Earlier this year, a game translation project which I had been trying to get off the ground for a very long time was surprise-announced by another team member, with a release implied to be imminent. I'm not going to mention the name of the project in the body of this post for Woolie Madden reasons—I don't think we should have tempted the Fates then, and I don't think we should any further—but if you've happened across this page, you know what it is. I had myself mentioned that I had already translated 90% of this game's Super Famicom script, a number the team member making the announcement quoted, and one which I stand by. Yet here we are several months later, and I'm still deep in work.
In short: the translation's the holdup. I'm informed that technical reasons make using the original SFAM game for a patch prohibitively difficult. However: the version of the game I understand we have to use has expanded greatly on that original SFAM game, adding a number of events and much more text—plus a second protagonist choice with mostly unique events and dialogue—while revising some of the existing script. Translating & editing all this new material, in addition to editing the entire script, old and new, for length and inserting it line-by-line, is unavoidably taking a good amount of time. While I've been presented with a method that attempts to create a script for the game using a combination of Google Translate, what I translated for the SFAM version, and guesses from non-translating members of the team, I strongly felt that the results did not deliver in terms of quality, accuracy, fluency, or characterization, so I asked, and was promised, complete responsibility for the script side of the project.
That's the reason for the delay. I, as the translator, am the rate-determining step. That's due to a decision I made for the quality of the project—I want to deliver a good patch, one that reflects the game & characters accurately and of which everyone can be proud—and the consequences of that decision are my responsibility. Given my current work rate, I'm going to shoot to complete the translation side of this project six months from now; emergencies or unexpected developments may change this, but I think it's doable.
That's the nutshell version, and I apologize to anyone whose hopes were gotten up by the announcement earlier in the year. There really isn't a way to short-circuit the time investment required for the translation, for reasons explained at length below. If you'd a more in-depth explanation, please proceed past the cut.
Last month, evidently, as detailed here. Almost 200 pages. I could joke about what could be in the book, since the game really seemed to be kinda hurting in the art budget in the beginning there, but: I doubt they'd release a big expensive artbook three years after the game's release if Luminarise sunk. Koei's been looking for ways to revitalize the franchise after Étoile; it seems that this one might have stuck.
Also, evidently, they're holding some 30th anniversary events in January. Wonder if any sequel announcements are on the horizon.
- I wonder if this is a wind-up to the Lunar 0 Kei Shigema & co. want to make. (No one will acknowledge the news in that interview, despite the translation being around for over a year.)
Someone says the SSS opening theme isn't sung by Jennifer Stigile. Someone on Tumblr says, though, that posts from Leo's VA's son (all right, grain of salt with that tortured provenance, but) are suggesting that at least some of the rest of the original Working Designs crew's back. This plus the use of some of Working Designs' original scripts signals Victor Ireland's involvement in the remaster.
IIRC, Victor Ireland was mad at Stigile at singing for the U.S. PSP version. Stigile's absence from her iconic vocal work indicates that Ireland has blackballed her. I've championed Ireland's legacy in gaming in the past, which has been elided to an extent due to some understandable hard feelings about how he treated some people in the WD heyday. The absence of Stigile, though, gives me added pause about Ireland helming a production today.
Never mind. I read confusion about this point elsewhere after posting this, so I listened to the snippet in the video, and it sounds like Stigile to me.
Never mind never mind: regardless of whether it's Stigile in the song or not, we're getting an all-new English dub. I don't have my hopes up.
Also, I'd forgotten in my absence how much of an iconic pairing the Lunar fan community and misinformation are. Reminder: don't trust any info without receipts!
ETA: What is with the spidery, ultra-thin font? The dialogue boxes are translucent, and the letters get lost among the colorful backgrounds and chunky pixels. I know I'm in clear gift-horse territory, but between this and the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, why has it become so difficult to choose easy-to-read, context-appropriate fonts for remakes of classic RPGs? Why have we lost this ability, as a species?
As you've probably heard, romhacking.net has imploded. At least, that's what I've heard; the site still seems to be up as of this writing, but the claim I read most recently is that downloads and new patches are not going to be hosted. The current content seems to consist of brief news articles about patch releases combined with "Relevant Link"s. Someone at what remains of the site threw its entire content up on archive.org, but, um, a) it's an 11.7-gig download, b) it's not getting rave reviews for its organization, and c) there's a rash of user complaints about trojans that, er, are not being addressed in a reassuring manner ("if you don't have the stomach to handle false positives and MAYBE a malicious file or two").
But at least one patch is safe: a kind soul contacted me offering to house the Phantasy Star III retranslation patch put together by romhacker Peaches with help from lory1990. It is up on FlamePurge's page!
This reminds me, actually, that I haven't looked at the PSIII patch to see if the script was edited. It'd be a small thing, as my script files are here. ROM script editing is an issue that's been on my mind as of late.
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