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malvarez1
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The whole Famicom Detective thing is so frustrating. The people on Twitter who are always the first to say that game companies shouldn’t ignore their smaller franchises are the ones being the most aggressively against this announcement.
That in mind, IMO, Nintendo is the best company when it comes to actually caring about its non A-list franchises. Capcom could take notes. |
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Mikan-box Glasses-kun
 Posts: 88 |
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Great column, thanks so much for not missing the Nintendo translation stuff! (Especially since it came out right at the same time as a... bunch of other stuff happened.) Seriously don't know why Nintendo is being so hard-headed with this, beyond sheer malevolent "we want everyone to believe in Nintendo magic" type of attitude.
One minor quibble: for the Emio section, text adventure refers to very specific type of game that the Famicom Detective Club series doesn't belong to. You may have gotten it mixed up with adventure games, though? Which is understandable, lol, as they're closely related. Anyway, really excited for another game in the series! |
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tintor2
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I beat Digital Devil Saga 1 which got quite hard in the final stages but the second half kicked my butt a lot. Like if I accidentally grabbed the wrong abilities for Serph and the others, making the party weak as heck. I found it even harder than Nocturne since at least in such game you can remake your party without any issues.
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2693 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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People tend to be guessing that the Starfy GBA games were added to NSO so suddenly, even outside of Japan, mainly because Tose recently announced that it's in a bit of financial hardship now, due to a bunch of games it was quietly working on for both Square-Enix & Bandai Namco over the past year being cancelled, and since Tose is one of the most prolific "ghost developers" in Japan that obviously hurts their bottom line. Therefore, since Starfy is one of the few game series that Tose actually owns any copyright over (alongside Nintendo), it's likely that Nintendo decided to help out a bit by putting Starfy on NSO, so that Tose can get some royalty payments. It obviously won't help Tose out a ton, but it'll at least give them some extra income. |
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b-dragon
Posts: 500 |
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Ooh, Digital Devil Saga. The first game had probably the hardest bonus boss I've ever encountered- amusingly, the main character from Nocturne, who you fought to that game's random battle theme. The second game is one of those oddball titles where, if you know what you are doing, the "hard mode" is likely easier than normal. I beat both games, and enjoyed them, but have a hard time recommending them- primarily because the dungeons, especially in the first game, suck so badly.
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tintor2
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Oh yeah. I recall the ratio of random encounters was bad. Still, I think this is the only Atlus game where they actually explain why you are controlling a silent character, Serph. |
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light turner
Posts: 190 |
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By smaller franchises they mean F Zero, Paper Mario, Star Fox, and Pikmin.
I feel the exact opposite. Looking at how they changed Vivian's story among a lot of other things in the remake just confirms they would totally not be fine with the Magypsies in 2024. I wouldn't say the remake "reinforced Vivian's queer background" so much as they completely rewrote his character and changed it for a modern audience. They also removed the characters making fun of Luigi crossdressing and saying how horrified they were at seeing him in a dress to basically cheering him on. The Magypsies are the same in they are not a flattering depiction so any modern release of the game would probably do a similar thing in rewriting all the dialog and story for them. Since Ace Attorney was mentioned they did a similar thing in the 2024 re-release of the Apollo Justice trilogy. They essentially rewrite the character of "Robin Newman" in the English version compared to the original 3DS release to walk on eggshells dealing with her whole ordeal of crossdressing as a boy and avoiding her whole issue. The very topic of crossdressing just seems way too sensitive now. Incidentally Alexander O Smith's work seems to be starting to become lost to time much like how Ted Woolsey's old translations were left behind in the 90s with modern releases of those games. |
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psh_fun
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Since Mihoyo is a Chinese company wouldn't that mean they made the characters Asian and not "white"?
