bowloflentils
@bowloflentils
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I irregularly post YouTube videos about video game history and trivia. I was also an editor on the Sakura Wars 1 fan patch and I am leading the editing on SW2.
Joined September 2021
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On behalf of the whole team, I'm sharing an update on our current progress with the Sakura Wars 2 fan translation. We've been hard at work since January, so we put together a short video showcasing our current build followed by a summary of what we've accomplished this year.🧵
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Square Enix's Paranormasight may just seem like another random release by the Final Fantasy company but the title actually marks the return of a veteran to the ADV genre named Takanari Ishiyama. His career is totally unknown in the West so I thought I'd make a thread about him.🧵
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Free-to-play versions of some of Falcoms games were apparently released in South Korea as part of a service called FROG in the 2000s. The way it worked was that players would watch ads that periodically popped up during loading screens. Pretty funny to see in action.
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Crazy that we went from having none of Type-Moon's visual novels available in English to Witch on the Holy Night, Tsukihime, and now Fate Stay Night all coming out within the span of like two years.
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It's October 1st and I'm thinking about that spooky glitched-out version of Tokimeki Memorial 2 again.
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If these Another Code remakes are successful, I really hope we get a third game. Along with resolving lingering plot threads, Rika Suzuki (designer/writer for both games) has suggested that a future title could have involved Ashley meeting Kyle Hyde from Hotel Dusk as an old man.
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This is my new video where I talk about the history of Leaf, an adult PC developer that not only created many popular franchises (To Heart, White Album, Utawarerumono, Tears to Tiara, etc) but who also pioneered the visual novel genre as we know it today.
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It's crazy to think that we went from only having a handful of classic dating sims/ADVs available in English to four of the most historically important/highly regarded entries in the genre receiving translations within a span of 3 months.
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One of the most prevalent online photos of Fire Emblem's creator, Shouzou Kaga, comes from a 1994 Famitsu interview, specifically a black-and-white scan featured on Shmuplations. However, I recently found out that the photo was originally in color so I got a copy and scanned it.
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Need to learn more about whatever the heck is being advertised here. It's some kind of romantic adventure game developed by Gaea Entertainment called by バチャめも. All the graphics are rendered in early-90s CGI, which gives it a low budget FF7 vibe.
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All the characters in Hotel Dusk and Last Window are rotoscoped based on performances done by various models. Below are a few of the confirmed models that played the cast of Last Window (many of which came from the Avocado modeling agency).
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I finished Paranormasight the other day and I’m sort of floored at how good it was. If you enjoyed the recent Famicom Detective Club remakes, or grew up playing Japanese adventure games on the DS like I did (Ace Attorney, Hotel Dusk, etc), I highly recommend checking it out.
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This is my favorite screenshot from the Sakura Wars 2 translation demo released today.
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Tengai Makyou II for the PC-Engine CD was one of the most expensive video games ever made when it was release, featuring incredible production values for 1992. It's creation was considered such an achievement that a TV drama was produced that depicted the game's development.
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Oh wow, Masahiro Sakurai talked about visiting Computer Land Tachikawa, Falcom's old computer shop, during his childhood in his latest video. I posted some pictures of the store a few months ago.
Here are a few photos of Computer Land Tachikawa (コンピューターランド立川), Nihon Falcom's PC store they operated in the early 80s. Before they began publishing PC games in 1982, this was Falcom's primary business.
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This is exciting news! The remake of Yuji Horii's Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin is going to have English language support! This title is considered to be a classic adventure game in Japan and this release will mark the first time it will be playable in English, officially or otherwise.
*Update* This will support English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese language options.
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Some random pages from a short Street Fighter manga drawn by Kiyohiko Azuma that was included in a comic anthology released by Movic in 1998. This would have been about a year before Azuma began creating Azumanga Daioh in 1999 and 5 years before Yotsuba in 2003.
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A photo of the original PC-98 version of Corpse Party running on original hardware. I believe this picture was taken at Tokaigi 2015 and was posted by a Twitter user named "S_tsubu25", who is no longer online.
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An advertisement for the North American PSP release of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Taken from the March 2011 issue of PlayStation Magazine.
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Seeing all these PC-Engine CD games get fan translated recently is really exciting to see. It's kind of crazy to think that more than half of all the English patches available for the system have only been released in the past 2-3 years.
