Boku no Natsuyasumi (ぼくのなつやすみ, lit. "My Summer Vacation") is a "summer vacation adventure" (なつやすみアドベンチャー, natsuyasumi adobenchā) video game developed by Millennium Kitchen and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation in Japan on June 22, 2000.

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. (July 2013) This article needs additional citations for verification. (June 2022)

Boku no Natsuyasumi
Developer(s)	Millennium Kitchen
Publisher(s)	Sony Computer Entertainment
Director(s)	Kaz Ayabe
Producer(s)	Contrail
Designer(s)	Kaz Ayabe
Artist(s)	Mineko Ueda
Composer(s)	Akiko Ukai
Platform(s)	PlayStation, PSP
Release	JP: June 22, 2000 (PS) JP: June 27, 2006 (PSP)
Genre(s)	Adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

It is first game in the Boku no Natsuyasumi series, which also includes sequels released in 2002, 2007, and 2009.

A PlayStation Portable port of the original game was released on June 27, 2006, under the title Boku no Natsuyasumi Portable: Mushimushi Hakase to Teppenyama no Himitsu!! (ぼくのなつやすみポータブル ムシムシ博士とてっぺん山の秘密!!, lit. "My Summer Vacation Portable: The Secret of Doctor Steamy and the Summit Mountain!!"). The port features updated graphics and several new characters.

Description

The game revolves around "boku" (a Japanese first-person pronoun associated with young boys), a nine-year-old boy sent to his aunt and uncle in Japan's wooded countryside and the daily adventures he encounters there. Boku is there because his mother is in her final month of pregnancy. The player controls him for the 31 days of August 1975 as he enjoys his summer vacation. You explore the game's area and can catch bugs and pit them against each other, collect bottle caps, fly a kite, or just relax.

Development

Game creator Kaz Ayabe said that he wanted to create a game that simulates the real world. When development began, Millennium Kitchen handled everything about the game except for programming and sound design. According to Ayabe, Boku no Natsuyasumi's setting was inspired by the town of Tsukiyono, in the Yamanashi Prefecture of the Chūbu region. The team took many pictures of clouds during the staff's time collecting references for the game, some of which would go on to appear on the box art for the Japanese version of Everybody's Golf 3.

Ayabe stated that originally, the game was planned to be released in the summer of 1999, but Sony's producers asked the team to add in a fishing minigame, which delayed the game to 2000.[1]

Sequels

Boku no Natsuyasumi spawned three sequels and two ports to portable consoles as of 2016. An iOS game was announced as part of a 2017 Sony foray into smartphone development.[2]

Apart from the series proper, other games in the same style have been developed by Millennium Kitchen. These include Bokura no Kazoku (lit. "My Family"), a family simulation game, Attack of the Friday Monsters!: A Tokyo Tale, developed for Level-5's Guild series and the first Millennium Kitchen game with an official English-language release, and Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation,[3][4] a game where, instead of boku, the player takes on the role of the comic-strip and animation character Shin-chan as he spends his summer in Kyushu with his family. This game will be released with Japanese voice-acting and text in English and other Western languages by Neos Corporation.

References

External links

• Official website (SCE) (in Japanese)
• Scroll Issue 10: Summer