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View Full Version : Is this Even Accurate? Asalieri Targets the Repro-Makers



Gatucaman
07-24-2013, 04:19 PM
Now, i am not sure if this may be the right board for talking about this, but i really want to share my intrigue.

Eric "Asalieri" Gaede, the man who become infamous for committing slandering and defamation towards James Rolfe with the AVGN Movie Fundraiser & The Cheetahman 2 Kickstarter, the gusy who is known to be a complete sneaky guy with an agenda, the guy who attempted to sabotage Channel Awesome in 2011, has now targeted the main 3 Repro Makers on the Internet.

TimeWalk Games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBlsF8uXB8U

NES Reproductions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQDLjGG0kTU

Game Reprouctions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOVEGgCDEIc

I Have seen his 3 videos and honestly they all seem very sneaky and cherrypicky, what also raise my eyebrow is that he actually recommended the people from NintendoAge, which i know they arent popular around here.

My question is, if you allow this to get into discussion, how much accurate his claims are?, specially if some of you have been using the services of these 3 well known groups?

wiggyx
07-24-2013, 07:01 PM
So let me get this straight. These guys make repros and promote other "small" operations, but hate on the "big" sites that make repros because they're able to make nice things such as boxes, manuals, etc?

Sounds like a classic case of ujelly to me. Mad because someone else is capable of making a premium product while their plain old cart with a cheap-o label is just the same crap that anyone with zero talent and a few bucks to spend on cheap hardware can produce.

Sorry if I'm missing something, but I really can't be bothered to listen to these two hypocrites ramble on for more than a few minutes, let alone an hour or more.

edit: watched a few more minutes of the time walk video while taking a shit. These guys are useless. Cry babies at best, and totally not worth anyone's time in my opinion. You'd be better off spending your time reading an article about the merits of pumpkin catapults.

StoneAgeGamer
07-24-2013, 07:19 PM
So let me get this straight. These guys make repros and promote other "small" operations, but hate on the "big" sites that make repros because they're able to make nice things such as boxes, manuals, etc?

Sounds like a classic case of ujelly to me. Mad because someone else is capable of making a premium product while their plain old cart with a cheap-o label is just the same crap that anyone with zero talent and a few bucks to spend on cheap hardware can produce.

Sorry if I'm missing something, but I really can't be bothered to listen to these two hypocrites ramble on for more than a few minutes, let alone an hour or more.

I only watched first video, but I didn't understand their complaints either. The only possible valid complaint they possibly had was legality, but then the one guy says he makes repros so I am not sure how he could even complain about that. As far as the site's business practices, as long as they aren't ripping people off I don't see the problem. It seems their policies are pretty clear. If the customers don't like them then they shouldn't be buying from them. Also the idea that they should just hire more people is easier said than done. I am in a similar position with EverDrives at the moment and I have contracted out work and am working on getting more people to help, but there is a lot involved in this.

Metalwario64
07-24-2013, 07:35 PM
Yeah, I'm usually okay with Asa, but he has his moments where he seems to rant for the sake of ranting. I thought he was pretty accurate with his criticism of James' support of the Cheetahmen 2 fundraiser, but on the other hand I think he was in the wrong for complaining about donations for his movie.

Unfortunately, here he seems to be ranting for the sake of propping up his repro making buddy.:|

Frankie_Says_Relax
07-24-2013, 07:49 PM
You'd be better off spending your time reading an article about the merits of pumpkin catapults.[/i]

Oh, I'm sure these guys would do a three-part series on how the medieval style trebuchets are FAR superior to the compressed air cannons that they use in the Punkin Chunkin championship and how those things are ruining the sport.

I'm officially at the point in my life where most YouTube "exposes" of this nature make me want to hurl myself out a third story window on to a rusty Victorian gate spike.

bb_hood
07-24-2013, 08:15 PM
TimeWalk Games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBlsF8uXB8U

NES Reproductions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQDLjGG0kTU

Game Reprouctions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOVEGgCDEIc



Easily 3 of the worst internet reviews I have ever seen.

