I am Christina Aguilera
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They talked about VI a lot in Nintendo Power. Same with Tactics Ogre. I think both were almost completed before they closed.
That was really just such an odd era of Nintendo Power. In the era after the Saturn and PlayStation launched but before the N64 did, it really seemed like they were grabbing at straws for things to cover versus the consistent blockbusters of the NES and early SNES era, since they could only stretch out previews of the same future N64 content so far. The Game Boy was basically in purgatory at that point too, Virtual Boy being a stillbirth and localized Pokemon being years off. That pretty much just left them with nothing to cover but bad licensed Game Boy games and fawning coverage of gorgeous-looking SNES RPGs that no one was 100% sure would ever leave Japan.
I was just thinking about Illusion of Gaia earlier today and giving the soundtrack a listen-through, so talk about good timing! Interesting that Jerauld wrote most of the story in English; I wonder how much of the final script is his original work and how much is translations of the Japanese dialogue.
I'm awfully curious about this too. One of the notable things about Illusion of Gaia always was that it was written by a Japanese novelist. Whoever was ultimately responsible for the English version did well. It was among the most emotionally resonant SNES RPGs I've played.
RE: Square in the US:
I think the SD3 / CT thing is a false dilemma. I mean, I have no idea if the idea that they had to choose between them is true or not, but if it was true, that was faulty reasoning. The US market was not swamped with RPGs, and the SNES' late life sales were decent enough that I don't think a release in late 96 or even maybe early 97 would have been a death-blow. Especially given the PS1's slow uptake and the N64's inhospitality to third party developers.
...
I actually haven't played much of King Arthur and the Knights of Justice and I had no idea it was considered to be such a pivotal title for Enix America. I think I might pick up a copy to see what the fuss is about.
I think the issue was less worrying about market saturation (though surely a concern) and more about just Square USA's limited resources to actually localize and market the games being stretched too thin to be able to do both.
King Arthur is an odd game. It was a licensed game for a children's cartoon (20th century high school football players get zapped into the past or such and become knights of King Arthur's court), yet it was surprisingly dark in contrast with the subject material, with some of the characters actually DYING-dying and you exploring through some sort of hellscape made of human remains to bring them back. I've played a bit, it isn't very good. Speaking of Nintendo Power, they did a little behind the scenes preview on the game during that same era:
http://www.flyingomelette.com/koj/scans/np-scan1.jpg
http://www.flyingomelette.com/koj/scans/np-scan2.jpg
This reminds me of this story.
http://kotaku.com/5747077/dragon-quest-vi-arrives-too-late-for-gaming-grandmother
:-(
Surely if that grandma was into JRPGs and was already 4 games into loving the DQ series, she had to have at least played the translated ROMs by 2011. Right? If she didn't find it on her own, one of her grandchildren would have had to have shown her between then and now.
For my part, I never understood how Enix America had the resources during the 16-bit era to localize and market one-off RPGs like Brainlord and 7th Saga, but not enough to bring over their main game series, the one with "owned DW1 with a Nintendo Power subscription"-level name recognition. It just never felt like it made any sense.