book Archive

Stock is running low on the second edition of the Zelda book, so it’s time to get ready to print the third edition! First, we gotta do some edits. Mato realized how often he overused exclamation points throughout the book, so I’m going through right now and changing most of them to regular ol’ periods. There will be some additional edits after this, but nothing too major.

This is also my first time working with InDesign. I was already impressed with Tony’s design work, but this InDesign experience is adding another layer of respect to his talent. There are so many things to keep track of in a design document like this. Tony is magical (╯✧∇✧)╯

I recently announced a new book about Mother 3 that I’ve been working on – it actually started out in Jan. 2017 as a small article for EarthBound Central, grew too big to be an article, so I was gonna turn it into its own special page, but then it got too big for that too. It wound up book-sized, so I figured okay let’s make it into a book, and with 2018 being the 10th anniversary of the translation patch, it’d fit pretty well.

The book’s not about Mother 3’s translation or Mother 3 itself, but rather the cycle of rumors and hoaxes and hopes and expectations and disappointments that have persisted for 23 years now. Tony the book guy suggested trying to go for a “crazy conspiracy” theme with everything linked together like someone investigating a bizarre mystery. So I threw together this crappy concept pic in about two minutes.

I doubt the end product will look anything along these lines, but it’s a funny premise to think about!

Mato and I had a nice time visiting a little Japanese garden in the middle of the Arizona desert recently. In the gift shop, we found a neat book:

Just a few days previous, we’d seen this book on the anthropomorphism episode of Japanology Plus. And then here it was near where we live!

It’s a goal of mine to utilize the many photos I’ve taken over the past decade by making my own photography book(s). This book is good inspiration and motivation for me!

I was going through some old files the other day and found some pages Tony had printed out for me. They’re from when press start to translate was still in mid-development, and it was time for me to take photos. I thought it’d be neat to show a before/after thing:

The top sheet of paper is the in-progress layout, and the blue square with the green X is where the picture was originally going to go. You can see by comparing it to the finished book below it that page layouts almost always change when we add a photograph or some other kind of visual aid.

I’ll make a point to save more of those in-progress pages to share when we’re working on future projects!

Mato found a gem while looking through old emails recently. It’s a mockup of what we thought the EarthBound Legends of Localization book would look like:

The name of this file was “open zine copy.png”. lmao, we thought it’d be small enough to be a zine! For those who don’t know/remember, LoL EB was funded as a stretch goal during Fangamer’s You Are Now EarthBound Kickstarter in October 2014. And two years later, when the actual LoL EB book was released, it looked a damn sight more impressive than the mockup:

And a “zine” it is not. At over 400 pages, I hope the EB book stays our biggest book. I don’t want to go any higher pleeeease!

Fangamer’s Black Friday sale started early! Out today is press start to translate: This is what happens when you let a computer translate a video game? and a swanky new bookmark!

press start to translate is better known as the Funky Fantasy IV book. You can get it at Fangamer for $22! The Legendary Bookmark is 8 buckaroonies and you can get that one right here. Also, a special promotion just for the Black Friday sale (Nov 21 – Dec 1) : buy 2 LoL books (over $10, so excluding the passports), and you’ll get the bookmark for free!

I also wanted to share this video of Fangamer’s mailroom getting ready for the upcoming tidal wave of BF orders:

I’ve seen a handful of people flip our Legends of Localization books for stupid high prices on second-hand markets like ebay and amazon. Nothin’ we can do about it, so I try to find amusement from it. The worst is someone asking $2,000 for the Zelda book in “used, acceptable” condition, hah. But I saw this today and couldn’t stop laughing:

“Realistic price”, lmao. Dude. We sell it new for $29. I hope nobody falls for this!

A new book from Prima Games gives a special shoutout to Legends of Localization! It’s called Playing with Super Power: Nintendo Super NES Classics, and Fangamer got a copy of the super cool collector’s edition:

It goes in-depth on some of the most popular SNES games, including Zelda, the Marios, the Star Foxes (yeah, Star Fox 2!), aaaaand EarthBound. It’s full of facts, little-known trivia, development stories, tips from speedrunners, and even some amazing fan art! This is an incredible labor of love.

And hey, look look!

That 400-page book is us! 😀 And I can tell from reading the section on EarthBound that they got some of the information from the EB LoL book. That’s a major goal for our books, to be used as a reliable resource for stuff like this. Hooray! 😀

If you want this dang cool book, I definitely recommend the collector’s edition. Pick one up here!

Well, sort of an LoL book. It’s a localization of a Japanese children’s book! It was written by the producer and narrator of Game Center CX (Producer Kan!), and illustrated and translated by the multi-talented Nina Matsumoto.

Not only that, the Legends of Localization team added tons of bonus content. We interviewed the author, the illustrator/translator, and the designer of the English book. AND! The original Japanese edition of the book is also there in the back, so you can check out the changes that were made.

Also free stickers B-)

Here’s the commercial that was a huge group effort and tons of fun to make!

Buy the book heeeeeeere! And if you happen to find yourself at Tokyo Game Show this week, the book will also be available there! Producer Kan himself will be selling it 😀