MyTurnToPlay
07-24-2013, 08:16 PM
The two guys in the those videos are dick shits and deserve to choke on Shaq Fu carts.

Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

thank you.

Gatucaman
07-24-2013, 08:22 PM
Yeah, I'm usually okay with Asa, but he has his moments where he seems to rant for the sake of ranting. I thought he was pretty accurate with his criticism of James' support of the Cheetahmen 2 fundraiser, but on the other hand I think he was in the wrong for complaining about donations for his movie.

Unfortunately, here he seems to be ranting for the sake of propping up his repro making buddy.:|

Dude, you don't even know how much Wrong and misinformation Asa was spewing regarding James, you are invited to do some research over certain blogs and find out the truth, that honestly does not put Asalieri in a good light, Trust me when i say that his criticisms aren't really criticism, as much as it was slander, distorting evidence and information, and forcing people to believe what he says and attack and shun other people who disagrees.

Heck, you can read some of the stuff (in the comment section) on Irate Gamer Sucks articles from August 4 & 11 from 2012

That terrible mouth taste flavor shouldn't be discussed here if you ask me, but i just brought it up, because, if you look closely, you will find out, Asalieri doesn't really have that much of a trustworthiest reputation and should ALWAYS be taken into consideration, and quite frankly, this is no exception, because it comes down to, Who is he in position to Rant like this?.

And Even tough Asa and most of his companions are known to be trolls, the Issue is that unfortunately and sadly, They have Way too much influence on people, specially their fanbases, and my fear is that his views might create a huge damage in people like us or others who have purchased stuff from those guys, and trust me, I know what i am talking about when i say, that, you REALLY SHOULDN'T trust anything that comes from the mouth of this "person".

wiggyx
07-24-2013, 08:39 PM
I only watched first video, but I didn't understand their complaints either. The only possible valid complaint they possibly had was legality, but then the one guy says he makes repros so I am not sure how he could even complain about that. As far as the site's business practices, as long as they aren't ripping people off I don't see the problem. It seems their policies are pretty clear. If the customers don't like them then they shouldn't be buying from them. Also the idea that they should just hire more people is easier said than done. I am in a similar position with EverDrives at the moment and I have contracted out work and am working on getting more people to help, but there is a lot involved in this.

Man, I hear ya. I can produce up to 2 Earthbound Zero shells a day with the 3D printer and that's if I have absolutely no issues along the way, which is a pipe dream. One per day is about all I can realistically expect.


Oh, I'm sure these guys would do a three-part series on how the medieval style trebuchets are FAR superior to the compressed air cannons that they use in the Punkin Chunkin championship and how those things are ruining the sport.

I'm officially at the point in my life where most YouTube "exposes" of this nature make me want to hurl myself out a third story window on to a rusty Victorian gate spike.

LOL!

I'm officially too old to watch hours of nerds ranting about who cares what. Not to mention how ignorant and plain old incorrect they are so much of the time. They really should spend more than 2 minutes researching what they plan to rant about and drop the old "I know everything about copyright law" game that so many folks on the web play.

Jack_Burton_BYOAC
07-24-2013, 10:05 PM
I watched half of the first video, and couldn't take anymore. Maybe these guys get around to making some valid points, but their presentation is unbearable.

I have no real issues with repro game businesses. It does bother me a little bit to think about them selling hacks and translations that the creators have explicitly said they do not want to be sold.

However, these hack and translation authors are already infringing on the copyrights of the original publishers when they load their ROMs up in an emulator, or play them on homebrewed repro carts.

They want to cherry pick their notions of what's right and wrong. And maybe they should. But to me, there's no honor among thieves. If you hack a game, don't complain when somebody steals it from you and does whatever they want with it.

And then there's the whole notion of destroying working games to make repros. I don't support that, but I can see the other side. It's easy enough to create PCBs and cases from scratch, it's just more expensive.

EDIT: The guy on the left has a much better video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v9aLcgF9UA&list=PLARJ0QnEARkfkB4vewT9TJo7dz9zy1U_2&index=1

Talking about how he thinks it's hypocritical for some repro makers to come down on people reselling the games they buy from them. I'm in agreement.

