Hey everyone. Vic Ireland contacted me with a few clarifications that I'd like to share: 0:37 - Ireland wrote mostly for Turbo Play, which was a sister publication from the folks who made VG&CE. I only have one issue of that magazine sadly. That and the other one available for download on the internet do not feature him credited, so I had to go with my observations. I would've loved to show his name on an article or review. EDIT: Found and instance of an Ys III review written by Vic in the December 1991 issue of Videogames & Computer Entertainment (after or around the same time as the first TurboGrafx-16 releases from Working Designs came out, so I didn't look far enough ahead in my search). archive.org/details/vgce_91-12/page/n45/mode/2up?view=theater 18:31 - I say that they re-recorded the cut scenes since they couldn't get the isolated audio tracks. This is not true. They re-recorded them because the Japanese version's audio was weak. I certainly agree with that assessment. 20:52 - Vic says he implemented the pay to save mechanic to prevent "save scumming back when I cared how people play". He seems to regret its inclusion. I still say that it didn't affect my playthoughs at all, though I can see why people would object to it. 23:00 - There is actually some Working Designs humor in Iron Storm. According to Vic "if Japan wins where the US eventually stages an economic invasion of Japan, flooding it with inexpensive autos, TVs, radios, and gadgets. The resulting trade imbalance enslaves Japan to the US. " I would've loved to show this. 34:12 - Regarding the increased difficulty in Alundra, Vic says "I didn't only buff monsters in Alundra. It was more of a balancing. For the final boss I reduced its HP and increased its attack power. The Japanese version took FOREVER to kill. It was a tiresome attack sponge. I made it easier to kill, but more deadly if you got hit so the battle was a more reasonable length. Someone who formerly complained bitterly about WD "meddling" on Alundra wrote me an apology letter after they played the Japanese version and realized that I did inarguably change at least some of it for the better. Also, the opening animation with the rock music was just for the US version. Did not exist in the Japanese." 39:44 - Magic Knight Rayearth. I probably should've mentioned that the hard drive crash happened at Sega in Japan before Working Designs got the game. I did when I talked about this one in the "Last Officially Released Games 2" episode. Regarding if it was just FMV data or not, Vic clears things up with "Rayearth source code was absolutely partially lost on the Japanese side in a crash before we got it. Anyone that says it was just FMV lost has no idea what they're talking about. Tim had to really jump through a crazy amount of hoops and hack out chunks of binary, already compiled code from the retail Japanese release to fill in the gaps in code libraries that were lost or damaged to eventually get the English version to actually work." 45:45 - I said Vanguard Bandits' Japanese title was Epic Stella when it's actually Epica Stella. Vic adds some more fun trivia about the game: "Vanguard Bandits" was actually called Epica Stella in Japan, not Epic Stella. Vanguard Bandits was an accidental title. We were spitballing after we got the legal notice from Midway about Detonator Gauntlet infringing and someone jokingly said "Panty Bandits" to someone else some distance from me and I misheard it as "Vanguard Bandits." It actually was a way better title than Detonator Gauntlet, so it worked out OK. Also, the surround assist feature of the game (where if you have allies adjacent to an enemy you are attacking, that helps you) that really improves the strategy did not exist in the Japanese version. Ken worked a long time on that to get it right and it turned out great. I'll add to this post if Vic adds more clarifications.
Whoa, Vic contacted you? Awesome. I tried to get a hold of him a while back, but I guess I was reaching out to a dead email...or maybe he never saw it. Oops. Still, that's really cool. I know Coury of My Life in Gaming tried reaching out to him a few times too, in the hopes of getting an interview with him or history about Working Designs in general.
This is probably one of the most anticipated episodes of Game Sack for me, and seeing the duration of it, I applaud your hard work Joe. Thank you for making my Saturday nights great!
@@BladeBlur ❤️ been my username/gamer tag since the first game dropped. (Cooper is also my name IRL) Quick story I hope makes you laugh: My mother purchased a new Chrome Book. I drove over to help her get started and get some of the stuff she needed on the thing etc. I initially used my google account to set it up, added hers after, forgot to log out before I left. She called me a little after and said “uhh why did you make my Google name SPY COOPER Or something?” 😝
sweet video drop! i love working designs more than dislike, and their nsfw jokes snuck into magic knight rayearth got me so confused when i was a teen playing it for the first time.
Hate them. I'd rather have the original voice acting in my games and I don't really enjoy their usual gameplay changes. Doesn't help that the games are super expensive nowadays.
