Higurashi Game Translation Project

[theacefrehley]

At any rate, all the work of the Sonozaki Futagotachi (unfortunately) will kind of become 'useless' after they release the oficial localization (?) and it won't make sense for them to continue it, regardless of permissions to keep on.

Once the game is out, people will buy it (or download illegally) and there won't be any need for the girls' work (again, unfortunately). Even if MG's translation is not good (I don't know their work)...

[BetoJR]

I, personally, find it interesting that sometimes we get this furor whenever something gets licensed for commercialization outside Japan. Is it really better to not have it at all, and rely on fans' works to enjoy the games?

Notice I'm not bashing whoever does translate the games for the fun of it - I find they do a bang up job - but I do wonder...

[theacefrehley]

I don't think it's a bad thing they licensed it
It's just that they take sooooo long to pick stuff...


I'd be excited about it if it happened like 3 or 4 years ago

Now I already read this game anyway
And it's not much fun when you already know what is going to happen (that goes for anime watchers as well...)

Higurashi is so much more interesting when you don't a have a clue of what's going on...

[BetoJR]

I, for one, am eagerly waiting for this to pan out. Even having seen all of the animated Higurashi and reading most of the scanlated manga chapters, I still wanna play the original games.

[theacefrehley]

I read the game for the first time fully after watching the anime

It was fun


But the anime (even with all the failures it had) was much more fun
It was a despair to not know if it was Shion or Mion you were seeing, for example,
To not know who were the janitors... the dead walking...
We were like crazy posting theories in this forum, trying to solve the puzzles

Well, I think the same goes for all detective/mystery stuff...

[Village Idiot]

Originally Posted by theacefrehley

Is that the company that only sells games by direct download and you have a limited number of times to startup the game (like, having to connect with their site to be able to startup the game)?

DRM like the Securom that EA uses.

-You get 5x activations
-Needs online activation before you can run it the first time
-Changing OS/Hardware/moving files around uses up an activation
-Must contact them after you run out to get more activations

Not worth the risk of them shutting down and the games becoming worthless. That and they charge in euros, which will kill you with the exchange rate. Hell, Da Capo costs more than $80 Canadian.

[theacefrehley]

Originally Posted by Village Idiot

DRM like the Securom that EA uses.

-You get 5x activations
-Needs online activation before you can run it the first time
-Changing OS/Hardware/moving files around uses up an activation
-Must contact them after you run out to get more activations

Not worth the risk of them shutting down and the games becoming worthless. That and they charge in euros, which will kill you with the exchange rate. Hell, Da Capo costs more than $80 Canadian.

Of course I'd recommend people to buy their games
But, with just a quick search on google, I found a crack for one of their games: Kira Kira
The crack passes that restriction, according to the people who made it


Since there's that risk, it seems to be wiser to get that crack, for the people who bought their games. Otherwise, as you said, the game might become useless one day.

Therefore, I think the same will happen to all other games they release.
So, I don't think it's that much of a problem
The crack is like an 'insurance'...


To depend on 'authorization' to play is, indeed, a bit bothersome...

[izmosmolnar]

Originally Posted by BetoJR

I, personally, find it interesting that sometimes we get this furor whenever something gets licensed for commercialization outside Japan. Is it really better to not have it at all, and rely on fans' works to enjoy the games?

Notice I'm not bashing whoever does translate the games for the fun of it - I find they do a bang up job - but I do wonder...

To be frank, I'm absolutely happy that official localizations are moving towards story centered titles (Edelweiss, Princess Waltz, Kira Kira, and most of the freshly announced titles for example) instead of the Sex-fests which was the majority in the past, however I just wish they would have chosen something which never (or not in the foreseeable future) gets a fantranslation.
Demonbane, Higurashi, Shuffle all have/had an already considerable fantranslation (easily expandable maybe a better word), while many many great titles don't even have anything planned, or they really at the beginning ( <10%).
I bet my ass people would have bought Sharin no Kuri for example, Swan Song, Fortune Arterial, or Muv-Luv series etc (I'd buy it for sure), and none of them has a predictable localization currently going.

That's why I agree with Ace, and I would have preferred if they show some consideration towards those few people who are/were in the process of fan-translating stuff (it's not like there are so many of them to be perfectly honest, the VN community is ridiculously small when you compare it with the anime fanbase).
On the other hand I can see where MG is coming from, because Higurashi or Shuffle is indeed a good choice to make income, as they do have a large fan-base due to the anime, and the game may also attract many people due to watching Umineko.
Oh well, that's how capitalism works I guess... :/
We have a Hungarian proverb related here: "The money talks, the dog barks".

[rogerpepitone]

Originally Posted by izmosmolnar

I imagine they wouldn't use SF's already translated script of course, so they'd start from the beginning, and so far in all the games they made, they used a unique engine which is a lot different from ONScripter.