Kiddo
07-25-2013, 01:21 AM
However, these hack and translation authors are already infringing on the copyrights of the original publishers when they load their ROMs up in an emulator, or play them on homebrewed repro carts.

They want to cherry pick their notions of what's right and wrong. And maybe they should. But to me, there's no honor among thieves. If you hack a game, don't complain when somebody steals it from you and does whatever they want with it.

The difference, obviously, being that the hacks and translations are (in most cases, at least) created as hobbyist works distributed as ROMs/patches for free, and in most cases were originally privately distributed among small communities. Calling that thievery is something I'd consider warped and insulting, especially when compared to people selling repro carts of someone else's work on eBay for triple-digit prices, ripping off both the ROM hacker and the purchaser. You'd essentially be calling anyone who used a Game Genie or Action Replay a "thief", since the entire point of those devices were to hack games.

CatTehBus
07-25-2013, 03:24 AM
I think they are upset that reproduction makers are "websiteing" themselves rather than sell on a forum and that they are a business but they don't act like a business. I've always thought of reproduction carts as commissions so it doesn't matter how much the materials used would have cost.

Jack_Burton_BYOAC
07-25-2013, 04:37 AM
The difference, obviously, being that the hacks and translations are (in most cases, at least) created as hobbyist works distributed as ROMs/patches for free, and in most cases were originally privately distributed among small communities. Calling that thievery is something I'd consider warped and insulting, especially when compared to people selling repro carts of someone else's work on eBay for triple-digit prices, ripping off both the ROM hacker and the purchaser. You'd essentially be calling anyone who used a Game Genie or Action Replay a "thief", since the entire point of those devices were to hack games.

A game genie or action replay doesn't circumvent copyright when used.

The hacking isn't the point of the hypocrisy, it's the the fact that you must use an original ROM file in order to play the hacks. The hackers are committing a type of theft, and then complaining when someone steals from them. Am I simplifying things a bit much? Maybe, but it's enough that I can say if someone were to ever steal my own derived works (which are in other hobbies) I wouldn't have anything to say.

The more convincing point I think hack authors could make is they don't want the game companies getting wind of things and coming down on them for someone else selling their game.

Koa Zo
07-25-2013, 05:52 AM
"...because I worked at Dominos for 11 years..."

lol

JSoup
07-25-2013, 07:37 AM
Not knowing who this Asalieri guy is, I did some Google'en. It's fairly telling, I think, that the first two things that pop up are an Encyclopedia Dramatica article and this very topic.

Greg2600
07-25-2013, 12:53 PM
My issue here is that these guys are bashing websites they've never even ordered from.

Kiddo
07-25-2013, 01:30 PM
A game genie or action replay doesn't circumvent copyright when used.

This is actually a heavily contested idea, especially by first parties who have basically done everything possible to prevent "Cheat" devices from being operatable on modern gaming setups. To them, a hack is a hack is a hack. These companies also attempted to crack down on people who modify their legally purchased hardware in the privacy of their own homes. Do you not see where the concept of ownership is being stretched to unreasonability?


The hacking isn't the point of the hypocrisy, it's the the fact that you must use an original ROM file in order to play the hacks.

The mere existence of ROMs doesn't immediately assume piracy, you know. How many people do you honestly think played a Super Mario World hack that never touched the original cartridge? This applies even to fan translated games, since much of the reason they'd be fan translated in the first place is because of fans who've been playing the games for years in Japanese.

Gatucaman
07-25-2013, 01:52 PM
Well guys, i actually contacted the guy in the video, Protitus, and i asked him how much for a Repro of Sweet Home, and how much will be for Shipping to Mexico, This is what i got.