Best episode ever! Thanks Joe. I miss Working Designs. They really brought alot of the rpg games out here. Not to mention the love they put in their product cases. Especially when it came to collectors sets. We really don't see them much anymore which is sad.
As a Lunar fan, I have a love genuinely/love ironically relationship with Working Designs. I will admit that a lot of their earlier translations have aged poorly... but a lot of translations from that era have aged even worse. And yeah, the changes they made to the diffculty is unacceptable. Their PS1 era translations were honestly fine, though, aside from a few questionable line changes. Personally I think their song dubs were great, the boat song in Lunar Silver Star Story in particular I think is better than the Japanese version. Their packaging and collector's editions are absolutely gorgeous though, you can't deny that.
And now Lunar is getting a release on the Sega Genesis Mini II coming in October! The Sega CD versions of the Lunar games are confirmed for the Japanese version, but I'm hoping they'll come to the American version and help flesh out the roster of rpgs.
I wouldn't say so. Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, EarthBound, Pokémon Red and Blue, Final Fantasy IX, Vagrant Story, Phantasy Star IV... all of these games had great translations by that time. Games like FF7, Tactics and Legend of Dragoon were certainly lackluster in this regard, but it's not like every game was still incomprensible like Breath of Fire 2 by then.
Working Designs was the only reason we could play these games outside of Japan and back in the days that was awesome but nowadays i mostly patch the games with un-worked patches because they often changed and rebalanced to much in my opinion.
Have you actually tried playing some of the games unpatched? Popful Mail specifically becomes a complete joke to get through. They made the game a LOT more interesting difficultly wise.
@@ProfKisuto i played the unpatched game many years ago and after that video i started to replay Popful Mail on my RG351 and I must say I prefer that its easier.
It's so weird that Working Designs clearly loved these games, and also decided to mangle them. It's like... "hey! I feel so passionately about these niche Japanese games that Americans don't get to enjoy! I strongly feel they would find fans here! I want Westerns to enjoy these cool treasures! BUT ONLY IF I MANGLE THEM FIRST"
My best friends family in HS sponsored a foreign exchange student from Japan. So I got to play Japanese titles...with live Japanese to English translation!
I miss them so much. I don’t have many things left from them, except my Growlanser ps2 release. Thank you for making this episode. I loved how they snuck little messages in their magazine ads in the copyright section :)
Love Popful Mail and its legendary English dubbing and I especially like that line. The voice of said purple gargoyle thing sounds weirdly similar to the Big Brother show's Zingbot and like he sucked helium outta balloon.
Working Designs brought some pretty great games over here. Their translations don’t bother me. As long as the basic idea of the story comes across I don’t care if some random NPC says some dated 90s humor. Alundra is one of the best games ever. I’m definitely glad we got that one. It out-Zeldas some Zelda games, and I think the music is really good. The puzzles get way too convoluted at times, though, sort of like Lufia II. Those puzzles where you push blocks on ice and they only stop when they hit a wall or something are just bad.
Alundra is an amazing game. Very dark, incredible music and challenging puzzles and enemies. I hold it up there with Story of Thor/Beyond Oasis and Soleil/Crusader of Centy as my top 3 action adventure games.
Alindra is better than any 2d Zelda. Also is more mature and dark, with great story, puzzles, top graphics, platform elements, secrets. This game have everything. Best 2d action adventure ever.
Popful Mail's translation is so powerful. I hope video games go back to insanely funny translations like that. This episode definitely got me interested in some of their other games. Exile has always been on the radar so good to know there's more to it than I thought.
I hope not, and I am happy that there seems to be a bit more of QA these days, even when translations are not done in-house. I understand that some local references might be hard to translate but this is the nature of the job. Blatantly changing them "because its funny" shows a clear lack of respect of the original material.
@@Sarahm2261 A bonus "abridged" gag translation would be fine with me. I just don't like translations pulling in dated gags as part of the main translation. It was cringe when WD filled their games with Bill Clinton and Wheaties and it's cringe today.
Just listened to the interview with Vic Retro Hangover did where you were a guest. It was great to publicly hear to from Vic after so long and it's clear that he still has a passion for this work but the realities of the modern market make the kinds of releases Working Designs did very difficult. Especially as most companies brought their localization efforts in-house or shifted to larger publishers.
