Lunar Threads

This is kinda old news, but I figured I'd throw it out there. Time will tell if this post is in the right place, but Vic Ireland has started a new company that sounds like it will deal with game porting. Gaijinworks. He has a webpage http://www.gaijinworks.com/ but it won't have anything on it for a while. Now, if we can just get an offical Lunar 3 japanese release, maybe we can have a great port just like the good ol' days.

It's somewhat hard to find since it's a ways down the board, but there's actually a topic on GaijinWorks already over on the General Gaming board:

http://www.lunarthreads.com/viewtopic.php?t=1810

oops ^_^' Sorry.

Nah, not a problem. It was buried in that board. I've been wondering about them lately. The news about the company came around the middle of summer, and we've heard nothing since.

Yeah, I think I read somewhere that they weren't planning on updating the site till early next year. I'm anxious to see what they churn out though. The death of WD was a sad day for us all.

Actually, the reason no one has heard from them is because I have Vic tied up in my bedroom redoing the translation for L:L and L: DS. You know, it'll be awhile before he's done. A guy working with only a pencil in his mouth can only go so fast.

Actually, I really am intrested to see what games Vic wants to port over. I doubt we'll see Lunar go to them, it'll likely stay in Ubisoft's grubby hands.

I call them Ewwbisoft now.

Benevolent_Ghaleon wrote:I call them Ewwbisoft now.

LOL...good one, BG.

I haven't been here for a while, and haven't been doing much gaming cause of a car accident, is workingdesigns not making Lunar anymore? what is going on, please some1 explain, thanks in advance

Working Designs is no more, therefore the only company translating the last two Lunar games to come state side was ubisoft.

Those two aren't connected, though -- Ubisoft localized Lunar Legend because WD passed on it; they were still in business then but working on other projects. It was natural enough for Ubisoft to also localize Genesis/Dragon Song, and by then WD was pretty much gone.

it's not that Ubisoft is a bad company like EA. They make good stuff, they just did Lunar wrong at least they bothered to GIVE us lunar, even if it wasn't the same.

True, and most of what they did was not so much a matter of messing up something that was good as it was not putting enough time into it -- or simply not going the extra mile we'd expect from WD. Legend's translation was a bit off, but some sections were quite good as I recall. Rune commented once that what it needed was one more editorial pass by a single person to unify it (Vic actually offered to be that person, but was turned down by Ubi), whereas instead it was rushed out the door. (And even with the rush it was released a month late, just barely in time for Christmas.) There were also bugs introduced in localizing, but without knowing enough of what needed to be changed to accommodate the English text I can't say what might be attributed to carelessness rather than simply lack of time to finish debugging it; cartridges need a lot of lead time to manufacture and the Christmas target probably hurt them quite a bit. And, of course, some of the criticisms directed at Legend are for things not under Ubi's control, like the battle system and (probably) the alcohol refs being changed to chocolate and soda and so on.

I haven't played much of Dragon Song in English, but from what I've heard it's the same deal -- not enough time to do some obvious debugging and editing. They did put in a couple of improvements -- I'll forgive them a lot for simply making Althena's hair the correct color at the beginning. And sure, if WD had done it they probably would have put in player selection of battle targets, but even with lots more time than Ubi had, how many localizers are going to make that kind of change. (And then WD would have taken months doing it and drawn fire for changing something from the sacred original.) Ubi wouldn't have been able to do much with the stripped-down story that Genesis had, and WD wouldn't have either.

*coughcoughcough*

Alunissage wrote:True, and most of what they did was not so much a matter of messing up something that was good as it was not putting enough time into it -- or simply not going the extra mile we'd expect from WD. Legend's translation was a bit off, but some sections were quite good as I recall. Rune commented once that what it needed was one more editorial pass by a single person to unify it (Vic actually offered to be that person, but was turned down by Ubi), whereas instead it was rushed out the door.

That's interesting... That's virtually the same comments that I had regarding Dragon Song. It really could've been improved substantially with just one person running through the dialogue to unify it. Most of the problems were problems with consistency anyhow.

What I don't get... they were putting the game out in October, and a one-month delay (to November) really couldn't've hurt them any. I think that extra month would've been ample time to clear up that mess. KF

It seems to me that Lunar simply isn't considered a top-tier franchise like Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior, so until it gets a big budget entry on a console, we shouldn't be surprised at it getting shoddy treatment by developers and localizers.

Frankly, I still think it was a mistake on GameArts's part to focus on Grandia 3 instead of developing Dragon Song as a console title. I've already been pretty vocal on here about how I think DS's story has a lot of potential in it that could have made for a really great game if it had been given more adequate care from a development standpoint. If it had been billed as Lunar 3 on the Playstation 2, and given the big budget treatment Grandia 3 had, I think it would have been much more successful than Grandia 3 ended up being.

Not to mention the fact that Dragon Song was stripped of the things some of us like most about the Lunar series, the anime cutscenes and voice acting. Dragon Song just wasn't an epic game compared to the previous games. Even Lunar Legend was a much more substantial game and that was a stripped down remake/interpretation.

i think it was a mistake to bing it to handhelds to begin with its so hard to really get into an rpg if your playing on the go. the point of handhelds is to entertain yourself during a slow day at work or on the bus its not that great staring at a tiny screen with your DS pluged into the wall. theres nothing like coming home after school or work poping a disc in the playstation just to unwind.

I don't know what prompted the development on the DS but I assume they saw it as a new platform and wanted to see if the interest was still there. Perhaps a plausible idea but a horrible execution. Lunar really is at it's best when it's designed for a console with all the bells and whistles fans come to expect.

Eh, I'd be happier without voice acting and am fairly indifferent to animation; I'm perfectly happy with sprite scenes if the sprites are well done (like Legend's). It's the battle system and music quality I want to see preserved.

And there are many, many RPGs for handhelds, which is nice for those of us who like them but don't have time to play console games. Most of my game time is during my commute.