As with many '80s kids, The Goonies was my absolute favorite movie as a kid. It was the ultimate explosion of the idea of going out with your friends through your town on a Kids on Bikes backyard adventure. I made a point of catching it on broadcast TV (in the long-forgotten days when the major networks would air theatrical movies in prime time and they were a more reliable method of catching movies after their theatrical runs than VHS tapes, which were at the time expensive & extensively-delayed) whenever it was aired.
The Goonies isn't remembered as fondly nowadays, and - after catching a revival showing at my old high school, where some enterprising band members were projecting it on the side of a tractor trailer - I think it's because the kids yell a whole lot. It's a group of kids together, and to kids, yelling communicates excitement (and The Goonies sure was exciting to this kid!), but when you're an adult, a bunch of kids yelling can be just nails on a chalkboard. That aside, though I didn't come away as besotted with The Goonies as I was as a kid, and though much of the appeal of the movie has to be colored by the lens of childhood, I think it holds up sufficiently, the typical various '80s insensitivities notwithstanding.
Anyhow: given my love of the movie, my mother got me The Goonies II NES game by Konami. (In the U.S., the title billed it as a sequel to the movie, though it's actually a sequel to a previous Goonies game never released stateside.) I predictably played the hell out of it, and the title's garnered a bit of modern prestige by being one of the first Metroidvanias. I have to say, though, that while I recall enjoying the thing after some fashion - I cared enough to beat it, eventually - the overriding memory I had of the title was one of frustration: being stuck in an endless series of rooms, that maddening music looping over and over, hitting and otherwise poking tediously at every surface (as you did to uncover hidden entryways), or otherwise going over and over old territory in a usually-futile attempt to unstick myself and make some progress. The phrase ad nauseam was applicable in every sense. My experience was also colored by an inexplicable and utterly undeduceable bit where you have to, er, hit an old woman five times (and no less than five) with your fist or a hammer in order to obtain a necessary item. This was as much of a roadblock to me as the "kneel by this cliff for several seconds until a whirlwind appears" part of Simon's Quest, and it doesn't come attached to a title with Castlevania ambience or music chops. It's completely unexplained, and it deserves to be every bit as infamous as the Simon's Quest bit.
I recently decided to replay it, though, inspired in part by Jeff Gerstmann's NES ranking project, where it enjoys an in-my-opinion unwarranted ranking of #16 out of 478 games as of this writing. Given my own extensive memories of the title, and the existence in the game of an outright unsolvable puzzle, I'd chalked this up to nostalgia bias on Gerstmann's part. Did the replay change my mind? Well...somewhat, but not really, not fundamentally.
That Last Post:
From all appearances, I posted a few lines about stuff I did in 2024, promised more, and nipped off. I actually do have this post mostly completed on my hard drive, but in the interim, I landed on a new professional job that involves a lot of watching franchise material. With the demands of work and the Translation Project (below), something had to give, and the something was that post. I held off on blogging further primarily due to lack of time but also because I wanted to see that post finished before moving on, but, well, this existence of this post proves that that ain't gonna happen. It will be finished, but not before more new material appears. Sorry.
The Translation Project:
The Translation Project is continuing apace. Not a glamorous update, but there are certain phases of projects where it's just a lot of heads-down work, and the best you can say is "yep, still ongoing." I should be able to make the "end of April" date I projected for my end of the work - that is, of course, providing that no other work or life matters intervene. If that changes, I'll post notification here. (I will say that for purely personal reasons, it would be hard for me to stay on the project past June, and there is a practical limit to the amount of time I can take up from folks who are graciously volunteering their sweat & tears here, so there's a built-in hard stop to faffing about on my end.)
I'm knocking out the larger files first, dedicated to love interest lines; there are numerous smaller files I have basically done but want to check something in the actual game before I send them on. In any event: The part that was the big sticking point for me alone, having a format for the script that's usable for a patch, has graciously been remedied by other parties, and I'm dedicated to seeing a properly-translated version of this game happen, no matter what it takes.
Other folks' writing projects:
On a note: Kimimi wrote an appreciation a few days ago of a certain game. It's a strong overview. It's an excellent fond summary of the Angelique experience: "sitting in a room so pink Barbie would think it was a bit much while a grumpy Guardian tells me how much he dislikes lobster." No, seriously: as essential as that is, Kimimi brings home many of the core characteristics of the franchise: how safe the game's romances and universe are, or its smart use of the smallest actions or bits of dialogue to illustrate character (such as Clavis during the tutorial jumping, so far as he jumps, at the opportunity to teach you how to cut out of conversations quickly), or the importance of soft power on the road to the throne (admittedly, I have a more mercenary view than Kimimi on this).
