Working Designs: Gamer Goodyboxes

[WulfeLuer]

After giving in to the Dork Side yet again, I nabbed an Arc The Lad boxset for the PS1. After going through everything, I realized just how much stuff was in there. I've gotten Working Designs-published games before, and I knew of the glorious tradition of WD tossing in all sorts of things going from the cool (Arc the Lad memory card case, soundtracks soundtracks soundtracks) to the interesting but weird (the Lunar 2 pendant, Growlanser's watch) to the would-be-kickass-if-collectors-weren't-scared-to-open-them-and-use-them (playing cards, stickers). I know that this is at least partially responsible for WD slow financial demise; making all this stuff could not be cheap, especially with a relatively niche market.

I just want to know, what started all this? Feelies of one kind or another have been around forever, but something of this scale and this consistency is just over the top (this is NOT a complaint, I love all the goodies). And did anybody else out there use their powers for awesome like this, before or since? Not just a 'special edition' with a soundtrack CD or an artbook (though those are great too), I mean consistent releases with lots of/extra nifty swag.

[celerystalker]

In most Working Designs manuals, the final page or so usually contained translation/localization notes, explaining changes made to pacing, making jokes work culturally, having english teachers check the grammar, etc. They discuss tgese special editions at length in some, and Victor Ireland wanted to offer the US the sort of special editions that Japanese folks had enjoyed for years.

Beyond that, they also produced tons of mail-in goodies like pins, posters, post cards, etc., which were intended to mimic Japan as well. I remember ads for the Lunar games having jokes in the fine print about enjoying seeing their games fetch high prices on ebay. Additionally, they were one of the first US publishers to offer lots of disc art variants. There are several versions of Dragon Force, Magic Knight Rayearth... the Lunar stuff is especially nutty. I have a buddy who owns all seven Sega CD disc variants, as well as their fan art edition of Lunar for PS1.

It was really an attempt to offer products with a different quality standard in the west. They got a lot of backlash at times for choices such as screwing up the difficulty in Exile: Wicked Phenomenon and completely re-writing jokes in Albert Odyssey, but stuff like the Elemental Gearbolt Assassin's Case, their high-end guide books, and porting niche genres in the early '90s like Vasteel, Popful Mail, Vay, etc. definitely caught them a strong fan base. Don't forget their Spaz label, with which they brought over twitch action games like Thunderforce V, Silhouette Mirage, RayStorm, etc.

They were a rare company that went after a vision not unlike Limited Run Games today, but with an intense focus on translating the experience of Japanese special editions and games that were of high quality, but other publishers wouldn't touch due to limited appeal in the US. Real commitment to a goal. Some of it turned out badly, like the dog shit cover art of Cosmic Fantasy 2 or the crap challenge in Exile: Wicked Phenomenon, and given that most games had things like sticker pages in the manuals, finding truly complete copies of games with those or the registration cards can be tricky, especially with all of the offers for posters and such. You have to admire how different they were in their time, though, and we likely wouldn't have gotten the kinds of special editions that are so common today without their efforts.

[Aussie2B]

Yeah, despite their claims of doing something nobody in the industry had ever thought of before, I think they were just ripping off the limited editions Japan was already getting, and US computer games had been including interesting extras going back to the 80s. WD definitely went overboard sometimes, though, which wasn't really justified for many of the games, in my opinion, as a lot were B-tier. If you really want to see excessive, check out the contents and price tag for the "Wonderful Edition" of Summon Night 6 that's due to be released (whenever the endless delays comes to an end) by Gaijinworks, which is Working Designs 2.0 in all but name. It's all the more ridiculous considering the game got a so-so response from Summon Night fans in Japan, and the US barely has any Summon Night fans, considering all we've gotten previously was SN5 and some spin-offs. I think an excessive LE makes a lot more sense if it's for a popular series with an established fanbase that would want merch based on what they love. But in this kind of scenario, I think it's mostly selling to collectors who have little familiarity with SN and little intention to actually use and enjoy the merch. Though I say all this despite ordering one myself, haha.

I don't really have any complaints with the quality of the goods in WD releases, though most anything besides art books and soundtracks is probably going to be a useless trinket to me. I just wish the quality of their localizations matched the quality of the bonus merch, since it's the game itself that really matters. The cringy dubbing, throw the baby out with the bathwater scripts, unfunny and/or offensive jokes, and code fiddling that broke the gameplay may have flown in the 90s, when the alternatives were usually Engrish localizations or no localization at all, but even now as Gaijinworks, they're localizing just the same and have become a laughingstock among other professional localizers. You know it's bad when like 90% of the reaction to Summon Night 6's dub (which is dub-only; no option to play with Japanese voices) is like "oh god, this is almost as bad as Chaos Wars", yet Gaijinworks is still puffing out their chests over the "quality" of the dub and hyping up the post-credits dub outtakes (when the in-game voice acting sounds like outtakes, haha).

[eskobar]

I really loved Working Designs back in the day ... but when I learned a bit of Japanese I noticed how much they FUCKED with the scripts in the localization process. They didn't respect the source material and that made me lower them from my gaming haven to the earth.

Still love the packaging, specially the Lunar series; I used the pendant and really loved the hard cover manuals. They FUCKED Silhouette Mirage, the original version is much better.

[celerystalker]

Yeah, despite their claims of doing something nobody in the industry had ever thought of before, I think they were just ripping off the limited editions Japan was already getting, and US computer games had been including interesting extras going back to the 80s. WD definitely went overboard sometimes, though, which wasn't really justified for many of the games, in my opinion, as a lot were B-tier. If you really want to see excessive, check out the contents and price tag for the "Wonderful Edition" of Summon Night 6 that's due to be released (whenever the endless delays comes to an end) by Gaijinworks, which is Working Designs 2.0 in all but name. It's all the more ridiculous considering the game got a so-so response from Summon Night fans in Japan, and the US barely has any Summon Night fans, considering all we've gotten previously was SN5 and some spin-offs. I think an excessive LE makes a lot more sense if it's for a popular series with an established fanbase that would want merch based on what they love. But in this kind of scenario, I think it's mostly selling to collectors who have little familiarity with SN and little intention to actually use and enjoy the merch. Though I say all this despite ordering one myself, haha.

I don't really have any complaints with the quality of the goods in WD releases, though most anything besides art books and soundtracks is probably going to be a useless trinket to me. I just wish the quality of their localizations matched the quality of the bonus merch, since it's the game itself that really matters. The cringy dubbing, throw the baby out with the bathwater scripts, unfunny and/or offensive jokes, and code fiddling that broke the gameplay may have flown in the 90s, when the alternatives were usually Engrish localizations or no localization at all, but even now as Gaijinworks, they're localizing just the same and have become a laughingstock among other professional localizers. You know it's bad when like 90% of the reaction to Summon Night 6's dub (which is dub-only; no option to play with Japanese voices) is like "oh god, this is almost as bad as Chaos Wars", yet Gaijinworks is still puffing out their chests over the "quality" of the dub and hyping up the post-credits dub outtakes (when the in-game voice acting sounds like outtakes, haha).

Yeah, if Working Designs was doing today what they did back then, it wouldn't work at all. It's hard not to cringe at some of the stuff they did with the translation in Dragon Force with the quotes and names, but nobody else was gonna bring us Dragon Force back then. Honestly, I think the Arc the Lad games are awful, and Vay, Vasteel, and Iron Storm aren't my cup of tea... but they were porting Daisenryaku long before anyone else.