Overall I find it hard to get angry at this given all media do this all the time. Lots of American media race swap mythological figures like Norse or Greek gods and even real life historical figures like on Bridgerton or even just regular characters who look completely different between adaptions like the new Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen on the current Superman cartoon. Atlus made the Buddhist figure Mara a giant green penis monster and Saber is supposed to be King Arthur. Final Fantasy made Shiva a blue ice woman. A lot of works use names from mythology just for a reference sake. I am disappointed to see the English Genshin voice actors being so unprofessional though. I wonder if they'll get recast or scolded like other English VAs who have caused bad PR before in the past like Paimon's VA. I remember Snowbreak completely fired their English VAs when they started complaining about the game and just decided to focus on the other languages instead since most of the playerbase play that game subbed. That might be worth considering for Genshin at this point given how many problems the VAs have been causing. Genshin fandom in general is very toxic and full of haters and I try to ignore them. |
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BadNewsBlues
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As much as people want another Darkstalkers, Viewtiful Joe, or Okami there’s not much money in to be made in something they never profited on. I also would hesitate to say Nintendo is Uber fond of it’s non A-list franchises particularly when it comes to localizing them. Pepperidge Farm remembers Captain Rainbow never being released in the U.S.
Botched Nocturne remaster notwithstanding? Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Fri Jul 19, 2024 12:06 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
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Uh-uh, nope, we're not doing this. We didn't go through 20 years of confirmed documentation of Vivian being gender-nonconforming in Japanese for folks to try and re-write history. Find another chain to yank. I may be a TTYD hater but I'm a professional TTYD hater. I actually played TTYD on original hardware, I've been around the block long enough to know what went down with stuff.
This is really good context, thanks for this. Tose is a name I've seen here and there over the years, this paints a clearer picture. A quick glance on Google also reveals they had a hand in those really fun Game & Watch Gallery games. I hope the Starfy ports give them a good lifeline.
The only reason I ever beat DDS1 was because I used a guide I found on GameFAQs. I can't imagine my beating the final boss without it.  I love the Mantra system, I vastly prefer it over he Spheregrid. But I won't pretend it isn't overwhelming.
Also, yeah, I never even TRIED the Demi-Fiend fight. You had to be such a munchkin just to prepare for it. That said, DDS has my favorite OST out of the SMT series.
So, the reason I used the terminology I did was because I was worried younger readers wouldn't understand the difference. Adventure games like Shadowgate or Famicom Detective Club haven't been a thing in so long that I was worried calling Emio an "adventure game" would give the impression it was along the lines of, like, a game with 3D exploration. You did good to clarify the difference between a text adventure and an adventure game (there is a BIG difference between the likes of Zork and Shadowgate, readers will definitely appreciate that). This is one of the challenges that comes from talking about old games, like how a shooter can either be an FPS or an isometric shooter like Zaxxon. As for the translation stuff: glad you guys appreciate it.  Nintendo doesn't often do stuff that necessitates me giving them the wag of the finger, but it would be utterly inappropriate of me to not give them their due when their mistakes are public. I love Nintendo a lot, but they're not perfect and their bad decisions are worthy of criticism, same as anyone else's. I wasn't down with Nintendo's treatment of their contractors a few years back, and I'm not cool with their treatment of external translators now.
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i got the shivers!
 Posts: 117 Location: Brazil |
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Final Fantasy 14's latest expansion is essentially this. It takes place in an area that's suppose to be around Central America on a real world map and it's full of nothing but tacos and ponchos and alpacas. I don't really mind it though. I've wanted tacos in the game for ages and it's nice to finally have them and alpacas are cute.
As far as race goes all the inhabitants are lizard men, bird people, lion people, goblin people, and fish people so they kind of don't have to worry about skin color or anything like that. The only human characters are the Pelupelu who are like human children and they have light skin when you can see through the masks they wear. They've always play fast and loose with the real world analogies. The base game takes place in the equivalent of Africa yet has no African origins or themes at all and is all European focused. |
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GNPixie
Posts: 322 |
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The Genshin situation is messy all around. I remember people taking issue with how they handled the Greek gods in Hades and they were basically told to shut up and deal with it, despite some of the people taking issues being Greek themselves (some people even got harassed because of it); whole situation reminds me of that.
Which part of Latin America though and when? This is kind of important since there's some places in Latin America where areas having people of dark skin is rare or other places where its incredibly common. Post Spaniards, Latin America is distinct that its a melting pot of different cultures, not just white or black so unless they specifically say its based on this period or this period, I think people are taking it too much at face value.
