Alright, Just to add to the continuing drivel and up and down commentary.

Anyone who is over the age of 22, raise your hands.
(Mine is raised high)
Anyone who owned at one time an orignal Sega Master System with CD Attachments, again, raise your hands
(Mine is again raised high)
Nough said. I have owned and played nearly every WD Translated game out there. I hope that with Gaijinworks Vic will add more to the world that pointless games, because that is the way RPG's are going now a days. Currently, the newest game i own is Dragon Quest VIII, Journey of the Cursed King. Otherwise, all I own is FF7, Lunar SSSC Lunar2 Complete, and to top that off, I STILL OWN THE ORIGNALS FOR MY SEGA CD SYSTEM.

You downplay what Victor accomplished because he added pop-culture commentary into the game, because he didn't beleive the GBA would survive well, if anyone has a clue, The GBA was only brought out to Fuel the Pokemon Craze. I Only bought a GBA to play the Legend of Zelda games. I wont even touch a DS to save my life. But if Victor Ireland came out with new game translations of the games we would love to see, but available on all platforms that would allow it. I would buy into in less time that it takes me to make a pot of coffee. He has my Full Support, because i think now after the fall of WD, he has learned more and can possibly come out with something much better.
If that makes me old, or stupid in some people's eyes, got just 1 saying for you:

SOD OFF YA WANKERS!

FF7 has absolutely nothing to do with it, though. Had Lunar not been a success on the Sega CD there would never have been remakes. Lunar TSS and EB were great games, but without good sales, there was no reason to keep the series going. The Japanese sales of TSS weren't bad, but likely not enough to warrant the treatment it got on the Saturn. The Japanese sales for EB were horrid, because like here, it came out at the end of the Mega CDs life, and the Mega CD wasn't enough a great seller in Japan either. The whole reason for the Lunar remakes was to add to the fanbase before they attempted Lunar 3. And while they did well, especially here, Grandia eclipsed it as GameArts main series. Hence why Lunar 3 never came. But had Lunar TSS and EB never done well, and a lot of that is credited to TSS's great sales here for a Sega CD title, there would never have been remakes on the Saturn and Playstation. FF7 came out way after TSS and EB, so it has nothing to do with the equation.

"Of course, had the company not brought over the Lunar games, WD would almost be just a footnote in gaming history."

Very possible, as Lunar really was their flagship series for a long period of their history. Ironically, without Lunar's popularity in the US, GameArts might have been a footnote in gaming history as well. Lunar's sales and popularity were better in North America than Japan, a merit no other JRPG series can compete with. However, had WD not brought it over, I'm not sure the Lunar series would have ever seen the light of day here. The originals were on the Sega CD, and TSS was passed on by quite a few companies, including Sega of America. EB would have certainly been passed on, as it came out in the late stages of the lifecycle of a machine that never had a large base to begin with. Had those not made it over here, it's certainly possible there wouldn't have been remakes at all, as Lunar's success in the Mega/Sega CD era wouldn't have been nearly as good.

You guys are still going on about this? Personally, I'm impressed that Victor Ireland has so much of a presence in gaming that his localizations manage to instigate such impressive flamewars between the fans and the detractors. That is quite a feat in itself. Frankly, I really like his games though, so I don't really care one way or another whether or not it's a literal translation.

"I thought Victor mentions in "The Making of Lunar" that they added his body odor in because they wanted to come up with a reason why he was isolated in his tower."

Yeah, after double checking with an import player, I was wrong on that one. Though now that I'm recalling the "smelly" Myght was a remake change only I think. Going through all the TSS screenshots, I don't see any indication of Myght having body odor in the original translation for TSS, but I don't have as many screens for that game as the other main three in the series.

Really, WDs translation of TSS was very literal. It was EB where they took a lot more liberties.

I agree, and I've said this before, but it's not *what* you say, it's *how* you say it. You sound extremely matter-of-factual, condescending, and blunt. Sure, this is teh intarweb, anyone can say whatever they please without fear. However, I do think everyone deserves a little respect regardless of where you are.

Unless, of course, you speak this way to everyone in RL...in which case, I guess that's just the kind of person you are.