Of the games they've distributed, were any originally written for NScripter? Were any of them originally written for a general engine (Kirikiri? DNML?), and if so was the MG release also done with that engine?

[izmosmolnar]

As I can't play the original japanese games either, I don't really know what engines they used in the japanese versions (or even where the heck can I identify the engine for the english ones), plus I'm also pretty bad with software stuff. :/

[Auria]

Well.. would be nice if they continue to translate since I don't really want to buy my games another time localized - I had really a hard time getting this game, and whether I have to import from the us or japan doesn't really matter.. @_@

Understandable if they are not motivated to continue because of people buying the localized version, but let's see if they will release a statement..

[izmosmolnar]

Apparently Mangagamer updated their site with the news:

'Higurashi when they cry'

We proudly anouce that we have started the localozation of 'Higurashi when they cry'. We have been getting a lot of requests from MangaGamer's fans to localize the title. We are very excited and happy to be able to relaese this best seller title from MangaGamer.com.

We target to release the title by the end of October. Please stay close with our release schedule.

They really need to find a decent editor :/ . I'm no grammarnazi, but there are 3 typos in the above quote (plus the title sounds a bit weird like that too)
Anyway IMO they exaggerate it a bit, why would a "lot of fans" request an official translation when a decent paced fantranslation was on it's way? Oh well, I'd be a happy bunny if they release all the question arks (it says "the title" so I imagine that means they release all question arks) by Oktober or November.
I hope the Sonozaki Sisters and MG could come on common terms in the end though. It'd be nice because first it would make it quicker if MG could use the twins' scripts for Onikakushi and Watanagashi (those wouldn't even need proofreading not like proofreading/editing is MG's forte), and I would really like to see SF getting appreciation and recognition for what they have done with the fantranslation. Additionally that'd be the first instance ever happening where an official localization is cooperating with the fantranslations, and IMO that basically could be a good thing to happen with the VN segment.

edit:

22:55:59 <zalas|MangaGamer> Question: Lots of fan translation out there, what efforts are there to work with fan translators?
22:57:02 <zalas|MangaGamer> Answer: I think it's a case-by-case situation. We don't have any ideas like fan translations are bad. If we're able to use that and get it at a relatively affordable price. Might be able to release video games at lower prices as well

[Christen]

If we analyze it more carefully, SF translations wouldn't really violate any license acquired by MG. SF's translation needs a legit Higurashi Game CD to even work, while MG will supply a full game with English translation.

It will all come down to how good MG's localization quality for Higurashi is, and if SF will still give effort on translating Higurashi.

[Benny1]

Well, from what I hear, Kira Kira, their latest game, has fairly fine editing. Not perfect, but entirely readable. This was not the case for their original releases. Yes, it's a bit expensive, but they're also maybe planning on doing something about this when Higurashi comes out with like say buy one get one free type things, but nobody knows yet.

Even if it is a shame that perhaps the work that the Sonozaki Sisters put into this will seem kind of futile if the localization is good (which it probably will be), it's really nice to see MangaGamer picking up titles like this. Their recent localizations have been games I am interested in, which doesn't happen often because my tastes, and in general the tastes of most hardcore otaku are nowhere near that of what would be profitable for a localization company.

[rogerpepitone]

Pretty ambitious schedule they've chosen. I hope they can still do a good job in that time.

[Keriaku]

It would be really awesome if the Sonozaki Sisters could work together with MangaGamer
Then none of their work would be 'wasted' and it would be a huge step in the right direction for the industry.

[Orophin]

Extremely important news

Well folks, we've heard back from MangaGamer, and it looks like we have to take down our translation patches.

However, we're still discussing cooperating with them on the official English release. We'll see how that plays out, since it would be great for everyone involved if Higurashi has a good quality localization.

We're be taking down our patch links, but not this site, so we can still blog about Japanese foods and such ^^;

Thank you for your past support, and please watch over us for the future.

Mion

Link: http://sonozakifutagotachi.blogspot....tant-news.html

Hope they will be able to work with them...

[izmosmolnar]

I'm really sad to hear that . I still wish MG would have chosen a different title instead of Higurashi.

[Jaymer]

Heyy Mion?
Will they be releasing Himatsubushi-hen and Matsuribayashi-hen only?
Because that'd make more sense for them to do that than release each game one by one (but I wouldn't mind collecting each game as it's released hehe..)

[Sonozaki Futagotachi]

Hi Jaymer,

MangaGamer will be releasing games 1-4 (i.e. Himatsubushi) as the first package, and 5-8 (Matsuribayashi) as the second package. The releases are slated to be download-only.

No idea if they'll release Rei as well; I don't see why they haven't announced it...

Mion (Sonozaki Futago-tachi)