I like Working Designs quite a bit overall, but today, most everyone springs for quality translations, tons of games get limited special editions, and fucking with action game difficulty was always dumb. They, to me, represent a time when people who were really into games were craving something more, with not just beautiful packaging, but anime influences and colorful RPGs. They, along with Atlus, really pioneered bringing over nice, very Japanese console games without westernizing all of the art, even if WD did just murder some translations.

Also, I think I hate some of those translations less than most folks. Trying to adapt the spirit of culturally different humor with re-written jokes more obvious to the new audience is a great concept, even if some of it aged poorly or just never worked. Earthbound certainly did that more deftly, but I can appreciate it in its timeframe

[AdamAnt316]

The concept of add-in goodies with media probably goes back to vinyl albums in the '60s. I'm not sure if they go farther back than that, but the Beatles have to have been one of the pioneers, including a sheet of cut-outs (http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/sgt._pepper_lonely_hearts_club_band_the_beatles_in sert_cut_outs.jpg) in with Sgt Pepper, and a variety of photos (https://wimwords.com/2015/03/20/from-the-stacks-the-beatles-white-album-with-inserts/) with the White Album. Various albums included a poster or a couple of photos, but the one which seems to have really gone all-out was Pink Floyd with Dark Side of the Moon, including a variety of posters and stickers (http://www.feelnumb.com/2011/10/04/pink-floyd-dark-side-of-the-moon-original-album-inserts/).

Getting back to the topic of games with feelies, the best example for add-in goodies has to be Infocom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infocom). The first Zork releases didn't come with much of anything, but their later games like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(video_game )) and Hollywood Hijinx (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Hijinx) came with all sorts of feelies like a faux tabloid, a "Don't Panic!" button, a palm tree swizzle stick, and a 'microscopic space fleet' (perhaps the most frightening plastic bag in the galaxy!). Of course, Infocom went out of business fairly early on, though it may be due more to Activision's botched acquisition of the company than all of the feelies.
-Adam

[lendelin]

Some of you are too harsh with Working Designs. It is certainly true that the standards we have today for translations and localizations are different, they got professionalized on every level, and we are getting used to the flood of special editions of all kind.

But you have to consider the times in which Working Designs tried to do something different. It was the second half of the 90s, ten years before we were glad when we got decent manuals and in color! The times of 'All your base are belong to us' were not far behind us, and the guide business was in its infancy. Most guides were still in black and white around 1994, and only the best games got a printed strategy guide, if at all. (Final Fantasy II, SNES, got none after the first FF got a Nintendo Power guide) Special editions were unknown for consoles games (not for PC games, though, they already had some (sometimes even crazy) bonus content).

The humor was different back then, and noone demanded faithfulness and preserving games for eternity and research purposes back then. The criticism of WD is justified, but the strong points of this compnay and what they did outweigh by far the justified criticism.

Like in Japan already done for some time, WD gave us special editions and guides which were truly new in America and Europe. Japan had well written and detailed guides for RPGs because RPGs were huge best sellers unlike in Europe and in America. WD demonstrated that there is a market for manuals in high quality in elaborate special edtions, and that there is a market in particular for well written and detailed game guides, even hardcover guides, a novelty in the days.

Unlike Limited Run (!), WD used a normal salesmodel and by all profit orientation localized games we probably wouldn't have gotten in the US. (The difficulty WD and Victor Ireland had with Sony about Growlanser Generations unfortunately proves it.) WD did some pioneering work and deserve a lot of credit, Limited Run run by two slick guys with their 'special' salesmodel does not because other companies do it much better and in a more honest way. WD did indeed pioneering work, LR certainly does not.

About Qs of the OP: I can't name a company which consistently (!) did before or after WD these kind of elaborate special editions for games.

Doublejump books certainly produced from 2003 to 2009 game guides in the tradition of the WD guides. I liked them a lot, in particular the guides for Disgaea 2 and 3 and SMT Nocturne are highlights of these game guides.

Nowadays I gave up completely on special editions. It is a sad state of affairs. I always wanted complete RPG collections (with all variants and special editions) for the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4. (Why the Playstation consoles? All the PS consoles are or were dominant in the RPG genre)

To get complete collections for the PS1 and PS2 wasn't very difficult and it was very affordable, you got some special editions really cheap if you were patient, let it be WDs Growlanser Generations or SMT Digital Devil Saga which I got in a ToysRUs sale for ten bucks. The PS3 is already more difficult, I still need around 15 more special edtions although I have already more than 35 (!). The PS4 is even worse.

The reasons for the terrible state of Special editions for collectors? It got out of hand. They are a) too many, b) way to pricey, and c) hardly drop in price because of ebay scalping. That's why I gave up on them for this console generation. Every third game by NIS is nowadays a special edition, sometimes one game has even TWO special editions with slightly different content and packaging. The PS3 has three to four times more special editions than the PS2. Even worse is the PS4; and the prices skyrocketed, going very often around $100 and much more with big figurines noone needs and are shamelessly overpriced.

In short, today we have the early WD special editions on steroids not so much content-wise but certainly when it comes to prices. I hope the market will cool down and these ridiculous amount of special editions and their prices will dramatically decrease. Too many special editions make them very common.

[celerystalker]

I made the LRG comparison based on two things. One, they both had very clear visions and goals in their approaches, and two, Working Designs literally threatened that you could buy their stuff at launch and enjoy the goodies or they would laugh at you when you had to over pay on ebay.

I really loved Working Designs, though, and own the vast majority of their catalog.

[Aussie2B]

Trying to adapt the spirit of culturally different humor with re-written jokes more obvious to the new audience is a great concept, even if some of it aged poorly or just never worked. Earthbound certainly did that more deftly, but I can appreciate it in its timeframe


I'm fully in favor of replacing Japanese jokes and idioms and such, ones that would never make sense or come off properly in English, with English lines that are in the same spirit, but the problem with the humor in Working Designs (and Gaijinworks) localizations is that it was often inserted where it never existed in the first place. They'd heavily rewrite scripts for no particular reason, totally changing the mood and characterizations from how they were intended. On top of that, their humor was/is usually juvenile, like something only an elementary schooler would laugh at (Summon Night 5 opens with a warning that you'll get bad breath or constipation if you pirate it), or in very bad taste, like the Retardotaur in Vay or the joke in Magic Knight Rayearth referencing how Ike Turner would beat his wife, Tina Turner. Nothing says comedy like real-life domestic abuse. When I think about the Magic Knight Rayearth localization, it especially makes me mad because I feel bad for any established Rayearth fan who bought the game back in the day, expecting it to be representative of the source. It was my favorite anime back in the 90s, and the only reason I was spared that abomination of a localization is because I didn't have a Saturn back then (though, considering what the game is worth these days, I kinda wish I owned a copy). But I mean, how do you take a game based on a shoujo manga/anime, i.e. primarily targeted at a preteen/teen female audience, and think it makes sense to insert a bunch of sex jokes, crass language like "skank", and Western pop culture references that would never come out the mouths of Japanese girls in 8th grade nor those in a fantasy world totally unrelated to Earth?

Anyway, I could rant about Working Designs for days and days, haha. In the grand scheme of things, I'm still appreciative that they brought out a whole bunch of games that surely wouldn't have left Japan otherwise.

