Oh, what a messed up week it's been. As many of you know, I'm a pedantic bastard when it comes to consistency of work. I pride myself on updating daily, rain or shine, sleet or hail, fingers or no fingers. However, I have not updated Double Agent for the past three days, which is pretty inexcusable. I didn't even have a chance to tell my coworkers about it. So what's up, you ask? The answer is simple: interference from On High, the person of my parents. You see, it was of their opinion that I hadn't been living up to my scholastic duties properly of late, so they physically disconnected the data line at my house. Boom. Total loss of internet access until today. Very, very, very annoying, and I deeply apologize. Won't happen again. Although, I suppose it's not so bad. In my absence, probably in light of the Thanksgiving weekend, I received a grand total of eleven letters. I hope y'all enjoyed the holidays, of course, but it's back to normal now, so let's see some more letters, hmm? Enlighten me, boys and girls. | Zelda is God | Allan, To say Zelda V is merely a "good game" is like saying that light goes"kinda fast." I could not imagine a much better gaming experience. The incredibly high level of quality in every area continues toastound me. The puzzles have a nice learning curve (and they are madevery well), the combat is a ton of fun once you learn to use theZ-Lock to strafe and guard and the dungeon design is top-notch. Notto mention all the depth in there - tons of mini-games and sidequests, a lot of characters to interact with, a huge map that takesminutes to walk across, the changing from night to day (and its effectupon places), tons of story and cinematics, the ability to travelthrough time and a large helping of dungeons and other things toexplore. Really, what more do you want from an action/adventure? To imply thatZelda is Mario with a sword and storyline is sheer nonsense. I cannot even begin to comprehend this logic (and the complete absence ofany reasons why this is so makes it impossible). The games are lightyears apart at anything other than the most superficial level. Zelda is more than a game; it's a truly immersive world. I am notjust playing this game, rather I am living in it. It gets inside ofyou. Surely this is one of the most obvious marks of excellence in agame. Anyone who would say Zelda is anything less than excellent issuffering severe delusions. And I truly feel sorry for those of youthat can not enjoy one of the finest gaming experiences to come aroundin a long time. Stephen Keller and the evil gnomes that live in his head |
And the democratic response to an earlier letter, which said that Zelda was simply a good game, but nothing more. Stephen's opinions on the matter seem to be backed up by widespread public and critical acclaim, though he's the first I've seen who lauds the story, or characterization. Considering that this has long been, in my view, a major failing of the Zelda series as a whole, any success in that area is of great interest to me. In fact, I think I'll borrow an N64 and rent myself Zelda this weekend. Enough of this "I'll give an opinion once I'm properly informed crap." :) Hey, maybe Zelda herself will even be faintly attractive this time... | Secret of Mana translation legends | Allen, I didn't quite understand one thing in todays Double Agent:What's the old horror story about Ted Woolsey's experience translatingSecret of Mana? Six weeks or something?What were you talking about? I didn't quite catch the drift for thatone. Other than that, keep up the good work! Nick Wilhelmy |
Well, back in the day, Ted Woolsey was the sole translator for Squaresoft, which meant that he had a LOT of work to do under the best of circumstances. A particularly bad example of this was his translation of Secret of Mana, which, as he recounted in several interviews, essentially consisted of him flying down to Japan, where he had to translate the entire script in six weeks flat, using incomplete copies of the script. As any translator, professional or otherwise, can tell you, six weeks to translate several dozens pages of script, then inputting them back into the game itself, is borderline impossible. But that's the deadline Woolsey was given, and though I'm not especially enthralled by the SoM translation, I've got to feel compassion and respect for Woolsey in that instance. | Super Dodgeball Fans Unite! | Allan, you have the best taste in videogames...EVER! Super Dodgeball isstill one of my favorite games too. I also liked Super Spike V-Ball, avery Super Dodgeball-like volleyball game. -Brud |
Strange but true story: prior to the development of GIA, AK and I were semi-seriously batting around the idea of making a page devoted to Tecmos, developers of such classics as Super Dodgeball, River City Ransom, and Crash 'n the Boys Street Challenge. It remains the coolest project I never quite got around to. | Phantasia in English? | Hiya! I just have one quick question. I've heard that Namco re-releasedTales of Phantasia for the PSX in Japan. Are there any plans, or even anyhints of plans for a re-release of the game in the US? Robindra N. Deb |
