Firstly, I would kind of like to see a #gia on Esper, but my reasons areentirely selfish as normally hang out on #verge there and it would saveme the minor annoyance of getting and using a new IRC client.

Secondly, PS rocks. This isn't a very interesting thing to say, but it'strue. unfortunately, Sega of America did a loudy job translating andpromoting the series, but then Sega of America is a hideous abominationthat should be put to sleep and replaced with something more effectivebefore it hurts American gamers any further. I have to agree about themindless jingoism of the early gaming days. God, that was annoying.Anyway, PS3 did suck. PS3 is a cancer that should be cut out and havegood tissue grafted in its place.

As to the WD localization...well, you might think that because I hateSega I would love WD, but actually I don't. Aside from the usual "VictorIreland is a childish, egotistical SOB" argument, they simply do thingswrong. Localizing is a good thing, but WD localizes its games intotwisted mockeries of their original selves. Firstly, the most importantthing to preserve in a game is the ATMOSPHERE, the THEME of the game.Making every game into a lame humor-fest totally destroys this, which isarguabbly WD's biggest crime against gaming. Secondly, games should beinvolving, and they should be believable. Characters in games should notmake jokes that make no sense for the game world, whereas about twothirds of all WD jokes do exactly that. We don't need fantasy characterstalking about Clinton and swedish masseuses, thank you very much.Actually, it couldn't hurt to note that virtually ALL WD humor is lame,and that you should only localize a game that way IF IT WAS FULL OF LAMEHUMOR TO BEGIN WITH!! Yeesh. Anyway, that said, i think it's veryimportant to the American gaming industry (which japanese companiesstill have yet to truly respect) that someone is going around a pickingup licenses to translate things that we would otherwise never see.Still, Sony is doing a significantly better job even for their flaws, sowhat i'd really like to see is a WD-like company that translates goodgames without lamerizing them.

And Shining Wisdom wawsn't THAT bad...it had a fun atmosphere, for aShining game.

Since the localization of Genjuu - which was what the "summoned monsters" were also called in FF III-V - as "Esper" in Final Fantasy III USis solely an invention of the translator, I really doubt the "Espers" inthat game were derived in any way from Phantasy Star.

People shouldn't read too much into the US names. (For example, yourrecent story with pictures of "Cactrot T-shirts" - there's no such thing as a "Cactrot" - they're Sabotenders.)

Sincerely,

Max C. Strini

Hey Allan I have a couple comments to make here....

In the last column a letter stated that, I quote "But the first console RPG in the US and the UK was Phantasy Star 1 for the Sega Master System in 1987/88. It was revolutionary." Ummm, this is wrong. It was Legend of Zelda, released 1986.

Oh, and another thing, have you heard of Terranigma? It is a SNES title made by Enix (who also made Illusion of Gaia, great game) Terranigma was only released in Japan and Europe. Some people consider it a sequel of sorts to IIlusion of Gaia. Well, anyway, since it is so rare for an American (or Canadian) to find, I thought I would write in to tell you about it. (I am able to play it because I picked it up living in England for a year in 1996. Of course, I have a European SNES too, which runs in my house in the US thanks too a device called a transformer which converts one outlet to European voltage) Anyway, it is really great. It plays quite similar to Illusion of Gaia in gameplay and themes. There is a variety of special moves and such depending on whether you attack during a jump, attack during running etc. It is certainly a great action RPG, probably even better than Zelda: A link to the past and Secret of Mana. It's certainly a shame that It wasn't released here, wasn't it? I guess Enix decided not to bother putting it here, probably because of Illusion of Gaia's relatively poor sales. But it's a shame all right.

And as for Square's big announcement, my bets are either on a US release of FF Compilation or maybe Chrono Trigger 2.

- Kalahari

First of all, Allan, where's my cookie?

Anyway, my opinions on the PS series, and one question for you.

Now, I loved PS2. It was a landmark game in that it included the deathof a party member, a fake boss, and the ability to choose your partymembers. It was also a tough game, and fun to boot.PS3 was a tough game for me to like. I thought it was just boring. Thetechnique system wasn't done too well, either.PS4 was a great game. It had great features, like Combo attacks (Love'em), Macros (Great for Lazy people like me), and Really hard bosses(Slowly dying out in favor of the evil plot demons). It wrapped up thestory in a neat little package, too.

Now for the question: Rank these games in the order you'd want to see them translated:Dragon Quest 6, Dragon Quest Monsters, Seiken Densetsu 3, Pokemon Gold,Silver, Polka-dot, whatever versions, and the Megami Tensei series.

Greg (Waiting for DQ7 and his cookie)

I just wanted to say that I agree with almost everything Hahn's clone saidin his letter about the Phantasy Star series. The one thing I do have todispute is something you said in your reply, when you called Phantasy Star3 a black mark on the series. I have heard that opinion expressed before,but it is one that I disagree with very strongly. I completely agree withHahn's statement that each PS game was progressively better than the onebefore. While it was irritating that the third generation quest in PS3 wasnearly the same no matter which character you had, the game overall had agreat story, good music, great gameplay, etc, to such a degree that Ididn't even mind doing the same thing four times in order to get all fourendings. In fact, I've played the whole game through several times, so theredundancy thing isn't really an issue at all. PS3 also had asignificantly better translation than either of its predecessors. PS3 isdefinitely up there on my very top tier of RPGs, along with PS4, ChronoTrigger, and FFIV. So, if anyone is looking for a great old-time RPG toplay, PS3 is definitely one of my highest recommendations.

