Remembering School Idol Festival & Other Lost Apps (╥﹏╥)

7/5/2023

As of March 31st, 2023, Love Live! School Idol Festival is no longer in service.

It's not like I played the game for the entirety of its 10 years of service, but I still have 10 years worth of on and off memories with the game.

For starters, it was basically my first introduction to gacha in general. The rates in that game were still egregious, tbh. But that made the moment when you see a UR card flip up that much sweeter.

I loved watching gacha videos of llsif on YouTube. Of course, no one I followed uploads llsif gacha content anymore, but I do still follow some of them on twitter. Their genuine excitement offered me a lot of entertainment, that's for sure.

What hurts a little more is the end of All Stars, tbh. I believe it got nowhere near the recognition that llsif did (and maybe that's partially thanks to its basic rhythm gameplay and HORRENDOUS power creep...to the point that I pretty much had to stop playing because I just couldn't keep up!...and its less than impressive 3D music videos, admittedly ;).

All Stars had adorable 3D graphics ! It was everything I had wanted for llsif ! ...But, going back to llsif2, admittedly the tough rhythm gameplay of it would probably be too crazy for 3D videos to be very worth it... I wonder how much your average phone would struggle to run it, too...

LLSIF followed me as I changed my oshis from Hanayo to Honoka to any other girl I took a great liking to.

"School Idol Festival 2" honestly just feels like the game with updated UI. Only now, everything is gone and they need to start from scratch. I wish Klab didn't decide to delete llsif's legacy.

While I'm reminiscing about my memories with llsif, I can't help but remember the plethora of other mobile games I've played in the past that either aren't available on the app store anymore, or the companies behind them have ended their service for them.

Somehow, I remember messing around with silly little anime apps on my ipod touch back in the day. In particular, I definitely remember playing a lot of "anime quizzes" in app form. There was also a Hatsune Miku app that was basically just a looping video of a bunch of MMD Hachune's leekspinning to loituma whenever you opened it... Somehow, I kind of doubt that app was an official release from crypton (lol). 

One official release I definitely remember is MikuFlick 1 & 2. It was definitely an unorthodox little rhythm game, but the dreamy theatre graphics at the time totally blew me away. At the time, I had never had the opportunity to play Diva Arcade or Future Tone.

It's a little sad thinking about how it's very possible that I and nobody else will ever have access to play those games ever again. The most we can hope for is that there is still the odd video of it uploaded on YouTube...

It was so helpful when there were databases of all of the cards from idol games. Hopefully those databases can continue to be preserved and archived. 

I'm sure one day Love Live and all of those other games will be totally forgotten.

But, I'll do my best to remember them until my brain can't anymore.

P.S. Hope everyone had a nice Fourth of July! My boyfriend's room had the most lovely view of the fireworks... ♡