Nandemonai

The one "with the detective" mentioned above is Demonbane, and it's great. There's also Littlewitch Romanesque, but depending on your taste for loli you may want to go with the Steam version. Cartagra doesn't really feature a high school at all. In Soul Link everybody's stranded on a space station (if you happened to have purchased it before it poofed). Then there's 999 / VLR. Eve Burst Error is old, so its translation is very iffy, but it's still great despite that and it's only $5. Koihime Musou is a Three Kingdoms isekai. Funbag Fantasy is a nukige with a plot that doesn't involve anything remotely like a high school.

On the topic of Kickstarters, consider this: Sol Press had to Kickstart their first two games to get their company off the ground. And at the time of the Sakura Sakura Kickstarter especially, they didn't really have a lot to show but big talk about future plans. They couldn't actually announce anything because those deals hadn't been done yet. Imagine if the Sakura Sakura KS had failed. Their whole company likely would have failed with it. None of these eight announcements would have ever happened.

Of course they shouldn't. If they did that then there would be a large block of time in between releases where there was nothing going on. If you don't have work for people to do, you lay them off. You don't pay people to do nothing much for months on end. Not if you want to say in business. Also, if you only go out there and ask for licenses every few years, you aren't going to have ongoing relationships with licensors and that will make it highly problematic. The trick is not "don't llicense games until your old licenses are done". Everyone does that. The trick is "don't license too many games and grind everything to a halt". Sekai Project seems to have fallen afoul of this. They have something like 20 projects going and they continually have trouble getting things done in a timely manner. Their problem isn't that they're continuing to acquire projects when they're not done with what they already have. Their problem is acquiring projects faster than they can finish them.

Older games might have had better plots, but the problem is, they're old. Most of the people who would know about them have been in the scene for awhile. At this point, that more or less means they're either gone, or they went pro. When the same thing happened to anime, the fansubbers just evaporated. Yes, some folks continue to fansub the new popular shows (no, stream rippers don't count), but not many. Most of those groups just closed up shop. For the most part, fansubbers did not pivot to subtitling older anime. In exchange, we now have a vast smorgasbord of legal anime for free. In general this is a good trade-off. Old shows like Akazukin Cha Cha, Mizuiro Jidai, or Tokimeki Tonight weren't getting a lot of love before (from the pro companies, because nobody cares about old anime so nobody buys it; from the fansubbers, because nobody cares about old anime). They still don't get a lot of love now. The number of subbers doing old shows is probably down, but they were always few. The VN fannotation peak was not nearly as high as the heyday of anime fansubbing . VN fannotations never threatened to smother the market both because the pirates were already smothering it, and also because they never managed to get anywhere near fannotating the majority of the industry output. Look at the number of games Omochikaeri covers every month. Every one of those games a multi-year commitment. And that's the problem: VNs can't attract the kind of community that anime fansubbers could, for two reasons. One, a big draw of being an anime fansubber was fame and attention. Tens or hundreds of thousands of eyes on your thing. Getting your sub out first for bragging rights. Fan patches take forever to do. It's just a much slower, much more involved type of thing. Two, fannotating a VN requires a much higher level of Japanese skill than dealing with an average anime episode. (Not that the average fansub quality was terribly good; it varied by group but often was horrible, especially with the speed subbing groups all competing to get the thing out the fastest.) The VN companies are much less likely to go after people fan translating older VNs, especially from bankrupt companies. There are a lot of those. In fact, it's likely that eventually those will be the only real projects in existence, if only because any "fan translation" worth playing of something recent will just go pro. But I just don't think there will be many of those projects. There aren't many of them in the anime world, and there were always more anime fansubbers than VN fan translators.

It's not possible to have a good translation with bad prose (well, okay, maybe if the original has bad prose to begin with), but it's very possible to have good prose that isn't a terribly good translation (because it isn't faithful to the original text). That's also a problem that most people wouldn't be able to recognize.

No, it's the most under rated thing among the apologists for low quality work I am convinced that Recettear took off because its localization is one of the best I've ever seen. There were other, better, quirky Japanese games that could have been the one that opened the floodgates. Why Recettear? Because someone at Valve saw the demo and was immediately taken by it. Well, why did that happen? Recettear is a low budget game and even its merchant sim mechanics aren't THAT special. Indeed, Recettear being a smash hit in the West surprised everybody; Japanese sales were so-so. Why is that? I'm pretty sure it's because Recettear's localized script is better than the Japanese script. I haven't actually checked, but I'll bet Recettear in Japanese is a fine script, but nothing spectacular. The English version, in comparison, cranks everything up to 11 and is a laugh riot. I've been thinking about this for quite awhile. When I look back at what I consider the best games I've ever played, there is a very high correlation with the best localization work I've ever seen. Nearly all the best translated RPGs and VNs have really good localization work. I have a very hard time thinking of any I'd hold up as an example of best-in-class despite having a bad localization. Because a bad localization kills the script. Many RPGs that I ultimately wasn't impressed with have bad localizations. Some are probably just... bad games. But I'm now convinced many would have ranked much higher had they been translated by competent folks who knew what they were doing, rather than by inept companies that didn't give a rat's ass. The Atelier series, for instance, has consistently awful localizations, which - combined with the already-fairly-weak plots - really hurts the games. I checked out entirely: I quit halfway through Atelier Shallie because I just didn't care, and haven't bothered looking at any released since. I have it on fairly good authority the Ar Tonelico series is good in Japanese; I couldn't get more than a few hours into either of the ones I tried because the writing was so. awful. RPGFan makes the point better than I ever could: Here is a review of the Japanese PSP version of Legend of Heroes: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch. And here, of the English version. Notice how every aspect of the game scored lower? That's not only because it's a different reviewer. That's because a good story does more than just hold your interest during the story segments. It doesn't make the whole game better, but it makes it feel better. It subconsciously makes people more willing to overlook flaws in the game as a whole. People recognize this effect for graphics; they call it bling. But they don't seem to acknowledge it's true for the text, as well. Bad localizations destroy games. They do it so effectively people don't even understand what happened, just that 'they didn't like the game'. They think 'that game sucked' when the real problem was 'that game was translated by a company that cares so little that when one of its employees thought it would be funny to change a character's name to Esty Dee, they just left it in the game'.

