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/vr/ - Retro Games

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10520691 No.10520691 [Reply] [Original]

how do we tell for certain that more people are getting into jap only retro games and demand for translating them is at its highest and not just the effect of internet echochambers amplifying this sort of unilateral believe?

>> No.10520693 [DELETED] 

There are a lot of decent gameplay focused Jap only games and what they translate is braindead coomer shit like this

>> No.10520721

the amount of people genuinely interested in retro games is very low. talking to guide writers or hackers for translated (or very niche) games, the numbers are lower than you even think. i expect that less than 100 people will play tengai makyou ziria to completion, a game that was in "great" demand for decades. people by and large do not care about game history to any legitimate degree, let alone actually playing a famicom, pc 88 or translated ps1 game to completion. the only way to generate reasonable discourse is either for a popular influencer (ugh) to pick it up or for it to part of a modern devs past catalogue. and even then...how few people played marvelous? a game that has direct lineage to their supposed favorite game, ocarina of time? what about treasure conflix this year? people dont care.
>tldr we are surrounded by larpers and all talk.

>> No.10520889

>>10520691
Just learn Japanese. I did and there really aren't that many "hidden untranslated gems". Most games didn't get translated for a reason.

>> No.10520890

>>10520691
Demand for translating Tokimeki has always been high since the retro era, it was mainly just the coding that was filtering people from pulling it off. e-celeb/influencer opinion definitely has sway in getting these kind of things done though.

>> No.10521005

>>10520889
It depends on what you're interested in. Retro Visual Novels, for example, are still mostly untranslated. And plenty of classics still haven't or only recently have.

>> No.10521021

>>10520691
Does the PC-98 autism anime count as being outside the internet echochamber? It's undoubtedly driving a lot of interest in games from that era even if they're garbage

>> No.10521048 [DELETED] 

>>10520693
Oh, come on, go ahead and cry me a river, you obnoxious faggot. Do something about it, I dare you.

>> No.10521159

>>10521021
people who like looking at screencaps on twitter versus actually playing the games is a world's difference. the amount of genuine interest in playing older games beyond the typical schlock is shockingly low.

>> No.10521168

>>10520721
How did you get your estimate?

>> No.10521172

>>10520889
I agree with the “most didn’t get translated for a reason” comment *except* for the PCE and CD, I do think that’s the last console that has quite a few good and or fun untranslated games, there’s probably a few Saturn games that would be worth translating too

>> No.10521528

>>10520721
This is probably true for the most part. My parents were really religious, was homeschooled, and I mainly only played the NES as a kid/teen. As I got older, I only stuck with retro games, nothing higher than PS1. As a result, I'm alienated with my zoomzoom peers when it comes to any kind of gaming.

>> No.10521886

>>10520721
You mean the barrier to entry is too high (both when starting a game and coming back to it after a break) relative to the time and energy people can afford to put into it
Maybe if they could play on their phones with perfectly reliable save states, AND get automatic recaps of what they've done so far, more people would play
>inb4 boomers, ADHD, etc etc
Modern society makes literally everyone act like this (because phones, and also because everything is an ad) and games can only get traction if they cater to that kind of flighty mindset

>> No.10521971
File: 54 KB, 504x512, 1682010091662339.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10521971

>>10520693
that's because actual games with gameplay you can already play without any translations

>> No.10521973
File: 56 KB, 720x302, 1685672691607219.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10521973

>>10520721
>i expect that less than 100 people will play tengai makyou ziria to completion
i'll play it because it runs natively on psp. that's all i need in my life

>> No.10522098

>>10520889
I learnt a bit of Japanese, also I learnt a lot of kanji, but I struggle the most with hiragana-only texts that should be easy to understand, but in fact in can "read" them without understanding them.
How did you learn Japanese?

>> No.10522661

>>10520691
Easy, just sort by upload date on RHDN. Most of the games being translated now are just random obscure games that only the translators cared about. The peak was probably early 2000s when SNES JRPG translations were being released almost weekly.

>> No.10523113

>>10520889
Video games aren't too difficult with the Japanese either. Tends to be more basic and repetitive, especially in the series OP posted. Though, I think it's only really worth learning JP for VNs/LNs. Lots of gems that have no chance of ever being and/or properly translated.

>> No.10523162

>>10520721
>a popular influencer
At your service. Expect soon a video-review about the fan-translated Tengai Makyou Ziria. Just finishing the game and sorting the script out.