[WulfeLuer]

I'm not going to sit there and pretend that WD went a bit crazy on the translations, a lot of it does come across like a bunch of wannabe Simpsons writers got a job localizing Japanese stuff instead. A lot of it was crass, but sometimes you'd get clever stuff like referencing "I am the eggman, I am the walrus." Most of it is nerds being nerds (the Dork Side will dominate your destiny) and targeting teen and preteen boys, that at the time seemed to be category a) Beavis or b) Butthead. At least they were open about their target demographic. I didn't know they did that to MKR, though; that was a mistake.

Indeed, they picked games to localize that no other game company wanted to touch, and the stigma against RPG's and 'too Japanese' games in the Western market (made worse by people like Bernie Stolar) made it even more of an uphill battle. Even with the breakthrough that FF7 provided, the suits were dead set on keeping the niche games niche, which also strongly affected the guide market. There was some horrible stuff being published (yay Prima) and being gobbled up for $15-20 a pop back then. But WD was dead set on delivering high-end gamer swag. Their perfectionism and wondrous stubbornness got them in the end, but it was a helluva run.

[Aussie2B]

It really is bizarre how they bungled their strategy guide releases. I mean, when did the Lunar 2 guide finally come out, months after the game's release? I mean, no shit your guide didn't sell well when the majority of the people who would've bought and used it were already done with the game by the time it was available. It just makes no sense that they failed to make a simultaneous release. It's not like they were a third-party like Prima or BradyGames, who would have to ask, say, Squaresoft to provide information and early access to a game. Working Designs was localizing and publishing their games themselves, so if they worked on putting together a guide at the same time as they were localizing, it should've been even easier for them to make a simultaneous release than the other guide publishers.

[lendelin]

It really is bizarre how they bungled their strategy guide releases. I mean, when did the Lunar 2 guide finally come out, months after the game's release? I mean, no shit your guide didn't sell well when the majority of the people who would've bought and used it were already done with the game by the time it was available. It just makes no sense that they failed to make a simultaneous release. It's not like they were a third-party like Prima or BradyGames, who would have to ask, say, Squaresoft to provide information and early access to a game. Working Designs was localizing and publishing their games themselves, so if they worked on putting together a guide at the same time as they were localizing, it should've been even easier for them to make a simultaneous release than the other guide publishers.

Too bad that Zach Meston isn't a DP member anymore, he wrote the Lunar 2 guide among many others. He once stated what the big prob was, I can't remember exactly what it was, but he admitted that it was a big mistake to release the guide so late. (70% of guides are sold within three weeks after a game is released) I think he wasn't satisfied with the quality and WD gave him more time to finish it.

On the other hand the terribly delayed Lunar 2 guide was an exception and not the rule.

You are right that the humor in these guides were teenie-jokes and sometimes bathroom humor. I got them when I was an adult but still I enjoyed them because they were different and high quality unlike many others we got at the time. The guide business was in its infancy at the time, and to get such guides was just great, in particular for JRPGs which were still back then cartainly niche games and didn't sell well enough to warrant published guides.

[Aussie2B]

The strategy guide for Arc the Lad Collection was another they screwed up. The guide they released only covered the first two games. They planned to release a guide covering Arc the Lad 3 later on, like they did with Lunar 2, but realizing that doing so kills the profitability of a guide, they decided to scrap the Arc the Lad 3 guide entirely.

[Edmond Dantes]

Also, I think I hate some of those translations less than most folks. Trying to adapt the spirit of culturally different humor with re-written jokes more obvious to the new audience is a great concept, even if some of it aged poorly or just never worked. Earthbound certainly did that more deftly, but I can appreciate it in its timeframe

To be honest, my question is how much of a difference the translation really makes.

I mean, that might be odd coming from the guy who will always say to watch anime subbed when possible, but even I'll admit (for example) that Yu-Gi-Oh in Japanese is only a slightly better experience than in dubbed English--it's still a fundamentally generic shonen anime just with card games instead of martial arts battles, and if you didn't like it in English its doubtful that you'd have thought the original was worthwhile.

Likewise, and I may be about to commit a major sin here, and I mean, I do LIKE Lunar: The Silver Star (both versions), but at the end of the day the game is kind of a bog-standard JRPG about a boy who sets out to be a hero and ends up having to save the world from a dark lord (here called a Magic Emperor) with plot twists you can see coming a mile away (gee which of these obviously evil looking people is gonna turn out to be the bad guy later?) and characters who are basically archetypes, only the PS1 version doing anything to make them break out of that and even then, just barely. And was anyone really surprised that [SPOILER] turned out to be a goddess?

I mean it was fun, and its flaws get forgiven because despite being cliche it managed to salvage that with its execution (one of the only cases of this, like, ever), but... I highly doubt I'm getting a worse or totally destroyed experience just because the version I played had a kid who talked about eating Wheaties.

[eskobar]

To be honest, my question is how much of a difference the translation really makes.

I mean, that might be odd coming from the guy who will always say to watch anime subbed when possible, but even I'll admit (for example) that Yu-Gi-Oh in Japanese is only a slightly better experience than in dubbed English--it's still a fundamentally generic shonen anime just with card games instead of martial arts battles, and if you didn't like it in English its doubtful that you'd have thought the original was worthwhile.

Likewise, and I may be about to commit a major sin here, and I mean, I do LIKE Lunar: The Silver Star (both versions), but at the end of the day the game is kind of a bog-standard JRPG about a boy who sets out to be a hero and ends up having to save the world from a dark lord (here called a Magic Emperor) with plot twists you can see coming a mile away (gee which of these obviously evil looking people is gonna turn out to be the bad guy later?) and characters who are basically archetypes, only the PS1 version doing anything to make them break out of that and even then, just barely. And was anyone really surprised that [SPOILER] turned out to be a goddess?

I mean it was fun, and its flaws get forgiven because despite being cliche it managed to salvage that with its execution (one of the only cases of this, like, ever), but... I highly doubt I'm getting a worse or totally destroyed experience just because the version I played had a kid who talked about eating Wheaties.

The games are enjoyable... and the experience is there and I am thankful that I had the possibility of playing that game in some form, but when you really like your hobby and go deep in you analysis its when you start to question why WD took the liberty to make that changes, now that we have more people doing great localizations you even question more the way that WD works, the target customer really could have appreciated a more precise translation, respecting the original message the director wanted to give to the players.

I really like to read or listen the original director vision, being a movie, animated series or a book. Yes, you can add or subtract elements to fit into a space, but changing the original vision is not really the best way to treat another person's work.

[Aussie2B]

I've never been able to wrap my head around the excusing of WD localizations that goes like "well, they were boring, generic games to begin with anyway". If that's the case, then why on Earth were they licensed for localization in the first place? Why didn't they license games that were, you know, good to begin with, rather than giving us localizations that basically turn the game into a fanfic or parody of the source material? RPGs also aren't visual novels either. I don't think it's even necessary for the plots to be that inventive. They have other aspects like exploring and battling to keep the players interest too. If series like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy could have many games with fairly by-the-books plots of fantasy worlds under the threat of some great evil, and they can still rank among many people's favorite RPGs, without the localizations needing to shoehorn in added humor and totally rewrite the scripts, then why should that be necessary for other RPGs? If it is felt necessary, then I think they aren't getting to the root of the problem. You can try to polish a turd, but it's still gonna be shittier than something that's not a turd to begin with.