My site:
Effectively on hiatus until I finish The Translation Project. I'd like to finish up the Beep! magazine Lunar interviews before the Steam rerelease at the end of the month, but that might not be in the cards. It seems as if most people have concluded I'm making up the interviews and Kei Shigema's Lunar 0 ideas, but I can say from decades of experience that that's the Lunar fandom for you (the part of it off Tumblr, anyhow; the fans on Tumblr are uncharacteristically friendly).
Dead by Daylight:
Dead by Daylight is taking a break from content for a big quality-of-life update, and so am I. I was aware of how much of my gaming time it was taking up - mostly not wasted time; I genuinely enjoy the game, and it's made with great love - but it feels so good to make actual progress in other titles I want to play. There was a Resident Evil-themed 2v8 mode I wanted to try, but I missed the deadline, and I think I'm better staying on the wagon, in the end. In retrospect, Brad's years-long obsession with a live service game to the detriment of his personal and professional well-being, considered an anomaly in the day, is more of the more prophetic bits from Giant Bomb.
Tumblr:
I am back on Tumblr. Reservations aside, with the world going to hell (or the United States going to hell and trying to drag the world with it), it's no time to disconnect, I suppose. I don't post there often, but it is my sole social media presence. There are folks there I'm very happy to see again, but there are times when I wonder just what it is I'm doing. I still think the AI mining is, well, a minefield, but it's the only place to social media platform to post and view art that has a opt-out option for AI.
Movies:
I'm OK with the cinematic experience dying now.
Note: I meant to have this post completely ready by today, but I've had a few job and other real-life matters to which to attend over the close of December, and I have a few celebrations to enjoy at the end of the year. I'd rather take the time to commemorate the stuff that meant a lot to me this year properly instead of rushing it to meet a 2024 deadline. This post, then, will have to be a work in progress for several days. When it's complete, I'll post a notification here.
At the start of the year, bonbonbunny above pointed out that enjoying games nowadays encompasses more than playing them firsthand - it also includes enjoying when people you like are playing them, or enjoying content produced about them. This really struck home with me, reading it as I watched Jeff Gerstmann play a bit of NES Dragon Warrior, and though I did manage to play a good amount of games this year, I indeed found that much of my enjoyment of games came from sources outside of playing them directly.
Translating (Professionally):
My professional translation career experienced a number of landmarks in 2024. First, there was the release of Sand Land, the open-world, vehicle-heavy RPG based on the Akira Toriyama manga. It was an incredible honor to work with Toriyama's characters—I love you, Rao—and I was super happy to be part of this project. It was a joy to watch it from pre-release work to the announcement to it coming to market - the first time I've ever been part of a single-player title release this big.
Second, I've been working for much of the year on another title based on a manga from one of the field's most venerable and globally-popular artists. This title hasn't been announced, so I can't say more - other than the game genre is a change of pace for me, but offering plenty of character in which to sink my figurative teeth. It's an honor to work on this property, and it's been a pleasure to spend time with the game's cast, which has, after these many months, come to feel like a second home.
Third, I was fortunate enough to be appointed (it's a supervisory role! I'm using "appointed"!) to an editing position on an RPG in one of the genre's foremost franchises. One of those franchises on which you dream about working when you first join the craft. One of the franchises. The title's still under wraps—shh!—but I'll be sure to let everyone know in an extremely tiresome manner of my involvement once the cat's out of the bag.
These jobs, though, delivered joy not only via the prestige and the work itself, in the ability to be part of bringing these stories to audiences, but in the substance of the stories. There are a couple moments I encountered in translating text that were some of the most potent of the year for me - even though I experienced them solely in text and stage directions - that I was hoping to discuss here but can't, because the relevant games haven't been released or, in one case, even announced yet. I'll come back to this post in however many months it takes for that to happen to share my thoughts properly.
One moment, though, I can discuss: the closing questline of Sand Land, which involves the chance discovery of a long-lost song by the late wife of one of the main characters, with the party then becoming the vehicle of a grassroots idea from a few fans to share the song with the world's newly-reunited populace. I got to translate that questline, and I felt it was a beautiful coda to the game. The group finds some part of civilization, of happier times, surviving in a pocket of the world where it's been loved in a smaller scope and has been bringing joy to others, that is rediscovered to bring a message of joy and hope to a larger, reborn world, bringing unity to a society that's long lacked it - and a small reminder of love to a man who's learned to go without such things but deserves one nonetheless. This wasn't labeled as the final questline when it was handed to me, but its role in wrapping the game up in a beautiful bow was shiningly obvious regardless. A glorious way to commemorate the survival and reflourishing of this world.