>> No.10523212

>>10520890
>e-celeb/influencer opinion definitely has sway in getting these kind of things done though
in this case it kind of muddied the water. in tim rogers' review he assured viewers that they didn't need to play it because "i have played it for you," and most people who pay attention to these sorts of videos already feel that way anyway. that, and he asserted that tokimemo2 is better (which it isn't), which combined with the previous point also set a lot of reasonably talented or in-the-know people on the path of trying to get that game translated instead. which, not only is truly impossible (where decent progress was, at one point, being made on tokimemo1 pc) but is just not going to be what people think it is if they ever get to play it

on top of that, the translation of densetsu no ki no shita de reared its ugly head and confused people even harder, even though tim rogers himself tried to diplomatically come out and explain that that version is a mockery of the mainline editions even in its native language

>> No.10523270

>>10520691
All the legitimate "hidden gems" aren't retro games anyway, except by technicality. I'd give more information, but I'd rather gatekeep since I don't want westerners to start getting into the last truly safe haven for pure, untouched Japanese gems.
Just learn Japanese and you'll be fine.
>>10522098
>How did you learn Japanese?
By reading a lot. Not playing video games, but reading lots and lots and lots of text. Mostly from light novels and the news. The reality no one wants to hear is that to fully enjoy playing games in Japanese, you need a significant amount of skill/comprehension overhead so you aren't stumbling slowly through something and making it less enjoyable.

>> No.10523284

>>10522098
>I struggle the most with hiragana-only texts that should be easy to understand
Anon, I was once having a problem to solve a puzzle in Ys for NES. I look it up and found a thread in some japanese site where a lot of people where having the same problem. Turned out that hiragana-only is not easy even for Japanese people. Compare both sentences:
庭には二羽裏庭には二羽鶏がいる
and:
にわにはにわうらにわにはにわにわとりがいる
Now which one you think is far easier to read?

>> No.10523301

>>10523284
I know some PC-98 games/VNs are in pure katakana. Have no idea what possesses people do that. Kanji makes everything remarkably more intuitive.

>> No.10523404

>>10523301
in the example he posted that's the entire point of the riddle, but yeah, all-katakana when not being used for something like robotspeak is like, a weird japanese boomer holdover thing

>> No.10523549

>>10520889
Fake and gay.

>> No.10523820

>>10520889
>there really aren't that many "hidden untranslated gems".
Bullshit, there aren't many high profile games that are JP only but there's a lot of good ones. And even for high profile ones, a ton of them have either JP only spinoffs or ports, or were changed so much in translation they became different games like Renegade.

>> No.10523824

>>10521021
Isn't PC-98 mostly Japanese? There's hardly going to be a wave of western anime fans playing Japanese language VNs and RPGs which is what most games on the platform are.

>> No.10523836

>>10523301
The PC-98 didn't have that problem itself, after the first 2 models (so in its 2nd year on the market iirc) it already starting including kanji roms instead of keeping it as an option. This was because it was a business computer. You wanted to do any word processing, you'd want JIS1 kanji at the least. The suits basically jizzed themselves over being able to use kanji then.
The real issue is that the 98 was a business computer at first, so the 8-bits (6001, 8001 and 8801 of NEC itself, nevermind the fujitsus, sharps, MSXs, Epsons, etc.) had a better share of the hobbyist/gaming market and those would stick to the optional kanji scheme for a while as it's cheaper. Price and tech gimmick was the name of the game for those systems until the 8-bits started to fade and the 98 and its clones had their relatively short time in the sun until American Bill forced open the computer ports of Japan.

>> No.10524118

>>10523824
>mostly
Wasn't it exclusive to Japan?
I don't know of any PC-98 games that were released outside Japan, except as ports to the Saturn, or DOS/Windows

>> No.10524439

>>10520721
This is all true. Retro games are but another commodity to use as ammo. Be it trivia, physical and digital hoarding, or gatekeeping. How many actually play them? I sure as hell would like to know. It can't be all that many.

>> No.10524503

>>10520721
Man, I'm fucking playing games as fast as possible, homie, I can only beat like 15 a year at best. I work and have a family, don't come for my fucking soul like this.

>> No.10524540

>>10521172
It feels like the truly "great" games that were only in Japanese are either translated officially or have fan translations now, but there's still games that are just "okay" that never came over that are interesting. It's honestly nice to see those finally getting their time in the sun, especially with licensed anime games that aren't 100% garbage.

The shit that bothers me is when people retranslate games that already had translation patches. Fire Emblem Genealgoy of the Holy War's first translation was the better one, and instead of just fixing the issues with it (one of the bigger ones being that the game would actually freeze during the credits), there was an entirely new translation done for no fucking reason.

