Udaru Harada. Minazuki designed and illustrated Takahashi's characters, while Kawata illustrated the remaining characters. The writers did not begin work on the story until the characters were created. Takahashi felt the game's story is simply actions that represent what becomes of the characters. He mentioned the story exists not because he wanted to write the story, but because he wanted to "illustrate" the characters. Takahashi believed that such a writing style was unique even within the game industry at the time, but has since become the norm. Although the story contains futuristic elements such as maid robots, Takahashi stated the story takes place during contemporary times. Parts of the school in which the game takes place was based on the alma mater that Takahashi, Minazuki, and Aomura had attended, and Takahashi said the game's story reflects the staff members' school experience during the 1980s. To Heart was released as an adult visual novel for Microsoft Windows PCs on May 23, 1997, following the releases of the previous Leaf Visual Novel Series titles. PlayStation release The original Windows version was followed by an all-ages version for the PlayStation on March 25, 1999. Takahashi viewed the PS port as a "brand new game" under the disguise of a ported title, as he believed the original staff in the development team could not be satisfied with simply a straightforward port. Several changes were made to the PS version, including the removal of adult scenes and additions such as voice acting, new and rewritten scenarios, a new heroine named Ayaka Kurusugawa, and bonus minigames. Takahashi stated that the addition of voice acting was decided upon early into development. However, because of the high amount of memory needed to store the voice acting's audio files, the decision caused the development team to debate between using higher quality audio or a smaller number of discs. Ultimately, the amount of data required by the voice acting caused the game to be released on two discs. Aomura also made changes to the stories of his characters, and he admitted that he did not thoroughly understand Shiho's character while writing her scenario for the Windows version's development. He made revisions to the scenario in the PS version, and saw the result as a completed version. Takahashi felt the majority of the scenarios were smoother without the erotic scenes present in the original version, and stated that the original's inclusion