One of the most significant missing pieces of ’90s visual novel history just quietly became accessible to English speakers for the first time. Leaf’s 1996 PC-98 title Shizuku has received a full fan translation patch by Her‑Saki, landing almost exactly 30 years after its original Japanese release. For a work that helped define the term “visual novel” itself, that’s a long time to wait.
Shizuku originally launched in early 1996 on PC‑98 and is widely cited as the first game to actually use “Visual Novel” as a genre label, kicking off Leaf’s “Visual Novel Series.” It later received a Windows PC release in 2004, but remained Japan‑only despite its historical importance and cult reputation among genre historians. The new patch finally opens it up to an audience that has mostly known it through second‑hand synopses and screenshots.
The story mixes psychological horror with explicit sexual content, making it very much an adults‑only experience. The protagonist’s world is described as drained of color and meaning until a shocking classroom incident pulls him into a disturbing investigation led by a teacher who is also his uncle. From there, he teams up with a classmate linked to the case, as the narrative leans into madness, obsession, and the erosion of reality.
While many influential PC‑98 works have slowly trickled into English via fan efforts, Shizuku’s arrival stands out because of its direct role in shaping how the medium defined itself. It’s a product of a time when developers were reassessing how far they could push long-form, text‑driven storytelling, even if that meant pairing unsettling themes with content that will be a hard line for some modern readers.
The patch is distributed separately as a fan project, so anyone interested will still need to source the original game and apply it themselves. For those studying the medium’s roots, or just curious where the label “visual novel” really came from, Shizuku is no longer a purely academic reference point.
Source: Romhack.ing via Time Extension
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