But my perspective on this is probably gonna be different than many, since I work professionally in localization. I'm deeply invested in the art of localization, but for those who aren't, I can understand why they'd be less concerned about changes. It is true that, even with a poor localization, a fun game will probably remain fun, even if the potential fun has been diminished by some degree. Countless 80s and 90s games are proof of that.

[celerystalker]

I've never been able to wrap my head around the excusing of WD localizations that goes like "well, they were boring, generic games to begin with anyway". If that's the case, then why on Earth were they licensed for localization in the first place? Why didn't they license games that were, you know, good to begin with, rather than giving us localizations that basically turn the game into a fanfic or parody of the source material? RPGs also aren't visual novels either. I don't think it's even necessary for the plots to be that inventive. They have other aspects like exploring and battling to keep the players interest too. If series like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy could have many games with fairly by-the-books plots of fantasy worlds under the threat of some great evil, and they can still rank among many people's favorite RPGs, without the localizations needing to shoehorn in added humor and totally rewrite the scripts, then why should that be necessary for other RPGs? If it is felt necessary, then I think they aren't getting to the root of the problem. You can try to polish a turd, but it's still gonna be shittier than something that's not a turd to begin with.

But my perspective on this is probably gonna be different than many, since I work professionally in localization. I'm deeply invested in the art of localization, but for those who aren't, I can understand why they'd be less concerned about changes. It is true that, even with a poor localization, a fun game will probably remain fun, even if the potential fun has been diminished by some degree. Countless 80s and 90s games are proof of that.

For me, giving WD a pass on that stuff has more to do with the fact that at the time, I just didn't know any better. Those are the versions of the games that I knew for years and years, never really thinking to question anything. It's liking Robotech even though it's a hacked up Macross... that may be true, but for 20 years or so, I only knew it as Robotech, and that's where my nostalgia is.

It's not that I'd say that they were right to do what they did, and when I read some of the meticulous notes on the Earthbound translation and the effort put into localizing to speak to westerners while maintaining the spirit of the intended lines, I gained a far greater appreciation for quality translations. No, it wasn't right... but it was all I knew, and it just didn't wreck it to the point where it overrides how much I treasured those releases.

Surprised at how reviled the Rayearth translation is. I was a big fan of the anime, but I guess due to the time in which it came out, where anime would get all kinds of weird localizations from companies like ADV, AnimEigo, Anime Works, US Manga, Manga, Pioneer, Funimation... you couldn't assume anything was right it seemed.

[Aussie2B]

Yeah, I can accept things as being products of their time. What bugs me is that the owner of WD/Gaijinworks and many fans argue that it was right to handle them as they did. They'll even argue that it's superior to how most game publishers handle localization these days, and that mentality is then applied to today's Gaijinworks releases, which are handled just the same as the old WD releases. I'd have no problem accepting the old releases for what they are if Gaijinworks was like "yeah, that's how we did things then, but we've evolved and improved". It's like with Atlus. Yeah, the original Persona localization was pretty awful, with how they tried to Westernize it, but they've matured as a localizer since then. I don't see any of that kind of maturing in Gaijinworks, and their diehard fans seem happy with that, preferring the nostalgia they get from 90s-style localizations over what is all but objectively better localizations being done these days by other publishers.

[WulfeLuer]

Atlus developed and grew with the time. Human endeavors especially in media have to change at least some or they stultify, and they'll lose and/or alienate their audience. WD didn't really want to leave the crass ol' 90's behind, and between that and their perfectionism with their goodies and version of localization they wound up closing their doors. Almost like dudebro became dogma. I agree that most of their version of localization just wouldn't fly with most of the gamers out there today, and while I can see Gaijinworks trying to bring that back and succeeding to some degree, it seems to have become its own excuse.

Anyway, whatever you feel about the translation and the crass corniness, a lot of trails were getting blazed there. And I still say that WD at least gave is an ridiculous amount of swag in their releases, even if some of it was pretty much Cracker Jack prizes for nerds. I still enjoy that, and appreciate that they were trying to be different, and making a mission out of bringing games to gamers because gamers wanted to play them.

[Nz17]

Oh my, where to start?

How many of you have played Sony's and Ubisoft's LUNAR localizations? What did you think of those? I thought the Ubisoft one was lame, and the Sony one was boring. Then again, I didn't like the other changes in the GBA & PSP ports/remakes.

From what I read, the major reason for Working Designs's death was Sony of America. In the 90's, SoA was cool with WD's approach and choices. But starting in the 2000's, SoA's stance for PS1 and PS2 was, "3D good, 2D bad!" SoA wanted the PlayStation games to look technically impressive so it was trying to squash 2D releases at the time. If you wanted to release games with 2D graphics, SoA required them to be budget-priced, compilations, or both. That's why WD's last few releases were either compilations or 3D games. WD actually wanted to make each Arc the Lad game its own separate release, but it couldn't get Sony of America's approval that way, which is why the ATL collection was so delayed. The delays for WD around this time starved it of money.


The Lunar stuff is especially nutty. I have a buddy who owns all seven Sega CD disc variants, as well as their fan art edition of Lunar for PS1.

The LUNAR FAE variant is the rarest one from what I understand. It was crafted after the PC port of LUNAR was cancelled after months of work due to worries about software compatibility.

[Edmond Dantes]

I've never been able to wrap my head around the excusing of WD localizations that goes like "well, they were boring, generic games to begin with anyway".

I didn't say "Boring," let's be clear here.

But your own argument says the story might not necessarily be what people like about it, so my point still stands. I can see people being mad about changed gameplay mechanics (especially if Exile: Wicked Phenomenon and Sillouhette Mirage are as janked up as I've heard), and I can see translation being an issue if, say, they turned something that was unique and cerebral into an Adult Swim comedy--which I've been told may have actually been close to it in a number of cases. It just seems though that WD's decisions work more than they don't.

That said, I have my own issues with translations nowadays in a lot of fields, such as never buying Shout Factory's Super Sentai box sets because they seem to prefer over-literal translations as opposed to the fangroup GUIS, who tried to translate idiomic humor and provided a separate translation notes file to explain some of the more weird or cultural Japanese aspects that are still there regardless of translation. From what I've read, Shout Factory's version is basically unwatchable, while I can confirm that GUIS's isn't (EDIT: To be clear here, the Sentai series Kakuranger was the one that turned me off of Shout Factory as I had actually e-mailed Brian Ward about the potential issues when the set was first announced, and then found out my fears were basically ignored).

That said, WD doesn't really sound like either group of translators because it seems like they're more about leaving their own mark on things.


If that's the case, then why on Earth were they licensed for localization in the first place? Why didn't they license games that were, you know, good to begin with,

Said GameFan magazine after the fiftieth time a unique or interesting RPG was turned down in favor of another generic platformer.

[Aussie2B]

From what I've seen, WD/Gaijinworks seems like masters of passing the buck. For every delay or any other issue, it's always somebody else's fault. So I've always been skeptical of their finger-pointing at Sony of America. I think the primary reasons for WD going under is refusal to evolve in a decade when gamers starting having higher standards for localization than they did in the prior decade and for trying to bring out games that weren't particularly good. They put so much effort into trying to bring over that junky PS2 Goemon game (and I say this despite loving the series as a whole) and that hideous Tengai Makyou: Ziria remake. The latter was especially stupid because I've heard the project was cancelled because of Microsoft's print run minimums. So, uh, why even begin the process of localization? If you have a print run size in mind, you find out if that meets the minimum beforehand. Working on the project and thinking you can later somehow change Microsoft's rules is pure idiocy. Likewise, they could've found out in advance that Sony of America would want Arc the Lad and Growlanser as compilations instead of trying and failing to convince Sony otherwise after they were already deep into the localization process.

