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Gaijinworks were working on a localization for Tengai Makyou: Ziria (360)
- Thread starter Takao
- Start date
orthodoxy1095
Banned
That's really too bad :/
Infernal Monkey
Member
Guess it had something to do with Microsoft's minimum print run requirement being stupid huge in the US? Shame. They probably could have sorted out a physical Euro release, but that'd be way too much effort.
Definitely.
Definitely.
threelights
Member
I hope someday this series gets a fan translation or something from someone. They seem like such good games.
A shame Gaijinworks couldn't do it...
A shame Gaijinworks couldn't do it...
cj_iwakura
Member
Guess that explains his bitterness towards MS.
This would've likely been in the early part of the 360's life, when Microsoft went hard on trying to get JP content.
Yeah, I distinctly remember Vic talking about it back in 2006 and then wondering why it just dropped off the face of the earth.
Nah man, I'm sure Konami is aware of their legacy and eventually will...
*sigh*
Cant even joke about it, RIP Hudson bee
We thought we had a release vector via a deal that was made with a existing X360 publisher for the physical and we would have handled the digital. The publisher backed out (due in part to the huge MS minimums for niche games) and digital wasn't enough to keep the project afloat. (If it wasn't clear from the context, this all happened a long time ago)
The game was a very weak port of the original Ziria, but we were pretty confident we could bring it up to an acceptable level, and had already done quite a bit of the work to that end when we canned it. The trailer was boss.
Daggers to my heart.
Have either of you played it through to the end? I guess I am curious as to your specific problems with the game, since your above comments do not extend beyond a vague, tersely stated dislike. For my part, I have completed it twice and I found it to be far better than the original Ziria in every aspect and full of charm and brilliance. The music is fantastic as well. The only downsides I could find were the crappy character running animation and the lack of adjustable camera control.I should add the X360 port is well-loved by many Japanese players and fetches a good price these days in Japan (see the amazon.co.jp page for evidence of both claims). This is not something we would expect of a "crappy remake" or "very weak port", but to each their own.
Daggers to my heart.
Of course I played it to the end. The best thing about the game is the fairly copious amount of animated cutscenes. And that's where the goodness tails off. The bad list is longer: 3D model animations are sparse. In-Game cutscenes are very poorly animated. Camera is pretty upsetting. Environments and textures are really, really budget. It's clear from the money not on the screen that there was relatively small budget for the title.
Still, as a fan of the Tengai series, I was willing to jump in and do the best possible job with it, and there were some within Microsoft fighting the good fight, but there were just too many in MS positions of power that were clueless about gaming and gamers working against it. The platform-killing management problems have manifest strongly in the XBOX One era, but all the internal problems started in the 360 era, IMO.
A whopping 23 middling Japanese user reviews are a pretty poor support for that "well-loved" position. I believe Japanese players love and are nostalgic for the series, but they have to know the port is weak. The price has much more to do with the rarity of the game (very small run) than the quality of the game. As a huge fan of Tengai who has personally met with a number of people involved with games in the series over decades, I can confidently say it's a very weak port.
But hey, if it's really worth $500 new/sealed, I have a couple new/sealed spares I'll part with.
The Spoony Hou
Member
That's sad, even if the game was weak. I should really try those games though.
The one to root for is 4th Apocalypse, by a mile.
SporeCrawler
Member
This series seems to be too niche for the audience. Did manjimaru or the third game on PS2 ever make it over to EU or NA? i think a oriental blue on GBA did.
Imho the best game in the series is the fighting game.
Imho the best game in the series is the fighting game.
Oriental Blue just has a fan translation (although apparently it's very good). Nothing was ever officially released in the west and none of the other games in this series can be played in English.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
I think FEOEZ was translated but not inserted. I think byuu was going to do it once he'd written a new debugger. Not sure what happened with that after his forum crashed, all the old info is gone.
I agree with the camera (as mentioned earlier), but nothing else you list is related to the gameplay. You don't mention the wonderfully updated battle system, for example. Also, it runs at an extremely high frame rate (felt like 60fps to me, but I didn't measure it), which was really nice. I agree the game has an overriding whiff of low budget, but I just played it a few weeks ago and I still thought it looked pretty nice. More importantly, it is great fun.
Yes, the game was produced in a relatively low print run. From what I have read the print run was 7500 or so (it sold 2600 first week). However, a cheaper download version has been available on Games on Demand for many years. Furthermore, there are rarer JP X360 games that sell for much less because they aren't that good.
