News

New Welcome to Pia Carrot! Game Project Does Not Meet Crowdfunding Goal

The crowdfunding campaign for F&C's Pia Carrot e Yōkoso!! AW (Welcome to Pia Carrot!! AW) game project ended unsuccessfully on Sunday, after raising only 4,053,290 yen (about US$28,500) of its 30 million yen (about US$211,000) goal since the campaign began on March 28. As a result, F&C has announced that production on the game has been halted.

The game would have featured an entirely new story with an isekai (alternate world) theme, with a protagonist going to a fantasy world. The game was intended to be all-ages, and would have featured three main heroine routes, and two side heroine routes.

Cocktail Soft (later F&C) launched the first Pia Carrot e Yōkoso!! game in 1996 for MS-DOS on the NEC PC-9800 Series and for Windows 3.1, with the game later receiving a PC-FX and Sega Saturn port. The game spawned four direct sequels, as well as a side series consisting of the games Welcome to Pia Carrot!! G.O. ~Grand Open~ and Welcome to Pia Carrot!! G.P., and an otome game spinoff (featuring male characters) titled Pri Pia ~Prince Pia Carrot~.

The Welcome to Pia Carrot!! 2 sequel game inspired the Welcome to Pia Carrot!! 2 DX six-episode original video anime (OVA) adaptation in 1999-2000, while the Welcome to Pia Carrot!! 3 game inspired the Welcome to Pia Carrot! Sayaka's Love Story anime film in 2002. The first and second game in the series also had their respective three-episode adult anime OVA adaptations in 1997 and 1998.

The series is also notable for having a Pia Carrot concept cafe that opened in Akihabara in 1998, which is often cited in otaku culture as the start of the maid cafe boom in Akihabara.

Sources: Ubugoe, F&C's X/Twitter account via Hachima Kikō