if they didn’t have nudity or extreme violence. They were sort of a cross between the ESRB’s T and M ratings. Can Can Bunny Premiere was given an X Rating as it has a handful of topless scenes with each girl. Yet there are no explicit visual sex scenes; it all progresses through dialogue since everything is static images (remember, this was back when these sort of games had little to no movement with the characters).
Premiere sold decently at ¥ 5900 (roughly $56 USD; the yen to dollar ratio in 2020 is roughly where it was in 1996), and pushed enough units that KID released a ‘thank you’ version of the game in December 1996. It’s the version I have here, with the only differences being a slightly cheaper price and a special print run for both the instruction artwork and game disk.
Can Can Bunny Premiere 2 is a direct sequel to the first game, and by this time KID was improving the quality of their titles on the Saturn. This title also was tame enough to warrant Sega’s +18 ‘yellow’ rating. This Game has two disks; a requirement thanks to graphics that were better than it’s PC88-derived predecessor and space for the voice overs. The presentation of the title also had advanced. Whereas Premiere was presented in a windowed format with text in a separate window artwork in Premiere 2 encompasses the entire screen with interwoven text in an opaque area, similar to most typical modern visual novels. Characters also had more expression, and we got the all important Glasses Girl is Best-est Girl character introduced.
Otherwise the game play did not change much from it’s predecessor.
The version I have is actually the original release, and similar to Premiere this game also received a ‘thank you’ version. Yet strangely enough the later version moved to just a single disk. I honestly have no clue why this choice was made and logically can only believe that somehow the company figured out ways to better compress or compile the game’s assets onto one disk.
Weirdly enough… I just don’t have much more to talk about relating to Can Can Bunny. The series would receive some follow up titles on Windows, and it’s relative popularity at the time gave it half a dozen OVA releases. For the Saturn Cocktail Soft also produced Welcome to Pia Carrot, another well-known circa visual novel featuring the titular restaurant Pia Carrot, and an extremely forgettable visual novel called With You Mitsumete Itai [～みつめていたい～]. Cocktail Soft stopped making titles following Y2K. Most of the series published by KID would eventually be taken over by NEC Interchannel, whom had long been simultaneously releasing Saturn titles themselves and continued to release games for near the next two decades.
As for cringe-worthy Saturn titles themselves, expect me to talk about more in the future.
The Cringe Gamer 