(I will be the stereotypical persnickety translator here for a moment, though. When the party finally hears a proper recording of the song and has an emotional response, one of the group asks after their comrade Rao, the late singer's husband, wondering if he isn't upset to perhaps have a wound reopened. (His wife died as part of a tragic mistake he made decades ago while working in the service of a corrupt military endeavor.) His laconic response was, in my translation, "My tears all dried long ago." I see from watching a video of the quest that this was edited to "My tears all dried up long ago," which is literally a two-letter addition, I know, but to me connotes a different emotional reaction, one less involved and more dismissive. I feel the original communicates that Rao's had his tears, but that he's come to a point of...not acceptance, quite, as the situation is not one that can be accepted, but of acknowledgement and coexistence with the past and the way things are, good and bad, that seems at the core of Rao's character. The edit (my tears have dried up, it's impossible for me to have an emotional response to this anymore) seems to dismiss the possibility of tears at all, to dismiss what's happened, to be about stuffing emotions down and denying them in a stunted way. Editing has to happen, but I feel this was a loss nonetheless.)
Translating (Hobby):
There have been ups and downs with The Project That Has Consumed Me, but I'm grateful that I have the help of folks who know what needs to be done on the technical side and am finally within what might be generously called the homestretch - even if, in the process, I discovered that, due to version differences and formatting considerations, I basically had to translate the entire goldang game again. Again, thank you for your patience.
This seems like whistling past the graveyard given the events of the week and now that Tony Todd has taken from the world - I prefer to think that he was raptured - but I got the Angelique Luminarise artbook. It's well-produced, but it can be dispensed with fairly quickly: Both the best and worst you can say about it is that it's an exhaustive compendium of all the digital art available from the game by lead artist Sayo Ichi (plus Munashichi, a talented landscape illustrator who designed the Guardians' offices).
Sorry for the binding eating up so much of the images on one side, by the way; it's a new book, and most of the images of interest are at the front or back, where the issue is most exacerbated.)
This includes an extensive collection of in-game background stills and character art of the love interests and others in the cast, of course, but it also features promo art for B's Log articles and LINE-like social media icons and the Famitsu black & white promo comics that served both to introduce characters and, via a couple old-school OL Angelique fans, the general concept of the game.
There's also a good amount of art for merchandise: art of the cast (including Ange; not Reina, though) in black leather from merch from one of the stage shows; the standee art of the Holy Bird Guardians (Julious & co.) interacting with the Luminarise Guardians illustrating the 1st/2nd/3rd Step CDs; etc.
This isn't completely exhaustive—say, art for merch for some eatery promotion of the characters dressed as waiters and maids done in a ink/watercolor French cafe style is absent, maybe due to the use of a different artist than Sayo Ichi. Most of the merch art is present, though—and this will count as digital art for most, as you're likely familiar with it primarily from photos on Suruga-ya or Yahoo Auctions.
The flip side is that, save for a few headshot sketches in back, you're not getting anything that hasn't already been released. You can still view most if not all of this online where it was originally posted, if you like. The art's also commentary-free - nothing on the pieces save for its original place of publication. Disappointingly, there's no interview with Sayo Ichi (or Munashichi), either. (Kairi Yura used to do interviews for days.) It also, save for three-and-a-half pages in back of a few headshot sketches for each Guardian, doesn't have any design material.
Angelique has never, ever been big on this; even the settei books for the Neo Ange and Koi Suru Tenshi anime have only finished, production bible-level sketch work. I don't know if it's a mandate from on high or what: the love interests must be presented fully-formed, like Athena from Zeus's head, with none of the nitty-gritty on how the design concepts came together revealed, at least visually. The odd upshot of this is that, even at fewer than 50 pages, the Maren artbook that came with the deluxe edition (viewable on this page, showing actual production sketches, rejected costumes, etc.) is probably the most extensive behind-the-scenes visual resource we've had.
Verdict: Nicely presented but not essential. Nevertheless, it's convenient to have this all collected and on paper.
I was going to conclude this with a photo of Tony Todd at the aquarium he used for his Twitter avatar, but the specific one I had in mind seems to have been wiped from the internet. Sic transit gloria mundi.
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