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Wow, the first volume of "Anime Vision Special," a Japanese video magazine, has a segment where they visit Nihon Falcom in 1988. It even has rare footage of Mieko Ishikawa, one of the company's main composers at the time and a founding member of Falcom Sound Team JDK. Very cool!
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The Legend of Nayuta is releasing soon in English. On paper, the title is an action spin-off to the Trails/Kiseki series but it is so much more than that. Nayuta is not only one of Falcom’s best PSP games but it is an amalgamation of the company’s best qualities from that era. 🧵
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An illustrated world map of Dragon Quest 1 that was included with a pamphlet advertising the game.
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Today marks the 5th anniversary of my first YouTube video, The Origins of Visual Novels. At the time, I was frustrated at seeing titles like Ace Attorney pop up on some many visual novel lists. So I made a New Year's resolution to learn how to edit video and this was the result.
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Got my copy of Another Code Recollection the other day. Feels really good to finally have a new game added to this collection.
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NEW VIDEO!
This time I spotlight the self-proclaimed largest ADV on the GBA, Zero One by Fuuki. Learn about this ambitious handheld adventure along with Zero One SP, a remake that features character designs by the creator of Outlaw Star.
Link:
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September 26, 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of Trails of Cold Steel. Leading up to the game's launch, Falcom's president recorded a series of behind the scenes videos for PlayStation's JP blog. They're a fun glimpse at the inner workings of the studio that we rarely see.
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This is a flyer advertising the very first Tokyo Game Show held in August 1996.
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Magazine advertisement for the Super Famicom release of Umihara Kawase, taken from the November 4, 1994 issue of Famitsu (scanned by Gaming Alexandria).
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Seeing Famicom Detective Club get a new entry once again reminds me of the Famicom's rich history with adventure games, which is rarely discussed among Western fans. It was one of the system's most popular genres with almost every notable developer putting out their own ADVs.
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Wow, it looks like Masahiro Sakurai received a Xanadu completion card back in the mid-80s. This was a certificate you could get from Falcom that proved you were able to beat Xanadu. Here is some footage from Pasokon Sunday of kids showing off their cards back in the day.
『ザナドゥ』がSwitchで遊べる!
そんな時代が来るとはなあ｡
写真は､約38年前にいただいたもの｡
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The Windows remake of The Legend of Heroes III has a hidden dev room where you can see Toshihiro Kondo (Falcom's current president) and Makoto Shinkai (future director of Your Name) have a conversation with each other.
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Here are a few photos of Computer Land Tachikawa (コンピューターランド立川), Nihon Falcom's PC store they operated in the early 80s. Before they began publishing PC games in 1982, this was Falcom's primary business.
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A magazine ad for a PS1 game called Welcome House, a 3D adventure game developed by Gust before they became famous for making the Atelier series.
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Got my copy of Tsukihime today! I love how the packaging makes the act of just opening the box feel prestigious. They even hid a reference to the lines the protagonist can see underneath all the layers of the package. Very nice touch.
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One of my favorite old pieces of promotional material for the original release of Ghost Trick were these videos made for Capcom Japan's YouTube channel called "Ghost TV" where you can see stuff like Shu Takumi performing magic tricks.
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These are magazine advertisements for all the classic entries in the Famicom Detective Club series.
The Missing Heir, The Girl Who Stands Behind, Yuki ni Kieta Kako, and the Super Famicom remake of Part II.
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Loop8 releases today and, while it's reviewing poorly, I find it interesting that English fans are getting what is essentially the 4th iteration of an untranslated PS1 cult classic. That game being Gunparade March. So it feels like we're missing a lot of the context behind Loop8.
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With the announcement of the Another Code remakes, I wanted to share this photo again of the key people responsible for creating the original DS game. This was taken from a 2005 interview in NOM UK where they share a lot of fun development stories:
Group photo of several key people from Cing shortly after Trace Memory (Another Code) was released on the Nintendo DS back in 2005. This includes Taisuke Kanasaki (Director and Character Designer), Takuya Miyagawa (Producer), and Rika Suzuki (Scenario Writer and Game Designer).
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My YouTube channel has reached 10,000 subscribers! This is an amazing milestone, thank you to everyone that enjoys watching my stuff! I've been busy working on Sakura Wars 2 lately but I'm still plucking away at a small video on the side. Thanks again and have a great day!