I DID NOT FAKE ANY OF THIS, i just blurred my name.

http://s24.postimg.org/awp3y436d/Untitled_1.jpg (http://postimage.org/)

And then i proceed to talk to the guy behind NesReproductions and here, i compiled in one image our conversation (with his permission of course, thanks), I did not edited ANY of the text.

http://s15.postimg.org/njjf4h9ez/nesrepromailscompilation.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/l27nx7pif/full/)
image shack (http://postimage.org/)

And here i was thinking that guy protitus did sell cheaper, and i could get a sweet home repro for less than 20 dollars, i know that might be impossible, but here, i cant sent donor carts because of the corrupt fees people ask for sending stuff from this city.

Jack_Burton_BYOAC
07-25-2013, 01:53 PM
This is actually a heavily contested idea, especially by first parties who have basically done everything possible to prevent "Cheat" devices from being operatable on modern gaming setups. To them, a hack is a hack is a hack. These companies also attempted to crack down on people who modify their legally purchased hardware in the privacy of their own homes. Do you not see where the concept of ownership is being stretched to unreasonability?



The mere existence of ROMs doesn't immediately assume piracy, you know. How many people do you honestly think played a Super Mario World hack that never touched the original cartridge? This applies even to fan translated games, since much of the reason they'd be fan translated in the first place is because of fans who've been playing the games for years in Japanese.

Your first point is taken.

I remember in the past quite a few people insisted on clauses talking about having the right to a back-up copy at home, but in the end most of the people in the scene agreed that it was just as illegal to play a ROM when owning the original game as it was under any other circumstances. USA only, of course.

StoneAgeGamer
07-25-2013, 03:32 PM
Your first point is taken.

I remember in the past quite a few people insisted on clauses talking about having the right to a back-up copy at home, but in the end most of the people in the scene agreed that it was just as illegal to play a ROM when owning the original game as it was under any other circumstances. USA only, of course.

This is correct as far as I understand.

However you can make back-ups of your own games and play the back-ups. You just can't distribute these copies in any way. This law is more in place to stop people from distributing rather than preventing people from obtaining back-ups of media they own.

In the end, it has become pretty obvious that these game companies are not that concerned with people pirating old games or making repros, they are concerned with new games being pirated.

They were right in the first video, its just not even worth the legal fees to bother with this type of stuff. They could send cease and desist (which still cost legal fees), but they are really gaining nothing by doing it because in reality they aren't losing money by the repro-makers being in business. The only reason to send a cease and desist in this case would be purely out of principle and most businesses don't operate on principles alone (or at all). Its all about whether they can make money or are losing money from something. If neither is true, its not worth their time.

BlastProcessing402
08-07-2013, 06:13 PM
Your first point is taken.

I remember in the past quite a few people insisted on clauses talking about having the right to a back-up copy at home, but in the end most of the people in the scene agreed that it was just as illegal to play a ROM when owning the original game as it was under any other circumstances. USA only, of course.

I think it's more like "illegal to download a ROM when owning the original game as it was under any circumstances". If you dump your own, that should be okay under copyright law, but since there's never been a real court test of this exact thing, and courts are pretty wacky sometimes, who knows.

Kitsune Sniper
08-07-2013, 07:59 PM
The more convincing point I think hack authors could make is they don't want the game companies getting wind of things and coming down on them for someone else selling their game.

THIS IS WHY I'M AGAINST TRANSLATION REPROS. I don't want X or Y company to come after me saying that I made this for them. One particular idiotic repro maker actually wanted to hire me to translate games for him after I released Samurai Pizza Cats - I told him to kindly go fuck himself.

Also, people are dumb and pay money for several repro carts to play hacks and translations instead of getting a flashcart. Fool, money, are parted, etc.

CastlevaniaDude
08-07-2013, 10:47 PM
THIS IS WHY I'M AGAINST TRANSLATION REPROS. I don't want X or Y company to come after me saying that I made this for them. One particular idiotic repro maker actually wanted to hire me to translate games for him after I released Samurai Pizza Cats - I told him to kindly go fuck himself.

Also, people are dumb and pay money for several repro carts to play hacks and translations instead of getting a flashcart. Fool, money, are parted, etc.

