/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5551485]

Were Working Designs justified in their translation decisions and difficulty adjustments? How do you feel about them?

[Anonymous No.5551487]

Translation whatever.
Most of the difficulty adjustments were full-on retardation.

[Anonymous No.5551503]

What's with Americans and having to shit all over foreign source materials?
>Robotech
>Every single Working Designs
>Godzilla
>American remakes of foreign stuff
etc etc

Is it inferioty complex because they suck at making media?

[Anonymous No.5551504]

>>5551503
The "I can do it better with the same characters" syndrome.

[Anonymous No.5551505]

>>5551485
They brought us a lot of games that at the time no one else would even consider. For that I am thankful.

[Anonymous No.5551508]

>>5551485
Justified is a weird choice of words. I think most if their decisions were bad but I wouldn't call them not justified.

[Anonymous No.5551512]

>>5551485
Some of their decisions were really dumb, but I like them overall. Most of the games weren't hurt much by difficulty changes, and they made some nice changes too like adding analog support to some games. I like their humor, but they went overboard sometimes. I would prefer if translations left things alone as much as possible, but I enjoyed their stuff despite that. Their packaging and bonuses were really cool too.

[Anonymous No.5551513]

They usually localized main story stuff fine, though to be honest they put in more effort in the Sega CD days than they did with PS1 by using Lunar as an example. The side stuff was the real problem. We don't need Clinton jokes in a JRPG as the steadfast example. And yet diehard fans bitched out a guy trying to relocalize things to remove those weird jokes and forced him out of doing anything more.

Difficulty changes were also stupid. I can understand avoiding rentals, as Japan didn't have to balance their games around a rental market and all, but localizers should never, ever decide to personally change a game's difficulty just because of different market factors. Final Fantasy IV got butchered by Square for this by becoming too easy, and Castlevania III became infamous by Konami cranking shit up through the roof. Meanwhile Working Designs did it with almost every game, and in some cases even made liberal gameplay alterations like with Silhouette Mirage or difficulty fuck ups with Raystorm that do not have a single goddamn excuse.

[Anonymous No.5551521]

>>5551504
>>5551503
>Retard weebs newfags pretending to know anything about shit

And it's always Macross fags too.

[Anonymous No.5551524]

>>5551485
Anything that pisses weebs off is good.

[Anonymous No.5551546]

>>5551521
Wrong.
Let me give another example: just search for "Earthbound-likes" made by Americans. Every single one misses the point of Earthbound is by miles. Face it, Americans love to grab other stuff and "do it better" with their retarded decisions.

[Anonymous No.5551681]

>>5551513
>Clinton jokes in a JRPG
You got my interest, tell me more.

[Anonymous No.5551690]

>>5551681
Working Designs loved their topical humor. So a village would turn into a bunch of inbred rednecks, someone would give advice on how to kill Barney (the dinosaur), the aforementioned Bill Clinton joke, some kid asking for Mortal Kombat levels of violence, etc. Meta humor all around that replaced generic townsfolk dialogue with then-trendy things.

[Anonymous No.5551717]

>>5551546
What is the point of earthbound?

>>5551681
There's a bunch of pop culture references, Austin Powers etc. They're all pretty bad, but the writing when they're not trying to be funny is decent.

I like the difficulty changes though since the jap version is a little too easy and the WD version is one of the few RPGs I consider to have near perfect balance where exploring each area but not stopping to grind makes each boss tough but beatable. Also the music track they wrote for the bonus dungeon is surprisingly good and fits the tone of the rest of the soundtrack really well.

[Anonymous No.5551726]

FOR ME TO POOP ON

[Anonymous No.5551728]

>>5551485
>Were Working Designs justified
Absolutely not.

[Anonymous No.5551747]

>>5551546
meanwhile Lisa and Undertale don't care what you're saying because they're different games and have their own identity. Stop pretending like just because something doesn't draw you in like it did when you where ten doesn't mean kids today are not drawn in.

[Anonymous No.5551750]

>>5551747
I'd pray kids aren't playing Lisa

[Anonymous No.5551757]

let's shit talk the only company who tried bringing things over. bunch of losers bringing over good collectors editions of games you didn't get to play. how dare they. it's like they did all that for themselves instead of 12 year olds to decades in the future

[Anonymous No.5551759]

>>5551750
why not? it might have some heavy subject matter but at least it's not just edgey just cuz

[Anonymous No.5551772]

I don't support any attempt at rewriting shit if it's not for the explicit sake of keeping something understandable for a different audience. Trying to be funny in a translation when there was originally no humor to be had is just plain bad and creates the opposite effect because you'll just be groaning instead. Keep it true to the original author's intent, for fuck's sake. It's just basic integrity.

I don't care for anyone's difficulty alterations back in the day, the only time that went anywhere well was when it lead to SMB2US happening. Games were specifically designed one way for a reason and adjustments can have vastly unforeseen consequences.

