V-Sync issues?
Not sure, the FAQ in Dakkodango’s walkthrough mentions it like this:
Little My Maid came out years after all those titles. And I think I phrased that poorly; I didn’t mean that Snow Drop came out first, then XChange 1, etc. I meant that those four are the first four games PP released.
And newer copies of Snow Drop may indeed not have the ESRB rating on them. The game’s been in print for a long time. But check the ESRB’s site. (Apparently I can’t link to the actual search results I ran, cause the ESRB’s site is kinda lame). Just click the link and search for any game with an AO rating. I compiled that list directly from the ESRB’s site. So I’m pretty confident that Snow Drop is rated AO by the ESRB.
Edit: And I just checked my copy of the game. Snow Drop is the only one I still have the box for (I got rid of most of the rest of the packaging for my earlier games a while back) but it clearly has the ESRB AO logo on it.
Well I’ve had my copy of snow drop since 2005 and it didn’t have any ESRB ratings on it and yet tokimeki check in was released around 3 months after and which I got much later and that still had the ESRB rating on the discs.
What about Critical Point? It has an ESRB rating.
I think you might not be aware of how old the games actually are. I’ve had my copy of Snow Drop since 2001. Tokimeki Checkin was released in late 2001 or early 2002, I can’t remember which anymore.
I’m not stupid and I know that they were released 3 months apart in 2001 and I was only pointing out that by 2005 there was no ESRB rating on either the package or disc of snow drop whilst the tokimeki check-in discs still had the ESRB rating on them in LATE 2006 (and I had to go through a lot of invoices to find out when I actually got it).
@Lancer-X: if you got that from gamefaqs you should take it with a pinch of salt since they have princess waltz listed with the ESRB AO rating even though it was never rated by the ESRB.
Uh, I got it from the ESRB?
Demonix, with all due respect, the ESRB has given a total of 24 titles across all consoles the AO rating, and Princess Waltz isn’t one of them. Sorted alphabetically from ESRB.org > Search by Rating > AO (Adults Only):
All Nude Cyber
All Nude Glamour
All Nude Nikki
Body Language
Critical Point
Crystal Fantasy
Cyber Photographer
Fahrenheit -Indigo Prophecy Director’s Cut-
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude
Lula 3D
Manhunt 2
Peak Entertainment Casinos
Playboy: The Mansion
Playboy Screensaver: The Women of Playboy
Riana Rouge
Singles
Snow Drop
The Joy of Sex
Thrill Kill
Tokimeki Check-In!
Water Closet: The Forbidden Chamber
WET - The Sexy Empire
Xchange
Wherever you got that rating, it wasn’t the ESRB. As far as the ESRB is concerned, Princess Waltz is unrated (though, we all know it would have gotten an AO anyway). I won’t claim to know where you got that information, but it’s more likely than not someone along the grapevine passed off speculation as fact. You should know as well as I do what’s wrong with not verifying the accuracy of what you hear (see Fox News’ Mass Effect SE"X-BOX" fiasco)…
<Edited to address the intended recipient. Sorry, Lancer-X!>
Uhm, with all due respect, I don’t think Lancer-X ever mentioned Princess Waltz. Your post does prove that he’s right about Critical Point having an ESRB rating though. 
In my original post where I listed TCI, Snow Drop, XC1, and Critical Point as all being rated AO, I went and looked at that exact same list. I even tried to link to it, but unfortunately their web developers suck and you can’t link to search results directly, just to the search page.
Especially ironic given that you’re ranting at entirely the wrong person, as a quick check of post attributions would confirm. I actually own the English translation of Princess Waltz- it’s the only English-language eroge I have. I know it doesn’t have an ESRB rating.
Let’s keep this on the topic of Aselia, please. ^^ For the record, the five games mentioned above produced by Peach Princess (Xchange, Water Closet, Tokimeki Check-In, Snow Drop, and Critical Point) are the only ones put out by us in the past that were submitted to the ESRB for rating. Princess Waltz not among them, as also correctly noted.