It's like the original English dub of Sailor Moon; at the time, maybe I rolled my eyes at the '90s-ness of it all, but you start to really, really love it as more time passes. Working Designs' humor is so unique and fun when you compare it to the slick, polished, and either overtly political or overly sanitized stuff we have now. I can only imagine many early Japanese localizations with that 90s flavor now, especially Popful Mail and Vanguard Bandits.
More continues can be earned in Parasol Stars, they are hidden well though. The bubbles, or enemies when thrown into certain spaces on each stage, and you uncover hidden items. You can hit each area multiple times with bubbles or enemies, and each time the bonus items you uncover increase in point value, eventually you uncover a 100 yen coin, collecting it earns you a continue. Bonus doors in boss rooms (like Rainbow Islands) can be uncovered by collecting 3 "miracles" in each world, if you get 3 of the same, you get a bonus door on the boss stage, entering it and you can actually find a large Yen coin that awards you 99 continues, finding a rainbow necklace which pops up every 77 levels played, within the stage, also awards you 99 continues.
Came here to say this, but while I knew about the Miracle Doors, didn't know about the large Yen coin or the rainbow necklace! Been playing this game for going on three decades and still learning new things, no wonder it's my all-time favourite.
Joe I know you’ve never been one to overly flex your collection but I know it’s gotta be incredible. You actually inspired me to collect because of how knowledgeable you are. It’d be cool to see your collection. Maybe a montage style video going through your shelves. Thanks again for your content as always!
Wasn't there a GS episode where Joe and Dave would show us around their houses and show the games/consoles/gaming related stuff? Or was it like a fever dream of mine? 😀
Joe, you are without a shred of a doubt a true, honest, genuine soul. This episode is by far one of your very best. Working Designs games have always been really special to me. I have had many adventures and journeys with various titles, Dragon Force being number one for me personally. You have brought light to many in a world full of chaos just with this episode alone. I just wanted you to know this. Thank you Joe and we miss you Dave. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. BTW, I am heading over to my local BlockBuster Video to go rent Iron Storm I have always wanted to play and Beyond The Beyond really blows. Same story with me too. Damn you, Samson and your curse!
Wow. Hats off to Gamesack, I only grew up playing a handful of these titles and had NO IDEA of the rich history of Working designs. Thanks again Joe for an amazing video man!
Another thing of note for Growlanser is that the nicely animated opening cutscenes from the Japanese version were replaced with generic character art portraits and music. That always saddened me cause Satoshi Urushihara's artwork is always a sight to behold, and his animation is stellar too.
The Iron Storm translation drops the ball hard when it comes to naming the german units, especially the Navy. It´s a garbled mischmasch and more like a wordle task to figure out what is what.
Chances are it's romanized Katakana. Japanese gets weird when it translates foreign words. Ex: Google is officially Gugulu in Japan. Everything has to fit the syllables laid out in the kana. Definitely sounds like it was out of their wheelhouse and they should have got someone to find the correct German spelling.
@@Retro_Royal Internet in 1995-1996 was not the same as it is today. Internet access would have been on a per hour in the USA as AOL didn't start offering $20/month internet until later in the 90s, around 96 or or 97 or so. Wikipedia, inaccurate as it is, didn't exist yet. At some libraries you might be able to get access to some online encyclopedias like Britanica or you might have some CD Rom based encyclopedias. Regardless if they had really put forth their best effort they could have likely found someone or gone to a local library and researched names I imagine. I'm sure plenty of wargames in the 80s had already done the legwork there and I easily found books on them in my library at the time. Another possibility I just thought of is they may have run into character limit issues with unit names. I remember that was one of the problems with Lunar and a lot of Retro games have issues like that in the English versions. In either case, probably not their best work. It's a bit hard to guess which one it is without seeing the names. I did notice an obviously abbreviated name in the clip shown here though.
This episode is one of Game Sack's best. I LOVE Working Designs, and the coverage here goes into the awesome guides and manuals you'd get with these old games (which very, very few channels have). And if anyone is wondering what the rule is for localization, like, "when is it okay to add humor and such," the answer is this: it is pretty much only okay when Working Designs and ADV do it.
It's best to mention that Magic Knight Rayearth was directed by Rieko Kodama, the character artist of Sega Ninja, Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star II, one of the artists on Sonic the Hedgehog, the director on Phantasy Star IV, and the producer of Skies of Arcadia.