Personally, I predict that Gaijinworks will, sooner or later, go under for similar reasons, and this time, they won't be able to blame Sony of America. Or maybe they'll conjure up a new reason that SoA screwed them, who knows. Maybe they'll blame the closure of the UMD factories, haha.


I didn't say "Boring," let's be clear here.

Sorry for being unclear. I wasn't accusing you of saying that but rather speaking of a general pattern of comments I've observed. It's particularly bizarre when I see them coming from the biggest WD/Gaijinworks zealots. It doesn't makes sense to me that they worship the localizer yet apparently think all the games they release are bad, only salvaged by having parody-like localizations. Personally, I don't think most WD/Gaijinworks games are bad. B-tier, sure, but still fun, and they would stand just fine with more faithful localizations. I don't think a game's script needs to be innovative or cerebral to be worth respecting the creator's intent. My belief is that the purpose of localization is to make the original creator's work shine in a new language. I think it should be as faithful to the source as it can be while also being natural and clear. WD localizations did succeed at reading like natural, smooth English, which was a draw in a time when Engrish localizations were common, but that was a result of them often not really doing anything in the way of actual translation, instead just throwing away what was said in Japanese and making up something entirely new. It's much, much harder to simultaneously accomplish that level of smoothness while maintaining faithfulness, but the industry has evolved such that it can and should always strive to pull off both.

[celerystalker]

I think part of Working Designs' rise and fall coincides pretty heavily with the growth of anime in western markets. The vast majority of their localizations were for games with heavy anime aesthetics in a time where most publishers were westernizing the artwork. Video games with anime portraits and cutscenes weren't super common then, and I think there was a pretty heavy overlap in people who were discovering anime and those gobbling up WD and Atlus releases. As that Japanese influence became mainstream, WD lost their identity as a unique publisher aside from the big limited editions, whereas Atlus, also being a developer, owned their own franchises like Persona, and had a stronger identity to build on. WDwas no longer doing things that other folks weren't already doing (arguably much better), and didn't have an anime-starved base to crowd around them anymore.

I mean, how many WD games didn't feature heavy anime aesthetics? Cadash, Parasol Stars, Iron Storm, Sega Ages, and a few Spaz label shooters?

[Aussie2B]

Yeah, definitely. Localizers specializing in niche Japanese video games were popping up left and right in the 00s, and when they were releasing better games, with better localizations, why would anyone care much about what WD was offering? I feel pretty confident that they still would've gone under even if they hadn't gotten any resistance on Goemon on PS2 and Ziria on 360 and released them as planned. I'm sure they would've sold poorly. I'm doubtful, even if they could release the Arc the Lad games and Growlanser games separately too, that that would've changed their course either. None of those were the types of games that would be big sellers in the US, not even by RPG standards. Even Atlus could barely make the Growlanser series profitable, to the point that they removed voice acting from their PSP release (since they didn't want to pay to produce a dub or even license the Japanese voices). I feel like WD was always waiting and hoping for next game to be the next Lunar: SSSC, failing to understand that the success it had owed a lot to being in the right place at the right time, and that time was never going to come again. SSSC came at a time when a lot of new Western fans of RPGs where made thanks to Final Fantasy VII, and a lot of new Western fans of anime were made thanks to Toonami and Pokemon and such. Eager for more of both, there was Lunar, with a box of goodies more impressive than many console gamers had ever seen before, and it had a script that read a lot more naturally than FFVII and whatever else they may have been exposed to in their limited experience with RPGs. But newness wears off and time's change, and WD didn't seem to grasp that.

[SparTonberry]

I thought Ziria 360 was being localized by Hudson themselves and I recall somewhere on their forum they stated/hinted at it was canceled because of difficulty writing a balanced localization (faithful yet understandable).

Months ago I watched Tomato stream Super Mario RPG and it sounds like the Japanese text was pretty bland in comparison to the English (such the Mushroom Kingdom invasion, several memorable lines in English, but it seems like a number of NPCs were just repeating the same handful of lines in the Japanese text). Not WD, but people criticized Woolsey probably just as much then.
(although the one secret boss, is kind of a toss-up as to if they made it better. In Japanese, it complained of being a 2D sprite in a 3D world, while in English it was rewritten to emphasize it as a parody of a generic Final Fantasy boss)

[Aussie2B]

Hudson gave mixed answers on Ziria:

http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2009/310.html

But Hudson and Gaijinworks did work together, and the WD/Gaijinworks owner did show some screens of the cancelled Ziria localization he was working on at some point. Now that I think about it, Ziria fell right around that transitional period from them, between WD going under, the staff continuing to localize for others, just not as WD, and then properly forming Gaijinworks. So I can't say for sure whether it would've been a WD project, a Gaijinworks project, or neither, and maybe it came along too late to play a role in WD going under.

As for Woosley, yeah, he's pretty divisive too. Personally, I'm a big fan. For me, he strikes the right balance between taking liberties and staying faithful, while WD/Gaijinworks goes waaaay too far in taking liberties for my taste. But I know there are others who think Woosley went too far with taking liberties too.

[WulfeLuer]

From the peeks into their history, and a bit of inference from their patterns, WD as a whole had a very...artsy-fartsy hauteur about things. They wanted to localize game a as version b, and damn anybody that got in the way, They beat their heads against a wall and blamed the wall for the subsequent concussion. in some cases they seemed to charge headlong into the wall, dust off and do it again. If they ran into a snag, they'd quietly lose their minds and pretend they were on some sort of crusade on the behalf of the fanbase, making the wallbanging some semblance of heroic.

They did meet a lot of resistance from Sony and Sega, some understandable, some not, and they did tend to work hard (not always on the right things or in the right direction, mind). But there seemed to be this undercurrent of unwarranted optimism and need for vindication, and when it didn't pan out, it was everyone's fault but WD. Unfortunately, wide-eyed optimism and 'screw the man, I'm doing it my way' attitudes is not usually an effective business model, especially since 'the man' can and does dictate the policy on games for their consoles. It's almost like they decided that JRPG heroes' spunkiness would translate into financial success in real life.

That being said, WD did do some good things. We wound up with games we would not have had otherwise without importing and fanpatches, plus assorted other rigomarole. That stubbornness gave us things to enjoy, and that dedication gave us lots of little goodies that we didn't see across the pond in our game cases very often. I really can't speak to the wackadoo antics like the difficulty snafu in some of their games or the complete warping of themes in others (Rayearth did not need the Beavis and Butthead rewrites). I can state that Lunar and Lunar 2 were not paragons of innocence to begin with (remember the bromides), and I do enjoy a RPG that is willing to act like a bunch of middle-schoolers questing about in a linear campaign session but still acting like middle-schoolers. But WD didn't want to change with the times, pure and simple.

In the end, I think a lot of people here had some fun with WD's products. We're gamers, we get the games to play with and have fun.

Side note: I only got one WD game new at release (Lunar 2 EBC), played for about an hour and let a friend borrow it and lost it to the ether. I was upset because it cost me a lot of money, but the game itself didn't really seem like much of a loss. Fast forward to early this year, when I nabbed a copy of Lunar SSSC more or less for the hell of it. It wound up being a total blast and a breath of fresh air between the 'serious' RPGs I usually play. I plan to play Lunar 2 in the next month or two (after MS Saga and maybe Secret of Mana) later on down the road some other WD games. I don't expect gaming nirvana, but I do plan on some fun to make up for skipping these way back when.

