Toushin Toshi Series

About
The Toushin Toshi series (also known as Tournament of the Gods) is a series of adult, Eastern RPG games released by Alicesoft, debuting in 1990 with the original Toushin Toshi. The games are concerned with the events of the Toushin Tournament, a martial competition nominally intended to find the world's strongest warriors. As the player experiences the games' stories, the tournament is typically revealed to be more than it initially seems, dividing the games into distinct "tournament" and "post-tournament" segments.

The series has the distinction of having the first Alicesoft title ever released on Nintendo hardware, in the form of Toushin Toshi II GIRLS GIFT RPG (a remake of Toushin Toshi II), and was also the series to head Alicesoft's first net game, Shinyaku Toushin Toshi ～Girls Tamer～.

Settings
The settings of the Toushin Toshi games are highly similar, but technically distinct from one another. These lead to the unusual sitaution where gaps in one series might be explained by another, despite being nominally set in entirely different universes. Recurring characters are a common motif, with signature characters being arena staffer Shuri Seihajuu Nagasaki, match commentator Kuri, and recurring minor antagonist Atlanta.

The setting of the first game is explicit: it is set on The Continent, home of the Rance Series, some two decades after the events of those games. The rules of this setting apply in full: characters are governed by the Planner Scenario, Atlanta is an Apostle and the same character who appeared in Rance IV, etc.

The setting of each of the following games is less clearly defined. Each remaining game in the series is set in highly similar settings to The Continent, but their stories are ultimately incompatible with one another (with the exception of Toushin Toshi II and its direct sequel, Toushin Toshi II - Soshite sorekara). The relationship between these settings, and even back to the setting of The Continent, can be complex. Characters and concepts revealed in one universe might go on to influence the other, such as Toushin Toshi III creating the character of Juno, who would later appear in Rance X. This unusual back-and-forth can also be seen between characters in The Continent and the world of Mamatoto.

Links

 * Wikipedia