In most other betas, the developers give some people in the public a beta version to test, and those testers point out all the mistakes and the developers fix them. Sometimes the testers get a free copy out of it.
For this, they give out a beta of the game to some people and they point out all the typos and other mistakes and MG fixes them. They could get a free copy out of it or whatever.
I don’t see a difference.
Well, to add more to this topic, I’ve done some looking and found that the company who released Hinatabokku, Tarte, has some other games in their lineup that look and sound interesting enough. I’ll provide some getchu links plus brief explanations on the plot from Himeya:
Katahane (this one looks and sounds to be the most interesting)
http://getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=220453
Plot: This game has two stories, “Shirohane” and “Kurohane”.
-The Story of Kurohane-
Coco wakes up in a comfy bed… but he doesn’t know where he is. He goes outside and finds that he is in a castle. Coco waits for someone to come in an aisle. After a while, Christina and Efa come to him. Since then, Coco talks to various people in the castle, and finds out that he is a doll and is going to stage a play with Christina and Efa. They start to practice and rehearse the play, but nobody knows there is a secret conspiracy…
Moemama
http://getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=238645
Plot: Masaya is a uni student living alone. His father was always away on business travel so his mother left her family. Therefore, he is longing for the fireside. On the other hand, his old friend, Ami, is good looking, good at sports and smart. He is living a good life with his friends and Ami. One day, when he comes back home, there is a small girl waiting for him. He doesn’t know who she is but actually she is…
School Panic
http://getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=194661
The president of the school council has suddenly resumed their former school rules, which were very strict, and many students were expelled as a result. There is only one way to change the situation…
And here’s a few more I found but don’t know much about them:
http://getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=24525
http://getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=18384
http://getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=14903
http://getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=8767
On a side note it seems Hinatabokku has a fan disk.
http://getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=129201
Anyway, I’m basically asking if anyone here has played or heard of any of these games and whether or not they may be something to look forward to if MangaGamer should succeeed.
Anyway, to Narg-san, since you’re familiar with Liquid’s titles, is there anything not currently in the lineup that you would reccomend? For example, how is the Ryoujoku Guerilla series, also there seems to be a sequel to The Queen and Princess As Your Rewards, have you played that one?
I know just enough about Katahane to want. (One of the two stories has girl/girl going on, iirc. And they’re pretty. I’m easy. I’ve had that package picture as my wallpaper for ages.) That’s probably the only thing MG can throw at me to tempt me at the moment.
of your other stuff listed
http://getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=24525 - Negai no Mahou - http://www011.upp.so-net.ne.jp/maniac/g … omahou.htm seems to say it’s a generally mediocre school love game
Now you guys might have a reason to support MG - even with the trashy typos and downloading issues - because they surely won’t import more titles to the West if they go outta business. Which goes back to what OLF was pointing out: you gotta make a sacrifice, to get more of what you want.
Depends on your tastes really. The stories in Liquid titles are “passable” - they at least TRY to make a story, and it really helps boost things, but they aren’t the most imaginative. So you’re going after the particular fetish of that title. They’re really the same thing when you get down to it (dark sex and rape), so its the kind of girls you’re after. For me, its obviously the twincest titles. But that’s my FETISH speaking. Plotwise, they aren’t all that great… you just happen to be a criminal asshole with some sort of “gift” or “power” that lets you get away with violating people:
http://www.tactics.ne.jp/~liquid/saimin/index.htm
http://www.tactics.ne.jp/~liquid/seido/index.htm
However if you’re wishing for the continued success of MG, it really isn’t more Liquid that you should be hoping for, but the BaseSon (same parent company) tactical-RPG masterpiece, Koihime:
http://www.tactics.ne.jp/~baseson/koihime/index.htm
It’s a REALLY professionally polished eroge. You ever heard of The Romance of Three Kingdoms (one of the greatest Chinese stories ever told; with multiple games based on it)? Well imagine if EVERYONE (except the player of course) was a woman. There ya go. Now add TONS of sex scenes - all the kinds you can think of (twincest, incest, neko mimi, girl on girl, virgins, glasses, etc). Great character designs. A console game quality FFT style tactical engine. There’s a reason why its so loved in Japan.
My only problem with MG doing it: Koihime is VERY story intense, because of the Romance of 3 Kingdoms thing. MG level typos would RUIN the experience. But on the same token: MG is currently your best shot of ever seeing it in the West. People can boycott 'em - but they should be aware of what they’re giving up as well. Double-edged sword and all that. MG really is sitting on a gold mine.
Tarte’s mother company, Deal, went bankrupt in 2007, though. I asked about if NEXTON got all of their game catalogue, but I didn’t get a straight answer.
Tarte released the demos for Katahane in an interesting way, at the rate of one episode every other week, from 2006.03.31 to 2006.08.04. For people further interested, I wrote an introductory post here and asked a friend for a deeper review here and here.
