Jeff@SaturnWorld: We’re going to have to close up now. Victor’s at the gate. Thanks again, Mark, Dan, Brad, and Anne
Jeff@SaturnWorld: Hope to have you back soon!
Saturn: Let’s do it again soon.
Jeff@SaturnWorld: Everybody, give the folks a hand!
Randy@UGP is on the stage.
Saturn left the stage.
Jeff@SaturnWorld left the stage.
Moderator: Pepe says: “”
Moderator: Hawaiian says: “!!”
Moderator: Eiksirf says: “clap clap clap”
Moderator: Gamemaster says: “Segas Too Cool”
Moderator: Eiksirf says: “hi randy”
Randy@UGP: Our guest this evening is Victor Ireland, president of Working Designs.
Moderator: Eiksirf says: “VOLTRON KICKS!”
Victor Ireland is on the stage.
Moderator: Pepe says: “HELLO VICTOR!!!!”
Victor Ireland: hi all!
Randy@UGP: Working Designs translates foreign titles for the US market, amongst other nifty things.
Randy@UGP: So, what’s the latest with WD?
Victor Ireland: we’re really, REALLY busy tending the RPG business as well as getting SPAZ off the ground.
Victor Ireland: We will have 6-10 titles out this year.
Victor Ireland: (between the two labels)
Victor Ireland: GA
Randy@UGP: Can you give us any clues as to what they’ll be?
Randy@UGP: Personal request from Jason Montes: bring over Digital Dance Mix. 🙂
Victor Ireland: Well, we’ve got the announced stuff:Albert Odyssey, Rayearth, and LUNAR: Silver Star Story for the Saturn…
Victor Ireland: Raystorm under the SPAZ label for Playstation…
Victor Ireland: and our good friends at SEGA were kind enough to announce SEGA AGES to the world FOR us (for Saturn)
Randy@UGP: Note: the moderator is experiencing technical difficulties. We’ll be asking the audience Q’s in a sec/
Victor Ireland: That’s 5 announced.
Victor Ireland: We have two to 3 more to announce very shortly for Saturn and 1 or 2 for PS this year.
Moderator: Andre says: “Any word on Magic Knight Rayearth?”
Victor Ireland: Rayearth has about 80-90 of the text in place, and the recording process is started….
Moderator: MasterC says: “Is Spat making any games for Saturn as well as playstation?”
Victor Ireland: That title has been a bit of a pain to get right, since we had to halt development on the project for almost 2 years to get to use the original Japanese names instead of lame ones TMS and Kodansha wanted.
Victor Ireland: (Rayearth)
Moderator: Rudo says: “Is John Truitt (Ghaleon) making voices for Rayearth?”
Victor Ireland: SEGA Ages contains Space Harrier, Outrun, and Afterburner II on 1 CD for $39 for Saturn.
Victor Ireland: It’s due out mid-late june.
Moderator: ?Trunks says: “we all know what working designs does but what we wanna know is why does it take so long!?!?!”
Victor Ireland: That will be a SPAZ title.
Victor Ireland: John will be involved in MKRE. 🙂
Moderator: we’ll let Vic catch up on these questions
Victor Ireland: IF we just ported titles, we could do it a lot faster, but we generally try to improve them and/or fight over details to make the best possible product. Case in point (2 examples):
Victor Ireland: On Rayearth, we were told, after the contract was signed, that we could not use the original names for the characters (main ones being Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu), but had to use the crappy ones TMS created for the crappy US dub (Luce, Marine, and Anemone).
Victor Ireland: We would NOT do that.
Moderator: you tell em, Vic
Victor Ireland: So, we fought for nearly 2 years, with development halted, to get our way. To give in would be to compromise the product.
Victor Ireland: A look at the TMS US dub they can
Victor Ireland: not sell to syndication, and you see how BAD their writing and names are for that version.
Moderator: Zapf says: “Have you considered a port of Grandia?”
Victor Ireland: Second, on Albert, for example, the load times were TERRIBLE on the Japanese version, like 10 seconds in and another 7-10 coming out of battle.
Victor Ireland: We chose to rip the system apart and rewrite critical stuff on the system to get those loads down. They now stand at 4-6 in and 4-5 out.
Victor Ireland: A big improvement, but one that costs TIME.
Victor Ireland: We will not RUSH a product to make a date. Period.
Moderator: IDİ says: “your saturn support is greatly appreciated vic.”
