RETURN TO 1990

About RETURN TO 1990

RETURN TO 1990 is a time-travel visual novel about a man who receives a second chance at his life with the knowledge of the next twenty years in his head. It begins in March 2027, he is 29, with 37,000 won on his account, and commits suicide by jumping from a bridge over the Han River. He wakes up in 1990, in the small room above his mother’s side-dish shop in the Seoul marketplace, inside the body of a twenty-year-old stranger. He knows the future, the booming companies, the stagnant neighborhoods, the exact timing of the collapse.

The investment system is the game’s backbone, which is a visual novel with a thick layer of gameplay. You experience the 1990s Korean stock market boom and the IMF crisis, the dot-com bubble, the 2008 financial crisis, you know the news before everyone else, buy first, sell first. But the more you mess with time, the less it wants you to win, and the story is about the price of knowledge. Secondly, the land speculation, you select building plots on a map of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, where Gangnam is still a rural village. You need to know where to put real estate purchases to profit from the new-town projects and the bubbles they create. Thirdly, company construction, you have to found companies in the past that only arise in the future, develop their product, staff, and finances, manage a CEO, CFO, COO team, accept or reject investment offers, build entire business groups around them, turning PC networks and web portals into conglomerates worth billions. It is not a game where you just grind money; the company management system is the management sim at the game’s core, intertwined with the visual novel gameplay and the investment system.

The characters you meet live in the spaces between. The girl who saved you from drowning is a chaebol scion, always one step ahead, and her presence haunts your every choice. Your mother runs the side-dish shop in Seoul, and she is the reason why you are here. The question of whether this life can be any different is woven into the story with the relationships you forge and the choices you make.

Months pass in the game in the form of a visual novel with voice acting and beautiful pixel graphics. Everything has its time and place, and both the story’s tone and the game’s systems are built around this idea. You have different endings depending on your wealth and relationships, so your gameplay hours are not separated from the narrative by a thick wall. The Steam edition of RETURN TO 1990 contains the Prologue and Chapter 1 (the period from 1990 to 1999). The game is a buy-to_own, no energy limits, and the in-game gold shop is available to you. On the other hand, Chapter 2 (the period from 2000 to 2009) and Chapter 3 (the period from 2010 to 2019) are available as DLC. Korean, English, Japanese, Simplified, and Traditional Chinese are available. All companies, people, and brands depicted in this game are fictional, and the investment results shown in the game have no relation to any financial investments.

The essential considerations and points for those who are thinking about buying RETURN TO 1990 are as follows. This is a visual novel with management game elements, not an action or stock-trading simulator; the time-travel mechanics allow learning from mistakes but at a price. The narrative has multiple endings based on wealth and relationships, with the gameplay hours not being segmented from the story. The Steam version of the game includes the Prologue and Chapter 1, with no energy limits, and the in-game gold shop is optional, while Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 are available as DLC. The game has a rich set of systems, including investing, land speculation, and company management, intertwined with the visual novel. The game is set on PC through Steam.

If someone is considering alternatives, there are several similar titles. For a visual novel that is more of a life-simulation game with elements of managing, Chinese Parents can be a good option. Another alternative is Long Live the Queen because it is also a choice-driven story visual novel with various endings and stat-systems. Yes, Your Grace is another visual novel, but it has more management and less story than Long Live the Queen. Suzerain is a story-driven game with text-based systems rather than visual novels, but it has elements of management and politics, with decisions affecting the game’s outcomes. Coffee Talk is a visual novel that primarily focuses on dialogue, while Steins;Gate is a time-travel visual novel with branching paths and consequences for every action. As a time-travel visual novel with management game qualities, RETURN TO 1990 combines investing, land speculation, company management, and visual novel gameplay with multiple endings based on choices and actions. Therefore, to experience playing as a man who receives a second chance at life with the opportunity to make different choices and affect the narrative, download RETURN TO 1990 on Steam for the Prologue and Chapter 1, with Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 as DLC.