Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Nine hours on the road tomorrow, but I just see it as a chance to listen to way too much game music. Don't say we didn't warn you.

I wanna get packing, but there's a lot of good letters I gotta print first. So I'm gonna cut this short and get to it.

Onward.

I'd say the task at hand for all you UK gamers who want to play CC is clear: start a third world war and wipe those pesky Germans out once and for all. I know the last few times your continent got plunged into bloody warfare it didn't work out too well, but those were wars over nationalism, economics, and the deluded ravings of various madmen. This time it'll be for video games, so it'll all be worth it!

I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to the Germans here, because we've been in the same boat. Japanese, at the Hiragana/Katakana level, is capable of encoding phonetics much more compactly than the Roman alphabet. This leads to things like the 6 letter limit on names in CC - you can write "Lucky Dan" in six Japanese characters, but not in English. We got screwed out of Seiken Densetsu 3 because there was supposedly so much text that translating the story into English would have required twice the memory, and thus pushed the cart past the SNES's memory limits or something. I'm not entirely sure how the hacked SD3 ROM works, and I don't need to know, so don't tell me.

The point is that allowances can and should be made for such things. No programming company I've worked at has ever not taken localization into account, they've always planned ahead in their code design to make sure the text in their software could be translated into German, French, and yes, Japanese. I'm aware that a good chunk of console code is written in assembly, so developers don't necessarily have access to the same EZ translation-ready libraries that C coders, etc. do. Still, things like the 6 letter limit on names shouldn't be happening. Did they initially plan on not translating it, or what?

So what I want to know is, why are these things happening? Are Japanese game coders lazy, stupid, incompetent, or is this just some plot to annoy us gaijin? Ok, clearly none of the above is true, given the quality of the games themselves. There's probably a rational explanation, but I can't for the life of me think of what it is. Any ideas? 

Advance warning: the following explanation is based on my own stupid mistakes and ignorance about Vagrant Story. I'm not saying that anyone else would have made the same dumbass errors - I'm sure you made your own unique dumbass errors.

Something I didn't realize for most of the game was that there are several factors more important than straight out weapons strength or class affinity. (I also didn't realize you could purchase abilities other than battle abilities in FFT until Chapter 3. Lord help me, I'm just not real bright.) Elemental strengths and weaknesses, and to a lesser extent pierced/blunt/edged weapon affinity can turn the 0-5 hits you're making into 50-100+ hits. The trick is to use the Analyze spell on just about everything you can, and then take a look at enemies' specific weaknesses in the status menu. (It's the same status menu Ashley uses, which threw me off for a while. You can also switch between elemental and class weaknesses with the Square button.) Generally just about everybody's weak against one specific element or class type, and you can adjust your weapons' attack stats by moving around the right gems and equipping the right accessories. Fiddling around with the set gems menu for 30 seconds at the start of a room will save you 10 minutes of trying to use chain combos, and keep your risk levels below 30 most of the time. Trust me on this. Adjusting gems also allows you to get by with a minimum of weapons - I mostly stick to a two handed hammer, which works great.

Ok, everybody who stopped reading in disgust over my incredibly simpleheaded explanation can come back in now.

People? I said you could come back in...

Anybody?

I don't know how many copies of VS got sold in Japan, and I don't know what Square may or may not have done to anybody associated with the game. Any info on this would be appreciated.

What I can say is I wouldn't be surprised if Square did such a thing - the reason we got Vagrant Story instead of FFT2 in the first place is due to a lack of phenomenal sales on FFT's part, if I remember correctly. I can also say Square's a complete dumbass if it fired anyone from the programming staff of Vagrant Story. Anytime Famitsu gives a 40 to a game and it doesn't sell well, it's clearly marketing who's screwed up. Fire their butts.

Yup, I screwed up. Someone with an advance English copy of PE2 confirmed Resident Evil controls shortly after last night's column was posted, but I was too lazy to change it at the time.

I'm not entirely clear why anyone would forsake the relatively straightforward controls of the original game for dyslexia personified, tho I do remember reading that the developers wanted a control scheme where pressing up caused Aya to move further into an area after she entered, regardless of her orientation. The RE scheme does that, if nothing else.

