has anyone heard if any of the pinky soft games will be translated into english or if ill just have to learn japanese to play them ?
Since I hadn’t heard of Pinky Soft before, I looked it up on Google, and Himeya had listings for four games from that company. The packages looked kinda dated, reminding me vaguely of old Jast games. It’s your call.
Licensing is something I only vaguely understand. It seems most of Peach Princess’ games have been from the Will and Crowd labels, though I could be forgetting some. Most of G-Collections’ games are from the companies on the CD-Bros list. The Hirameki games seem to be from K-Industry, Princess Soft, and Frontwing.
Tangent: I have been thinking about ways to get bishoujo fandom out of obscurity. I’m wondering what it would take to get some games like Clannad or Pia Carrot or To Heart into good translation. Is this corner of bishoujo fandom much too small, and how might it grow? Are legitimate DVDs an answer? (Maybe, as long as they have better distribution than Hirameki.) Reasonably priced downloads? Internet play? I’m wondering what I could do someday to help…
Yes, when I was your age, all I had was Noctural Illusions… and I liked it! (It wasn’t as awful as I expected.)
Thanks, have fun.
-gekiganwing: fandork, encourager.
“Huzzah!”
quote:
Originally posted by gekiganwing:
Licensing is something I only vaguely understand. It seems most of Peach Princess' games have been from the Will and Crowd labels, though I could be forgetting some. Most of G-Collections' games are from the companies on the CD-Bros list. The Hirameki games seem to be from K-Industry, Princess Soft, and Frontwing.Tangent: I have been thinking about ways to get bishoujo fandom out of obscurity. I'm wondering what it would take to get some games like Clannad or Pia Carrot or To Heart into good translation. Is this corner of bishoujo fandom much too small, and how might it grow? Are legitimate DVDs an answer? (Maybe, as long as they have better distribution than Hirameki.) Reasonably priced downloads? Internet play? I'm wondering what I could do someday to help...
Yes, when I was your age, all I had was Noctural Illusions... and I liked it! (It wasn't as awful as I expected.)
Thanks, have fun.
-gekiganwing: fandork, encourager."Huzzah!"
Nocturnal Illusions was a good game with even better untapped potential. The game could have very much benefited from some nonlinearity, and extended storylines for each of the characters. But that's beside the main point.
ALL of Peach Princess' games, in fact, have come from Crowd and Will. I can't speak to the other companies listed. But I do know this much: in the dark ages, about three years ago when Peach Princess was first opening up, they admitted no one else but Crowd or Will would agree to license titles to Peach Princess.
As for the games you are mentioning ... it would take a minor miracle. What I am about to say is hearsay and some parts are pulled out of my ass, but I believe it on the whole to be more or less accurate.
The market is teeny. Beyond teeny. The US market for b-games right now is very small compared to Japan. Games in Japan sell thousands of copies; games here sell hundreds. In addition to this, games routinely go for like $90. The math isn't encouraging.
In fact there have been a number of high profile failures. The Princess Maker series, for instance, that never even saw a release of the one negotiated-for title; the Dragon Knight series that DID see a release (Knights of Xentar) but did astronomically poorly and folded the US company.
As a result, the Japanese companies are leery of getting involved with this market. This is probably an understatement. Exacerbating this problem is the cutthroat nature of the Japanese market, combined with the fact that these games cannot be localized without the involvement of the Japanese game makers. The Japanese market is so competetive that delaying a release can sink a company, as the companies generally tend to work only a few games at a time. Reallocating finite resources to a US release that will fetch a much lower return is not a good short term move, it's a good long term move - the US market IS expanding.
All these things combine to make US releases a crap shoot for Japanese companies. In particular big name releases are, well, better games - and therefore more complex and harder to localize; also costing more to license. We won't see any of those for a good while.
quote:
Originally posted by Nandemonai:
Nocturnal Illusions was a good game with even better untapped potential. The game could have very much benefited from some nonlinearity, and extended storylines for each of the characters. But that's beside the main point.ALL of Peach Princess' games, in fact, have come from Crowd and Will. I can't speak to the other companies listed. But I do know this much: in the dark ages, about three years ago when Peach Princess was first opening up, they admitted no one else but Crowd or Will would agree to license titles to Peach Princess.