[kupomogli]

Honestly, I think the Arc the Lad games are awful

This I don't get. People throw massive praise at Shining Force, a painfully average TRPG, but even as average as the original Arc the Lad game is, it's still much better than Shining Force. Doesn't get the same kind of praise. Arc the Lad 2 though is one of the best TRPGs in the genre and the game gets overlooked because it's the second game, a sequel to a rather disappointing first in a time where we've got great games FFTactics and Tactics Ogre. Arc the Lad 2 may have received its popularity in Japan because the first was popular when it came out, but the game didn't get its time to shine in the US because of the game that preceded it in this collection, a collection that came out in 2002. The collection certainly didn't do the brand any favors, that much is certain, and let's be serious here, the first was never "bad" but when it released in 1995 in Japan, it was more similar to the quality of the Shining Force titles that preceded it than Tactics Ogre which released the same year. Also, the isometric design to stages in Tactics Ogre really pushed what was capable in TRPGs due to height and depth, something that may have hurt perspective on non isometric or non 3D games in the future. That doesn't mean that a good TRPG couldn't be made without it, as Arc the Lad 2 is good and Brigandine is the best TRPG ever made.

That being said, if you've only played the first Arc the Lad and didn't put time into the second one, you're missing out. Arc the Lad 2 is like night and day compared to the original. It's not without its flaws though. Weapons now have levels and by attacking with your weapons, you'll more frequently do your most powerful action and have a higher chance to get a good hit on the enemy instead of a partial hit, add to this that due to monster collecting, monsters may have less variety than humans, but they're statistically more powerful, meaning that you won't as often deal full damage making the game a bit slow early in the game with constant partial blocks from the enemies until your weapon level increases. Unless the characters are your all out magic users, magic use is fairly weak again due to monsters having better statistics, so characters that are melee/magic might as well focus on melee and not really bother with magic. There's a limit to the amount of items that you can hold, meaning unless you use multiple save files and Arc Arena to circumvent this, item arrangement will be a constant thing long before you finish the game. Magic spells still have to target an opponent or an ally, you can't set it off in an area and then the area of effect will hit them, the main focus has to be a target. With that being said, these are the only real problems surrounding Arc the Lad 2, the third game actually has more issues. Arc the Lad Twilight of Spirits is okay, and End of Darkness is pathetic.

Arc the Lad 2 keeps the TRPG gameplay, but changes the games exploration aspect to that of a standard RPG. Multiple towns and dungeons on each of the games continents. There's a guild in the game called the hunters guild with around 50 different jobs that each have their own storyline, something similar to the quality that you see in the main storyline(think any side quest on an RPG that has its own story.) Each area in the game has one ore more additional dungeons that have unique weapons and items that can be acquired. Then there's the monster collecting which allows you to add monsters to your party and Arc Arena which add another layer to the game altogether. The first Arc the Lad is worth playing only because the second is so good.

[celerystalker]

This I don't get. People throw massive praise at Shining Force, a painfully average TRPG, but even as average as the original Arc the Lad game is, it's still much better than Shining Force. Doesn't get the same kind of praise. Arc the Lad 2 though is one of the best TRPGs in the genre and the game gets overlooked because it's the second game, a sequel to a rather disappointing first in a time where we've got great games FFTactics and Tactics Ogre. Arc the Lad 2 may have received its popularity in Japan because the first was popular when it came out, but the game didn't get its time to shine in the US because of the game that preceded it in this collection, a collection that came out in 2002. The collection certainly didn't do the brand any favors, that much is certain, and let's be serious here, the first was never "bad" but when it released in 1995 in Japan, it was more similar to the quality of the Shining Force titles that preceded it than Tactics Ogre which released the same year. Also, the isometric design to stages in Tactics Ogre really pushed what was capable in TRPGs due to height and depth, something that may have hurt perspective on non isometric or non 3D games in the future. That doesn't mean that a good TRPG couldn't be made without it, as Arc the Lad 2 is good and Brigandine is the best TRPG ever made.

That being said, if you've only played the first Arc the Lad and didn't put time into the second one, you're missing out. Arc the Lad 2 is like night and day compared to the original. It's not without its flaws though. Weapons now have levels and by attacking with your weapons, you'll more frequently do your most powerful action and have a higher chance to get a good hit on the enemy instead of a partial hit, add to this that due to monster collecting, monsters may have less variety than humans, but they're statistically more powerful, meaning that you won't as often deal full damage making the game a bit slow early in the game with constant partial blocks from the enemies until your weapon level increases. Unless the characters are your all out magic users, magic use is fairly weak again due to monsters having better statistics, so characters that are melee/magic might as well focus on melee and not really bother with magic. There's a limit to the amount of items that you can hold, meaning unless you use multiple save files and Arc Arena to circumvent this, item arrangement will be a constant thing long before you finish the game. Magic spells still have to target an opponent or an ally, you can't set it off in an area and then the area of effect will hit them, the main focus has to be a target. With that being said, these are the only real problems surrounding Arc the Lad 2, the third game actually has more issues. Arc the Lad Twilight of Spirits is okay, and End of Darkness is pathetic.

Arc the Lad 2 keeps the TRPG gameplay, but changes the games exploration aspect to that of a standard RPG. Multiple towns and dungeons on each of the games continents. There's a guild in the game called the hunters guild with around 50 different jobs that each have their own storyline, something similar to the quality that you see in the main storyline(think any side quest on an RPG that has its own story.) Each area in the game has one ore more additional dungeons that have unique weapons and items that can be acquired. Then there's the monster collecting which allows you to add monsters to your party and Arc Arena which add another layer to the game altogether. The first Arc the Lad is worth playing only because the second is so good.

You must be confusing me for someone who has shoveled praise on Shining Force. I haven't. I do like Shining Force III okay, but that's largely due to aesthetics over quality. Not a Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre fan either, as they are truly slogs if you don't love spending more time micro-managing through menus than actually playing.

For tactical RPGs, give me Dragon Force, Ogre Battle, Brigandine... stuff with some flair and uniqueness. If I have to stick to a grid, I'd rather do something like Black Matrix A/D or Wachenröder, which offer cool settings, or Vandal Hearts, which keeps a more brisk pace.

[Aussie2B]

What a weird ass complaint to make. You can't direct your ire with the entire gaming population for generally liking one game you don't like very much more than one you do (which is a stupid thing to be bothered by in the first place) at a single individual who didn't even mention one of the games in question. For all you know, someone who thinks the Arc the Lad games are awful might think they're less awful than Shining Force, unless they say otherwise.

Anyway, Shining Force deserves the recognition it gets. It's still one my favorite strategy RPGs. It's got straightforward, quintessential strategy RPG gameplay, plus a unique art style, an endearing cast, and excellent music. But even more significant, it's historically important. Pretty much all the strategy RPGs listed in this topic wouldn't exist if not for Fire Emblem and Shining Force coming before them. Those two series laid the groundwork for the sub-genre. Throwing shade at Shining Force is like throwing shade at the first Super Mario Bros. Even if you think later games in the genre surpassed it in quality, you still owe it gratitude if you like the genre, in my opinion.