Pulltop did release one game under Jast USA. They're a brand of Will, which for years was one of basically two brands Jast had access to, when they rebranded as Peach Princess. Quick ancient history lession: Jast was a Japanese h-game maker. Jast USA translated a bunch of their titles into English. Then the founder got cancer or had a heart attack or something. He died, company folded. Jast USA wasn't sure what to do; it found new partnerships with Crowd and Will and rebranded itself Peach Princess. Eventually Peter Payne decided Jast USA was the more well-known name and re-orged under it. Well, Pulltop being a Will title, Jast USA released one of their games: Princess Waltz, in late 2008. They never released any of Pulltop's other titles, and 5 years later Pulltop decided to launch Moenovel. I think it is fairly safe to say that Pulltop probably wasn't impressed with Jast USA and is unlikely to work with them again. Their experience with IMHHW probably 'taught' them that going it alone is a 'much better' way to go, since it sold a LOT more than any numbers Jast could have put up in 2008.

Cleanly? They turned one route literally into gibberish.

I found Corona Blossom to be not worth the time. It isn't very interesting.

Princess Evangile has issues, but it sounds like it has what you want. Koihime Musou is, like, half charage and half plot-based. Looking at what you've said, I'm also going to recommend Chrono Clock. All the character routes are somewhat short, but the 3 of the 4+2 (2 locked behind the first 4) that I've finished so far had what it sounds like you're looking for. Even if the plot is kind of light, it's still there. Sonohana New Gen might work for you for the same reasons. I'll also recommend Littlewitch Romanesque, although many folks will prefer the Steam version to the uncut one. The characters are great and it's pretty well written.

MangaGamer clearly does have a schedule. They release one game a month almost all the time, which can only be possible if they've got a schedule. They don't announce that schedule publically, but that doesn't mean they don't have one at all.

Very true. This guy was an admin for the city, got pissy when he was let go, and seized control of the network he was administrating. He made the mayor come personally see him (in jail) before he would reveal the password. This happened more than 20 years ago. And here's an article telling people "hey, you guys know this is illegal". The standard practice now is that if an employee is getting fired or laid off, you have to make it a surprise in order to protect yourself. Many times the employees will be escorted from the building by security immediately after they've been notified. This isn't the nicest way to go about it, but it isn't anything unusual either. I do, however, disagree that the layoffs won't have significant long term effect. There's a good chance the layoffs either are a sign that long term prospects are already rocky, or will make the situation worse in the long run.

Well, there goes the neighborhood. I wouldn't be surprised if they respond to this by launching more Kickstarters, it brings in a chunk of money up front in exchange for a lot more hassle down the road. And obviously they're hurting for money. Companies that aren't hurting for money don't do this. And wiping out the ENTIRE marketing team is a very questionable long term move. Look on the bright side: If worst does come to worst, Jast USA has a long history of license rescuing titles from bankrupt localization companies. There's a decent chance they could clear Sekai's backlog by 2030. Perhaps the early 2030's.

I'm not even sure the VIC-20 could hold a single one of the sprites in its 10K of RAM. Never mind the single-button joystick. Or the fact that Trails in the Sky's text would fill up dozens of floppies even if compressed**. I can see it now... I walk up to a townsperson, press FIRE to open the menu, then select TALK, but this NPC isn't on the same disk as the NPC I just talked to. The game prompts me to INSERT DISK #28. ** - The successor system, the Commodore 64, had floppies with 190K of space per side. But you can't fill it entirely with text. Because the machine has such low RAM, you'd have to store the game program and some of the graphics on each disk. You'd end up with a lot less than 190K of usable space for dialog when you were done.

JAST licensed Littlewitch Romaneque after Littlewitch had already gone under.

That was supposed to be attached to Infernoplex's post mentioning Ojou-sama to Himitsu no Otome - which is a Moonstone Honey game. I'm not sure how that got screwed up.

It is Moonstone. Moonstone games seem to print money for MangaGamer.

