Umineko Download Version Released

An announcement from chronotrig of The Witch Hunt (from this post):

The Witch Hunt is pleased to announce that we have been working with representatives from Hobibox over the past few weeks, and together we've worked out a download version of Umineko and Umineko Chiru. That's the full Japanese games, not just the patches.

The Japanese versions of both EP4 and EP6 are now available for download purchase from Hobibox's website, and are compatible with the newest English patch installers. The entire download system has been translated by Witch Hunt members, so there's no need to navigate through Japanese pages. Future episodes will be added as soon as they are translated, and since there's no import fee or shipping, you can get the games at the original Japanese prices.

If you have any problems whatsoever, please let us know as soon as possible and we'll try and fix them.


Before I go any further, one disclaimer. Hobibox has decided to start this service for American audiences only. That means non-US IPs cannot access the download page at this time. If things go smoothly for the download version of the game, Hobibox plans to include more regions in the near future.

Partly because of this, the Witch Hunt would like to open up to the other translation groups that have been working on Umineko. We haven't been in close contact with most of these groups lately, so if you are part of one of these groups or know someone who is, let us know how things are going. Of course, we'll now link to the homepages of any group that asks.


Finally, many, many thanks to Mion, Message, and Roto, all of whom put in a huge amount of work on this project, leaving the rest of the team time to focus on the EP7 translation. The shifting about of our whole editor lineup has slowed us down a bit, but I think we're on fairly solid ground going forward. Without the time spent by those three, however, the download version would not have come together the way it did.

The Witch Hunt is also acting as an affiliate for these download purchases, so you can support us by using the link at the top of this message to buy either Episode.

Considering all the recent turmoil in the translation community, this much cooperation between a translation patch group & the original Japanese game creators is rather amazing. What do you guys think?

Uncle Mion

[fujifruit]

I suppose this would encourage me to play Umineko someday >_>

Lets see we have OverFlow, Nitro+, Minori, and 07th expansion
Who's next?

[ultama121]

Innocent Grey, hopefully.

Ryuukishi07 wrote the following e-mail to the folks at the Witch Hunt quite some time ago:

http://witch-hunt.com/letter.html

He was actually very pleased to see Umineko translated into English so that people outside of Japan could enjoy his work. So it's really not surprising the Witch Hunt and Hobibox were able to work out this kind of deal.

This along with the NNL/minori deal has been very encouraging.