That's true, but I'm not sure there's enough interest. With Mother 3, the translation team actually offered the patch to Nintendo for free in order to officially release the game. I don't think they ever responded, though. At least we did get Earthbound on the Wii U VC, even if it was the censored North American version.

Yeah, I'm still surprised that, despite being the censored version, it got a T rating.

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I'd really love to see the 3DS version of Tomodachi Collection localised. It looks like a fun game.

- Star Ocean: Blue Sphere.
- The PSN versions of the Mega Man Legends games for the Vita. And the cellphone game for 3DS/Vita systems.
- The original Clock Tower.
- Whenever Square Enix decides to make a Kingdom Hearts game, then immediately follow it with a King's Remix Master Director's Cut Shiny Edition with more features, storyline, etc., that they pause, just make that in the original game, and release it so that we in the states don't have to wait for, say, 1.5 Remix a full ELEVEN FREAKIN' YEARS LATER.
- I dunno if this would count, seeing as it was localized, just in Europe, but The Last Window.
- The Mana series games that have yet to make it to American shores (Lord knows that series needs a pick-me up after Dawn of Mana and that RTS released for the DS)
- The new packaged Dangan Ronpa 1+2 edition. I know they're localizing the first game for us, but they could easily package both games and do the exact same thing. Though, looking at it from their point of view, it'd do better to spend the money on one game, see if it makes money, then see if they can get us to pay for the sequel.
- Silent Hill: The Arcade. Because I love the Silent Hill series. Even if I can't bring myself to play it that often. And all Silent Hill games that haven't finished making their way West, or haven't even tickled Europe yet.
- GK2, I guess. I disliked the first one, but Capcom always does something, don't they? They hate our laughter and instead hastily shove out another Resident Evil game- trying to please everyone, and end up pleasing nobody... wait... that's it! REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY! If they think we hate it enough, they'll try to appease us! BRILLIANT! *stoned*
- Monster Rancher titles we haven't gotten yet. Because I'm apparently a masochist, and Monster Rancher hurts so good.
- The other MOTHER games, because that'll make that crowd happy. Gonna buy that Earthbound game (I hear it's the middle of the series?) when I can feel confident in buying it. Mostly in that Super Metroid only cost 30 cents, and was so shiny and cheap, so I am thirty cents short of Earthbound when it came out. And I can only buy in ten dollar increments.

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I wish more that they'd stop making KH games. We have the first one, the first HD, and a remaster and a remix and the 1.5 remix and the whatthefuckever version of that one as well. Goddammit, there is milking the cashcow and then there's milking a cashcow's dried up skelleton, Squeen! Namco did it with Phantasia, but at least they stopped bringing out more Phantasia versions.

C-A

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I don't think it's dead, I just wish they'd focus their efforts more. Or, at least focus them on major projects. How many times have I seen Final Fantasy commercials where the main characters just do a lot of standing with be-wondered expressions? That isn't interesting, and it doesn't tell us anything about the plot! At least when they do Kingdom Hearts stuff nowadays, there's lavishl animation in their models, and at least some attention paid to stances, movement, expressions.

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I guess Square Enix is becoming Capcom, eh? I mean seriously, do we really need ANOTHER Street Fighter 4 rehash?!

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We had tons of Street Fighter 2's. Then again, this was before the patch/DLC, so there were TONS of Street Fighter II's just to keep tweaking hitboxes, move sets, etc. Now, there was that Capcom v. game that was released twice, but the second one cut out a lot of the much-wanted characters and also had on-disc DLC.

Though I don't think Square Enix is becoming Capcom- in fact, just the opposite. Square Enix is doing one of the worst, yet most profitable things you can do in the industry: servicing the brand. How many Final Fantasy games have looked fairly the same in the past five years? Notice that for every two Final Fantasy titles they pump out, a Kingdom Hearts game comes out, and is anywhere form average with poor controls (lookin' at you, 358/2 Days), to BEAUTIFUL AND AMAZING except a few things here and there but it's forgivable (i.e. KH3D). In fact, Dissidia and Theatrhythm, from what I can tell, are brilliant titles that far outshine their recent contemporaries. Heck, what have they released recently? A FF MMORPG (again), and re-releasing Final Fantasy X and X-2 (both good games with plenty of flaws in the leveling mechanics).

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X definitely had a problem with the leveling, what with having to put each member into the party at least once and actively do something, otherwise they wouldn't get any AP/EXP... but I think X-2 did a good, classical leveling system.