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In the 80s, a Japanese PC magazine called Technopolis ran a regular column called HOT ACCESS to Techno Man. These were interviews that spotlighted different creators, some of which are now considered pioneers of Japan's early game industry. Here are a few notable installments.🧵
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I made a list of my favorite Japanese ADVs/VNs in the order I played them. I tried to challenge myself by only including one entry per series, so there may be some games that don't strictly belong in this genre. The first 15 are my all-timers while the rest are runners up.
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The cover to the April 2006 issue of Login Magazine, featuring The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC.
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I had no idea this was a thing but apparently Toshihiro Kondo, Nihon Falcom's current president, practices karate. And he's a black belt? This was discussed in a recent Den-fami Nico interview:
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Came across this old 1up article and it's really funny to look back on. I remember how bleak things felt for JP game localizations around 2011 but I'm so happy articles like this were so wrong. Not only did games like Xenoblade get US releases, but now they are huge franchises.
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I recently sat down and thought about my favorite games I played this year and I think that prize would have to go to Paranormasight. I grew up playing tons of adventure games on the Nintendo DS as a kid so this title felt like a game made specifically for me.
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I believe this is the first iteration of the logo animation that still plays at the beginning of many of Falcom's games (taken from 1998's Brandish 4). This was created by Makoto Shinkai, director of Your Name, way back when he worked at the company in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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For those curious about Trails, here are four entries you can jump into. Starting with the first game (Sky) is a good choice, but if that isn't appealing then try out whichever installment below looks the most interesting. See if you like it and worry about the other games later.
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Chunsoft's sound novels are far more historically important than I think most people realize. Basically every early visual novel, or JP adventure game with a branching story, got its ideas from the likes of Otogirisou and Kamaitachi no Yoru. It was truly a genre-defining series.
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The Another Code remakes will contain new voice acting not present in the originals. However, this will not be the first time Ashley Robbins has been voiced. A European trailer for Another Code R features Carina Reeves, voice of Fiora from Xenoblade, performing as the character.
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Here are pictures of Takami Akai (creator of the Princess Maker series) and Gainax's offices during the time of Cybernetic Hi-School's release. Taken from the August 1989 issue of Comptiq.
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Oh cool, the remake of Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin now has an English Steam page! There are even screenshots of the translation.
the Steam page is up for G-MODE's Okhotsk ni Kiyu remake, out September 12—it's launching with English & Chinese language support on top of Japanese
icymi, this is a remake of a popular old Yuji Hori ADV, supervised by Hori & illustrated by the OG artist
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According to a post on GBAtemp, Traceytrace has announced that they are suspending their work on the Zero One SP translation. They may or may not return to the project but they did post a patch containing the work they have completed so far along with a spreadsheet of the script.
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I'm a few days late but it's now been 1 year since Paranormasight launched in 2023 and 1 year since I made this thread about Ishiyama's career (the game's writer/director). If you are a fan of JP adventure games, I highly recommend checking it out. It's a short, spooky fun time!
Square Enix's Paranormasight may just seem like another random release by the Final Fantasy company but the title actually marks the return of a veteran to the ADV genre named Takanari Ishiyama. His career is totally unknown in the West so I thought I'd make a thread about him.🧵
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Today is the 35th anniversary of the Ys franchise which premiered in Japan on the PC-88 all the way back in 1987. Here is a video taken from an episode of Pasokon Sunday where they interviewed the development team responsible for creating the original game.
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Just watched the first episode of 16bit Sensation and I love this little sequence, it gave me flashbacks to my college screenwriting class. It's also animated by Kou Yoshinari, a very talented artist that has also worked on several bishoujo games such as Muv-Luv and Kafu.
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This may be the last Nintendo Direct before the Switch 2 is announced, so I hope that means we'll get some interesting niche announcements you sometimes see at the end of a console's life. Basically, I hope an English release of Buddy Mission Bond is revealed.
Join us for a
#NintendoDirect
livestream focused on
#NintendoSwitch
games coming in the second half of 2024! There will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during this presentation.
📅 June 18
🕓 7:00 AM PT
⏳ Roughly 40 minutes
Watch it here:
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Here's a fun piece of artwork featuring the cast of Dragon Quest IV, the first DQ game I ever played. Taken from the September 1, 1989 issue of Famitsu.
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Once again thinking about the manual cover to Tengai Makyou: The Apocalypse IV.
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While making my Zero One video, I found an old Japanese fan site dedicated to adventure games. Along with other content, the site had a popularity poll where people could vote for their favorite ADVs. It's an interesting glimpse at what some online fans were enjoying around 2007.
