October 28, 2026TM3 Progress

Tokimeki Memorial 3 v0.40: Sports Day and a rainy zoo date

Patch v0.40 is built. Last time I made it to my first date. Since then I've played on into June, and I changed how I work: I play the newest build, and when a line is still Japanese I translate it on the spot. My wording goes straight into the workbook, and the next build has it.

It's slower than sitting down with a spreadsheet, but it's a lot more fun, and I get to hear the lines in context before I decide how they should sound.

Sports Day

May 18 is Sports Day at Moegino High. You pick your event from a little menu: the 100M dash, the three-legged race, tug-of-war, or skipping the whole thing.

Two students walk through the school gate under strings of colorful flags. A banner in Japanese hangs over the field, and a caption reads "Sports Day!" The date header says 2002 Sat 5/18.

I ran the 100M dash. One time I came in first, and Makihara was so happy for me. Another time I false started twice and got disqualified, and the game tells you in giant green letters. That graphic is still Japanese, along with the how-to-play screens before each race. They're drawn into the art, so they're next on the redraw list.

A chibi-style running track. Giant green Japanese letters reading 失格, "Disqualified," float over two runners at the starting line.

A rainy day at the zoo

Our next date was the zoo on June 2, and of course it poured. We met at the station, rode the train out, and walked around under umbrellas.

Makihara, a girl with short red hair and yellow ribbons, stands in a busy train station labeled Shin-Moegino St. She says "It looks like the train is going to arrive any minute now."

Makihara holds a pink umbrella in the rain outside an animal enclosure with giraffes behind the fence. She says "Every single animal is so cute~. Though, it's a little sad that they're kept inside cages and fences."

The zoo is where I first saw a lot of how Makihara thinks. She loves the animals, and she worries about them too. The game gives you three ways to answer her, and one of them is a classic dating sim trap. I'll let you guess which.

The same rainy zoo scene with three answers to choose from: "Animals are better off out in nature, aren't they?", "Want me to let them out?" and "But they're well fed, so they're happy."

The menu that wouldn't leave

After the zoo we stopped at a café by the station to talk, and the game gives you a little menu of topics: Humanities, Sciences, Arts, Athletics, Other, and Quit.

When the chat ended, the menu stayed. It floated over Makihara while she said goodbye, followed me home, and was still on the screen days later.

The game copies each topic name into a small space in memory that only fits a few Japanese characters. "Humanities" and "Athletics" are longer than that, so they spilled into the spot the game uses to keep track of the chat, and it forgot to close the menu. The names have more room now, and the menu goes away when it should.

Little fixes

The date in your room reads "6/2" now. Single-digit days used to have a gap, like "6/ 2".
Short labels like "Zoo" got a little more breathing room.
Hobby results put the item on its own line, so "Got a new item!" doesn't break in the middle of a word.
The menus over the room icons are sized to fit the English.
Menus with two columns of choices, like the Sports Day events, line up the way they do in Japanese. Before, "Skip" crowded right up against "100M dash" and looked like part of the same choice.

The player's bedroom on a rainy morning. The date header reads 2002 Sun 6/2 with no gap, and a choice box asks where to meet: "Meet at Station" or "Meet at Hilltop Park."

What's next

The Sports Day art, the rest of Makihara's lines as I keep playing, and a long list of draft menu wording waiting for my final say.

There's no patch to download yet. When there is, I'll announce it here.

Unofficial and made for fun.