[Funcoland Clown No.5551803]

>>5551508
This. Of course they were justified. There were contracts and documents and everything. It's not even that hard to understand why they did it, at least with regard to the translations, trying to broaden the appeal of a small market with games that were expensive to localize. Honestly Vic Ireland was instrumental in the popularization of JRPGs in the west. For better or worse

[Anonymous No.5551808]

>>5551759
I think he means because it's a shit game

[Anonymous No.5551826]

>>5551803
People weren't playing JRPGs because of hilarious Clinton jokes, you twat.

[Anonymous No.5551882]

>>5551505
Yeah back then a game like Lunar wouldn't have been likely to make it over. And if it did, it wouldn't be with the care they put into translating the music and such.

[Anonymous No.5551895]

>>5551826
They also didn't stop playing them because of said Clinton jokes, fuckface. In fact, it's probably safe to say that the playerbase grew IN SPITE of said jokes.

[Anonymous No.5551905]

>>5551750
The fanbase is mostly 12-16 year olds who think they've all grown up from Undertale.

[Anonymous No.5551920]

>>5551808
>shit game

Anon, pls.

[Anonymous No.5551939]

>>5551681
The Eve Burst Error translation also had Clinton jokes if you want them in a visual novel, of all things.

[Anonymous No.5552071]

>>5551485
You know what justified them to do whatever they wanted? They bought the publishing rights. So justified, yeah, 100%. Forgivable, up to you.

IMO a translator's job is to remain faithful to the content and intent of the original message, and if you do anything more than that, you're doing more than just translation, you're doing something like creative interpretation or even reimagination. If WD thought that was their job, well shit, I think that's unfortunate, but again they're the ones who locked down the rights, so bully for them.

As for edge cases where localizers feel like humor and pop references in the original work honestly have to be translated, they should be creative enough to come up with something similar. A puzzle based on Japanese poetry or literature should be modified into one based on the English equivalent. Some American politician or celebrity shouldn't be mentioned unless it's replacing a joke about a Japanese one. And so forth. And that's only in dire cases, if a Japanese game refers to a very popular anime or something that Americans would know about, just keep it the same.

[Anonymous No.5552161]

>>5551485
No and no.

[Anonymous No.5552186]

>>5551485
the logo getting thanos'd lol

[Anonymous No.5552473]

>>5551803
>instrumental in the popularization of JRPGs

That was FF7.

[Anonymous No.5552603]

Translations are never justified.

[Anonymous No.5552846]

>>5552603
This. Translations exist purely because of greed.

The only games I respect are ones where the creators were offered deals on international rights, and declined. Sure, it's "free money" for something you've already made, but artistic integrity should be paramount.

[Anonymous No.5552872]

>>5551503
No, it's because it's literally a falsified translation stupid obsessed bitch.

[Anonymous No.5552873]

>>5551485
>difficulty adjustments
unjustifiable, especially since many were RPGs or action-adventures with much longer than average playtime

i can understand making a 40 minutes long arcade styled game harder to increase its longevity, but RPGs?

[Anonymous No.5552876]

>>5551546
And Yurocuck romhacks are unplayable dogshit tech demos.

[Anonymous No.5552905]

Didn't they enable running in games were the mc normally only had a slow default walking speed? That and enabling analog stick support in digital-only games seem to be nice, harmless perks as long as they don't ruin any other aspect of the game.

[Anonymous No.5552941]

>>5551485
>MISTER STARK, I DON'T FEEL LIKE THIS DESIGN IS WORKING SO GOOOOOooooood

[Anonymous No.5552974]

>>5552873
It doesn't make Lunar longer though since you still never ever need to grind in those gamed, it just makes it so it's not flat out easy. Nothing wrong with that.

Ironically the one game that really was ruined by that was Silhouette Mirage and it's an action game.

[Anonymous No.5554143]

>>5552974
>Ironically the one game that really was ruined by that was Silhouette Mirage and it's an action game.

They broke Exile 2. You can't progress and see most of the game without grind for hours or hex editing.

[Funcoland Clown No.5554149]

>>5552473
No FF7 was the watershed moment but it had to be built up to

[Anonymous No.5554150]

>>5551487
Their translations were the best

[Anonymous No.5554245]

>>5551485
>translation
The changes were lame, but alas.
>difficulty
Largely no.
I'm still mad about Silhouette Mirage.

Most difficulty changes in general are just bullshit and tend to be done by people who have zero idea about anything regarding game balance.
The only sensible difficulty increase in a game that I can think of off hand was Contra Hard Corps in the west, and that's just because the game was already balanced around not getting hit at all (and they didn't fuck with the game other than that either).
Which is surprising, because Konami had a real habit of fucking western releases up in the arcades.

>>5551513
>raystorm
Didn't they just lock out the end if you made it easier than default? They didn't jack it up to be obnoxious IIRC.

[Anonymous No.5554249]

>>5554149
For the minority who owned a Turbo, Sega CD, or Saturn I guess. Most people didn't really associate them with JRPGs in the West the way they would Squaresoft until Working Design's PS work, which was pretty much all post-FF7.

[Anonymous No.5555471]

>>5554249
No, you could be a JRPG fan even with just NES, GB, Genesis, SNES in the pre-FF7 era. I was. I was mail-ordering out-of-print RPGs from magazine store listings on the other side of the US in 1993-4 with just those systems.