As for the games you are mentioning ... it would take a minor miracle. What I am about to say is hearsay and some parts are pulled out of my ass, but I believe it on the whole to be more or less accurate.
The market is teeny. Beyond teeny. The US market for b-games right now is very small compared to Japan. Games in Japan sell thousands of copies; games here sell hundreds. In addition to this, games routinely go for like $90. The math isn't encouraging.
In fact there have been a number of high profile failures. The Princess Maker series, for instance, that never even saw a release of the one negotiated-for title; the Dragon Knight series that DID see a release (Knights of Xentar) but did astronomically poorly and folded the US company.
As a result, the Japanese companies are leery of getting involved with this market. This is probably an understatement. Exacerbating this problem is the cutthroat nature of the Japanese market, combined with the fact that these games cannot be localized without the involvement of the Japanese game makers. The Japanese market is so competetive that delaying a release can sink a company, as the companies generally tend to work only a few games at a time. Reallocating finite resources to a US release that will fetch a much lower return is not a good short term move, it's a good long term move - the US market IS expanding.
All these things combine to make US releases a crap shoot for Japanese companies. In particular big name releases are, well, better games - and therefore more complex and harder to localize; also costing more to license. We won't see any of those for a good while.
What He Said. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
When I’ll make a lot of money when I have a business, I’ll promote bishoujo games. Definitely.
quote:
Originally posted by Nandemonai:
All these things combine to make US releases a crap shoot for Japanese companies. In particular big name releases are, well, better games - and therefore more complex and harder to localize; also costing more to license. We won't see any of those for a good while.
This is a shame as IMHO bishoujo games would get a boost by big name releases. Especially big game releases which have cross appeal with h-anime (or even non h anime depending on who the game is aimed at). Bible Black is the perfect example of a game, that despite being a few years old, could probably do good buisness on the back of the animes popularity. None of the games currently released have direct cross appeal (ok that's not quite true, they have cross appeal in that the art styles are similar, but nothing that will increase sales based on a specific animes popularity). Gibo will be the first game translated which also has the anime released in the US (unless I'm very much mistaken), but I'm not sure how popular that anime is. Piggybacking specific anime's popularity could really raise the profile of B-games, but it doesn't seem like it's gonna happen sadly.
quote:
Originally posted by dco_chris:
This is a shame as IMHO bishoujo games would get a boost by big name releases. Especially big game releases which have cross appeal with h-anime (or even non h anime depending on who the game is aimed at). Bible Black is the perfect example of a game, that despite being a few years old, could probably do good buisness on the back of the animes popularity. None of the games currently released have direct cross appeal (ok that's not quite true, they have cross appeal in that the art styles are similar, but nothing that will increase sales based on a specific animes popularity). Gibo will be the first game translated which also has the anime released in the US (unless I'm very much mistaken), but I'm not sure how popular that anime is. Piggybacking specific anime's popularity could really raise the profile of B-games, but it doesn't seem like it's gonna happen sadly.
Others have brought up this point before. All I have to say is that this isn't really true yet, but it will be in the future. Look at how long it took anime to go mainstream, and it's still about as small as you can be and still be called mainstream.
The problems with this idea are kind of counterintuitive. First, there are licensing fees to consider. Games like Kanon have sold very large numbers of copies in Japan; I don't know any sales figures but it's either hundreds of thousands, or millions. If one of these titles came over, it would probably do much better than other b-games. But it would still not compare in the slightest to the Japanese sales. There are b-games that have shows connected to them. But none of the shows have seen domestic release yet. So name recognition would not be as big as you're probably hoping.
...what I'm trying to say goes like this. Releasing a big name title would be expensive and a lot of work; and it would not generate a large enough return. Any US distributor of b-games would have to take hits from other product lines to put out big name games - and this would make the big name titles a liability, not an asset.
