History of Valis was very kindly written for Japanese Gaming 16Bit by Geoffrey Vasiliauskas.  If you have any comments for him them please feel free to Email him at storge@hardcore.lt

Besides VALIS the videogame, there was also the Telnet Music Box program released for NEC and Sharp computers, various music CDs containing VALIS music, an OVA or original anime (meaning animated) presentation video, a small production of rosin VALIS swords and costume elements as well as girls' jewelry, a VALIS T-shirt as a prize in a promotional contest, probably VALIS Japanese comics (known as manga in the comics world and in Japanese) and spin-offs, including VALIS motifs in animated serials like Slayers!, Slayers Try! and others (the main character in Slayers, Lina Inverse, may in fact be Lena from VALIS III for PC Engine). It also got honorble mention in the popular game Record of Lodoss War, where Valis appears on a map as the name of a country. VALIS III for PC Engine also contains hidden bitmaps which indicate a contest called VALIS roulette, with prizes to be doled out by Telenet. One of the bitmaps is instructions on how to enter a secret code onto a post-card and where to send the post-card (to Telenet headquarters).

Blue-haired school-girls in sailors' uniforms didn't originate with VALIS, but Yuko became their incarnation, and she continues to be the subject of Japanese anime art. She's also made cameo appearances in other venues. It seems clear that from the beginning the creative team that cooked up VALIS the videogame intended it to become an animated film and, eventually, a television series. In one of the alternate realities in Dick's novel VALIS is a cheap sci-fi film about a satellite broadcasting information threatening to people in high places. The generals decide to destroy the satellite. In other places Dick references VALIS as an American film from 1975 which dealt with the impermanence of what seems to be reality. VALIS the videogame poses the same question to its young audience: did what just happened really happen, or was it a dream, a fantasy? Are there other worlds? In the case of the game as in Dick's novel, the answer comes from the evidence: the piece of scarf tied around Yuko's arm in remembrance of slain Reiko, the information that saved Dick's son Chris from an undiagnosed hernia. In both cases the final decision rests with the individual, there is no proof that would stand up in court. Dick and Pike probably agreed that it was futile to try to prove intellectually the existence of God, in the end it's up to the individual to decide. The Wolfteam left it up to the player to decide how serious to take the game.

VALIS never became a children's cartoon in Japan, at least not a widely-known one (the OVA was a cartoon, after all). In exactly the same way Dick envisaged it, VALIS the videogame interposed into popular culture and into the terms of popular culture an essential question about the nature of reality itself. Dick's novel ends with a cartoon, after all: the author is pondering all that has happened, and proof arrives in the form of Felix the Cat. I like to imagine that Dick's authority will continue to grow in years to come, that his stature will grow as an important writer from the 20th century, a writer of serious literature in terms the wider contemporary culture was capable of understanding, in accessible format if that's a better way to say the same thing. I like to imagine, say, 50 years from now Dickheads, as Dick's fans call themselves, will be collecting VALIS videogame memorabilia -- T-shirts, fantasm jewelry, the coveted OVA -- in the same way Tagomi, the Japanese ambassador to the occupied West Coast of the United States, collected antique American popular culture items, comics and toys and other items.

VALIS the videogame's original creative team included the following individuals: the original game design was by H. Hayashi with help from Y. Mitsuhashi and special thanks to M. Akishino. The program (apparently originally written in Z80 source code and converted to other CPU machine code instructions) was written for NEC PC 8801 by M. Akishino with help by M. Hanawa, for Sharp X-1 by M. Yamamoto, for MSX by T. Anazawa, for FM77AV by S. Iizuka and for NEC PC-9801 by O. Sato.

Graphics directors were H. Hayashi and M. Takahashi. Graphics working staff were M. Takahashi, D. Kiyasyu, S. Shiino, H. Toriumi and T. Tanaka.

Music was composed and arranged by S. Ogawa under advisement from O. Sato.

http://twin.coco.co.jp/valis/game/ has alternative information on the origin of the name of the videogame. The webpage is in Japanese.

Character designs are by Osamu Nabeshima, an experienced anime director who's worked on such projects as Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, Clamp School Detectives, Devil Man and Mysterious Thief Saint Tail, was involved in character designs for VALIS. Kazuhiro Ochi, Tomokazu Tokoro and Hajime Kamegaki were also production designers. Combined, their works include Six God Combiner Godmars, Fushigi Yuugi, G.I. Joe The Movie, Transformers The Movie, Genesis Survivor Gaiarth and Space Warrior Baldios. These three are mainly animation directors and mecha (mechanized, robot art) designers. Music was also composed by Michiko Naruke and others. Besides the above-mentioned systems, VALIS also appeared on the Nintendo Famicom, known abroad as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Data compiled by dawkeykhan for Yakumo's Telenet / Renovation webpage. anti-copyright 2002. all rights to distribute this document in whole are provided to all non-profit entities. excerpts for literary review, criticism and for any other purpose are strictly forbidden, with the sole exception being granted to certifiable homoplasmates. any attempt to cut and mangle this document into other forms will result in universal holographic informational backfire, since every part of this document recapitulates every other part. that being said, throw away your perplexity, hope springs eternal, listen to the frash of sword and may the VALIS be with you as you ascend to the worlds of light.