I've been seeing Mother 3 translation repro carts popping up on Reddit and forum spam lately. Roughly 55 a piece before shipping. Then the people argue that that is simply their cost, they're not making any money. WHAT? THAT makes me absolutely sick. Those guys (the translation team) went out of their way to make sure Americans who would play the translation supported the game in any way humanly possible, including but not limited to buying the official Japanese cart. They offered to pull their work and allow Nintendo to use it if they decided to localize. And now, with EB doing great on the WiiU VC, some jackoff is going to take all that hard work and that spirit of fandom and try to sell it?

I hope NOA does a VC release of Mother 3 tomorrow and sues the crap out of these morons.

It's one thing when its a repro of a leaked official translation that was never released (Earthbound Zero) -- to take someones hard work without their authorization when they were obviously doing it in the spirit of being true fans who simply couldn't play a game makes me sick.

Tanooki
08-08-2013, 01:07 AM
If you're talking about the mother 3 shipping any day now, you probably shouldn't spout off not knowing all the facts. Do you know what it costs to manufacture a small run of legit boards, chips, batteries, gba shells, labels and the rest? The less you buy in bulk the more the cost increases per unit and I know he didn't have like 1000 or even close to 500 made because any project like that is a gamble. Also I do know the repro maker was going to or has already gone and emailed Tomato about wanting to donate a cut of the profit for his work. He's an online buddy of mine and I do assist him in some matters now and again with stuff. Sure there is a profit margin there but it's not ungodly huge.

I agree translation jacking isn't great but in the end the translator also doesn't own their work as its the original owners work creating the original game. I'm also unaware of any other repro maker who does offer a cut of the profit to either translators or original game makers as it's a first to me. I think anyone using a fan translation to profit on a repo should give the writer a cut in all fairness so I respect that in this case.

Panzerfuzion
08-08-2013, 02:37 AM
I don't even care what there talking about, the guys in the video are absolutely disgusting. There overweight gluttonous looking pigs that have more adipose tissue then muscle. They look like they choke down triple cheeseburgers with a bottle of prilosec. If you want someone to listen to what you have to say respect your outward appearance.

CastlevaniaDude
08-08-2013, 10:48 AM
Also I do know the repro maker was going to or has already gone and emailed Tomato about wanting to donate a cut of the profit for his work.


That right there says it all.

Do you honestly think that your friend believes for a second that Tomato is going to agree to something like that?

Tanooki
08-08-2013, 11:30 AM
I think this got brought up on NA as well considering timewalk does a good bit of business out of there. These two large trolls are completely pathetic. I'm still listening to the gamereproductions.com trail of selective lies, mockery and hypocritical bullshit from these assclowns. I take a little more offense to this one as I've got a game off him before, he's a local, and I do talk with him and they're making the guy out like he's some evil self serving piece of shit who has no life other than to serve people in shoveling out bootlegs while being a lazy ass who takes a month to turn it around.

It's annoying even listening to them with their combo rambling/whining diatribe against his faq page which clearly is a mix of truth and cover your ass text to pacify the buyer, and that's a given. But to rip on him for $30 games when the moron on the left says donor games are $2 and he could make one for someone else for just $9 is the epitomy of hypocritical lying garbage. I know that guy has been asked before on price, he doesn't sell for $9. The GR guy is married with children, has a full time real line of work, so like you figure out why there's a month turn around to delivery time. 40hours work, another 20-40 of kiddie time, wife time, other needed chores/shopping, and the rest and you tell me why 1 month is unreasonable. Looking at that goob though, he doesn't appear to have much if any of those things in his way so perhaps that's why he's clueless.

Metalwario64
08-08-2013, 11:33 AM
I don't even care what there talking about, the guys in the video are absolutely disgusting. They're overweight gluttonous looking pigs that have more adipose tissue then muscle. They look like they choke down triple cheeseburgers with a bottle of prilosec. If you want someone to listen to what you have to say respect your outward appearance.
While I think these may be Asa's worst videos (he really seems to try to be propping up his buddy, or he's just run out of things to rant on :/), insulting someone's appearance like that is childish, and yet pretty funny if you watch this video.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TDHTftZSQc


Trust me when i say that his criticisms aren't really criticism, as much as it was slander, distorting evidence and information, and forcing people to believe what he says and attack and shun other people who disagrees.
How the heck do you "force" someone to believe something?@_@

Daria
08-08-2013, 12:39 PM
Maybe he straps people to uncomfortable chairs, tapes their eyelids open and plays his YouTube videos on an endless loop?