Victor Ireland: we have a good relationship with Game Arts. However, Mr. Miyaji will not license Grandia to anyone until the game is closer to release (which stands at October for Japan, right now).
Victor Ireland: No one has Grandia in the bag, but SoA and WD are basically the finalists.
Moderator: 10 more minutes… keep the questions coming
Victor Ireland: Of course, we’re pretty confident. 🙂
Moderator: MasterC says: “What is status of Lunar:the Silvar Story?”
Victor Ireland: LUNAR: SSS is also underway. One thing a lot of people don’t know is that the US will be getting LUNAR: Complete in the US, which is not even out in Japan yet.
Victor Ireland: It is an updated version of LUNAR: SSS that was released last Winter.
Victor Ireland: It has full-screen animations and some extra stuff.
Randy@UGP: Any plans for Thunderforce 5?
Victor Ireland: The game requires the MPEG card in Japan.
Victor Ireland: but, sine that’s not out in the US, we’ll shoot for almost full-screen, without the card.
Moderator: Pepe says: “Is there a release date yet for Lunar: SSS? (Spiffy Rei av Randy!)”
Victor Ireland: TF5 will be connected to some of our upcoming announcements. I’m not saying TF5 will BE the announcement, but it will be related. 🙂
Victor Ireland: We talk in generalities about releases, but it looks like LUNAR: SSS is September-sih.
Victor Ireland: um, -ish.
Moderator: Zapf says: “Are there any titles out in the US that you think deserve to have had a better translation?”
Victor Ireland: Whew. Too many to list. Definitely Mystaria/Blazing Heroes. I think the crack was affecting the translator’s job performance.
Moderator: Rudo says: “Were you succesful in trying to replace some of the songs by those in the Sega CD version or are you still fighting for that (please say yes)?”
Victor Ireland: All the FF’s have fallen short, IMO. The text does not have the emotional impact to match the visuals.
Victor Ireland: We’re not really Fighting on the music issue, just, um, discussing… 🙂
Moderator: remember kids… he’s not advocatin the use of illegal narcotics 😉
Victor Ireland: We’ve already remixed 4 and returned them.
Victor Ireland: Time will tell if we can leave them in.
Victor Ireland: Um, returned them to the proper place in the game, that is.
Moderator: Zapf says: “What is the hardest part about translating a game? (Keeping the emotion in the language, things that don’t translate into english well, etc?)”
Victor Ireland: the hardest part is details like so and so is the son of so and so, who’s from so and so, etc And…
Victor Ireland: finding interesting for boring townspeople to say all the time.
Moderator: i’m daryl.. and this my brpother daryl
Moderator: Rudo says: “Have you guys patched things up with Gamefan or is the fighting still going on?”
Victor Ireland: the Japanese townspeople are INCREDIBLY generic. We replace almost aLL their text.
Victor Ireland: Rudo…are you from Gamefan? 🙂
Moderator: Rudo says: “no”
Victor Ireland: funny timing.
Moderator: I don’t believe him… kill the mole
Victor Ireland: We are on the mend after almost two years.
Victor Ireland: We’re getting our apology.
Randy@UGP: Question from SaturnWorld: Fire Pro Wrestling? 🙂
Moderator: Andre says: “Oh, that’s good to know Vic, I did’nt like the fact that you and GF were fighting”
Victor Ireland: FPR is not in our genre, but we have a great relationship personally with Human (the publishers) from the Vasteel days.
Victor Ireland: We’ve recommended the title to SoA.
Moderator: Zapf says: “What influenced you to include all the ‘extras’ with your games (color manuals, nice CD’s, foil-printed casing, etc?)”
Victor Ireland: We’ll keep beating them until the do it.
Victor Ireland: It KILLS WCW.
Victor Ireland: The extras are all the stuff I want when I buy games. Almost no one cares about that at the publisher level. It costs us plenty, but it ends up with a product I personally would BUY.
Victor Ireland: I don’t publish crap I wouldn’t buy.
Moderator: you tell him vic
Moderator: Zapf says: “The gaming industry needs more of you.”
Victor Ireland: Game Fan has been cut off from all PR and review copies of games for almost 2 years, BTW.
Randy@UGP: That’s about all the time we have. Thanks for coming everyone!
Randy@UGP: And thanks to Vic!
Victor Ireland: That’s why Dragon Force and Iron Storm weren’t even mentioned in GF awards, though they were the best of their genre in ’96 and won awards elsewhere.
Victor Ireland: Why thank you, Zapf.
Randy@UGP left the stage.
Victor Ireland left the stage.