Perhaps people react negatively to your arguments because they are controversial and you refuse to defend them.

"But Working Designs was stuck in the past, while other games had very infrequent pop culture references in their games, Lunar was littered with them. Almost every NPC had something inane to say, not to mention that you could talk to them at least twice and they would say something different. Now if the original Japanese dialogue is done in a similar fashion in Japan, that's another arguement."
Whether you find someting inane or not is irrelevant. There was just as much dialogue in the Japanese version. And I wonder why anybody would be upset if more dialogue is added to a game anyway.

As to your "littered" comment, show me a number. Hell, give me a ballpark estimate of how many pop culture references there are. I'm still saying around a dozen and that's pretty liberal considering people typically only bring up 3-4 of them.

"Regardless, if the only ideas passing for humor that they have on the shelf are that the old man is locked away in a tower because he stinks and farts all the time... I take issue with the translation."

You do realize that was also in the import...

Nekofrog's arguments have been no more or less offensive than everyone else's on this thread, yet for some reason his comments are the only ones getting tons of negative karma. I think we're seeing something here that goes beyond simply disagreeing with his points, this is just personal distaste.

onacouch... WD's references were not obscure, nor am I arguing that such references should be included in game scripts. All I'm saying is that it is incorrect to cite Nintendo and Atlus as proof of anti-WD hypocrisy.

And there's nothing really obscure about Bill Clinton.

I think we have Working Designs to thank for references such as these. Using your example, Terpfen, I think that if it weren't for WD using obscure references (Which I welcome) then perhaps Nintendo and Atlus wouldn't have "perfected" it with the transparency effect you mentioned.

Also wanted to mention that I couldn't stop laughing when I read the "Dark Knight" comment coming from a character in-game. In fact I'm glad for the odd in-joke in games as usually dry in humour as RPG's.

Whenever I play Final Fantasy VII, I'm skeptical of the name translations, so I'm sure to change them to Crowd and Ballet.

Terpfen, another example of that would be the fan translation of Tales of Phantasia, where the character 'kuraasu' or 'Klars' was adapted as 'Klarth'.

The same goes for the name 'Marth'. In katakana, 'maasu' could potentially me spelled 'Mars', but the s at the end would have caused far too much donfusion, as it wouldn't be pronounced the way we pronounce the name of the planet Mars, as that is written as 'maazu'


So while this may be a coarse thing to say, everyone who debates the Aeris/Aerith issue is legally retarded in my view, because they're arguing over something that's already been settled waaaaay before you even thought about the issue (becuase it's not an issue).

Good lord, it's apparent some people can't even take a joke.

Look, watch FF:AC in the original Japanese. They say Aeris. Not Aerith.

Discussion over.

You can respond to all that with tl;dr if you like, because I don't know why I wrote that much.

Okay. It's obvious that there are people here who enjoyed Mr. Ireland's work at Working Designs, and those that didn't. That's what happens, you can't please everyone.

However, when folks start bashing on and insulting each other simply because they have different opinions, then you begin to realize, "There must be something terribly wrong with the people here."

Everyone's free to their own opinions, but perhaps we could go about expressing them a bit more politely? Sure, this is teh Intarweb, but that shouldn't stop us from respecting others. GAF seems to have some serious problems with that.

not that I don't like Aerith better myself, but knock off the use of the "gay as a euphamism for something stupid", mmmkay?

No, I'm just asking. If it's pronounced Aeris, why is it pronounced and spelled Aerith in a US game?

Why do you constantly attack people?

So why does Kingdom Hearts have it as Aerith in the US?

I always liked Aeris as the name anyway.

Worry not fellow gamers. GW will have to change and raise their game translations practices hopefully.

Why! Well with Nippon Ichi, D3 and Atlus also doing good translations GW need to capture part of that market or they'll disappear quicky.

Aeris was not a mistranslation, nor was it an error.

"Aerith" is still pronounced as "Aeris" in Japan. It was just changed to match the name phoenetically to avoid confusion.

"(myself included, as I now pay for and manage the new Working Designs Message Board...)"

Link please?