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This is a flyer for "Game Fund: Tokimeki Memorial," a campaign where Konami allowed fans to invest in the development of Tokimeki Memorial 3 (along with another title that would become Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side). This was years before stuff like Kickstarter and Fig existed.
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A picture of ToHeart's Multi created for an unfinished fan game called "Leafff", a game similar to Segagaga about working at Leaf. A thread about the project infamously led to a leak of private conversations between Leaf employees that caused a huge stir in the fandom in 2001.
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I recently discovered that there was a freeware sound novel released in 2000 called 1999ChristmasEve. The game is about the protagonist and his girlfriend taking refuge in a church on the night of Christmas Eve after their car breaks down in the snow.
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Today is the 25th anniversary of Famicom Detective Club Part II: The Girl Who Stands Behind on the Super Famicom. This remake impressed the heck out of me when I first played it back in 2009 and nowadays you can play the game's equally impressive 2nd remake on the Switch.
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With White Album out now and the visual novel Steam sale going on, I wanted to again shamelessly plug my video about Leaf. In it, you can learn about the company that coined the term "visual novel" and who helped establish the genre as we know it today.
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Magazine ad for Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys taken from the October 1993 issue of PC Engine Fan.
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This is an ad for Little Lovers, a 1997 PC game directed by Jiro Ishii (most well known for later producing 428: Shibuya Scramble). The title is a raising sim where the player takes care of one of three girls over the course of one year in real-time.
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This is a Sakura Wars ad I scanned a while back that features a very nice illustration of Sakura Shinguji.
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After finishing the game, I decided to record the anime adaptation of Private Eye Dol and upload it to the Internet Archive. This OVA was released as part of NEC's digital magazine for the PC-FX called Anime Freaks FX and was directed by Mitsuo Fukuda, director of Gundam Seed.
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These are various magazine ads for Ys II Special, a Korean developed remake of Ys II that was released in 1994. The first ad features artwork by Lee Myung-jin, the artist famous for creating Ragnarok (the manhwa that would serve as the basis for the MMO RPG, Ragnarok Online).
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On Falcom's old website, there was a section of their news page that would update periodically with info and screenshots of upcoming releases. Most of the screenshots are broken now, but here are a few early glimpses of Xanadu Next I managed to find through the Wayback Machine.
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These are photos taken during the opening day of "Falcom Shop" in late 1989. This was a store located in the Yoyogi neighborhood of Shibuya that exclusively sold merch and games created by Nihon Falcom. Composer Meiko Ishikawa can be seen in the photo on the right in a red apron.
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I recently found out that a French TV channel called Nolife interviewed the development team of Another Code R back in 2009. This includes Rika Suzuki (Designer/Writer), Satoshi Kira (Nintendo Co-Producer), Taisuke Kanasaki (Character Designer), and Shigeru Komine (Director).
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Today is Chrono Trigger's anniversary and we just lost Akira Toriyama earlier this week. Not only was DBZ one of the first anime I watched, but Chrono Trigger was the game that helped me become a fan of Japanese RPGs. Man was a big part of my childhood and I'm gonna miss him.
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Picture of Yuji Horii in 1984 holding a PC-88 copy of The Portopia Serial Murder Case. The text mentions that the game was a huge hit, selling 17,000 copies. For comparison, the 1985 Famicom port sold 700,000 copies. Just goes to show how small Japan's PC market was at the time.
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Really wasn't expecting this music to play when I lost this otherwise silent mini-game in Saorin to Issho.
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Thinking about Panzer Graphix again. This was a doujinshi drawn by Raita Honjou in the early 2000s. The cover image caught the eye of Sega producer Ryutaro Nonaka which led to him hiring Honjou to work on the project that eventually became Valkyria Chronicles.
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As part of Kamaitachi no Yoru's 30th anniversary, Spike Chunsoft is releasing a port of X3 for modern platforms (a collection of 1-3 initially released for the PS2). The original Kamaitachi basically established the novel game genre in Japan. Hope this gets an English release!
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ComuNet is still a mystery to me. All I know is that they were a visual novel publisher in the 2000s that helped release Phantom of Inferno in the US as a DVD game. Their site also lists Vjedogonia, Hello World, and No Reality as future releases but they never made it to market.
I did a lot of research on Hirameki International in 2020 but the biggest mystery I never solved about the company was what their relationship was with another publisher called ComuNet Inc. Seems like they invented the AnimePlay brand and their logo appears in Phantom of Inferno.