InsaneDavid
08-08-2013, 08:58 PM
Maybe he straps people to uncomfortable chairs, tapes their eyelids open and plays his YouTube videos on an endless loop?

Still not as bad as watching Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

Tanooki
08-08-2013, 11:40 PM
No it's far worse than Dr. Quinn, at least she's easy on the eyes and ears.

Ed Oscuro
08-08-2013, 11:45 PM
The hacking isn't the point of the hypocrisy, it's the the fact that you must use an original ROM file in order to play the hacks. The hackers are committing a type of theft, and then complaining when someone steals from them.
I think you should look up Sega v. Accolade. If a hack is provided as a patch file, it's up to the user to legally provide the original ROM. Yes, I know that many hacks aren't provided this way, and especially when you buy a complete cartridge of a hack - but the hack makers are reasonable in asking to be paid for their original contribution as the maker of a cheat device or the publisher of an unofficial expansion pack for DOOM or Quake, or indeed as the original game publisher.

Jack_Burton_BYOAC
08-09-2013, 04:15 AM
I think you should look up Sega v. Accolade. If a hack is provided as a patch file, it's up to the user to legally provide the original ROM. Yes, I know that many hacks aren't provided this way, and especially when you buy a complete cartridge of a hack - but the hack makers are reasonable in asking to be paid for their original contribution as the maker of a cheat device or the publisher of an unofficial expansion pack for DOOM or Quake, or indeed as the original game publisher.

The hackers had to have the ROM on their computer. That's the hypocrisy. It starts before the players download anything.

The "it's legal to make one backup of your own game" thing is trumped by the DMCA.

Kiddo
08-10-2013, 01:54 AM
The "it's legal to make one backup of your own game" thing is trumped by the DMCA.

Hahah, taking the DMCA seriously. That crap didn't apply in the era of VHS tapes. Why should it be any different now?
The DMCA's supposedly "trumped" our original rights to physical ownership of what we personally purchase in regard to media for over a decade, yet no company has dared to let the DMCA be challenged up to the Supreme Court. Perhaps it's because they know it won't really hold?

It certainly doesn't help that Europe is finally putting it's foot down on the abuses of copyright law over the years. The DMCA as it is would be laughed at there.


I agree translation jacking isn't great but in the end the translator also doesn't own their work as its the original owners work creating the original game.

To start, let's take this question into a scenario where there's no supposed illegality involved: Does Ted Woolsey own his localization scripts for the Final Fantasy games he worked on? Does Working Designs own the localization scripts for the games they worked on? If not, then why bother re-writing these in every re-release, especially as the fandom for said franchises gets more broken with every re-script?

Second off, I would like to add that there's more to many, if not most, fan translations than merely plastering a script over the Japanese text. Besides the text and graphics hacks required to get the translation across, many hacks go the extra mile and add degrees of polish such as extra fonts, enhanced graphics and effects, and bug fixes. Perhaps most dramatically, the Satellaview-based fan translations up to this point stripped out BS-X-specific code and replaced it's specific save format with a standard SRAM format, among other more specific changes on a game-to-game basis, which essentially amount to -porting the games from their originally released add-on hardware to the base Super NES.-

Kitsune Sniper
08-10-2013, 09:06 AM
I think you should look up Sega v. Accolade. If a hack is provided as a patch file, it's up to the user to legally provide the original ROM. Yes, I know that many hacks aren't provided this way, and especially when you buy a complete cartridge of a hack - but the hack makers are reasonable in asking to be paid for their original contribution as the maker of a cheat device or the publisher of an unofficial expansion pack for DOOM or Quake, or indeed as the original game publisher.

No, we're not.

