(Archive) Velsarbor by Lachsen - RM2k

Now available in English

Special Thanks to WatDubHekBro. 
Main Download - GitHub
Mirror - MediaFire
Prepatched English Download Beta - MediaFire

Will update with more info later.

Richard Honeywood helped the house of Final Fantasy go from incoherent to incomparable - (FFIX's hallmark translation)

(from 1UP.com by Jeremy Parish - April 28th, 2011)

(on webarchive, when prompt, "click continue to 1up", on the top right corner to advance to the next page)

...With a successful translation of Final Fantasy VIII under their belts by September 1999 and Chrono Cross ready to go in August 2000, Squaresoft's localization teams had only one last PlayStation masterpiece to tackle: Final Fantasy IX.

The lush fantasy world and medieval cities of Final Fantasy IX marked a return to tradition for the series, which had grown increasingly modern with VII and VIII. But tradition hardly meant simplicity: As a celebration of the Final Fantasy series, IX packed a dizzying number of references to past characters, locations and themes, all wrapped up in a charming adventure that pushed the PlayStation to the limits of what it's hardware cound handle. A host of changes made the game feel like an interactive fantasy storybook or stage play: The return to cartoony superdeformed characters, the Active Time Events that introduced secondary plot elements, the allusions to Shakespeare. Even the simple addition of quotation marks around dialogue, first appearing in VII, gave the text a more literary air.

Though many of IX's allusions were present in the Japanese version of the game, they weren't there at the beginning -- when Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi delivered his original script, it barely resembled the full game that would later appear.

"I can remember receiving an initial draft of Sakaguchi-san's script early in production to review as preparation for our Loc Dept," Honeywood said. "I was surprised that it didn't really have any structure or even grammar to it. The plot was just a series of nouns. 'Darkness. Matches. Light. Candle. Boy with tail....' It made me laugh as I tried to imagine how a dev team would make a game out of this, and how much the planners would flesh out that basic story draft to have a very involved plot."

Final Fantasy IX's references range from the obvious to the obscure. Garland, Mog, Vivi, and "No cloud, no squall shall hinder us!" all make overt references to fan-favorite series elements, while Trance, the Dwarves of Conde Petit and the Princess Cornelia of "I Want to Be Your Canary" could easily sail over the heads of all but the most devoted fans. And that's not even counting the pop culture references packed into the script, with allusions to Star Trek ("Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.") and Monty Python ("Bah! Only only a flesh wound!")

Perhaps it was the wonderful source material, or perhaps it was the strength of the localization department by the year 2000; either way, Final Fantasy IX's translation remains one of the strongest scripts Squaresoft has ever produced. The improvements in technology helped, too, of course.

"FFVIII was the last game that forced the translators to submit their text in Shift-JIS double byte letters. I had written a tool that converted the text for them (along with line-width-checkers and a few other tools). On FFIX we convinced the dev team to allow us to use extended ASCII from the get-go, helping them implement that encoding into the program along with better fonts."

By the time Honeywood and the other localization producers were working on FFIX, they had hired translators capable of converting Japanese straight to FIGS (French, Italian, German, Spanish) rather than translating the script to English first. As a remarkably lively translation and a technical accomplishment, Final Fantasy IX was a fitting homage to the series and a hallmark of what was to come in future Square titles, when localization teams would work more closely with the developers than ever before.

"At FFIX's stage, we weren't too involved on a daily basis with the Japanese version...FFX, FFXI, FFX-2, FFXII and onwards we had the translators move to sit within the dev team at an earlier stage, and there was more collaboration. Over time, some dev teams became very good at choosing product and character names that work in all regions by discussing them with us."

In some cases, that close working relationship resulted in the English translations feeding back into the Japanese scripts -- FFX-2's developers liked the term "machina" that was developed for Final Fantasy X's English script so much they added it into their game in Japanese. And because American gamers cared far more about lip syncing in cut-scenes, some games like The Bouncer were recorded with English voices first and later dubbed into Japanese.

Via 1UP.com (webarchive)

(Spotted) 海賊ウォーク"Pirate Walk(?)" - RM2k3

Controls:

left/right - rotate camera

shift - run
z- talk/move red guards
x-rotates camera faster

*Uses Maniac Patch to achieve 3D effect in rpgmaker2003
(Bad recording, download and play for better performance)
Download:https://furige.herokuapp.com/2019/comment/5570

(Spotted)
https://twitter.com/EasyRPG/status/1137410650974621696 (60fps twitter vid)
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm35334327 (nico video vid)

Via VIPRPG12代目作品保管庫 (Japanese)

Hironobu Sakaguchi and FF programmers' try to rival DQ [Game Designers in their'early' days] - Keiichi Tanaka

(from Denfaminicogamer by Keiichi Tanaka - July 21th, 2017)

The 1980s and 1990s was the “adolescence” of the game industry. Wanting to find out more about the passionate, young, overeaching past of the game designers that struggled during that time, this report manga was created. The first guest is Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of “Final Fantasy”!

