Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-178.76.137.227-20150331165636/@comment-6697950-20150331210515

I'm pretty sure that people used bows way before the 21st century. The only reason SAO didn't have them is because it's SWORD art online, now BOW art online. The emphasis was on swords, so the game mostly offered swords (and some random stuff, like chakrams, that didn't have much of an advantage over swords). So, any game (aside from SAO) can have bows if they want to.