C-A

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For the characters. Leveling jobs was /tedious/.

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Eh, with the Growth Egg, it was tolerable. First Job I always mastered was the Dark Knight. Then the jobs each girl used in her Mascot dressphere, although I barely ever use those. Currently maxing Yuna's special one... although I have a new game to start after rushing through the last one. (Story-Only missions was... not that good of an idea)

C-A

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Personally I wish they would localize more Mobile Suit Gundam video games over here and even the SD Gundam games.

I'd like to say the Project Diva games but... well, Project Diva f was released in America.
Dunno about Germany, yet... but I doubt it.

C-A

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I would like both Ouendan games localized.

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Talking of unlocalized games, I'm involved with fan translations for 428 (various platforms), Chaos;Head (iOS/Android), and Steins;Gate (iOS/Android). My job involves re-writing the translated text into coherent and fluent sounding English. It's referred to as localizer or translation check.

Anyways, you can check out our work for Steins;Gate on this blog here:
http://tldr.aloneunix.ru/

Awesome, a fan translation for 428!
I haven't played it, but I've heard a lot of good things about it.

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Expect to wait at least a year before we release anything. This game is over 50 hours long, has over 80 endings, and as MILLIONS of kanji. It's no stretch to say that this is probably one of, if not the, most ambitious fan translation ever done. But if the fans can do Policenauts and Mother 3, we can do 428.

Today, the tech guys were finally able to crack the script files which took months of trying. We're on our way and even have two translators. It'll take awhile, but it will happen eventually.

428 is truly a great game. A compelling story with multiple characters. Modern Japanese culture. The urban cityscape of Shibuya. The brilliant photography and cinematography of the game's live action graphics. The gorgeous and ambient music by well-known Japanese composers. It truly is a masterful experience. Just look at the opening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NLEW76ohSU

428 also has a prequel called Machi that shares the same setting, but is completely different with its characters and stories. We wanted to translate that one first, but the scripts were really tough. So we've focused our efforts on 428. If we can get that miracle done, then we'll consider Machi.

Megaman battle network operation star force.

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Good luck with the project! I loved 428!



Kanji isn't really a good way to count 'difficulty'/'length in Japanese text if you can actually read Japanese in a normal speed (let's say like a native). 99% of the time, kanji in text will make things easier to read actually, because the brain has less to process (there are cool eye-following linguistic researches that show that 'normal' Japanese readers read faster because their eyes just jump from kanji to kanji, with the kana being read more as confirmation).

That said though, 428 is a long game! I think I had 42 hours on my save when I reached the good ending, plus around half of the bad endings.



I wouldn't call Machi a prequel; yes, it shares the Shibuya setting, the game system and little references (the cop in the Oosawa Kenji scenario for example is related to the hairdresser in Masashi's scenario in Machi because they're the same actor), but they are not really related. The same holds for Time Travelers by the way, which has a lot of references to 428 and also set around Shibuya. It's something like Demon's Souls and Dark Souls; more in the terms of spiritual successors.

I liked Machi better than 428 though! Don't get me wrong, 428 is an excellent game, but the I think that Machi's 'everyone-has-their-own-lives-but-still-has-some-influence-on-other-people' take better suited for the game system than 428's 'in-the-end-everyone-has-to-work-together-to-stop-XXX' idea. I will admit that Machi's slice of life theme might not be attractive to everyone though (I need to lose weight! I want to write literature!), while 428 (deliberately) has a more action-filmish vibe to it.

Oh, and shameless plugging, but because I think there are few English Machi and 428 reviews out there anyway, my reviews of Machi and 428.

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Thanks for the info! There's so very little out there on these games in English, every little thing helps. You're reviews are actually the only ones I've ever read about these games.

Damn shame we never got these masterpieces. Still, Chunsoft did localize Kamaitachi no Yoru on iOS as Banshee's Last Cry. As much as the script is Americanized, the fact that we even have it in English is amazing. Hope that they consider 428, but we'll be working diligently on our patch.

How difficult would you say the Japanese is in these games? I'm learning Japanese, but have only memorized up to hiragana. I'm guessing that since they have complex plots, the prose is hard to follow?

The plots may be complex, but the prose is not that difficult (compared to 'real' books) and the more difficult words are usually explained in TIPS. Of course, you'd still need to be fairly fluent in Japanese (be able to read 'normal' texts like books and manga w/o constant dictionary checking) to be able to go through the games at a normal speed.

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