And for a lot of us, the constant jokes dealing with things like "the rock" and politics and such DID ruin the game... While true, in the Lunar remake and later games they toned it down a little, I'll never forget the translation of Albert Odyssey for the Saturn... it was the worst... I'll admit I haven't played the japanese version of that one though, since the game itself wasn't too good. I have the japanese versions of Lunar on the other hand (Saturn ones, not SCD sadly) and do prefer them to the WD versions... Mind you, I've also recently become fed up with translators changing things up to the way characters act (I'm looking at you, Nippon Ichi) and as such finishing off my learning of japanese now and solely importing when possible... so my vote really doesn't matter :P

THe whole concept of 'They did it to fix boring dialogue!' is bulls***.

You can translate a game with REAL HUMOR or better grammar or better accenting and wording. But don't change what's being said at the core.

Fawful will always be able to make people laugh. You show a Lunar game to the common gamer nowadays and they'll just scratch their head.

I just want to know how far over 50% of the dialogue was made up of pop references.

"Filled with them?" Can you give me a count of them, please? Or even a percentage?

jmcc
"That Rock line really just destroyed the entire game for me. One line of dialogue undid everything else good about the game, somehow. Gameplay? Music? Graphics? I can't even really recall those things. They've been pushed out of my mind by that single line of topical humor."

There is something wrong with you.

I think the place where a company like this will flourish is going to be the DS . . . I really hope they bring some interesting stuff!

That Rock line really just destroyed the entire game for me. One line of dialogue undid everything else good about the game, somehow. Gameplay? Music? Graphics? I can't even really recall those things. They've been pushed out of my mind by that single line of topical humor.

Hmm? My head? Well, yes, it is shaped like this for a reason. I'll have you know I bumped it repeatedly and often as a child. I don't see what that has to do with my assertion that a few instances of pop-culture references in the dialogue of a game ruined the entire thing...

""WD changes all the dialouge!" folks, and back it up with first hand research on it."

You do realize those people exist because, on the Making Of Lunar video CD that came with Lunar 1... Victor Ireland SAID RIGHT THERE that they translate the plot-related script, but throw out everything else and rewrite it.

No one's disputing the accuracy of those plot-related lines. The issue with WD is the dialog they've rewritten--must we really need to smell what The Rock is cooking in the world of Lunar?

Whatever your views for this guy or not, all I can say is there's an oppurtunity here to see games released that we are not getting.

If there's some jap game you want to see released that's cool and no one is touching drop the guy a line by email if possible and let your voice be heard.

Despite any gripes some have GW can only serve our needs, for not all of us can speak or read japanese. Lets hope we get some good games.

I think if people here knew who GhaleonOne was and how involved he has been with Lunar especially, not to mention this very site, for what... almost 8 years now? Maybe you'd all realize he's not just 'some guy' doling out meaningless drivel like most people do. He DOES know of what he speaks, trust me guys.

As for the new company, this should be interesting. I do hope that it doesn't inherit WD's release schedules. WD was similar to NIS and Atlus now, and usually released some pretty interesting stuff that otherwise wouldn't have seen a release here. There just wasn't enough of it, especially in the last few years of operations. So I'll be curious to see what Vic does with this company... even though I'm not crazy about the name or the (probably early) logo.

Another neko style argument. Ghaleonone could've not mentioned a thing about knowing a guy or not and his point of, "have you actually read both versions of the games?" would be as valid. Instead of responding with something material, like, "Yes, I've played a number of games in both languages and found the differences unacceptable," you basically said, "I know a lot of guys who say this! SO THERE!"

"they insisted on changing the dialogue and screwing up the game's code, (yet in the same breath they didn't fix obvious problems like Luna's bulging eye in the battle screen). Then including a buch of garbage in the package, raising the price of a costly remake even higher, and claiming that "it's what the fans what"."

Do you know Japanese? Have you played Lunar as an import and understood the language? Because if so, you're like 90% of the rest of the anti-WD crowd when it comes to this topic. Yes, they do change some stuff to pop culture references, but they're generally replacing stuff that wouldn't be funny or even make sense to the general American audience. True, they could have kept to something less pop-culture, but in terms of the translations of the Lunar games, they were quite spot on. My admin at LunarNET has played all of the import Lunar games, and has gone on record with this. And he understands the dialouge quite well (has even read the Lunar novels that are in Japanese). So before you claim the dialouge and translation are so horribly skewed, do a little more research instead of just buying into what most folks are saying regarding the translation.

