What's in Lunar 3 ??????

For discussion of rumors of any new Lunar games, including the nonexistent Lunar 3

Who Do You Think Will Be Back In Lunar 3?!?

Ghaleon
5
14%
Zophar
1
3%
luna
0
No votes
Lucia
7
20%
Alex
2
6%
Hiro
2
6%
The Four Dragons
18
51%
 
Total votes: 35

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phyco126
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Post by phyco126 »

Or he could do what I do with bill collectors and just not answer the phone :P *gets around 10 calls per day from one bill collector agency*

Anyway, I believe Redding was on an episode of Home Make Over: Extreme Addition (also, they showed the temperature of around 115 in on part of the episode.) I'm fairly certain it was that town.

No offense, but I hardly see any town with a population over 30,000 being a hick town... Burg, was a hick town, vane (with a population not much larger than Saith) wasn't. It don't see the difference.
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Rune Lai
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Post by Rune Lai »

phyco126 wrote:Hmm, I think the reason there where so many Delays with WD is because of...

A. Quality control
B. Makeing sure it gets done right
C. Fixing bugs in the Japenese versions
D. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY smaller company with a certainly smaller budget.

*shrugs* Besides, I doubt they pull an EAgames stunt and force their workers to work 24/7 with no compensation and poor pay.


I'm pretty sure they don't. If they did and they still didn't ship they'd have some serious time management issues. O_o I think your assumptions are pretty much on the mark, but I don't think that's all of it. I don't know what's going on over there these days, but WD didn't always have astronomical wait times.

These days, Atlus USA seems to be a company of about the same size that also does a spectacular job translating RPGs, and they don't take two years to do an RPG. Moreover, they manage several releases a year, two or three of which are RPGs. I'm not sure what Atlus is doing differently, but whatever it is, cuts down on localization time.

phyco126 wrote:Besides, look at all the extras they throw into the game? I love that. You don't see crappy Square doing that with their FF games, do you? (would be great to have a Sephiroth punching puppet so you have something to punch with the Ghaleon punching puppet :P )


Atlus also has extras. I'm not sure if they took a page from WD or it's just a simple factor of the market now (I don't know at what point they started), but my copy of Shin Megami Tensei came with a soundtrack, and my copy of Digital Devil Saga was a boxed set with room set aside from the sequel (and it also came with a soundtrack). Pre-orders for DDS2 will come with a soundtrack containing that aren't even available in Japan. They also had free Disgaea mini-artbooks for the first so many people who registered their games.

WD doesn't have a monopoly on extras anymore. Atlus is probably their closest competitor in terms of size and inclination for including extras, but Nippon Ichi has opened up its own US branch now and they also cater to the niche RPG gamer crowd and toss in fanboy/girl-ready pre-order incentives. Even Midway's pre-order bonus for Shadow Hearts 2 was one of the best ever (pre-orders got a copy of the first game for free).

Square doesn't include extras though because it doesn't have to. People will buy their games anyway. Generally speaking, the extras are there because they're incentive. WD, Atlus, Nippon Ichi, are all aiming at the same hardcore audience and they have to hold on to their fanbase and drum up support. Final Fantasy is going to sell even if they don't provide extras. They might start now since times have changed since FFX came out (maybe FFXII will see pre-order bonuses), but they will likely sell well anyway.
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Kizyr
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Post by Kizyr »

phyco126 wrote:No offense, but I hardly see any town with a population over 30,000 being a hick town... Burg, was a hick town, vane (with a population not much larger than Saith) wasn't. It don't see the difference.


That's because Burg was out in the countryside, and a farming village. Vane was a college town that floated high above an ivory tower. KF
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Alunissage
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Post by Alunissage »

Redding's hickness is more atmosphere. I mean, the big Saturday night hang-out is Wal-Mart.

I'm pretty sure part of what slows WD down is that the games are just too big these days for their original model. I think the first few games were done almost entirely by Vic alone, though I don't remember where I got that. They've only had one programmer since Tim Trzepacz left in (I think) early 2000, and that programmer therefore has to work on projects serially. Tim was to work on EBC and the other programmer on Arc, but after Tim left Arc had to be put on hold until EBC was finished. And of course Arc had a longer than usual cycle because of being several games at once, plus the approval problem with Arc Arena not working right on one model of PlayStation which slowed them down several months. Growlanser also slowed them immensely because of Sony first requiring them to make it a collection (Grow II was finished a year and a half before Generations came out) and some other approval issues; I'm sure the huge amount of VA didn't help. Two RPG collections back to back just after a programmer and later a writer left basicaly killed their usual schedule.

I wonder if Atlus has any approval issues and more than one programmer or writer.

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Rune Lai
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Post by Rune Lai »

I know that Atlus will sometimes ask the original developer to do some the reprogramming for them (they did with Disgaea), which I'm sure took a load off the domestic team as well as ensured that fewer problems cropped up from someone monkeying in someone else's code. Tim was a great programmer, but he was doing surgery sometimes trying to get through material he did not have all the tools and/or information for. I'm not sure if it was the same for his successor.

I'm not sure how many full-time writers Atlus has off-hand (I think there are one or two), but I do know they hire contracters from time to time to fill out their needs on a project by project basis. I hear see job listings for the contract translator position every few months or so.

Approval issues I don't know as much about--at least not recent ones. (Sony rejected their interest in translating Soul Hackers back in the PS1 era.) I think it may have been a fight to get Disgaea past Sony since the game is entirely in 2D (Atlus's previous releases on PS2 were 3D), but since that turned out to be a surprise hit that probably made it easier for other companies. After Disgaea, both Mastiff and Nippon Ichi have released 2D games (one of which is a traditional RPG instead of a strat/RPG combo).
You have taught us the pity to live.
But I will not forget the beauty of life itself.
--Hyuui Riin, Phantasy Star II
-- http://www.sabrecat.net/ --

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