Doujin Gamer

I've been interested in the homebrew scene out of Japan for quite some time, but always found it difficult to track down information about these games in English when trawling the internet. A few of the big hits like Milky Blood, or the latest Kenta Cho creation get some mentions in the mainstream gaming press, but consistent, in-depth coverage is pretty rare. I'm hoping this blog will help to change that to some degree.

Doujin Gamer is aimed at getting the word out about these great games, and exposing Western audiences to them in greater number. This is more of a fan site than a news site, so posts will be lengthy discussions of specific titles more than anything else, but if I come across some interesting tidbits of news I'll try and mention it here as well.

For those who only have a very basic idea of what doujin is, a quick overview is probably in order. Basically, doujin is fan made content in a specific field in Japan, where the two most popular mediums to come about have been in manga and games. In so far as games are concerned, groups of like-minded programmers, artists, musicians, scriptwriters, and so forth join into groups (usually referred to as circles) to develop a game, or on occasion people go it alone in creating one.

Most of the popular genres that we see everyday on the various consoles are covered by the makers of doujin soft, but schmups, fighters, and RPGs do tend to be made more than other genres. One interesting thing you'll notice is that these homebrews help keep some genres alive that might otherwise have died as commercial developers abandon them for more profitable pastures. Thankfully doujin soft circles do what they do because it's a very special hobby to them, and not because they're in it for the money. As such, it's become a good place to look to for schmup fans, and other genres that don't get a lot of play in mainstream gaming these days.

Anyway, I'm going to leave it at that for now. I hope you find this site useful, and a lot of fun too.