Released over 30 years ago, Konami’s cult-classic dating simulator Tokimeki Memorial was a formative gaming experience for many Japanese gamers, but one guy says the series has literally become ingrained in his mind and body, to the point that he managed to develop a special ability.” In a now viral post on X, user @tortgtaiai relayed a conversation with his wife, who was astonished to learn that her husband doesn’t relate to the everyday struggle of “opening a stubborn plastic bag with dry fingers,” because he’s able to sweat from his fingertips at will.
“If I just concentrate on my fingers, my hand starts getting sweaty, so it’s easy to open.” He attributes the unusual biohacking skill to Tokimeki Memorial: Oshiete Your Heart, an arcade adaptation of the original dating sim released in 1997. The premise of the game is mostly the same as its console counterpart, albeit shortened – you raise your affection score with the heroines through dialogue choices, with the goal of receiving a love confession by the end of the game. However, unique to the arcade version was a system called the Tokimeki Sensor.
Tokimeki Memorial: Oshiete Your Heart cabinets came with a pink device shaped like a PC mouse. The player would place their left palm on top of it so that their index, middle finger and ring finger rested across three sensors located on the upper part of the apparatus. The middle sensor – a black plate – measured heart rate, while the other two sensors measured how much the player was sweating.
The heroines in-game reacted to this feedback, for example, by assuming that the protagonist (player) wasn’t being honest if their pulse and sweating weren’t raised (suggesting they weren’t excited or nervous). Since upsetting the girls can lower your life bar and quickly lead to a game over, it seems @tortgtaiai developed his localized sweating skills to boost his chances of clearing the game. “While I was trying to master it, I ended up training myself to consciously control sweating on my fingertips,” he commented.
On a related note, Konami gave Tokimeki Memorial a big revival this year, with the release of the remastered version Tokimeki Memorial: forever with you Emotional in May. Launched as a Switch-exclusive, the game offers a new mode with enhanced graphics, as well as an old-school mode with the game’s original pixel art. For now, it remains available in Japanese only.
Related: Tokimeki Memorial’s “NTR bug” that lets you steal you best friend’s girlfriend finally patched out