Sorry, sorry. That was entirely my mistake. I meant to direct that comment at demonix, not you, Lancer-X, and got a couple of wires crossed when I was retrieving the poster’s name. That’ll teach me not to try and defend someone else’s point while I’m half-asleep. Especially if I end up opening fire on the one I intended to support. :oops:
Well, at least I gave a first-hand example of the point in my last paragraph, if at the cost of making an ass of myself…
Back on topic: Shingo, would it be possible to create an add-on patch for those who insist on putting the “original” adult content back in the game? I doubt I’d use it, but the sheer number of people complaining on the various VN community news sites about the “censorship” makes me wonder if such a thing would placate them… I’d ordinarily suggest releasing both an all-age and an adult version, but I’m sure this solution wouldn’t be worth the extra expense. Your thoughts?
The only problem with an ero patch is that the version we’re getting isn’t a case of the ero scenes simply being removed, they’ve been written out of the story so adding them back in would cause an inconsistency in the story.
JAST has made it clear that this was a decision made due to content concerns.
It’s “censorship” under the label of “we chose a different version”. Creating a patch would subject them to the same (perceived) legal hazards that releasing the 18+ version would have. Not only that, but the “necessary” edits would inflame the fanbase even more. An 18+ version isn’t happening. A patch isn’t either.
It’s not quite censorship to choose not to release something they don’t want to release, unless avoiding Studio Ring games is also censorship…
Anyway, there were a few recent obscenity casses that make it not a particularly safe time to publish something with loli-tenticle-rape, even if they are able to defend it, it will cost them a lot of money. It’s unlikely to be noticed, but it still probably isn’t worth the risk until things cool down abit.
It is censorship. They might have released the adult version, but for the concerns over the (alleged) inappropriate nature of the content. That is pretty muchthe definition of censorship.
And yes, I would say that avoiding Studio Ring games is also censorship, in its own way.
I can’t agree that choosing the all-ages version of Aselia over its adult incarnation in this case would constitute censorship any more than I could claim that the final release of Clerks was a censored version of the original cut (those of you who have seen both versions know exactly what I mean). I’m fiercely opposed to censorship in pretty much all its forms, but I have no issues whatsoever with JAST’s current plans for Aselia (as opposed to, say, Family Project or Xchange 3, or MangaGamer’s original plans for Soul Link).
Dark_Shiki, you do have a point about how an adult Aselia patch would be received; the mass media loves creating controversy, no matter how well-warranted it may be. The reason I bring it up is because fan-created patches are becoming increasingly more commonplace for censored VN releases (see Family Project, Xchange 3, Animamundi, pretty much every iteration of Higurashi, etc…) and I’d much rather see an official patch along the lines of what was released for Kango Shicyauzo and Kana than a still-partially-censored fanmade one.
I’d be surprised that a fanmade patch doesn’t already exist to convert the PS2 backport into the Special Edition if I didn’t have at least a vague idea how much additional translation work would be required. Dakkongo released its own adult graphics patch for scenes present in both the all-age and adult versions; I imagine it’d only be a matter of time before someone decided to build off of it…
…I’m beginning to worry about what will happen when 0verflow starts publishing its titles in English…
Well, from a hacking standpoint Eien no Aselia isn’t that big a deal. The modifications performed on Kono Daichi(ry for the English patch can with a little effort be replicated over despite the use of a different compiler between the two builds. The already-edited graphics suffice for nearly all of the game except the title screen stuff, which doesn’t matter because it’s all readable English in Special Edition (I’ve seen the title screen and it’s just a slight modification over the original game’s). As such, replacing the graphics is no big deal at all.
Textwise, as you can probably figure, there’s basically two parts to the game that require translation- the game text and the battle cries. The battle cries are slightly changed between Kono Daichi(ry and Special Edition, but not to any great extent and the data can just be copied over without drawbacks. The game text is another issue: while by and large the same script files use the same numbers for all versions of Eien no Aselia released, some things do get moved around and some of the scripts are just sliightly restructured enough to make it a complete pain to just move the translated text over without careful thought. Even after that, there’s still >10000 lines of text to translate to get Kono Daichi(ry up to Special Edition. That’s a significant amount of translation work, largely due to the fact that Kono Daichi(ry doesn’t simply ‘fade to black’ in the H scenes; it restructures the story to avoid them. As such there’s quite a bit of work to do even beyond translating ~500kb of eroscene text. Quite frankly, I don’t see anyone signing up for translating that amount of text just so people can see a version of the game with some H scenes when they could be translating A Profile or eden* (roughly the same length as those H scenes) instead!
In summary: Tech-wise there’s no reason why not, but who’s going to bother? Considering the wealth of more worthwhile projects that could be taken on, I just can’t see anyone wanting to do it.