And for the record, the said admin is quite neutral in the pro/anti WD bunch. It's certainly not like he's trying to defend WD, by any means.

ah, blind worship/disdain of a new company because the founder of Working Designs is behind it.

let's face it folks, this is not nearly enough information to know if we're going to be getting more games with localizations chock full of horrid pop-culture references, or arbitrary, irritating gameplay changes. (Silhouette Mirage, I'm looking in your general direction.) WD was not directly responsible for the overall gameplay, they were a localization company, who made the occaisional change. you cannot base future quality off of this one man. he is not a Kojima, Igarashi, or Miyamoto. he doesn't MAKE games, he merely heads a translation company.

we will see how good/bad Gaijinworks is when they bring a game over, until then, please stop pining and whining about the days of Lunar, absurd pack-ins, $80 pricetags, and poor voice acting. if Ireland was fully responsible, history will repeat itself, and we will see the same arguments about new titles that we do now about old.

This is a silly comment, but - Gaijinworks is incorrectly spelled on the front page blurb.

I can once again enjoy the sunshine and the flowers now that Neo-Working Designs (a.k.a Gaijinworks) flourishes again!
Say hello again to quality localizations! Hurrah!

I heard the Catholic Church was wrong about the shape of the earth, Neko. Don't you agree that Vic is just like the Catholic Church because both were wrong about something?

It wasn't a very good analogy.

"...

WHAT SANE PERSON ON THE PLANET EXPECTED THE GBA TO CRASH AND KILL THE HANDHELD INDUSTRY?

WHO?

Just look at the HISTORY. When the GBA came out, there was NO ONE who offered remotely ANY sort of competition. The Game Gear was long dead, NeoGeo had maybe 0.05% of the market share.

How was the GBA NOT going to be an instant success?"

I'm not sure, but what does this have to do with how similar he is to Bernie Stolar? Nothing, but you'd rather change focus than acknowledge that.

Well, look at the tons of "garbage" games out on the GBA. I can see how he thought that would ruin the industry, wasn't the Atari crash caused by slews of crap software being released on it?

Some of you act as if Victor can't make mistakes.

I as well thought that the DS was going to flop, and that the PSP was going to cause a stir in the handheld market. Yet I was proven wrong. At least Ireland is willing to admit it. And I'm glad to see he's finally opened up to other consoles.

I'm glad to see that Ireland has returned and hope to see some more ported games in the future.

Ok, so why did he not just keep WD open if hes gonna create a new company?

I will admit that as of late we have been getting more and more obscure JRPG's. The PSP is chalk full of them... Legend of Heroes 1 and 2, Generation of Chaos, Astonishia Story. But have you actually played them, if you have then you know they suck. The translations are dry, some of them are completely incoherent, the game play is unbalanced and unmanigable. Point is... yes without WD there are still quirky JRPG's in the states, but no one, NO ONE, did it even nearly as well as WD.

That Dragon Force PS2 (J) remake needs to be brought over here.

I think a lot of people (myself included, as I now pay for and manage the new Working Designs Message Board...) have fond memories of Working Designs for a couple of different reasons.

1) Their translation quality has always been supurb. Emphasis on always. I'm talking about even way back in 1992; while SNES owners were dealing with "spoony bards" and the like, WD's translation were a breath of fresh air in terms of literary merit and really bringing out the emotion in the text. Their humor was also appreciated in the NPCs, when talking to FF and DQ NPC either resulted in text that was boring/pointless, or they all said the same thing. In WD RPGs, it was actually *worth* talking to the various NPC running around for no apparent reason just to see what they had to say.

It also made the world of LUNAR in general feel more alive, in that it's people didn't just seem tacked on for decoration, they felt like they were actually living there. It's something I might add, is still lacking in most other RPGs.

