General News Archive

Dev Blog Moving to Patreon

The Legends of Localization Patreon has launched! All future Dev Blog posts will be posted over there since it’ll be easier to have everything in one place. But don’t worry! You don’t have to be a patron to see the dev posts – those will always be public. You can go here and filter all posts by tags to see only the dev blogs.

But if you do want to support us, let me give you a great big THANK YOU right now 🙂 See you over on the p-tron.

Games Done Quick is a Very Fun Thing

Taking a moment away from LoL discussion to mention Games Done Quick. Their summer marathon was all last week, and there was rarely a waking hour when I didn’t have it on in the background. This year they raised over two million dollars for Doctors Without Borders.

Besides Legends of Localization, being the GDQ representative is my other main job at Fangamer. It started a mere 2 years ago, when Kari Fry introduced me to GDQ’s prize guy so that I could donate some LoL books as prizes. Then Fangamer was asked to be a sponsor. Now we make official GDQ merchandise! And most of it is available year-round, which is a fact that’s hard to promote when there’s not an event happening.

But hey, now you know. Check out Fangamer’s GDQ lineup! 20% of all sales still go to GDQ.

“Detention” Out on Switch Today!

“Detention” is out on the Nintendo Switch today! I was introduced to this game last year via an interview with the game devs about the steps they took to make the English localization good and understandable for those not familiar with Taiwanese culture. You can read that interview here.

It’s a very good game and worth your time. BUT! It’s scary and depressing. If you can handle stuff like that, definitely check it out. There’s a good review of it on Waypoint, but it’s full of spoilers. Read it after you’ve played it!

Lufia & Estpolis Denki Cheat Codes

One of the LoL game cataloging dudes is starting on Lufia 1 and found some infinite HP/MP cheat codes for the English game. He needed the same codes but for the Japanese version, so I did some quick ROM debugging and figured out the equivalent cheat codes. So, if you’re playing Lufia or Estpolis Denki and want infinite HP & MP, here are the codes:

Lufia 1
8236-0F34 – infinite HP
823A-0FC4 – infinite MP

Estpolis Denki (エストポリス伝記 *独自の改造チートコード)
08E90FBD – infinite hp (HP減らない)
08E94EBD – infinite mp (MP減らない)

It’s times like this that I’m glad I know technical stuff on top of translator stuff!

Ahh, the Fresh Smell of a New Year

Happy 2018! Mato & I took a much-needed break over the last 2 weeks to relax and play a lot of video games. I played tons of Stardew Valley on the Switch while he played a bunch of PS4 games. The Switch has become my favorite console of the current generation, just because I can take it anywhere I want. It’s great for married couples who want to play different games at the same time! But if you want to play a Switch game at the same time… well, I guess buy another Switch x_x

Getting back to Legends of Localization, today we had (and are still having) a long meeting about our plans for 2018. Hoo, boy! There’s a lot we want to do. We’ll probably start a new stream project pretty soon. Right now we’re working on redesigning our stream layout.

How was your holiday? 😀

Poisoft Relaunched Their Translation Kickstarter

Knowing there was little chance they’d reach their 5,000,000 yen goal, Poisoft canceled their Order Land Translation Project Kickstarter last month, saying they’d relaunch it after tweaking things a bit. Well hey, they made good on their promise! The Kickstarter was relaunched this morning – the goal has been lowered to 2,000,000 yen and some of the rewards have changed.

Mato’s been playing a lot of Order Land on the Switch in Japanese and he’s been really liking it. All but the King mode.

Is Ys VIII’s Localization Really That Bad?

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana’s English localization is apparently so bad that Japanese game sites are talking about it. People made such a stink that the President and CEO of NIS America issued a statement apologizing for the lack of localization quality and promised to have it re-edited and patched by late November.

So I wonder, is it really all that bad? I’m about to find out!

We gotta beat this game before they release the patch next month. Wish us luck! And don’t worry, we’re taking screenshots along the way.

Legends of Localization on Sup, Holmes?

The post title isn’t a question. Dan, Tony, and I were guests on the interview show “Sup, Holmes?” last year. We talked about Legends of Localization, Starmen.net, Fangamer, EarthBound, old Rev3 Games shows, and tons of other stuff that I forgot I even said, haha.

Got 2 hours to spare? Give it a watch!

Fangamer Localized into a Japanese Company!

This is something that’s been happening in the background for a few months – Fangamer will soon open a Japanese branch of the company! Our hard-working Japan staff is busy getting the warehouse ready for the official launch. You can sign up for the Fangamer Japan newsletter right now.

We’ll be selling only UNDERTALE merchandise from the JP branch at first, but we’ll probably expand to other things once things settle down. We’ll definitely have Legends of Localization books available from there in the future!

At the Movies

Yesterday was a busy day! I spent a lot of it at the Fangamer office, doing some heavy duty meetings for upcoming projects and upcoming prospects. Legends of Localization is doing super well and I think everyone involved is excited for all the things coming up.

Then Poe and I had to rush home, eat, and then rush back to the movie theater – my latest movie translation premiered yesterday! It’s always a treat to be able to watch my stuff on the big screen and see how audiences react to my writing, the jokes I struggle to translate, lines that are meant to be emotional, etc. Although I’m obviously not the creator of the things I translate, it’s a great feeling when people enjoy something I translated, even if they don’t even think about the translator or the translation process. It’s a weird side effect of trying to translate as transparently as possible 😛

Also, super secret translator tip: I’ve learned from these movie releases that the way you watch/play something can greatly enhance your creativity when translating, so if you feel like something you’re working could be improved a bit, try looking at it differently. If you’re working on a text document, try changing the font and font size to something crazy. If you’re working on a show or movie or whatever, try watching it on screens of different sizes. Of course, time plays a big factor too, so if you can manage it, try setting aside a translation and then come back to it after a good amount of time has passed.

Anyway, some more cool stuff happened yesterday but that’s a story for another time!