The first game in the Tokimeki Memorial series, it was first released for the PC Engine's Super CD-ROM² System on May 27, 1994.

[2] Tokimeki Memorial is a dating sim game in which the player controls a male freshman from Kirameki High School.

The game is particularly notable for its "bomb" feature, where neglected, infrequently-dated girls would eventually become angry and gossip to their friends, severely reducing love meters across the board.

In the middle of the game, when the number of known girls is high, these "bombs" became the primary concern of the player, forcing careful planning and strategies like round-robin dating.

[2] Writer Koji Igarashi says when he was tasked with writing the story for the game, he got assistance from his girlfriend at the time, who would later become his wife.

Konami director Akihiko Nagata said "the person who created the game wanted to have experiences like this back in his high school days".

[6] This version was reduced in graphic and sound quality with the only voice clips being made available during loading, included an exclusive CD with a radio drama and new arrangement of the ending theme, "Futari no Toki", this time sung by the majority of the girls, instead of just Shiori Fujisaki.

[18] The game became more well-known in English-speaking communities after a video essay by Tim Rogers gained attention, and a fan translation of the Super Famicom port was published.