Well then, perhaps you'd like to read its reviews on mk2? For comparison, have a look at the mk2 reviews for Summon Night 5.
Namida ( which was the actual "true" Tengai III, not Fuun Kabuki Den which was a gaiden of sorts) was never released in English, either. Unfortunately by the time they got around to doing the actual sequel to Manji Maru, it was again a situation of a stripped down, budget version of the original vision.
This is the only part that matters, and the main point I was trying to make. It wasn't so bad I wasn't interested in doing it. This isn't kusoge-level stuff, just a very budget riff on a well-loved game.
It really isn't the only part that matters, unless you only play games for high budget graphics.
manzo
Member
The game that made me jump in. Ziria 360 was low budget, but I loved it nonetheless.
The only gripe was the god-awful battle music. Hearing it with high encounter rate made me play through most of the game with custom soundtracks. The battle track is one of the worst ever in any jrpg. The PC Engine version is way better.
The only gripe was the god-awful battle music. Hearing it with high encounter rate made me play through most of the game with custom soundtracks. The battle track is one of the worst ever in any jrpg. The PC Engine version is way better.
Wow, you are completely missing what I'm trying to say - repeatedly. The fact that I was interested in the game enough to license it *in spite* of the, as you said, "overriding whiff of budget" means that the game had some redeeming value, and I was interested in polishing that to make it better. That's it.
Then hopefully its the PSP version, because I don't feel like using an emulator for a translation.
manzo
Member
Just curious, what kind of changes did you plan/do to the localized version?
i have no idea how that would get made. the last chance to do this was when hudson soft was their own company.
maybe they can squeeze in through the red entertainment side of things. it seemed like they at least had some contacts if they were working on the 360 version of the game. i almost feel like doing a sega saturn release in 2016 would garner more press.
sony's going to be cutting vita out of their life soon anyway. i'm not sure where these late psp games are going to find life after 2016.
edit: actually, taking 4th apocalypse from the psp and making it into a steam game is probably the only way forward for that game now.
sixteen-bit
Member
aww, that's a shame.
sony's and nintendo's were both lower. sony's is the lowest as far as i remember. it's the reason you never got a lot of the games that came out in japan on the 360 and turned out to be decent sized hits, especially the science adventure games (although you're getting them now with steins;gate half a decade later). it's also why smaller developers stayed away. disgaea 4 probably would have been a 360 game if not for microsoft's minimum order requirements.
FlyingSaucer
Banned
Just knowing we came that close makes my heart bleeds.
What are you doing about it eh?!
There was actually one game that was released in English.
It was the fighting game spinoff.
FlyingSaucer
Banned
Seemingly jokes, a taste for puns and cultural references make it a little bit harder to translate.
And outside the PC engine fan community, the franchise is not really well-known and in demand.
Palette Swap
Member
That was a terrible choice. If we were going for a localization of early TM games, I think the Manjimaru port on DS would have been a tad better. Then again, it's a freaking huge game and DS was pirated to hell.
Anyway, given how Hudson is dead and there's apparently zero interest to fan translate the main entries, I wouldn't hold my breath for anything.
Anyway, given how Hudson is dead and there's apparently zero interest to fan translate the main entries, I wouldn't hold my breath for anything.
zero shift
Banned
Damn. Just looked at gameplay videos of this game and it is essentially a Dreamcast game put into HD. Man is it ugly. But then again it makes it appealing in a strange sort of way.
bloodyroarxx
Member
Ok after looking up Apocalypse IV is there a translation for either version of it cause it looks pretty freaking great.
cj_iwakura
Member
I know people who are interested in doing it, but they have other priorities.
That's a shame, even though it's the type of game that would have tanked with the 360 fanbase. Also I've always wondered why Gaijinworks never looked into translating the original Ziria/Manjimaru for release on the US Wii Virtual Console. There were a few JP-only games that got after-the-fact English translations on VC (Monster World IV), and digital downloads would have kept costs down.
Vic, out of curiosity (and if you are able to answer this), were the DS port and PS2/GC remakes of Manjimaru ever up for consideration?
It's been attempted for some of the games, just nothing ever made it to release.
cj_iwakura
Member
If it's any consolation, I know it can be done. Just a question of when.
Oh certainly. FEOEZ seemed to have been fairly far along before it dropped off, and it's not like we don't have fan translations that revived and got finished after years of inactivity (in fact, that actually seems to be the trend lately
).I also seem to vaguely recall a Manjimaru project, though rhdn isn't turning anything up as having been archived there, so it'd have to have been something in the whirlpool era.