Via Denfaminicogamer

(Archive) Wings of Origin - RM2k3 - [RMHistoria]

 (from RMHistoria - March 15, 2019)

Created by: Carius
Date Released: Nov 2005 / Early 2007 (Demo Remake)
Engine: RM2003

The author Carius was usually known around the GamingWorld community as a keen event programmer. Usually making tech demos for contests and tutorials on how to tackle RM2K3’s many limitations. Despite this reputation he did manage to crank out a more conventional JRPG called Wings of Origin. Starting out as a DBS contest entry, it’s essentially a visual novel with no player exploration with a few battles here and there.

Angel-like people known as “Airfolk” rule the skies. However, the protagonist Takeo is banished from flying ever again. An emotive and vengeful story combined with the use of Brave Fencer Musashi tracks made this small demo stick with me. It’s a ride full of twists and turns all in 18 minutes. What I like most about the writing is that we’re never quite sure of Takeo’s exact motivations for wanting to abandon his grounded life for revenge. The plot presumably sets up Takeo’s son as the actual protagonist. There’s a mysterious figure that appears at the beginning and my hunch is that it might be Takeo’s son from the future. This game will never be completed so we’ll never know! But it says a lot about how much this game accomplishes in such a short time.

There’s actually 3 versions of the game. The DBS contest entry, the 2005 story demo, and the 2007 remake of said demo. The 2005 one is the one I remember, even now I still prefer it though. The music choices are just better in my opinion. The art/mapping might be slightly improved in the 2007 one, but it’s still a general mishmash of Star Ocean / Tales of Phantasia / Rudra. There is interesting DBS experimentation in it but I really just like this demo for the story and the abundant night sky atmosphere.

Estimated length: 20 minutes

Download Here (3 Versions)
Youtube Gameplay (Full Playthrough

Ultima Island Page (archive)
RMTutorials (Carius’s page) (archive)

Special thanks to hedge1 for preserving the demos.

 

Crap.

In 1994, Ted Woolsey changed game localization by writing a "deathless" apocalypse - [USGAMER]

Final Fantasy 6's story inspired more than one budding writer to pick up their pen and go wild. [Square Enix/Source]

(from USGAMER by Nadia Oxford - May 5th, 2020)

"Every RPG enthusiast can recall what game they were playing when they were struck by the fandom's universal epiphany: The realization that RPGs can treat us to rich stories and deep character rosters that rival classic fantasy novels. We don't say it often enough, but the people who translated those games and added flavor to their characters, stories, and worlds deserve some credit for these discoveries. It's fine to journey for 60 hours with wooden heroes; it's better to come come away from the adventure bright-eyed and stuffed full of one-liners like, "Don't tease the octopus, kids!" and, "You sound like a chapter from a self-help booklet."

The 16-bit era was a renaissance for console RPGs, especially for Westerners. Though RPGs wouldn't reach anything close to mainstream popularity until Final Fantasy 7 hit the PlayStation in 1997, the candy-colored sprites in Secret of Mana and the solemn, realistic backdrops of Final Fantasy 6—released in the West as Final Fantasy 3— turned some heads and won some hearts. In time, these newly-baptized RPG fans and the veterans who fell in love with the genre through Dragon Warrior came to the same observation: Many of the RPGs produced by Square Enix (then Squaresoft) boasted next-level translations in an era where video game localizations were still infamous for being shoddy.

Squaresoft's RPGs weren't just clear and competent. They built up the worlds they belonged to, gave life and character to hero and monster alike. In particular, the localization for Final Fantasy 6 is so ingrained in fans' minds that certain character quirks and bits of dialogue have carried over into modern Final Fantasy games. Professional authors even cite Final Fantasy 6 as a major inspiration for their works.

It's remarkable to realize Square Enix's ability to deliver such a powerful story about death, devastation, and the end of the world while under the watchful eye of Nintendo of America's content censors. That's why the man behind the translations, Ted Woolsey, is still celebrated for his work."

Via USGAMER

Are RPG Maker games as bad as people think? [EUROGAMER]

"RPG Maker games have always been here. They are really easy to identify...
...But the tag is lying to you"

(from eurogamer.net by Giada Zavarise - May 24th 2018)

"We all have our petty personal crusades to fight. Mine is the endless battle in defence of RPG Maker, accused by many of being a bad engine only used by lazy developers. RPG Maker games tend to look the same, so this means that only untalented developers use it, right? I decided to prove people wrong. With science. That's why I took a deep dive in the Steam RPG Maker tag, gathering data about all 559 tagged games released to this day. Behold the results of my foolish research."

Via EUROGAMER

(Spotted) the machine that BREATHES - GMS2

(If you like Resident Evil, Shadow of The Colossus or Boris Karloff's Frankenstein, definitely check this out! Very pleased with how this is shaping out - spread the word!)

Via Steam (Wishlists adds appreciated!)
Via RMN
Via Itch.io
choinheap

(Reference) Illustrator Akira “Akiman” Yasuda, (Capcom) [toco toco]