fun2novel's Funtime Hour

Typically, WD's games were given somewhat... eclectic localizations.  My first knowing experiences with poor localization efforts were with WD.  However, their choice of games was always first-class.  Lunar, Dragon Force, Albert Odyssey, Rayearth, Arc the Lad, and Growlanser II and III.

Dragon Force is the game that formed my impressions of English voice-acting in games... in other words, that they were something to be avoided if at all possible, lol.  However, Dragon Force was such a powerful game that it was a minor annoyance. 

Other than Dragon Force, Growlanser was my most memorable WD game.  To be blunt, the jrpgs I'd played up until that point had lacked the sheer charisma of Growlanser 2 and 3's characters and setting (3's in particular is amazing), and I found being able to drastically alter the course of the story just by winning battles in a certain manner to be a really attractive trait in a game.  It saddened me immensely when WD went under almost immediately after its release, primarily due to Sony not allowing them to release 2 and 3 as separate games. 

Edit: Sony was a pain in the ass for everyone that wanted to localize jrpgs, right into the middle of the long ps2 era.  It was primarily NISA that opened things up by getting consistent sales from their 'anime-type' srpgs, jrpgs, and dungeon-crawlers. 

I never been a fan of their approach to localization myself. They do write some good stuff but they go overboard. At least their games where good. If only they didn't make their early stuff unfairly difficult. I'm too lazy to type it right now but read about Lunar: Eternal Blue (SegaCD) or Exile 2 for the Turbographics. Eternal Blue was especially brutal, and it's only the English version that was like that. Thanks Working Designs for making kids investing their hard earn allowance on a game they eventually will just give up enjoying.

2 hours ago, Clephas said:

Edit: Sony was a pain in the ass for everyone that wanted to localize jrpgs, right into the middle of the long ps2 era.  It was primarily NISA that opened things up by getting consistent sales from their 'anime-type' srpgs, jrpgs, and dungeon-crawlers. 

It was in the early years of the first playstation. Sony was very welcoming of rpgs but they wanted to keep a high quality of stuff being released. They also wanted there to be more 3D games but too many rpgs where in 2D. Bernie Stolar was against rpgs too so he wouldn't allow anything to be localized. As for why Sony wouldn't let WD release Growlanser 2 & 3 separately, that's anyone's guess but I think perhaps they didn't want people to think they are charging 60$ for a playstation1 looking game, lol.

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11 hours ago, fun2novel said:

 

It was in the early years of the first playstation. Sony was very welcoming of rpgs but they wanted to keep a high quality of stuff being released. They also wanted there to be more 3D games but too many rpgs where in 2D. Bernie Stolar was against rpgs too so he wouldn't allow anything to be localized. As for why Sony wouldn't let WD release Growlanser 2 & 3 separately, that's anyone's guess but I think perhaps they didn't want people to think they are charging 60$ for a playstation1 looking game, lol.

Sony was unsure that WD could meet sales goals for the games if they were released separately.  As it was, they ended up releasing a $100 game for $50 (until the ps3 era, standard pricing for a single game was $50) or $80 for the Deluxe edition.  Unfortunately, while the game omnibus sold about as well as the Arc the Lad collection, the sheer amount of work that had to be done to put out two games that were approximately the same length and depth of design as the standard jrpg was still the same as if they had sold them separately... so they didn't manage to make back their investment cash and the company crashed and burned.  WD generally only ever had a shoestring budget, compared to other, larger companies that came into it after them (like Atlus and NISA), so it wasn't really surprising that a single game failure put them under, lol. 

Incidentally, I have twelve copies of Growlanser Generations... most of which I obtained for under twenty dollars and including two unopened collectors editions, lol. 

Edit: A large part of the cost for Growlanser was licensing fees and paying for a first-class VA setup (large amounts of voiced text, dubbed by the best English VAs of the day... huge costs), which ballooned each game's pricetag for the company beyond the entire Arc the Lad Collection.

Edit2: You have to remember, while WD had used VAs before, most of them were concentrated in a minority of scenes (Lunar) or in animated cut-scenes (Dragon Force).  Not only that, the business itself wasn't fully established for gaming until FFX came out with a full VA cast and basically dragged jrpgs into the modern era... it was after that that Growlanser was released, and the price for VAs had gone way up from the days when Lunar was being localized.  The results... were predictable.

3 hours ago, Clephas said:

so they didn't manage to make back their investment cash and the company crashed and burned.

I wouldn't go that far, they probably could still go on and continue their work. The closed down because of principle, Victor Ireland was fed up with the bullshit his company had to go through with every game they want to work on and not being allowed to release the Growlanser game separately was the last straw. At least according to his own words before the company finally closed down.

It really does seem strange that Sony would do that, what's the point. That's the first and I think the only time I ever heard of a console manufacturer intervening with a publisher AFTER the game has already been approved. They can limit the number of discs pressed like they did to WARP's D.

4 hours ago, Clephas said:

Edit: A large part of the cost for Growlanser was licensing fees and paying for a first-class VA setup (large amounts of voiced text, dubbed by the best English VAs of the day... huge costs), which ballooned each game's pricetag for the company beyond the entire Arc the Lad Collection.

I am not surprised, there are a ton of voices in both Growlanser games. The Arc the Lad games are the ones Bernie Stolar prevented them to release, it wasn't until close to the playstation's life that it finally came out in English. In a better edition than Japan has ever got.

4 hours ago, Clephas said:

Edit2: You have to remember, while WD had used VAs before, most of them were concentrated in a minority of scenes (Lunar) or in animated cut-scenes (Dragon Force).  Not only that, the business itself wasn't fully established for gaming until FFX came out with a full VA cast and basically dragged jrpgs into the modern era... it was after that that Growlanser was released, and the price for VAs had gone way up from the days when Lunar was being localized.  The results... were predictable.

Yeah but don't forget games like Snatcher and Metal Gear Solid, both came out long before Growlanser and both have voices not even matched by today's games. It doesn't matter if voices were popular or how much they were used, what mattered whether the people behind it care enough to put this kind of effort. Final Fantasy X had horrible voice acting and I don't even want to talk about X-2. Even Xenosaga Episode I didn't always have good voice acting, I mean it was good in some scenes and pretty bad in others. Episode II had a few changes, some for the better some for the worse. But Episode III had the best voices of all, even those actors that were bad in Episode I suddenly sound good and professional in Episode I. So it comes down to competent and how much the people behind the games care about their projects.

My comment here would be if you want to talk about licensed games here, I think Sailor Moon RPG for SNES was quite good imo although the creator was mixing original story with the main story from manga. By the way, I think Rayearth games was kind of following the main story here although I'm not suure though.

Working Design, I'd more think that they released some anime looking RPG on PS1 like Lunar here than localized 3D games like FF which back there was quite a number being developed. Other than that, I didn't knew much about Working Design here to be honest until now at least. Guess learn another new thing today was good.

I played the Sailor Moon RPG back when the translation patch was first released. But it's been a really long time ago I have completely forgotten about that game. If I have the time I'll play and see if it's something worth talking about.

Working Designs is no stranger to 3D games either. Arc the Lad 3 and Elemental Gearbolt were 3D after all.