Just walked past their AX booth. They had banners of Shuffle and Shin Koihime Musou.
Edit: During their panel, they confirmed Shuffle, but they did not mention Shin Koihime Musou. They also said they are planning to do Da Capo 2 someday.
Shuffle and Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni? I must say, I’m impressed. Whatever you think of the games themselves, I think localizing titles with name recognition (i.e., with popular anime adaptations) is a good marketing strategy. Release enough titles like that and you’ll start to draw the attention of the general anime community, particularly with non-H titles like Higurashi.
Once again… isn’t there an already nearly complete Shuffle! fan translation floating in unreachable cyberspace? I don’t know how much work has been done on the project, but if there is massive work already completed it would be ridiculous not to look into using it :o
It could save cost, and perhaps end up with an even better translation than if they start from scratch…
Professional localization doesn’t work like that. You can’t just take a volunteer’s work and claim it as your own, even if the other party is willing. It’s not considered professional, and I’m sure there’s a host of legal / liability issues involved. In addition, fan groups generally work without the permission of the original developer; as such, their work is essentially contraband. Again, it’s a professionalism issue. The only way I could possibly see something resembling a fan translation being incorporated into a professional release is if Mangagamer commissioned one or more of the fan translation staff to edit or proofread the script.
koihime musou and shuffle are the ones i have wanted for a while and isn’t koihime is different type of h-game like RPG or RTS type h-game
The original Koihime Musou seems to be an ADV with some minimal strategy elements, not enough to call it a strategy game or RPG. Shin Koihime Musou was a remake with a redesigned scenario and battle system; I can’t find any info in English that details if the battles play a larger role in the remake than the original. I suspect the game is like Princess Waltz in terms of gameplay: it has battles, but they’re more of a minigame than a core part of the game. The game looks interesting; it’s in the “best” category on getchu, and has a ranking of 81 on erogamescape. Getchu also calls it an AVG.
Getchu link: http://www.getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=570065
Links for the rest while I’m at it:
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: http://www.07th-expansion.net/hi_Main.htm
Shuffle!: http://www.getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=126901
I have to say, the anime really improved on the character designs for Higurashi.
@Dark_Shiki -
I’d like to see the lines blurred between professional and fanwork (more cooperation…) (if there is a general acceptance that the official ‘something’ is less professional than the unofficial, something is wrong…) … Of course permission is always a requisite to something official [common sense].
It’s too bad common sense isn’t always legal… 
But, back on topic; regardless of my doubts, I’m excited to hear these announcements 
still it has something different than the average h-game
There’s been attempts to integrate “common sense” into law. One such result is obscenity law. Mmm, yeah…no thanks.
here is a review of SKM
http://omochikaeri.wordpress.com/2008/1 … ime-musou/
it seems to have more battles than the last game and the battles seems to be more complex than princess waltz
it is also expanded with like double want the last game
with the complex stuff i expect it to take a while like princess waltz did
Shuffle and Higurashi? Now that’s what I call licensing. I hope they wait for Essense+ to release Shuffle, since I want the most complete version.
Shin Koihime Musou is basically The Romance of Three Kingdoms with sexy/cute girls who are hornier than they are conquerors. 8)
Also with all these MG bombshells, it looks like PP is sliding into second place. 
Don’t let this challenge go unpunished PP!!!
My reaction to the anouncement of both SKM and Shuffle licenses is pretty much a border line of hooray and oh gawwd no @_@
First because of the obvious fact that hooray an english license for two games I’ve been dying to grab… and the oh gawwd no! at the thought of the horrible editing/scripting on two top notch games… add to the fact after conversion to AUD from MG’s pricing I’m paying the price of DL version for the same price as a boxed JP version @_@;;
I didn’t actually walk into their booth, so I didn’t see Higurashi. That’s a lot of major licenses. Jast has a lot of catching up to do. We’ll find out at their panel later tonight… and speaking of Jast, Shingo is alive!
Interesting… whether or not Mangagamer can actually do the Higurashi series justice is a different story.
Shin Koihime Musou is fairly good and has a massive amount of content, but it’s not worth playing for the battles - the engine is a bit better designed than Princess Waltz’s, but it’s still far from the level of Eushully/Alice Soft etc.
Shuffle! - whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy (I guess it will sell though)
Damn, Shuffle and Higurashi? These are some pretty big-name titles they’re going after. Well, since it’s the original doujin version they’re licensing, it probably wasn’t that much of a problem getting the license from 07th Expansion to release Higurashi. But Shuffle? Holy crap, they must have had to pay a pretty penny to Navel to license that one. Either that, or they were far more lenient than expected with licensing costs and nobody noticed it because the thought of licensing it never crossed anyone’s mind.
What next? School Days?
Mangagamer also has a full page ad on the back of the program guide. It lists all the companies they’re affiliated with, but there’s no other company I care about that hasn’t been revealed.
Good pickups for Mangagamer. But I still wish they could cut their teeth on something smaller to iron out typo’s before pumping out good games. Strange liquid is still listed in the ad considering they removed the games because of “copyright holder issues”.
One thing I will say about SKM is…don’t go through the bonus route. The normal routes are fine but the bonus one 
. You will be scarred for life. On a plus note pretty much anyone will have a girl they like in the game, considering they have almost everything covered. Oh yeah, Shunran and Shuran are awesome. They may not be twins but it’s close enough, and they share 
. Come to think of it, there’s a heck of a lot of sharing going on in this game, good thing there aren’t any yanderes.
.>
Well at least Higurashi should cover that pretty well.