I would imagine he’d be shifty on the issue if they were planning something. Gaining another group’s catalog could be a good market strategy if they decided to make a collection, renewal or remake. Depends what they did with it though…
I forget nothing. Eighteen months ago it was time to walk out of the Sahara, when I decided to shell out for Japanese classes. In six weeks, my third semester begins. So I care about MangaGamer only insofar as they could get me something worth buying. But a visual novel’s primary appeal is the writing and the story; otherwise why would I be bothering to learn Japanese? It’s not like anyone ever said “After much struggling and years of study, finally, I can read Playboy for the articles!”
A poor translation can kill a game. I think this, in large part, is what is wrong with Come See Me Tonight 2; the translation is very poor, the scenario itself subpar but the low quality of the translated English certainly does not assist, and in several places, outright killed what was supposed to be a joke. If all I want is H I will go watch my H-DVDs. I’m playing a game because I want to enjoy the story, which poor translations are quite likely to butcher simply with poor writing.
So a poorly-translated game is in some sense worse than useless to me. At this time.
Sure I can. They need me; I don’t need them, I want them badly. But even so, that’s not what I’m doing. I am not unwilling to compromise. Already I buy titles I find only marginally interesting, simply because the market needs my support. But accepting something I do not want only encourages things I want to discourage, and their DRM scheme makes their products worth LESS money, yet they want MORE for shoddy products.
I think by and large I’ve stopped “whining” about it. I won’t deny I have in the past 
but lately it’s come up when it’s come up in conversastion or when a newbie asks about it.
No, it means they are doomed if they continue on their present course, and what I do does not matter one iota. They are not approaching this as if it were a developing market. But it is, and they are demonstrably worse than other companies that have already failed. The price especially I see being fatal. They need to grow the total market size, enlarge the market base, and in order to do this they have to convince people who are not already fans to buy in, and I see the price all but eliminating this.
Already being done. See above
Has anyone thought about writing to them? I wrote to them last night. Here is what I wrote.
They responded back asking for a list of visual novel forums so that they could find more feedback from fans, and thanked me for their support.
I do not know if this will help them or will get them to improve their translation. But I think that if every person wrote to them they will slowly get the picture and improve their translation and remove typos from the game. Its better than just talking about it here. One person at at time. 
Well, if dark ero quality wise, Liquid’s titles are about as good as Virgin Roster, which on your old site you said was good but nothing special, then I’ll give those a try. Virgin Roster had story potential with it’s characters, but never went anywhere with it, but if these games actually try going somewhere with it, that’s good enough for me. I’m sure we’d get a warning from you if any of them were truly god awful.
Anyway, I took a look at this Koihime game and it does look good. Kind of looks like the Rance games (not that I’m very familiar with those either). I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this gets licensed.
On a side note with MG, I’ll support them until Da Capo and Suika come out. Those will basically determine whether I’ll continue the support or not. Considering that these games are well known and wanted by fans, then it’s only common sense that they’ll pay extra attention to detail andproofread these games like mad before releasing. However, if they prove to not be capable of common sense :evil: , then they will lose my support (after I calm down from cursing at them Angry Video Game Nerd style).
Talk about a wierd coincidence, Narg-san, not too long after you tell me about this game I find an anime series is being made out of it.
I sent them an email yesterday and received two responses:
20 or some minutes later, I receive this follow-up
Odd way to reply an email…
Edit: In the end, it jumps between secure and non-secure pages. But the actual page where you enter your credit card info is non-secure. You could force it to use https but they should make it by default. Their loss…
I just started playing Edelweiss, and even disregarding all the grammar and spelling errors, the translation seems like a step backwards. Not only do they drop honorifics, they replace last names with first names (or even completely drop last names when they say both).
Examples (translated by me from voices):
Early on, Mizuki says:
“I’m Hinata. Hinata Mizuki.”
The game just says:
“I’m Mizuki.”
And then shortly after, she says:
“So what’s Haruma-kun like?”
The game says:
“So what’s Kazushi like?”
Ugh, I thought we were past all this kind of Americanization long ago. Even mainstream anime and manga don’t do some of this stuff (like switching names) anymore.
I’ll post more comments about the translations as I go along if anybody’s interested, since I can understand enough Japanese to tell what they changed in translation besides this stuff.
Guys, we really should give them our feedback.
Write mails to them with improvement ideas or things they urgently need to change.
They deserve a chance to learn from their mistakes and improve on them.
I’d hate to see a company close down that translates those games into english - we already get so few of them over here.
PP should be their role model, because from what I see the PP guys do everything right. 