I'd say slippery slope personally given other games do this a ton. Why is it suddenly a bad thing here? Final Fantasy uses Shiva a ton, complete with a sex change, despite Shiva being a pretty major figure of Hinduism. SMT uses everything under the sun and yet I barely hear any complaints outside of that one case with Apocalypse/Final using Krishna. Being inspired by different cultures and using names from mythologies while playing fast and loose with them isn't a new thing . I don't see why its a big deal. Last edited by GNPixie on Fri Jul 19, 2024 12:41 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Mikan-box Glasses-kun
Posts: 88 |
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Ah yeah, I'd file that under "video games have terrible genre naming conventions", considering there's text adventure, adventure, and then action adventure, which is far more different than similar to either of the first two. Mostly I just mention it though since there's still a small but dedicated community keeping the torch of text adventures alive! (I've even tried my hand at making some, though I never got too far.) |
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q_3
Posts: 173 |
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There was apparently a third Detective Club game on the Satellaview SNES attachment in 1997, but it seems like Satellaview games are just lost to time (or piracy) at this point. RIP Sutte Hakkun, one of the best puzzle platformers ever.
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 653 |
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So, like, I don't want to be mean but you know that Puerto Rico isn't anywhere near Central America, right? It's way off in the Caribbean. We're closer to Venezuela than we are to Central American countries like Belize or Nicaragua. And, like, we don't do ponchos. Heck, we don't even traditionally have burritos. We kinda have our own version of tamales (pasteles), but we make them out of plantains instead of cornmeal. The ponchos and alpacas in Dawntrail at least make sense because the mesoamerican signifiers they're using would be accurate to that region--and the Inca empire in modern-day Peru still counts among them. Square definitely sidestepped a ton of matters by having them all represented by Hrothgar and those two-headed lizard dudes, but they've done good work in doing right by mesoamerican rep with Dawntrail.
That is astoundingly not how that works. That's not how ANYTHING works. "Genndy Tartakovsky made Samurai Jack, so Jack is Russian!"
I don't know if you know this, but a lot of Genshin Impact's voice cast are Latin American--Alejandro Saab, Anairis Quiñonez (who is Puerto Rican, like myself), Zach Aguilar, Christina Valenzuela, Valeria Rodriguez. So, like, they have a ton of reason to be upset about this. This is their heritage being mangled and misrepresented. This is why the contrast with Dawntrail exists: Dawntrail borrows mesoamerican imagery and culture but does so as closely it can to its proper context as it can. Genshin... doesn't, and it feels really crappy when people just take your heritage as a costume (especially given a lot of the modern-day issues Latin Americans face in the US as-is). Also, it's really crappy of you to judge them for being "unprofessional" for being invested in their character and the depiction thereof when it hits so close to home for them.
My private name for this kind of situation is the "Earthbound Problem"
Like, sure, I'm on pins and needles for a new Breath of Fire. The sentiment behind the desire to see more non-A-list franchises brought back is a good one to pin onto Capcom, especially since they have a LOT of beloved B-tier games like Dino Crisis or the like. And even if a lot of their older fighting games like Cyberbots or Rival Schools floundered from Capcom flooding the market with too many fighting games, I feel like there still ought to be room for some of the non-fighting-game stuff like Cannon Spike. I'm reminded of Shane Black doing a Q&A for The Nice Guys and pointing out there isn't a sequel because the film made no money. Fans packing a theater for a re-showing wasn't going to budge the needle, because in Shane Black's words, "So what...i'm gonna tell them some nerds like the movie?". This is why I harp on about "tiny miracles". Sometimes, love isn't enough and someone at the studio with clout has to go on a limb and for this stuff. I'm willing to bet that Project Rainfall didn't make Nintendo reconsider releasing future Xenoblade Chronicles games in the US--the sales from GameStop's limited release of Xenoblade Chronicles were what did that. If I ever get called upon to interview someone from Success, dollars to doughnuts one of the first things out of my mouth will be "who do I have to thank for putting Izuna 3 into motion?"
Botched Nocturne remaster notwithstanding?[/quote] You know what sucks more than playing a botched remaster? Not having a version of the game to play at all.
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