>> No.10524584

>>10520890
This. Tokimeki Memorial and Segagaga are the two holy grails of shit that people have been trying to translate since the early 00s. Both games have gone through like five or six different translation attempts, all of which fell apart on the hacking end of things.

>> No.10524623

>>10524584
SNES tokimeki has been fanslated for awhile now, with MSU-1 too.

>> No.10524831

>>10520889
>Most games didn't get translated for a reason.
this is the biggest cope of the "pretends to know japanese online" crowd.

>> No.10525312

>>10524623
Yes, everyone is aware. That version was an absolute last resort because nobody could get any of the decent versions working.

>> No.10525329

>>10524118
I mean unplayable for EOPs. These days it doesn't matter where it came out since everything can be emulated. But the EOP game selection on the system is still small

>> No.10525350

>>10524540
>multiple translation bad
Nah I wish that happened more often. Multiple translations are normalized in movies and books but in games there's still this idea that the publisher decides what the official English version is and every other translation isn't the REAL one and should be treated as inferior. Nah all adaptations are fanfiction whether it has the name of the company on it or not, that's how it's treated in books and movies. I say make more fan translations of games that already have "official" translations.
>truly "great" games that were only in Japanese are either translated officially or have fan translations now
But even the great and popular games have untranslated versions and spin-offs. Ultima and Wizardry are about as great and popular as it can get but an EOP can only play some of the versions of Ultima and Wizardry and there's a whole bunch of JP only Wizardry games.

>> No.10525469

>Venus and Braves
How many have even played this game. It's not worth engaging with the idea that all "good" art has already been dug up or qualified by inane metrics. There are plenty of significant creations for you to seek out. An endless amount, really.

>> No.10526064

>>10520721
>the only way to generate reasonable discourse is either for a popular influencer (ugh) to pick it up or for it to part of a modern devs past catalogue
That's because people no longer read magazines. Youtubers replaced journalists (and the latter who're still active shill only the latest titles).
Smartphones fucked up the newer generations' attention span too, making it less likely they'll try old games.

>> No.10526807

>>10524439
>gatekeeping
oh yeah.

>> No.10526843

>>10523284
>庭には二羽裏庭には二羽鶏がいる
It's a constructed sentence. No one talks like that in real life.

>> No.10526892

>>10523836
It wasn't so much of a forcing on Bill's end - DOS/V (basically normal MS-DOS but with multibyte character support hacked in) systems has been eating into NEC's marketshare for years. The advent of Windows with its native unicode support and IMEs meant that buying a PC clone running Windows was unironically a better move for Japanese businesses. Meanwhile NEC had gotten fat and lazy and never developed anything that could compete with Windows.

>> No.10527278

>>10526892
>The advent of Windows with its native unicode support and IMEs meant that buying a PC clone running Windows was unironically a better move for Japanese businesses.
This is one of those sentences that I instantly know will haunt me for the rest of my life

>> No.10528207

>>10520691
I'd like to hack Shadow Run mega cd, my idea is to just use a machine translation just as placeholder text and concentrate on the programming part first. Then if someone wants to put in a real translation they could just edit a script. From what I've seen this can super trigger some people, its a hobby I'm doing for fun so deal with it. I'm a long way away from that though.

>>10520721
I would do it for myself mainly, sure I'd like other people to see my work but even if 0 people were interested I'd still do it for fun.

Yep the number of real retro gamers seems to be very small.

First you got the nostalgia guys, they just play the same games they used to play or maybe sequals to a game they never got but say if they never played megaman they won't play the old ones.

Next you have rom hoarders, they'll get a 1up arcade or something and put in 7000 games but they are not truely good at any of them. Maybe they happen to like the pixel art style but don't really play the games.

You got people who only play games from 1984 and earlier and never new games. Eh, I think they're missing out.

An then you have the ones who are truely interested in those translations, they play new games the same amount as old ones. They don't even call it retro gaming, its just gaming to them.

>>10524503
It a lot of way I don't want to finish all the good games on the classic consoles but also feels pretty to finally see the end after literally years. I think I've been playing battletoads for 10 years on and off and not seen the end.

>> No.10528518

>>10526843
I have already seen 庭には二羽鶏がいる in some places, though.

>> No.10528597

>>10528518
Yeah I've seen it on 4chan.org many times as well. Always used in the same context too

>> No.10528626

>>10528597
>>10528518
I prefer
丹羽の庭には二羽中庭には二羽裏庭には二羽鶏がいる