That’s not “americanization”, that’s “translation”. There’s no honorifics in the English language, and I doubt any person speaking English uses them, therefore a correct English sentence doesn’t have them. It’s the same for the name switching part: you don’t address a person you’re close to by his last name but his first name, so a translation should takes this into account. A good English translation should produce a text that is correct English. “Americanization” is changing names so that you may think the story/scene takes place in the USA; it has nothing to do with the language itself. Changing “I live in Tokyo” to “I live in New York” is “americanization” because “I live in Tokyo” is a correct English sentence which meaning you change by replace “Tokyo” by “New York”. Changing “So what’s Haruma-kun like?” to “So what’s Kazushi like?” is not “americanization” because “So what’s Haruma-kun like?” is not a proper English sentence, nor does that change the meaning of the sentence.
Fanboys should learn English grammar and spelling instead of trying to learn broken Japanese, IMO. Catering to them (and, for instance, keeping the honorifics) may be a worthwhile commercial move, but it doesn’t produce a correct translation – just a fanboyish mutilation of the English language.
Let me guess - the classical “Romance of the three kingdoms” series that ends with the outcome of the battle at the red cliffs - and thus omits the really tragical part? (It’s not that I would actually expect the game to take the tragical turn either… aaaargh! I really should start playing it!!)
Changing the name is Americanizing it. The people in the game just met each other, so they call each other by their last names. The translation doesn’t take this into account. They just switched it. The lines I quoted are some of the first times they’ve ever referred to each other, so they have just met.
Even ignoring the honorifics for now, changing the sentence from “What’s Haruma like?” to “What’s Kazushi like?” IS changing the meaning of the sentence. You’re even ignorinig the point they often drop the last name completely from the lines, which has absolutely no basis in making a coherent English sentence.
As for honorifics, English DOES have them. I’m sure you’ve heard of Mr., Mrs., Miss, Sir, etc. They are used all the time in perfectly correct English. Therefore the sentence, “What’s Haruma-kun like?” is perfectly good English if you don’t keep your head in the sand and ignore that there are foreign cultures and honorifics though there.
And I don’t understand why people call others who want to keep the original culture intact fanboys. Have you ever looked at modern translations of any foreign language? Go to a book store and look at some foreign novels. Almost always, the translations will keep the culture of the original language intact. They will keep the original name usage. They will keep honorifics. They will often keep foreign words. More and more translation notes are being used recently because society can understand differences in culture. English is an ever-changing language and can easily accept foreign influences without being broken. In fact, much of English is based off foreign words.
Before anyone accuses me of being a Japanese fanboy again, note that I prefer any foreign work to retain its original culture. I watch foreign movies with its original voicetrack, no matter what the language. I enjoy the culture notes in books because I am able to understand that the book was written in a different country, which has a different culture that I can learn about. Watering down the translation to make it sound like it’s written in America only makes the story lose parts of its meanings and nuances. In a Japanese school system, the way they call each other is a very important aspect of their developing relationship. If it’s changed, we lose an important aspect of how they view each other.
Since when is “-kun” a “perfectly good English” honorific?
Last time I checked, they do not. Save in anime thingie, I’ve yet to see a translated Japanese novel keep “Tanaka-san” instead of translating it into “Mr. Tanaka”.
Doh! Then, read and play the game in Japanese? There’s a difference between adapting and translating, and turning a Japanese sentence into its appropriate English equivalent isn’t adapting, nor literally translating translating at all.
Only if your translator is bad. The feelings, politeness and relationship aspects in whatever language pretty much exist in any other language. It may have subtle differences but it’s exactly the role of a translator --with possibly the help of an editor-- to convey these subtleties. The goal is for the resulting translation to flow perfectly well in the target language while conveying the mood, feeling and meaning of the original text, without losing nor adding anything. The instant you keep elements of the original language that aren’t present in the target language (e.g. Japanese honorifics), you’re doing a bad translation.
I’m not sure what novels you’ve been reading, but I’ve only seen frequent use of honorifics in anime fansubs (and some commercial anime subtitles, as distributors have increasingly pandered to fan requests). Professional translators usually strip them out.
I like the usage of honorifics in animes and eroges… it helps to understand the feelings of one about the other. But i understand not everyone know about their significance. So i think it’s okay to drop it, or exchange by the usage of Mr., Ms., and so on. I believe the main problem in such games is some mistranslations that everyone can see, like call someone by his/her first name when we can listen to call then by his/her family name, or the worse case… listen to someone say “please call me (character’s name)-chan” translated as “please call me honey”. :lol:
indeed the only novel I have ( by Murakami ) translated had no honorifics. :? and Olf is right about the pandering to fanboys by commercial interest. in Reikon defense however english adopts foreign words all the time and while kun hasnt been adopted sensei( another honorific ) has entered the english vernacular . also someone who claims to be trilingual should know every language isnt basically the same and there are some things that just dont translate.