2) Their drive to improve games from their original Japanese version. Have you ever played the original Saturn version of Albert Odyssey? It's a mess! The random encounter rate is off the charts, and this is only made worse by the atrocious load-times. WD took this game and lowered the encounter rate and adjusted the EXP given by the monsters to give balance, and they also reduced the load-times a lot. While it's still not perfect mind, it made the game enjoyable at the very least. Other little tweaks like that were greatly appreciated by myself and others.

I honestly don't understand why so many people diss Working Designs when they did so much for the US gaming community. They were a company that stood up for the little guy as it were, those of us who wanted some of these gems from Japan, but aren't fluent in Japanese. LUNAR never would have come stateside had it not been for WD, and for that I'm extremely greatful, as it is now still one of my favorite series' of games ever (minus the GBA and DS installments). I don't mind delays if they're for quality assurance. "Delays are temporary, mediocraty is forever".

Hell, Blizzard is the same way. They took forever to make and finally release World of Warcraft, and look at how amazing a game that is. Granted, that's development and not translation, but you get the idea. If the quality is good, I don't mind the wait.

cutriss: I think this company has a place in the sense that the US is still consistantly missing out on games from Japan (and not just uber-sucky ones). GS already has games to choose from with DS/360/PSP and I'm sure we'll miss a bunch of fun Wii games when it comes out as well.

I don't know why that timeline has Lunar:SSSC in 2002 when it clearly came out before Lunar 2's remake.

What was the fourth game with all the bonuses? I don't think it was Vanguard Bandits, but that's my best guess on available information.

I just wish people would stop kissing WD's ass over Lunar. I mean, granted, WD brought over some pretty good games, but it's not like they made Lunar - GameArts did. GameArts also made the Grandia series. I watched my wife play all the way through Lunar, and it didn't seem terribly special to me. I suppose that might be different if you had fond memories of the Sega CD games, which I can understand - we all have rose-colored glasses for our favorite old-school games. I tried to play Xexyz again about two months ago and can't remember why I liked it so much. :P

But yeah, I don't see too much of a place for this company given how much success Atlus and NIS have had publishing the niche games. It seems to me like Victor Ireland would do better to work with one of those companies than to spearhead a new effort, but who knows - maybe he'll take a chance on some game that we'd otherwise never see over here. You never know.

I'm back. I just wanted everyone to know that I forgot quite a few games. Here's a better list (includes the FOUR games that WD did fancy sets for).

http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/company/11304.html

Me too. Funny i was just talking about how it sucked when working design went under. This is great news, i really hope they get Goeman out here.

Who keeps giving this guy money?

Nekofrog, you are dead on. We do not need to "smell what The Rock is cooking" in a game that takes place in a fantasy setting.


"Will we get some Bush jokes? ^_^"

I hope not. Not only have they been done before, but they'd be out of place in anything that isn't directly related to a game about a real-world political opponent of his.

The internet's full of anti-Bush jokes to satisfy your political slant. Go find them. Barring that, just watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

As a long time LUNAR and Working Designs fan, Im' very happy to read this.

I wish Vic and the rest of the staff at Gaijinworks the best of lucks and they can be sure I will check their games for the Nintendo DS and Wii.

Will we get some Bush jokes? ^_^

Good news, now we can get some of those unreeleased DS gems.

Maybe this time they'll work on releasing games with accurate translations (not stupid pop-culture cliche riddled garbage) and not screwing with the game engines and just TRANSLATING the games.
Oh, and for the love of Bruce Campbell, make them with the Japanese voice selectable. Maybe then I'll actually buy one of your games, Vic.

I actually enjoyed more than a few of Working Designs previous games, especially the Lunar series.

I wish Ireland and this new company the best of luck but I hope they won't just limit themselves to RPGs.

The eras of the RPGs not being brought over is over they should try expanding into other non-localized games.

I don't know if this is good news or bad news. They did great translations, but they took so long that it wasn't even worth it for the good translations on most of the games. Lunar 1 and 2's were gold, though.

I wonder how many members of the old forums will return if a new message board opens up on Gaijinworks.

I'm interested to see what will come out of this. Just have to wait and see for now...

How so darkage?

As for me, I don't care for the name. But I'm interested to see what game(s) he'll be working on. Vic, if your next email to me mentions Goemon in any way I'll be disappointed ;)