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Photo of Rika Suzuki promoting the sequel to J.B. Harold: Murder Club, Manhattan Requiem, in the the April 1987 issue of Comptiq. Years later, Suzuki would co-found Cing and serve as the writer and designer for Another Code and Hotel Dusk.
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This is very exciting! For those unaware, Otogirisou is the first entry in Chunsoft's Sound Novel franchise. This, along with titles like Kamaitachi no Yoru, laid the ground work for the visual novel genre we know today and inspired many future creators.
Otogirisou, in English! The first game released under the Chun Soft brand! It's a sound novel, which inspired the visual novel genre.
First released March 7th, 1992, it now has a complete English translation (even the box and manual!) at
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With the 3DS eShop closing, I wanted to shout-out Spirit of Justice. The return of Maya, fast pacing, fun cast, and amazing presentation make this one of my favorite Ace Attorney games. Highly recommend checking it out, especially since it is currently only available on the 3DS.
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Back in the late 80s, Nihon Falcom was split up into three development teams with each lead by a key staff member: Yoshio Kiya (Dragon Slayer), Masaya Hashimoto (Ys), and Kazunari Tomi (Star Trader/Dinosaur). Below is a photo of each team from the January 1989 issue of Comptiq.
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Cover art to the "Dept. Heaven Episodes World Guidance" book.
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Also you can see many of these models performing as these characters in Nintendo's Behind the Scenes video for Last Window.
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Ishiyama began his career at Konami in the 90s as a sound designer, working on series like MGS and Tokimeki. He eventually joined a company called Genki in the 2000s where he worked on dozens of games for Japanese mobile phones, many of which have now been lost to history.
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After discovering that Otogirisou actually has two different translation patches available (one by Tom/DDS and the other by ButThouMust), I decided to post some comparisons between the two scripts on Tumblr along with some very surface level observations.
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My Zero One video has already reached over 14,000 views in only one day! That's incredible! Thank you all so much!
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The latest episode of Insert Credit reminded me of some of the weirdly hostile reviews Another Code R received in the late aughts. Journey into Lost Memories is one of my favorite Wii games so I was pretty shocked when I later discovered it was so poorly reviewed by some outlets.
Ep. 319 - Insert Credit Annual
#5
Frank Cifaldi, Tim Rogers, and Brandon Sheffield rank the best games of all time, by a certain metric.
listen:
discuss:
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Back in 2001, an English demo for the Korean RPG, Arcturus: The Curse and Loss of Divinity, was released online. The translation is a bit awkward and contains some odd fourth wall breaking jokes in the game's tutorial. Not sure if there was something similar in the original text.
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I found out recently that Falcom has a blog called "Fal-Column" where staff have been sharing random development stories for almost two decades. On September 9, 2005, a graphic designer named "おかたむ" posted these cute clay figures of the monsters from Gurumin.
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This is a magazine ad for the North American release of Gurumin on the PSP. Third-party ports of Falcom's games had been released in the US for years but this was the first title directly developed by the company to get an English release in over a decade.
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Advertisement for Nihon Falcom's Zwei!! (also known as Zwei: The Arges Adventure) taken from the March 2002 issue of Comptiq.
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So while Paranormasight may just seem like yet another smaller release by SE, it actually has a surprising legacy behind it. If you want to learn more, here’s a lengthy interview with Ishiyama from 2022:
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In spring 2003, Falcom published a catalog that contained a CD-ROM full of trailers for their games. It also included the video below which showcased early footage of their upcoming titles, including Ys VI, Trails in the Sky, and "mysterious" new works (Gurumin and Xanadu Next).
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During the late 80s and early 90s, Minako Iwasaki submitted a lot of artwork to magazines like Technopolis, POPCOM, and Gamest under the pen name "ME-CHAN." Here are a few of her original illustrations from 1990-1992, before she became a professional artist at Nihon Falcom in 93.
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Magazine ad for Prism Court, a PS1 volleyball team management title mixed with a dating sim. The game is a cult classic in Japan and features character illustrations by Atsuko Nakajima, known for her work on shows like Ranma 1/2 and You're Under Arrest.
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Just finished playing Private Eye Dol the other day and noticed that you can meet Rolfee in the game's secret art gallery. She was a mascot character for the PC-FX, the successor to the PC-Engine, which launched a few months before Private Eye Dol was released.
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