I've seen a PS2 in action, and played around with a Dual Shock 2. I can't speak for the graphical improvements the PS2 bestows upon regular PSX games, but nothing about what I've seen makes me believe a PS2 would be much better than my circa 1997 Playstation for any upcoming titles.

Still, if you like having a shiny black box that plays a jagged version of the latest Tekken arcade game, more power to you.

I know it's GIA policy to worship Vibri, and I admit it looks kinda cool. I wouldn't mind playing it. But unless you're an insanely hardcore 2D gamer, I can't see equating the Ribbon with what could be the best RPG Square's yet made. Nope, the US is still well ahead of Europe gamewise.

Interesting news for Valkyrie Profile fans.

I maintain that US gamers should have an interest in what happens to Europe, if for no other reason than improving our own supply of games. If Square, Sony, Konami, Capcom, Nintendo, etc. start thinking in terms of a global market rather than a local one, we could start seeing faster, better translations and an end to the the 6 letter mistakes mentioned above. I actually think we're already seeing this happen with Square's establishment of a high profile European office and E3 being a far bigger news even than the TGS this year.

Capitalist forces at work on a worldwide scale, gotta love it.

While importing's probably a pain because of time and expense, at least anyone who reads this site can probably get more out of an English translated RPG than I can out of a Japanese import. On the other hand, more localizations means a bigger market, more profit for developers, and more and better RPGs for everyone. Which is good.

Damn, I'm starting to sound like my old economics teacher. Next I'll be forming "Letters columnists for Reagan."

Long story.

I'm well out of any school that would try such a thing, and I'm perfectly happy not to think of those who aren't. (In other words, I don't care about school problems anymore, sorry.)

Certainly games aren't that expensive a habit from an absolute perspective - compared to golf fanatics I know, I get multiple times the entertainment time for far less money. But considering the target audience of games (teenagers, broke college kids) they're still pretty expensive.

Kessen is the samurai game, and I'll agree it looks pretty good. That's the beauty of the PS2's potential, to play as Jet Li, to do funky Matrix acrobatics and to bust the heads of Sauron's troops with your own hands. I suspect it'll be the late first gen/early second gen games that pull this off, which is why I'm so excited about The Bouncer. That, and the fact that it looks to capture the "street punks on a citywide rumble" feel of the original Double Dragon arcade game. Man I loved that thing.

You're asking the wrong guy - I didn't go to E3. However, I don't think anything really outrageous happened, else I would have heard about it in the staff IRC channel. Belive it or not, when we go to a major gaming event the GIA does tend to concentrate on working like a dog to provide you with breaking news coverage rather than having wild adventures in space and time.

We save the wild adventures in space and time for after the gaming events, when all the wimps have gone to sleep.

Correction: certain internal elements wish to make it known that our own Brian Glick ran into Seanbaby and got Seanbaby's signature on his bra. Let the rejoicing commence!

Again, I gotta give the standard disclaimer that everybody's tastes are different, and if you like John Tesh than like him regardless of what I think. I'm not insulting New Age, I'm just saying that it's not my preferred music. And I'm not saying my preferred music is something everyone should like either, although I'll probably make note when Steve Earle's new CD comes out.

And now that the disclaimer crap's out of the way, I stand by my assertion that John Tesh sucks, as does Yanni. Yes, I'm aware of how popular Yanni is, and I've even listened to a few of his CDs. (Hey, I was just a kid and under a lot of pressure at the time, ok?) The Weekly World News sells more copies globally than The Economist, but that doesn't mean it's superior. There's a reason New Age == elevator music in a lot of places. I'm not saying it's completely wrongheaded as a genre, but Mitsuda's limited use of the style is about as far as I care to go, and most readers seem to agree with me. End of discussion.

Closing Comments:

Ok, gotta pack. As for tomorrow's topic, I'd like to continue discussing video game localization policies, and if any of you have info on why Japanese developers continue to be so Nippon-centric, send it in. Seriously, is it a cultural thing I'm missing, economic factors, my breath, what? Talk to you in New Orleans.

-Chris Jones, likely to start out with some Tactics on the trip tomorrow