The great thing about the Japanese visual novel is that they are available at almost every game or electronics store or on almost every gaming console, as well as the Windows and Mac operating systems.

While scaled down, visual novels include this same process of decision making - whether it be which person to ask on a date or which dialogue option to select, people must make decisions when playing visual novels. They must swing the sword, fire the weapon or choose which path to take. In video games, players must make choices. While they do lack active gameplay elements, the one thing that separates them from films, books or any other medium is decision making. The video game community seems to be split on whether visual novels are indeed video games. Go to the PS Vita section of any video game store in Japan and you’ll quickly see that half the shelf space or more is taken up solely by these games.

In North America and Europe, critics, journalists, and gamers have pronounced that the PS Vita (PlayStation’s handheld console) is dead. For gamers in Japan, however, the PS Vita is very much alive and kicking for one major reason: the incredible popularity of the ビジュアルノベル, or Japanese visual novel.

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