I will second the Trails series. Trails in the Sky was originally released in 2004 and it will probably run on your toaster. The game is completely awesome, though, especially with the addition of Turbo mode (the battles can be a bit slow-moving).

Huh. They updated the storefront page. All the 瓦石語 (garbagese) seems to be gone now, except for the one screenshot (which hasn't been changed). Perhaps it actually isn't being machine translated. (I'll still be wanting to see an explanation for what the hell that was they posted.)

It doesn't even require Lose to have lied, explicitly. A simple miscommunication would suffice. It's entirely possible Lose always intended from day one to release the altered version, and Sekai Project from day one thought getting a 100% unaltered release was in the cards. And further that Sekai thought it was so obvious that you wouldn't alter the 18+ version that they didn't think to ask, and certainly never wrote down in the contract. Everyone involved thinks everybody else is on the same page... but they aren't.

This is not a big change. For as long as VNs have been getting localized, sales have been this poor. It is only in the last few years that are the exception. Since the opening of Steam, and their success on Kickstarter, some of them have started finding more mainstream success. In 2011, for example, MangaGamer projected that Koihime Musou wouldn't crack 2000 sales, so they couldn't afford to pay the VA licensing fee, so they had to strip it out. Many years ago someone did a VN panel at ACen. (This would have been more than 10 years ago; it was a one-off thing from the days when there was Jast, and that was it.) The guy pulls up a copy of Tokimeki Checkin! and says "there isn't any voice in this game", to which I said 'That's funny. There most definitely is voice in the game'. The guy says "there, uh, isn't in the copy that I have". (Meaning it was pirated; in those days h-game pirates cut out voice to make the game smaller.) When I got on his case about it he was like 'yeah okay maybe I'll start buying them' and I said 'what about this one right here? There are copies right across the street [in the dealer's room].' And the guy tells me to my face "I already have it." I guarantee way more than 2-3 thousand people have played Subahibi.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of that kind of content, but after the XChange 3 incident years ago, Jast promised to announce ahead of time whenever any such changes were going to be made. Their track record honoring that promise has not been super great.

It certainly is not. Kickstarters are a pain in the ass to set up, requiring months of work to line up. We know this because of how long elapses between when companies announce they're going to do a Kickstarter and/or when the Prefundia goes up, and when the Kick actually Starts. Just because you don't see them doing that work in public doesn't mean they're not busy bees. Don't be Mr. PHB. What are they doing? They're figuring out what their budget is going to be. That tells them how much money they need to ask for. Who's going to translate the game and for how much money? What's it going to cost us to get rights to the voices? How much trouble do we expect from the engine? Are we likely to need 1 dev for 3 months tops for a few minor changes, or a major overhaul involving a whole team for the better part of a year? And they're trying to nail down stretch goals. What can we offer as a stretch goal? If it's merchandise, you have to estimate how much it's going to cost for shipping or you end up losing money on every pledge. Do you have piles of unsold merch laying around that you want to try to get rid of? If you're going to offer new merch, do you make it before the KS and risk ending up with piles of unsold merch that you need to get rid of? Or do you only produce what's actually demanded from the KS (plus some extra for lost or damaged merchandise)? How long a lead time will that take, who are you going to order it from, how much is it going to cost, and what's the minimum print run? If it's extra content or added features for the game, there are similar problems scoping and sizing all of that. Is this bonus content something that's easy enough for us to do? How much do we think it will cost us to do the extra work versus how much extra money do we think we can ask for? Can we even get the voice actors back into a studio? Is the writer interested in writing that extra scenario, and are they available? In other words, to do a Kickstarter right involves a whole lot of pre-planning work up front to scope out exactly what you think you can do, and what it's going to cost you to do it. That work is not free; it's money spent and time not available for other things. All in the hope that your project might get funded. Try to skimp on this, and you can easily end up with a successfully-funded project badly in the red because you're on the hook for a bunch of obligations the Kickstarter did not bring in enough money to cover. And that's not even including the giant pain in the ass that are Kickstarter projects that get delayed. How long did it take Sekai Project to deliver on all their Grisaia promises? I believe the physical rewards shipped in April. 2 and a half years after the projected date. The Kickstarter has 75 updates. As someone who's had to prepare similar updates before, I guarantee many of those updates took hours to prepare, in terms of meetings and follow up to gather the info contained in them.

Yep. It took more than ten years of shooting the breeze about the differences between Japanese and English before I realized that English actually does have honorifics. Military ranks are a good one, too. In Japanese, they say the equivalent of Sergeant Bob. They don't say Sergeant Bob-san. The sergeant part is the honorific. Well, we pretty much do exactly the same thing, except we invert the word order so the honorific comes first. When people were first trying to computerize speech recognition and the like, they went to the experts in the world of linguistics and tried to use the commonly-accepted facts as the truth. Come to find out linguistics was full of inaccuracies and oversimplifications. People don't pause between words, for instance. What we actually do is draw out the last sound for awhile, then launch into the next word. Try it; pausing. between. words. makes. you. sound. like. a. robot. There are lot more phonemes than people thought, too. Most vowels make more than two sounds, for instance.