Flight Diaries and Snow Presents Patches?

[ShadowSteel]

So I am a big fan of "If My Heart Had Wings" and with the recent announcement that "Flight Diaries" was coming to Steam it got me to thinking about some of the old patches that were once in the works for these fan discs.  Now with steam now being a more open market for more adult oriented games do you think we will either see an official patch to the "If My Heart Had Wings" Series or will this give more of a reason for Fan Translators to start work on the "Flight Diaries" and "Snow Presents" Fan Discs.  I would love to know what you guys think.

[WorldofAI]

I don’t really believe Steam was the limiting factor to MoeNovel not being able to release 18+ versions for any of Pulltop’s games. I believe it’s more of the demographic/geography issue. Japan has no problem with stuff like H-scenes and H-jokes while in the West, it is considered taboo and will generate lots of complaints (usually from those normal family people). There’s so much talk about these games dehumanizing women and giving bad ideas of what women are.

Think what happens to games when they get rated AO on the ESRB scale. Steam is also required to hide AO as much as possible as to generate more unwanted publicity. I’m sure MoeNovel is being over cautious of this and is why they’re hesitant to releasing patches.

[ShadowSteel]

Yeah I ee what you are saying but even before Steam opened up to this there games like NekoPara which sold an R-18 Patch via third party sites.  Plus there publishers like Denpasoft who quickly started selling the R-18 patches as soon as the green light was given.  in fact they have been releasing them as separate DLCs so people aren't forced to play these H-Scenes.

 

Granted there are a lot of crappy VNs out there, but VNs like "If My Heart Had Wings" tell a very deep story that don't make the girls look bad at all.  But I can also see why some Devs would be hesitant to release an R-18 patch.

[littleshogun]

What I would like to believe is that it would be the fault of Pulltop for decided to release the censored version overseas, although granted that it might be because Pulltop was working together with AGM in which the company wouldn't translated 18+ contents. I still blame Pulltop anyway foe not choosing more flexible translator out there lol, because I believe they could do the release through any experienced company in regard of eroge localization (ie JAST, Mangagamer) if they really afraid with the stigma in the West.

As for the Steam, well I would like to say that actuall Pulltop could use that. However their own problem is that they just released it in Steam only, and by Steam only I mean no other version other than Steam version, which of course causing controversies because of the censored content. While granted back at 2013 there's still not much VN that was released at Steam so much that Pullrop was quite clueless in regard of this, I still like to say that they should find out of how to work around the situation such as work together with JAST once more to release 18+ version because they work together to localized Princess Waltz in the past, although I understand though if Pulltop didn't want to work together with JAST back then lol.

Back to topic in regard of the chance if Konosora FDs get official 18+ patch. As for that chance, I would like to say that as long as Pulltop bound with AGM through the contract, there's no way that we'll get those 18+ patch. So for now the only hope for that is hoping one of the passionate fans would willingly translated the 18+ contents as well, and judging from the translator of 18+ contents of Konosora (Pabloc) I think the chance itself is almost none, because he said that he didn't want to touch MoeNovel's work anymore if I remember.

Edited October 12, 2018 by littleshogun

[ShadowSteel]

I have a complete English patch for the Original Japanese Version of "If My Heart Had Wings" and the team behind it were doing a patch for "Snow Presents" and "Flight Diaries", but they have since gone dark.

Yes the MoeNovel Version removed the H-Scenes but they did it pretty cleanly so I wouldn't have a problem with an All Ages Version.  However I would still be interested in seeing if a R-18 Patch or an R-18 Version is also released.

[Nandemonai]

Cleanly?  They turned one route literally into gibberish.

[ShadowSteel]

To be honest I mainly played Kotori's Route.  I didn't really pay too much attention after that.  XD

[adamstan]

1 hour ago, ShadowSteel said:

To be honest I mainly played Kotori's Route.  I didn't really pay too much attention after that.  XD

And that was the only route that was readable . I then went onto Ageha's route and couldn't figure what was going on at all, and had to drop it unti retranslation patch came out. But then, it was before any h-scene would happen, so that might be due to bad translation rather than censoring itself. Nevertheless, considering main plot device of Ageha's route

Spoiler

Wanting to have sex with protag, but constantly denying that she loves him, so essentially turning it into weird "friends with benefits" situation (but still getting possessive and jealous over him)

, it seems almost impossible to create good all-ages edition for this route.

