It's been an interesting week on Kickstarter, as tons of artists and designers have found the inspiration to shoot for their lofty ambitions with a bit of crowdsourcing. Although I just heard about this Megatokyo visual novel project on NeoGAF earlier today, the project has already managed to reach several of creator Fred Gallagher's lofty stretch goals for Megatokyo the Visual Novel within three days of its original announcement.

To those unfamiliar with the series Megatokyo, the six-volume series revolves around Piro, an obsessed manga/anime fan, and Largo, a hardcore American gamer, who fly on a whim to Japan and get stranded as the two are unable to afford their return trip home. The series accounts their everyday life experiences in Tokyo filled with dangerous ninjas, provocative maid outfits and kitties.

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Early demo footage.

For the visual novel, Fred Gallagher has decided to split the title into three parts, part 01 covering print volumes 1-3, part 02 covering print volumes 4-6 and part 03 featuring all new material and multiple endings, with each part containing nearly four to six hours of gameplay per playable character. As a result of the uber successful campaign, the game will include primary routes for Piro, Largo, Kimiko, Erika, Miho, Ping, Yuki along with secondary routes for Mugi, Junko, Dom, Ed and Junpei.

Originally, Fred had setup his Kickstarter campaign so that the basic game would be released once the project reached $20,000.00 featuring just Piro's and Largo's storylines. Much to his amazement, he had reached his lofty goal within three and a half hours and his first stretch goal before he went to bed the day he finished setting up his campaign.

With the next stretch goal of $150,000.00 already nearly within reach, Megatokyo the Visual Novel Part 3, fans can expect to see multiple endings, scenarios and events that haven't been reached in the comic yet; along with the possibility of "excessively romantic content" if the project ever reaches $500,000.00 in funding. Although Fred has stated that he typically shies away from presenting any sort of special love scenes in his comics, he has teased to his fans that if the project manages to reach that goal he will include them.

My advice to him? He better start brushing up on Fifty Shades of Grey, because if his current rate of funding keeps up, it looks like America may have its very first successful high-budget, eroge title on its hands.

For more information about the upcoming OELVN for Mac/PC/Linux, please visit Megatokyo the Visual Novel Game's official Kickstarter campaign page at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fredrin/megatokyo-visual-novel-game