Exactly 20 years ago, one of the most popular visual novels of the first decade of the 21st century saw the light, Shuffle was released in Japan on January 30, 2004 and immediately gained an incredible popularity that gave the necessary push to the developer. Navel to consider the possibility of a sequel for this genre novel, an eroge that was more than requested by the fans, as well as a console version, which arrived months later, but differed significantly from its PC version, with this great start, Shuffle today is commemorating its 20th birthday.
With a more than spectacular first step, Shuffle celebrates 2 decades of life today.
Shuffle is the first visual novel and the first step of the developer, Navel to enter the territory of a genre that was in its golden age, but whose competition was more than tough, as to remember some novels that already won the affection of the fans we can mention: AIR, Kanon, Fate Stay Night and Tsukihime, the latter being developed by Type Moon and which became a boom worldwide, especially, Fate Stay Night which without being a secret to anyone, to this day is one of the biggest franchises in the world of Japanese video games/anime.
As an extra fact, both Shuffle and Fate/Stay Night have birthdays, since both eroges were released on the same day, a date to remember for fans of the Fate franchise, January 30, 2004, but right now we are remembering the birth of Shuffle and its 3 sequels: Tick! Tack! and Really? Really! and Shuffle Love Rainbow as well as its adaptations, since only a year after its release this eroge premiered its anime adaptation consisting of a 1st season of 24 episodes and 2 years later its sequel titled: Shuffle! Memories, which had a 1st season of 12 episodes.
Both Shuffle and its sequels came to PC, but the only one that came to the iconic Playstation 2 was the first installment, with the difference that the console version was removed all its erotic scenes. It ceased to be an eroge and became just another visual novel, but not everything was bad, since we were given in exchange 2 new heroines exclusive to this version, plus a third possible northern route with the protagonist’s sister.
Ending the celebration, the last time Shuffle had activity was on October 30, 2009 with the release of Shuffle! Essence+ Tokuten Disk for PC that had all the routes of the 4 previous installments, plus the 3 exclusive of the console version, all this accompanied by new lines of dialogue and scenarios; this would be the last time we would hear any news about Shuffle and so it has been until today.
Fans still do not lose faith that they will return, although the installments offered the end for each heroine, some expect some extra content such as a time jump to 10 years in the future and how the characters look like. A story of them in their adult stage or simply a readaptation of the anime, that any of those things happen looks difficult, but in the end hope is the last thing to lose, so leaving possible miracles aside, we wish Shuffle a happy birthday №20.
