If not your likely either too young or not “hardcore” enough. You see back in the day (the early 90′s days) when gaming was still living high off the successful rebirth for the industry thanks to Nintendo, other companies wanted to get a piece of that pie here in the good ol’ US of A. So along comes the Genesis which was doing what Nintendon’t as well as a much smaller player in the form of the TurboGrafx 16. What made this competition awful and great all at the same time was the shear number of games that these companies were releasing to fight for our consumer dollars. Given that US development was much smaller then than now many companies simply published Japanese developed games.
Now if like me you were a young gamer who didn’t know any better you simply accepted whatever was brought over to you regardless of the horrible translations, “engrish” grammar and cultural jokes that you were never meant to get. That is until a shining star bathed us in his light in the form of Working Designs (insert Angelic choir singing here). Vic had a dream to bring over great Japanese games and there stories without butchering their intended meanings. He assembled a team to not just translate the words verbatim (which sacrifices context) but to make sure the proper intent of the content was being relayed. Then on top of that he would work with US voice actors to complete the package with a high quality delivery the likes of which had never been seen before. I remember the first time I played Cosmic Fantasy 2 for the TG16 CD and thinking how the voice work was better than most of the anime I had seen at the time. Then with Lunar SS for the Sega CD I’m pretty sure I was so move by parts of it I got teary eyed.
A quick look on the Working Designs wiki will tell you all about their demise due to struggles with companies as 3D was becoming a hot ticket and their high cost of production versus their little capital, but let’s not dwell on that. Instead focus on Vic’s recent ventures with his current studio Gaijinworks and more importantly his partnership with the recently revived Sunsoft. It seems Sunsoft has acquired the rights to a whole host of classic Japanese games from Telenet Japan Co which not only includes a great selection of titles ripe for a good translation and possible update but also some of the games Mr. Ireland has already published in the US.
This is definitely good news for gaming in general. With the popularity and ease of distribution for services like Wii VC, XBLA, PSN and the recent digital stores for DSi and PSP and the high production values Victor and his team have always brought just the back library alone will be enough for a few years worth of game updates or just classic re-releases. For all you fans of 80′s & 90′s retro Japanese gaming be sure to check out Sunsoft’s forums to let them know what your looking forward to, I know I’ll be there asking about the status of my favorites.