 

And littleshogun is right - to release +18 translations Pulltop/MoeNovel would have to change their translating contractor. I don't know if they can be convinced to do so... It would be nice if they hired JAST, MG or even Sekai to translate their games, but that seems unlikely.

Edited October 12, 2018 by adamstan

[Incynerate]

10 hours ago, ShadowSteel said:

I have a complete English patch for the Original Japanese Version of "If My Heart Had Wings" and the team behind it were doing a patch for "Snow Presents" and "Flight Diaries", but they have since gone dark.

Yes the MoeNovel Version removed the H-Scenes but they did it pretty cleanly so I wouldn't have a problem with an All Ages Version.  However I would still be interested in seeing if a R-18 Patch or an R-18 Version is also released.

I don't believe the team behind the retranslation patch ever did any work on Flight Diary or Snow Presents. I think those were separate fan teams that fizzled out very quickly.

It would be great if Moenovel put out an official 18+ patch, but I think it's extremely unlikely, especially since the entire Ageha/Hotaru side story appears to be cut from the English release.

EDIT: Also, I don't know if the retranslation team would work on Flight Diary. On Reddit MeruP said he might do work on a restoration patch, but the original translator is busy with other projects. IIRC he's also not interested in translating vanilla H stuff, but don't quote me on that.

Edited October 12, 2018 by Incynerate

[Nandemonai]

On 10/11/2018 at 10:33 PM, adamstan said:

And littleshogun is right - to release +18 translations Pulltop/MoeNovel would have to change their translating contractor. I don't know if they can be convinced to do so... It would be nice if they hired JAST, MG or even Sekai to translate their games, but that seems unlikely.

Pulltop did release one game under Jast USA.  They're a brand of Will, which for years was one of basically two brands Jast had access to, when they rebranded as Peach Princess.

Quick ancient history lession: Jast was a Japanese h-game maker.  Jast USA translated a bunch of their titles into English.  Then the founder got cancer or had a heart attack or something.  He died, company folded.  Jast USA wasn't sure what to do; it found new partnerships with Crowd and Will and rebranded itself Peach Princess.  Eventually Peter Payne decided Jast USA was the more well-known name and re-orged under it.

Well, Pulltop being a Will title, Jast USA released one of their games: Princess Waltz, in late 2008.  They never released any of Pulltop's other titles, and 5 years later Pulltop decided to launch Moenovel.  I think it is fairly safe to say that Pulltop probably wasn't impressed with Jast USA and is unlikely to work with them again.  Their experience with IMHHW probably 'taught' them that going it alone is a 'much better' way to go, since it sold a LOT more than any numbers Jast could have put up in 2008.

[adamstan]

Yeah, but they still aren't exactly "doing it alone". It seems that MoeNovel isn't "localization company" - it's just a brand name Pulltop uses to release EN versions of their games, while the translations are being done by AGM - so still "outside". But OTOH yes, they are publishing it themselves.

Maybe the quality of AGM's translations will rise, as they apparently launched branch solely dedicated to VNs, called AFAIK "Yume Haven", but still they won't translate +18 content. ASFOS looked promising, but then the CrossChannel disaster happened, so AGM is still very random quality-wise.

 

About the JAST history - you're right. And at least one of those ancient VNs - Sakura no kisetsu - is quite good Actually I didn't play Princess Waltz, being turned off by that dueling minigame/mechanic.

 

[ShadowSteel]

I personally think this is going to be mostly a job for the fans.  After all with the Main game not having a proper release for the R-18 overseas I doubt that MoeNovel would released a R-18 version of the Fan Discs without at least adding a R-18 Patch to the Main Game.

[Incynerate]

I don't know what the specific contents of Flight Diary are, but given the nature of fan dics, my worry is that FD will get the Ageha treatment: a significant (and terrible) rewrite that will make a can restoration patch extremely time consuming.

Edited October 14, 2018 by Incynerate