[Anonymous No.5555537]

>>5551521
It's not just weeb stuff, though. Look at any UK or Australia sitcom, their American counterpart is always fucking awful.

[Funcoland Clown No.5555557]

>>5554249
>>5555537
People didn't need to play them for them to contribute to the JRPG zeitgeist. I didn't have any CD systems before Playstation either but I was acutely aware of CD JRPGs with voice acting and anime cutscenes and I had been very envious for years. Beyond the Beyond and even Persona didn't really feel like they were as good as the WD titles I still didn't have access to and it wasn't until FF7 came out that I actually felt like I got the real grand multimedia RPG experience I thought other people were getting with WD games. When I actually got to play them, FF7 had clearly been far superior but I still appreciated them in hindsight and it pisses me off when obnoxious weebs and ESPECIALLY parrots shit on them.

[Anonymous No.5555558]

>>5555537
Wrong.
UK The Office < US The Office

[Anonymous No.5555565]

>>5555537
Coupling was the UK's attempt to combine Seinfeld's cast of neurotics and concept of greatly exaggerating the significance of mundane minutiae with Friends' cast of "cool" twenty-something normies, and the Friendsy bullshit just ended up eating up anything interesting about the Seinfeldy bits.

(Then of course the US thought to re-import the idea and it was shit of course, but the fact remains that the UK tried to copy the US formula and failed.)

And of course The Office US outgrew and broke away from the UK original in ways nobody expected. I like both versions, and watched the UK version first, but prefer the US version quite a bit.

[Anonymous No.5555680]

>>5555557
Those games definitely weren't good because of Working Designs.

[Anonymous No.5555705]

>>5554143
That doesn't surprise me I think the last thing I got of theirs were the Lunar remakes. At this point I don't support anything Vic does, not that it's hard.

[Anonymous No.5555742]

>>5555557
People that didn't play the shitty translation you played as a kid aren't obligated to like it just because it was your childhood, you egomaniac.

[Anonymous No.5555808]

>>5554245
>Most difficulty changes in general are just bullshit and tend to be done by people who have zero idea about anything regarding game balance.
The same is true for localizations.

[Anonymous No.5555880]

>>5551503
There was nothing wrong with adding the American reporter to the original Godzilla movie

[Anonymous No.5555882]

The were based for still causing seething weeb butthurt 20 years later

[Anonymous No.5555906]

>>5555882
So based means doing something so badly enough that people are still disappointed in the result years later? Those Star Wars prequels were based! Go George Lucas killing a thing people loved, you're the basiest base master!

[Anonymous No.5555986]

>>5555882
>imagine eating dogshit because you didn't have much other options
lmao americans

[Funcoland Clown No.5556063]

>>5555680
They are good outdoor and Working Designs brought them to Western audiences which helped popularize the culture that allowed JRPGs to become a genre that is accessible to English speakers

>>5555742
You don't have to fucking like it you need to appreciate history you snot nosed little punk. If you want to play a genre of games that was never popularized in the west then play VNs but if you enjoy ANY westernized JRPGs then you should be thanking Vic Ireland for helping to make it a thing in the first place

[Funcoland Clown No.5556067]

>>5555680 #
They are good period and Working Designs brought them to Western audiences which helped popularize the culture that allowed JRPGs to become a genre that is accessible to English speakers

>>5555742 #
You don't have to fucking like it you need to appreciate history you snot nosed little punk. If you want to play a genre of games that was never popularized in the west then play VNs but if you enjoy ANY westernized JRPGs then you should be thanking Vic Ireland for helping to make it a thing in the first place

[Anonymous No.5556073]

>>5556067
Jrpgs would have still become super popular with the mainstream when FFVII came out. Vic had almost no bearing on that. It's why they didn't become super popular when his mangled games were released

[Funcoland Clown No.5556079]

>>5556073
Anyone who seriously thinks Working Designs did more harm than good for the western JRPG culture is a fucking idiot.

[Anonymous No.5556130]

>>5555557
So because you thought they made good games but never actually played them, they were "instrumental" in expanding the genre? Pre-FF7 they put a handful of games in a niche genre out on niche systems. People who owned those systems tended to fall into the hardcore category and owned other systems. If WD didn't exist, those people would still be playing JRPGs on other systems. They were hardly instrumental. You're giving yourself way too much credit here, Vic.

[Anonymous No.5556131]

>>5556079
Learn how to read

[Anonymous No.5556172]

>>5556079
They didn't necessarily do harm but it also didn't do much good.

[Anonymous No.5556206]

>>5556130
This.

[Funcoland Clown No.5556610]

>>5556130
The anime cutscenes from these games were literally plastered all over the covers of every single video game magazine and splashed across multi page featured stories because of how impressive they were. Some Japanese games that never were localized were too but far and away the Working Designs localized games were the ones that first made JRPGs be perceived as grand cinematic experiences to Western audiences. While FMV games were languishing in the public opinion, FMV cutscenes within narrative style games were the first good application of the technology that came up on people's radar.

[Anonymous No.5559460]

>>5551505
Based pragmatic poster