General News IV: A New Hope?

[Shii]

People on the Internet seem to be up in arms about the word "ban" used to describe a practical ban as opposed to outright censorship. It's silly that an argument over English verbiage, which has nothing to do with Japanese law, is getting in the way of the practical reality being described here.

[drmchsr0]

Originally Posted by Shii

People on the Internet seem to be up in arms about the word "ban" used to describe a practical ban as opposed to outright censorship. It's silly that an argument over English verbiage, which has nothing to do with Japanese law, is getting in the way of the practical reality being described here.

Ahem, I'll repeat myself. AGAIN.

Originally Posted by drmchsr0

Ahem.

It's not a fucking ban.

It's a bill allowing the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly to decide what is acceptable for viewing or not.

It has not been signed into motherfucking Tokyo state law YET. (It's NOT a federal law, it's a STATE LAW.)

The bill has been approved for voting by the state assembly, which assembles on Wednesday to determine if it's gonna be law or not.

It is NOT a fucking ban, though it's probably worse than a ban.

Besides, it won't affect eroge, which is probably way out of the reach of most people. If they didn't already plaster 18+ stickers on the boxes already warning people that it's adult material.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...d-by-committee

(It is a sad day when ANN is more reliable than it's... ... ... competitors. Sankaku Complex is a tabloid and to consider it a news source is not just lazy, but dangerous.)

Part the second.

http://dankanemitsu.wordpress.com/

I'll just leave this here for people to read when you fuckers decide to stop reading the otaku version of News Corp's THE SUN.

[Ae772]

How about you get off your fucking high horse and read what Shii is actually trying to say?

But on the other hand, thanks for proving his point.

[swiftnissity]

Mashou no Nie is still going to be released by MG

[Pirkaf]

Originally Posted by swiftnissity

Mashou no Nie is still going to be released by MG

So it's coming after all. Nice Christmas news.. :-D

[fujifruit]

"So yeahhh about that Christmas release, not exactly happening, sorry if you were waiting for the fruits of my labors or whatever. Kinda been absorbed in Oretsuba recently, will probably start working on this again when I finish that."
Kaigen Seito.

[appztetra]

Da Capo 2 has been released by MG.

[Minimoto]

Merry Christmas to that~

[Belgaesh]

The patch of G-Senjou no maou has been released as of today.

Get it here: http://tlwiki.tsukuru.info/index.php...Senjou_no_Maou

All thanks to the hardwork of the translation team, thank them.

Merry Christmas!

[Minimoto]

G-Senjou no Maou?! Holy hell this is a beautifully eventful Christmas!

[NTX]

Beautiful! Merry Christmas :D

[appztetra]

Happy Christmas to all!

Glad to hear there's now a complete translation patch for Devil on G-String.

And for those who are interested, it sounds like Tokimemo Girls Side 2nd for DS is in "final beta testing." See this blog entry: http://gokusaishiki.wordpress.com/20...rry-christmas/

[Stranger]

[RANT]
A rant that is unworthy of its own thread, ignore it and move on, or read it at the risk of losing braincells.

Both JAST and MG can't release VNs on the console because Sony/MS won't accept them and because retailers might never stock them. But is that really the only way to get an English version of a Japanese Console game?

Let me put it this way, the game that we are looking forward to, but would never be released in the west, have in actually fact been released in Japan (duh!). The reason we are unable to get it is because of the language. The release in the west won't happen because the console guys won't allow it, and even if they did, the risk is too high for developer (translator/licensee) to take. And with PC VN selling less then 5000 copies, who could blame them.

A walk around for this problem lie in the fact that console game have been released in Japan and therefore we can import it. The language problem can be solved by releasing the English patch as paid-for DLC on PSN and XBL. This way the localization developer will not need to release the game itself in the west, and since the Japanese developer will be the one to release the DLC, they can just make it available worldwide.

"But what about the games that don't support DLC?" I hear you ask, and the answer is simple, release a game patch that adds support for DLCs.

"Ok, this might work for the PS3 and PSP, but what about the regional locked Xbox games? a mere patch is not enough" humm, nice question! And you are right, a mere patch is not enough to convert a regional locked game to regional free game, after all you need to run the game in order to apply the patch and the game won't run because of the regional lock! The Japanese developer might be able to walk around this problem by giving us a demo, which is basically the game engine with the English patch, then let the demo read the game files from the imported disk. But keep in mind that this is just a theory, I am not a Xbox developer, so I don't know if it is at all possible to make a demo that can read the "disk" data. And there is the other option, let the developer release a new copy of the disk that is regional free. The developers already do re-release some titles with a lower price tag, they can remove the regional lock on those re-releases.

"Wouldn't the console guys cry foul over the lack of ESRB rating?", errr... why should they? the games were never released in the west, and the translation DLC is just text, so where is the problem? For that matter, even the Japanese developer doesn't need to worry about the ESRB. Whoever import the game already know if it is right for them or not.

[/RANT]

P.S. yes, I've been drinking too much coffee! so please do forgive my rant.

Happy new year everyone.

Often by the time that fan translators create English patches for console games, the original game is out of print, and the console itself is dying or dead.

I checked the VNDB to remind myself what visual novels have been published on systems that can support DLC -- the 360, PS3, and PSP. All three consoles have a lot of Windows ports, though Dream C Club is an exception. There's a bunch of PSP titles which were ported from other consoles -- in the first page of the VNDB list, I saw 428: Fuusa Sareta Shibuya de (originally Wii), Arcobaleno! (originally PS2), Double Cast (originally PS1), Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi (originally Super Famicom), For Symphony ~with all one's heart~ (originally Dreamcast), and more.

That said, I don't expect Sony or Microsoft to legitimize fan translations of niche content. But if you know of a current console game which you believe merits a fan translation, then you may wish to talk with the company publishing the game. Some small publishers may be interested.

That said, there's a news story from Mangagamer about how their translation projects are progressing at http://mangagamer.wordpress.com/2010...lidays-passing