The other problem is that it would send a message to the Japanese companies - a negative one. Those with big name properties would be much less inclined to license them in the future. So a failed big name release would actually depress the market in the future - this is exactly what happened with the Knights of Xentar fiasco.
The comparisons to anime really are disturbingly apt. Anime started off very small. There were very few legitimate releases and only a handful of those were high-quality titles, like Akira. In the old days there were a lot of titles licensed because they were cheap. Many of them sucked. Look up Baoh or Harmageddon for good examples of this. These titles were licensed because they were what could be obtained. Steadily, more and more people became interested in anime - until the companies could afford to take risks on better titles. Now it's to the point where there is enough demand that pretty much anything new that's halfway decent will make it over.
...I guess basically, what I'm trying to say is that demand breeds more demand. There may be - no, there are - a whole lot of people who would enjoy playing games like Air and To Heart. But if the game were to be released now, many of those people would not know the game even existed.
When I was still a high school student, I was talking to a friend of mine about anime - and someone who happened to be walking by started making fun of us for watching porn. Six years later, not many people would make that mistake.
The market will have to build for a while before we will see the big titles - but we will see them. We may not ever see any recent titles but the VERY big ones, because by the time the market is big enough anything that's recent right now may well be archaic and outdated - but the market will eventually be big enough. Assuming it doesn't get killed by trying to expand too quickly.
In the meantime, we don't really have much choice - if you want to play them, learn Japanese.
quote:
Originally posted by Nandemonai:
In the meantime, we don't really have much choice - if you want to play them, learn Japanese.
Random bit of prognostication: fan translations of Japanese ADV/SIM games into English are an area that is likely going to see growth in the coming years. I wouldn't be surprised if anime digisub groups, crosspollinating with people who have the appropriate programming knowhow, branch out in this direction in the future.
The recent collaboration that produced a mini-translation of Wind: A Breath of Heartand included several members of The Triad or Haeleth's Kanon project might be the shape of things to come in terms of getting domestically unavailable games into the hands of interested consumers: they get the game translated into English and the Japanese creator gets an effortless sale in the English-speaking market.
[This message has been edited by Matthew (edited 04-13-2004).]
quote:
Originally posted by Matthew:
they get the game translated into English and the Japanese creator gets an effortless sale in the English-speaking market.
Hmmm... while there's undoubtedly people who will buy the games and benefit from the translations, piracy will still be prevalent. There's loads of people who pirate the English games, and those cost about 50% less than the Japanese games, and that's before shipping costs.
[This message has been edited by AG3 (edited 04-13-2004).]
quote:
Originally posted by Nandemonai:
There are b-games that have shows connected to them. But none of the shows have seen domestic release yet. So name recognition would not be as big as you're probably hoping.
Actually, there are several H-anime that have been released in the US that are based on games, like Kao no Nai Tsuki, Pia Carrot, Words Worth, Bible Black and others. But as far as Bishoujo games that have been made into mainstream anime, we do have Comic Party! And the To Heart manga is being translated into English. If we support these things, it may look good for getting the actual game translated into English. What do you guys think? Should we buy Right Stuf's Comic Party in hopes that someone will start translating Leaf's games?
You should buy Comic Party because it’s a great anime series. Especially if your into manga, and have a little knowlege of dojinshi and cosplay
quote:
Originally posted by bishounen_blue:
Actually, there are several H-anime that have been released in the US that are based on games, like Kao no Nai Tsuki, Pia Carrot, Words Worth, Bible Black and others. But as far as Bishoujo games that have been made into mainstream anime, we do have Comic Party! And the To Heart manga is being translated into English. If we support these things, it may look good for getting the actual game translated into English. What do you guys think? Should we buy Right Stuf's Comic Party in hopes that someone will start translating Leaf's games?
I had forgotten that Comic Party was starting to be released.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more interest seems to be slowly building in getting the more big-name titles...