- David

Okay, first of all, I'd like to point out I usually never write letters toany site, magazine, or anywhere; I only write a letter when I'm dead seriousabout the topic the letter section is focusing on. So it is important thatyou take this letter seriously.

I was a tad shocked that there was not one letter that didn't defend Sega orat least point out a few good things about Sega (besides the fact that theymake excellent arcade games). They all took the opportunity to bash Sega tothe ground and praise there fancy shmancy Sony system (which, by the way, Iown, so don't think I'm all anti-Playstation). First, let's look at Locke'sletter:

"...I am not to impressed with the Dreamcast so far. Right now, ....(the)graphics arent TOO supurb... (the graphics of Dreamcast are) slightly buffedup N64 right ....Also, it didn't help that the first 3 games released toreceive to good of reviews. [snipped]"

And what were the launch games of Playstation? Battle Arena Toshinden?Destruction Derby? Ridge Racer? As you can see, the only good game on thatlist was Ridge Racer, very similar to the Dreamcast launch, out of all thegames out, only one stands out. Why people are just noticing this now withDreamcast amazes me. And the graphics, not that amazing? They are hell ofamazing, considering they are launch titles. Looking back at PSX's launchtitles, the graphics didn't look all that great either. Problems we hatenow, polygon pop-in, pixelation, low resolutions, major slow downs, weren'teven noticeable back then. As developers gained knowledge of the system,however, the graphics became better, and more importantly, the games becamebetter. They didn't have to worry about getting used to a new system. Nowthey could concentrate more on the gameplay. Same thing is going to happento Dreamcast. And by the way, I can tell you haven't played Virtua Fighter 3or any VF ("It's wrong to assume, blah blah blah!"). You'd rather play the"cooler and flasher" Tekkens...

"Their biggest enemy now is no longer Sony, but the lack of trust they haveinstalled in their customers and the industry they compete in."

First of all, remember almost half of Playstation's installed base haven'tplayed any other videogames before, so Sega's reputation means nothing tothem. Another thing, just because Sega isn't the "coolest thing in theblock" does detract from their ability to produce great games. Isn't thatwhat it all comes down to? Great games? Allan states that all they've seenso far are average games. But haven't you looked at their SOFTWARE trackrecord before the Dreamcast? They created the classic Sonic games, theclassic Shining Force games (which was before either of the Tactics, sothere's the answer of who copied who), the never played but superb PanzerDragoon Saga, their REALLY REALLY long list of arcade games that areabsolutely wonderful, etc.. From this list alone, I have no worries thatSega can't make excellent first party games. In fact, all the letters postedcompletely did not mention the REAL problem that killed the Saturn, not lackof first party games: lack of third party support. Well, to clear things up,Sega has almost every developer working on Dreamcast, everyone from the bigshots of EA to the cool kids of Namco, to Capcom (hard at work with ResidentEvil 3 on Dreamcast), in fact, almost everyone except for your preciouslittle Squaresoft. Amazingly, when asked in a chat room, the people theresay that the Square games on Dreamcast would suck cuz it's a Sega system.What the hell?

"Buying a PS2, LockeCole3"

Putting all your eggs in one basket, huh? There's no guarantee that the PSX2is gonna be a success, the one thing that made Playstation was third partysupport, because they had no first party games. 989 Studies is notconsidered a first party division, the first party games they HAVE made(exception, Parappa the Rapper) all really really suck (look at Spawn, thenremind yourself, that's an in house Sony game), hell, even their MASCOT(Crash) is made by a different company. Now look at Sega, a company known bytrue hard core gamers for their software. Now imagine all the third partiesthat made all the great games for PSX (minus your precious Square, and eventhen, rumors hint at DC development, Xenogears 2, you bastards!) plus theworks of arts Sega makes all in one system. That system is Dreamcast. Howcould one not be excited by Dreamcast? No, I'm not some pro-Sega guy. Iacknowledge that Sega made tons of hardware mistakes (Sega CD and 32X, GameGear, etc.). But I also acknowledge that Sony can't make games for crap,Sega can. Sega seems to have done everything rgiht (powerful hardware, easyto develop for, low price, tons of developer support, seems familiar? Yup,the advantages PSX had over Sega Saturn), and they have something Sonydoesn't, an excellent in-house software development team.

In fact, the only prob that might come will be marketing. Sega MUST marketthis right. I agree fully that Sega MUST start marketing now. It's the SuperBowl soon, Sega, what the hell are you waiting for? A variation of thepre-launch Dreamcast ads in Japan would be perfect. In these ads, Segahumbly admitted making past mistakes (in various ways, check other sourcesfor commercial info), this would be perfect to apologize to the Americanpublic for past hardware mistakes.Sega rings the bells "Really bad game company" to casual gamers, but to truehard core gamers, they ring "Really great software company". If Dreamcastfails (imo, not likely, if we just gave it a chance instead of shove it offcuz it's a Sega product), then I think it would be best for Sega to become athird party developer. Their biggest strength is software, it would beperfect. In conclusion, don't piss on Sega's logo everyday, at least givethem a chance.

-Clyde Hudman

clyde3d@sprynet.com