[SparTonberry]

Wasn't the original Shining Force one of the first TRPGs (at least to mix some RPG exploration)?
The only game similar I can think of is Fire Emblem Gaiden, which seems to have been released only days apart in Japan.

[Edmond Dantes]

There might be something to be said for Shining Force's comparative earliness. I know I personally was young enough to have played Shining Force when the Genesis was still fresh (Though in fact I didn't discover any of Sega's RPGs until near the end of the 16-bit era) but by the time the Arc trilogy came out stateside I had pretty much ran out of interest. I DO own the trilogy boxset now (got it here on Digitpress) but I haven't ever played it. Which is weird as I got it specifically because I had a huge craving at the time.

Simply put, its easier to impress a kid than a late teen or early adult.

Also, the discussion about WD getting recognized due to starved anime fans kinda resonates with me as well, as--having been into anime in the period before Pokemon made it mainstream--there was a time where ANYTHING anime automatically got loved. Hell that was part of the reason I watched Pokemon itself: It was just nice to have an anime I could watch ON TELEVISION, without having to drive two hours away to an expensive video store in a mall.

I do indeed remember my very first interest in Lunar was simply due to "wow it looks like anime!" There was a time where that literally was enough of a selling point. Unfortunately by the time I actually played the game (I wasn't able to afford a Sega CD until years later when I discovered the holiness known as "pawn shops and flea markets") being anime and being RPG were both simply not good enough on their own anymore. I think I would remember the game with a nostalgic fondness had I had a Sega CD as a kid. (and for a long time Lunar 1 SCD was my ONLY Working Designs experience--the rest of their library I didn't discover until much much later, much of it with the help of the internet, and even then there are huge gaps, like their entire TG16 oevre).

But its worth remembering that this same anime starvation is also likely how Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z became big.... even though I actually still like both of those...

[kupomogli]

Anyway, Shining Force deserves the recognition it gets. It's still one my favorite strategy RPGs. It's got straightforward, quintessential strategy RPG gameplay, plus a unique art style, an endearing cast, and excellent music. But even more significant, it's historically important. Pretty much all the strategy RPGs listed in this topic wouldn't exist if not for Fire Emblem and Shining Force coming before them. Those two series laid the groundwork for the sub-genre. Throwing shade at Shining Force is like throwing shade at the first Super Mario Bros. Even if you think later games in the genre surpassed it in quality, you still owe it gratitude if you like the genre, in my opinion.

And this is the problem with people in ways that they think. A game coming out prior to another game does not mean it deserves praise for being a good game just for being an innovator, because if that game never came out, it doesn't mean another wouldn't have. Infact what did Shining Force actually innovate?

Ultima came out in 1980, the same year that Rogue did. The TRPG is basically an extension off Rogue and Ultima's original gameplay, but rather moving just a single space at a time and every enemy moving at the same time, you either have speed or phases and each character and enemy now take turns, as it's multiple characters instead of one player versus everyone. The games would have eventually been made, and regardless what Fire Emblem or Shining Force did for the genre, they aren't deserving of praise because "Brigandine, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc," were good games. Even if Ultima didn't exist, games similar to Ultima would still exist. If Super Mario Bros didn't exist, other platformers would. But honestly if you're going to call anything the innovator, then we should say Ultima innovated the DRPG, the TRPG, and the JRPG as it's got more of a hand in actually innovating any of these genres then most so called innovators.

It's a ridiculous notion to think that if something doesn't exist that it'd be impossible for something else to exist. I mean look the past decade for nearly every single medium. There's no more originality anymore because just about everything has already been thought of. So if "Fire Emblem, Shining Force, Zelda, Space Invaders, etc," didn't innovate then these other games wouldn't exist is speculation and nothing more.

[Edmond Dantes]

Okay, I can guess TRPG = Tactics RPG (I've always called them Strategy RPGs myself) and JRPG is a known term, but what the hell is a DRPG? DOS RPG?

And, well, it helps Shining Force really is kinda good. I mean I can still play those, in fact I appreciate the first more than I used to (as a younger person I found it dull due to its less exciting music, but I'm not as into pure visceral thrills as I used to be).

On a more general note I have run into cases where something is an innovator but honestly doesn't hold up well as a game. I found Space Invaders boring last time I played it... and I still don't see why people liked Dig Dug. What did that even innovate?

[WulfeLuer]

I don't get why somebody would bring up Ultima in a pioneering context without also mentioning Wizardry, but that's just me. Not sure what a DRPG is, either (a typo of WRPG?).

:argue:

Anyway, beating on old games because you didn't like them doesn't really help the issue. WD games did come at a time when NA was pretty anime-starved, but when anime did bust through finally, then WD's lineup seemed to surge up with it in popularity. It never really rivaled, say, Square, but gamers (especially the RPG crowd) at least knew what Lunar and later Vanguard Bandits and Growlanser was. The PS (and to a somewhat lesser extent the PS2) heralded a magic time for RPGs, and all those anime shows suddenly becoming mainstream did help. WD managed to capitalize on for a time, but the relatively rapid change in localization practices did wind up leaving them in the cold. I do believe that the fancypants boxsets and extra goodies (even if they're just geeky gewgaws) did help them keep a niche, and I do like those. However, I do feel that they should have had a more budget-conscious 'vanilla' lineup to go with them.

Honestly Arc the Lad never really crossed my radar until recently, and I asked some like-minded guys IRL (some even with a fair bit of the retail side of it, though I think Celery makes them look like nooblets in experience), and they had no idea what it was either. Maybe people were pissed over the whole multiple games in the box and never really talked about. Maybe WD flubbed the marketing. Anybody that can shed some light on that is welcome to do so.

A related question I have is about Atlus. What was the deal with using all those multi-disc cases for single-disc games? Room for fatter manuals, personal notes, or somesuch? A way to distinguish their stuff (either as a brand or to establish authenticity/bought new)? An attempt to emulate the distinctive multi-disc games of the time (I like big games and I cannot lie)? Because they could?

[celerystalker]

The Atlus double cases were for the exact reason you suspected: fat manuals. Stuff like Kartia and Brigandine needed the space (and why does no one talk about Kartia and its multi-player mode?).

Arc the Lad's problems came in a few forms. WD wanted to do them much, much earlier in the PS1's lifespan, but that was when Sony was harshly agaisnt 2D games on the Playstation brand. By the time WD split from Sega and went full Sony, the games were old, and while their place in Japan was more relevant due to their release timeline, by the time they hit in the US, those tactical RPGs were pretty plentiful. Available in roughly that timeframe on PS1 in the US:

Vanguard Bandits
Vandal Hearts
Vandal Hearts II
Final Fantasy Tactics
Tactics Ogre
Saiyuki
Hoshigami
Kartia
Brigandine

...and that's just a quick off the top of my head response where I know I'm leaving some out.

Basically, they were a collection of older games at a high price point competing against a pretty healthy group of games with very similar gameplay. I think WD overestimated the hunger for those games, but hey, hindsight is 20/20.

I kinda wish they'dve taken a shot at some of the other RPGs that were coming out in Japan. Moon, Oreshika, Rurouni Kenshin (that game's battle system really reflected its source material well!l, etc.

[Aussie2B]

And this is the problem with people in ways that they think. A game coming out prior to another game does not mean it deserves praise for being a good game just for being an innovator, because if that game never came out, it doesn't mean another wouldn't have. Infact what did Shining Force actually innovate?