Game translations and unofficial expansion packs for Doom / Quake are -not- the same thing. Doom and Quake are already set up for modding. The mods don't actually change the core game files, they just tell the game "Load these map and enemy files instead of the usual ones."

Furthermore the PC games already allow you to modify them, legally, as long as you follow the game's license for doing so. In most cases this means "change as many files as you want as long as you don't actually distribute the full game or unmodified parts of it." This license doesn't exist for game roms. The closest we could get to this on consoles is the SNES RPG Maker. 99% of the assets are in the cart. The other 1% (scripts, maps, and so on) are stored in memory and that's the only thing you can distribute.

... actually now that I think about it, there's just one legal fan-made SNES game translation: Hyper V'Ball on the SNES got a French translation that the original game developers gave their blessing to.


The hackers had to have the ROM on their computer. That's the hypocrisy. It starts before the players download anything.

The "it's legal to make one backup of your own game" thing is trumped by the DMCA.

Is it hypocritical if many of us admit to breaking the law? :P


To start, let's take this question into a scenario where there's no supposed illegality involved: Does Ted Woolsey own his localization scripts for the Final Fantasy games he worked on? Does Working Designs own the localization scripts for the games they worked on? If not, then why bother re-writing these in every re-release, especially as the fandom for said franchises gets more broken with every re-script?

Second off, I would like to add that there's more to many, if not most, fan translations than merely plastering a script over the Japanese text. Besides the text and graphics hacks required to get the translation across, many hacks go the extra mile and add degrees of polish such as extra fonts, enhanced graphics and effects, and bug fixes. Perhaps most dramatically, the Satellaview-based fan translations up to this point stripped out BS-X-specific code and replaced it's specific save format with a standard SRAM format, among other more specific changes on a game-to-game basis, which essentially amount to -porting the games from their originally released add-on hardware to the base Super NES.-

1: I think they do. Some translators keep the rights to their original translations, so companies have to get them redone. Maybe the more modern translations are 100% own by companies but back then things might have been legally different.

2: Well yea, no duh. :P It's not just "replace the text". I've spent hours testing my own patches, and some groups have huge private beta periods to make sure things work. It's not just "cut out a chunk of text and replace it."

SparTonberry
08-10-2013, 12:11 PM
Does Ted Woolsey own his localization scripts for the Final Fantasy games he worked on? Does Working Designs own the localization scripts for the games they worked on?
It would depend on the case.
From what little I played, it seemed Capcom just copy-pasted Ted's script into the GBA version of Breath of Fire.
I remember Vic Ireland said on the Sunsoft forum Square-Enix wouldn't let him rerelease Cadash for TG16 on Virtual Console, though he said that if SE wanted to release the game themselves, they'd have to make their own new localization. So it imply he owns the rights to the localized script/code mods if he didn't say it himself.

Parodius Duh!
08-10-2013, 01:10 PM
This guy is the definition of Chode, and it looks like I could make a ships sail out of his saggy Neck fat. Dudes a typical internet peen, who seriously cares about what him and his trashy fat friends opinions are?

Kiddo
08-10-2013, 03:47 PM
The closest we could get to this on consoles is the SNES RPG Maker. 99% of the assets are in the cart. The other 1% (scripts, maps, and so on) are stored in memory and that's the only thing you can distribute.

If you're thinking about RPG Tsukuru Super Dante, then I'll just say that the sequel (RPG Tsukuru 2 for SFC) is a lot more edit-friendly. Graphics can be edited and stored on Satellaview 8M Memory Packs, sound can be imported from Kanaderu (also stored from 8M Memory Packs), and pre-made scenarios were distributed via the Satellaview with new graphics, music and maps specifically in a mod-friendly manner. Unfortunately I'm still in the process of trying to dump much of the latter, it was practically a miracle Ryouma de Yuku Zenpen was uncovered.

Dezaemon for SFC is also really mod friendly, as it's basically a very customizible shmup engine.

Course, in both cases a typical audience would probably prefer using a later version (RPG Maker XP, or the 32-bit Dezaemons.) for the sake of both ease of development and ease of distribution.