Last word from Namco is that Tales of Phantasia's still under consideration for release in the US. It was dependent on sales and public reaction to Tales of Destiny. Both of which, by all reports, were pretty good. If Namco can reduce the random encounter rate a bit from ToD, I think ToP would be a welcome addition to the US RPG market, and the localization team certainly seemed to enjoy doing ToD, so... we'll have to wait and see. Watch the News section for new information, as always. | Last word on Suikoden | Ah!! A big welcome back to one of my favorite letter commenters THE DOUBLE AGENT. The site looks great, the information looks great, all the neat pix and movie's look great. I guess the next big thing you guys will be doing is making an actual magazine (hint hint). Anyways, I just put in disc two of Xenogears today, and I can truly say that the last time I was moved as I have been with this game was playing Final Fantasy III(us.) nearly 4 1/2 years ago. Square will always remain the champion on making new and fantastic world. On upcoming events, I've taken a look at Brigadine by Atlus, and Shadow Madness by Crave, and I'm not sure wether these titles are going to hold up. Brigadine is following a very "shining force engine" with strategic battlefields and swooping battle clips between the combatants. As for Shadow Madness, it looks like an almost duplicate of Final Fantasy VII engine, except for (being that it is a U.S. product) the characters were run through the Cheese Machine about 4 times. Looking forward the future, I can only see Final Fantasy VIII on the bleak and far distant horizon, so my question is. What game out there be it adventure, puzzle, or RPG, what will be the next game to pull my out of this world and into another, to totally capture my conscience and give a brief pause from this world of Cheeziness and Merchandising. Oh Calgon take me away. Oh and by the way, AIRSHIPS are the coolest things on the planet. Piano Man - there's an old Cid sitting next to me, makin' love to his tonic and gin. |
Well, with due respect, I'm actually growing to look forward to Shadow Madness quite a bit. The engine of a game is of some concern to me, but well-developed characters and worlds mean so much more to me, and affect whether I'll be truly swept up in a game. For example, I enjoyed Xenogears quite a bit, but wasn't really swept up in it. On the other hand, I remember the first time I played Lunar: Eternal Blue for Sega CD, and I was just enraptured. I began to talk to my friends about that funny thing that Ronfar had said yesterday like it was a real person. Lunar has solid gameplay, but it's nothing revolutionary. For me, it's the story that brings the magic to me. Wandering back on topic, my list of games I'm looking forward to are, I suppose, a trifle slim. Star Ocean: Second Story looks quite gorgeous. As I said, Shadow Madness has piqued my interest, so I'll be giving that a shot. Lunar: Complete is a lock for me, delays or no delays, but I say that all the time. And, of course, FF8. Surprise surprise. Oh, and my pick for the best game that no one will ever play, even if it does get ported for US release: Climax Landers for Dreamcast. Just give me a second while I drool... | River City Ransom is intelligent enough for me! | People talk Goldeneye, people talke Super Bomberman, but for two people,River City Ransom has the best multiplayer action! So many of my bestchildhood memories involve punching my friend in his square head,picking him up, and throwing him into a pit. If there was a four playerversion of River City Ransom, that kept the simplicity of the original(and maybe even the unique graphics), then it would just plain kick ass. DJMagicEric |
Oh, we all have our vices. Some do drugs, some drink to excess, some are sexpots, and some of us have weaknesses for old Tecmos NES games. And some of us have all of the above, but that's another story. Anyhow, despite my public weakness for River City Ransom, I'm just gonna say that this is the last letter on this topic I'll publish for a while. Okay? God, but they're great games, though... | Translators unite! | Regarding the translation issues, I have to say that _I_ would work on atranslation team and localize text. I don't care if I could make moremoney turning my writing skills to another task, I am just so fed upwith the sorry excuses for translations that I would jump at theopportunity to do something about it. And as for the amount of time ittakes to localize, it shouldn't add much time to the game development atall. Hell, all I'd need to do is play through the game (I beat most RPGsin record time, so this isn't a problem) and make note of each error,and each unclear paragraph, and then right then and there, walk over tothe computer where the text translation is set up and make the changes.How long could it possibly take? Eight hours a day, five days a week. Ithink I could fix up a game in a few weeks at the most. Give me moretime, and I could rewrite parts of it too. You don't need to be somegreat author to write better dialogue than what I've seen in some gamesthese days. I can do better, and I've never studied professionalwriting. Aye, Working Designs should be given control of all englishtranslations. Would I wait several months for a superior product?You bet. For me, FFT's Professor Daravon was a frightening discovery.How long will it be before they even forget to localize the main gametext...? -Devon |
See, while it'd be great if a whole bunch of volunteers could just march up and say to Square or Enix or whoever "Hey! We'll translate your games for free!", it's really not realistic. For one thing, they already pay people to do that sort of thing. For another, there are larger issues at stake. I doubt any company *wants* to put out an inferior translation. They do, however, have to take market forces into account, and the faster they produce games, the more profit they make, and profit is Good. So translations get rushed, much of the time. Unless someone invents a remarkable instant literal translator program, I doubt that'll change anytime soon. On the other hand, a quote springs to mind. "Delays are temporary, but mediocrity is forever." - Vic Ireland | The Lowdown | Manshoon wonders whatever happened to Zill O'11, an FF7-like RPG in development by Koei (its release date is still TBA - I'd expect to see it mid-'99 or so), FF5Rulz wonders if it's hard to play through a Japanese game with a script (RPGs aren't much trouble once you recognize a few symbols like "fight", "No", "Yes", and "Sell", but NEVER attempt to play Sakura Taisen unless you speak Japanese. Suicidal.), and a few more people wrote in about the Amano issue (I'm gonna let it lie for now, I think, hokay?). |
Again, many apologies, and daily updates should be back on track as of right now. 'Til tomorrow, then. - Allan Milligan, Avenging Forever | | | |