Ultima came out in 1980, the same year that Rogue did. The TRPG is basically an extension off Rogue and Ultima's original gameplay, but rather moving just a single space at a time and every enemy moving at the same time, you either have speed or phases and each character and enemy now take turns, as it's multiple characters instead of one player versus everyone. The games would have eventually been made, and regardless what Fire Emblem or Shining Force did for the genre, they aren't deserving of praise because "Brigandine, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc," were good games. Even if Ultima didn't exist, games similar to Ultima would still exist. If Super Mario Bros didn't exist, other platformers would. But honestly if you're going to call anything the innovator, then we should say Ultima innovated the DRPG, the TRPG, and the JRPG as it's got more of a hand in actually innovating any of these genres then most so called innovators.

It's a ridiculous notion to think that if something doesn't exist that it'd be impossible for something else to exist. I mean look the past decade for nearly every single medium. There's no more originality anymore because just about everything has already been thought of. So if "Fire Emblem, Shining Force, Zelda, Space Invaders, etc," didn't innovate then these other games wouldn't exist is speculation and nothing more.

To parrot what celerystalker said earlier, you must be confusing me for someone else. You should be in the Olympics with leaps like those. I said Shining Force deserves the recognition it gets. Never once did I say that a game deserves to be praised as a good game solely because it's an innovator. A game should be praised however much or however little as the individual doing the praising/criticizing feels it deserves. Being bothered by how much or little other people like a game or trying to conform the masses to your own views is a fruitless and childish endeavor. If you ask this individual what she thinks, I'd say Shining Force does deserve praise, not because it's an innovator but because it is a great strategy RPG, in my opinion. This individual, however, can't compare it to Arc the Lad because I've never owed nor played any game in the Arc the Lad series. Also, no rose-tinted childhood nostalgia glasses here. I played Shining Force for the first time when I was 19 or 20. Never even owed a Genesis until past 2000. (Not the greatest way to be introduced to it, but I actually first played Shining Force on the Dreamcast Sega Smash Pack.)

For people who don't enjoy Shining Force and don't feel it deserves praise as a good game, that's no skin off my nose. But they're being naive if they're surprised at why it's talked about more than than later strategy RPGs that are more obscure and had little to no historical/industry impact. You can trace the video game family tree back to the the Brown Box if you want, but that doesn't change the fact that games like Rogue and Ultima aren't strategy RPGs. I'm not saying no developer wouldn't have come up with similar ideas eventually had games like Fire Emblem and Shining Force not existed, but somebody had to come first, and whatever does comes first deserves respect and appreciation for being an innovator and offering inspiration to all subsequent games in their genre. A later game doesn't deserve credit for its concepts if they're all copied from a prior game. Then it just gets into execution and expansion of earlier ideas.

[kupomogli]

Arc the Lad's problems came in a few forms. WD wanted to do them much, much earlier in the PS1's lifespan, but that was when Sony was harshly agaisnt 2D games on the Playstation brand. By the time WD split from Sega and went full Sony, the games were old, and while their place in Japan was more relevant due to their release timeline, by the time they hit in the US, those tactical RPGs were pretty plentiful. Available in roughly that timeframe on PS1 in the US:

I did point this out a couple posts ago. The original Arc the Lad released in 1995 in Japan, with the collection releasing in 2002, it hurt the games way more than it helped it. If they were released separately, they may have atleast been able to grow a fanbase in the US like they did in Japan. The first game probably would have been received better if it actually came out before games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, or Vandal Hearts. The pinnacle of the series is the second game, and getting the collection a lot of people would probably want to play through the first game first, but as late as it came out and as painfully average as it was, despite being a six hour long game without doing all the side stuff, the first game was a barrier to the second(I personally know one person who actually quit the first game at Milmana right after you leave the first continent.)

Like was already stated, the amount of money Working Designs put into their games with the collector's boxes, the price point to these collections were also a problem. Arc the Lad Collection atleast had no standard edition and launched at I think $80. For a niche series not called Final Fantasy, or having literally any name recognition(many of which that had multiple releases still didn't sell that well, releasing it as a collection that appeared to be overpriced, they pretty much priced themselves out of the market. Growlanser Generations wasn't overpriced with the standard version, but again, a niche RPG series collection(of two games this time) in which none have ever been released in the US. and you're releasing them for $50, just seems like a bad business decision. Working Designs releases were great for the gamer, but not for a business trying to make money. They could have Growlanser 2 and 3 for $50 each. The third would have sold simply because of name recognition from the second. Both Growlanser games weren't fully voiced, but they did have a lot of voice acting.

[Edmond Dantes]

So I actually took out and began playing Arc the Lad two days ago, and to be honest, so far I'm quite enjoying it.

I only ran in to two major hiccups.

One... if you die on the first battle (which I did, because I wasn't taking the game seriously and didn't think the next hit would kill me... famous last words, those) you have to start a new game... and the game begins with like ten minutes of basically unskippable cutscenes.

The second was once you get to the second continent, all three of the available maps have treasure chests you can only open by throwing rocks at them. Silly me thinking these would be common drops or that I would maybe get them at shops or something, I had been using rocks to kill enemies, and wound up having none when I got here, and I'm OCD about this kinda thing so I feel like I have to restart the game just to open some treasure chests.

This really isn't a knock against the game tho, but it does highlight why I stopped playing RPGs, I get too hung up on stuff like this. When I was a kid I would just go on and not care but today I hate feeling like I missed something.

[kupomogli]

The second was once you get to the second continent, all three of the available maps have treasure chests you can only open by throwing rocks at them. Silly me thinking these would be common drops or that I would maybe get them at shops or something, I had been using rocks to kill enemies, and wound up having none when I got here, and I'm OCD about this kinda thing so I feel like I have to restart the game just to open some treasure chests.

If you were to leave and return to the ruins, you'll get in combat again be able to acquire the chests you missed. You can actually return to any area within the game that appears on the world map. If it's a story event that you can't enter from the world map, then you can't gain access to it in the future. Maybe that'll help.

[Edmond Dantes]

Unfortunately one of the treasure chest areas stopped being available after being cleared once.

Well, on my next attempt I'm either gonna grind for rocks from enemies I know drop them or else just not use them for anything but treasure chests, and maybe hope another option opens up. I kinda wish there had been some shop option where you could just buy more... as it is it seems like the town sections where you can walk around are basically pointless.

[Nz17]

rocks

Perhaps you should just use a Game Shark to give yourself all the rocks you want?

[WulfeLuer]

One... if you die on the first battle (which I did, because I wasn't taking the game seriously and didn't think the next hit would kill me... famous last words, those) you have to start a new game... and the game begins with like ten minutes of basically unskippable cutscenes.

Don't feel too bad. Somebody loaned me their copy of Final Fantasy Tactics, and I kept getting slaughtered in the first real battle (not the prologue with the overpowered NPCs, the first one where it's just you and some other schmucks), over and over and over. A bit later I brought back the game with my tale of woe, and the guys tried to help me figure out the problem. We fired it up, and found the problem: I didn't know that using the L1/R1 buttons scrolled though your units for deployment. I was just using Ramza and a guest so of course I was getting horribly devoured. Herpaderp.

[Edmond Dantes]

Perhaps you should just use a Game Shark to give yourself all the rocks you want?

I used to have a Gameshark CDX, but I lost it during a move.

If I ever found it though, I might just... rock that idea ;)

In general tho I try to play games legit as much as possible. When I resort to cheating its usually a sign I hate the game in question.