The VA for Popful Mail is wild. Thanks for covering this, was really curious about what other titles they had done other than Dragon Force and Silhouette Mirage
I wouldn't have been able to babe a single Working Designs game prior to watching this video. This is one of the reasons I love this channel. I learn so much about gaming history watching these videos. Really great stuff!
What an absolute treat and undertaking! This is a fantastic episode! Your hard work shows and was enjoyable from beginning to end. Your knowledge of Working Designs also shows in your skit at the end. I LOL'd! Keep up the excellent work!
I love the fact that they existed and brought over many games which would have stayed in Japan otherwise. Their packaging was also great, especially for the Lunar games on PlayStation. I didn't care for all those pop cultural references, which really just break the immersion. I have to be honest I'm glad they didn't localize Phantasy Star IV. Imagine Professor Holt hating to miss Melrose Place or a Zio's cult member sorting his ABBA collection... yeesh!
I had a love/hate relationship with Working Designs in the 16-bit era. On the one hand it was great to be able to play games from Japan that no-one else dared to bring to the US and I really enjoyed Cosmic Fantasy 2 on the TG-16 CD even if it's a SUPER basic and grindy RPG. On the other hand I absolutely hated how WD decided to make many of the games they translated unfairly hard with Exile 2 in particular basically being broken. I didn't realize that they managed to hang in there until 2005. Well done on this video! I really enjoyed it!
My thoughts exactly. I would add some of the stuff in the translations is quite cringe worthy and most probably not really faithful to the original text.
@@f937r Yes for those are are reading this and don't realize, video game rentals are illegal in Japan. It's also part of why the second hand market for video games is so big in Japan. If you're really curious you can for example see line by line examinations of the translation for Lunar 1 & 2 on LunarNET. They're not exactly massive changes overall. If the localization is ruined for you because a fairy NPC says Ghaleon has an ABBA collection then you probably aren't enjoying the story to begin with regardless of who did the localization.
My intro to working designs was Alundra and that is one of my all time favorites. The manual and map that comes with the game are beautiful! Great video Joe.
Technically the reason they went out of business was because they were going through the localization equivalent of development hell with the unreleased English version of Mystical Ninja Goemon Zero that they spent over 2 years on but was cancelled shortly before completion.
It was more than a "spat" between Bernie Stolar and Victor Ireland. Sega of American's management and then Bernie Stolar once he became Sega of America's CEO, blatantly delayed and hindered Working Designs repeatedly with every 2-D JRPG game Ireland wanted to localize and publish for the Sega Saturn because of some kind of "approval" and "quality assurance" process Stolar demanded of Working Designs, and Stolar having yelled at Ireland that 2-D Games and RPGs "don't sell in the US".. which was very wrong as 2-D fighting games like Marvel Vs Capcom and Street Fighter Alpha were HUGE in the arcades, and then FF 7 on the PS proved that RPGs can become a huge success with the right marketing and big time ad campaign. The arguments between Victor Ireland and Stolar and all the special "conditions" were major difficulties and are **why** Working Designs did NOT localize and publish the original Sega Saturn remakes of Lunar and Lunar 2 (named Lunar Silver Star Story and Lunar 2 Eternal Blue) in the US, and instead WD then started localizing the Playstation ports of those two Lunar remakes... Me and all the gamers that LOVED the Sega Saturn and RPGs back then were lucky we even got Dragon Force, Shining Wisdom, and the repeatedly delayed Magic Knight Rayearth action rpg localized for the Saturn in the US at all.... many were disappointed about the LUNAR remakes (the original Saturn versions) not getting localized back then... Most of this clash between Victor and Bernie Stolar and what was going on was revealed via EGM and Gamefan magazine interviews with Victor Ireland and many of Ireland's posts on RPG and Lunar fan Newsgroup message boards back in the mid 90's
Actually the Western versions of retro games are usually harder, since the US allowed game rentals while Japan didn't, so they were made harder to deter beating a rented game. There are exceptions though.
@@Furluge Release date seems to be a factor as well. Most of the games that were made harder for the US are from the '90s, whereas the ones that were made easier for the US are more likely to be older (and games of that era were already tough enough on their own). But this is not a hard and fast rule, of course!
@@3dmarth Yeah definitely not a hard and fast rule. You definitely pegged a correlation with difficulty in the 80s vs 90s. 90s was when game rentals started becoming more common. Devs were also figuring things out and the US version was often the first chance to do patches and changes. One example of this, or what seemed like one just based on guessing from what we got is Rockman/Mega Man. It seems like the devs were transitioning to an easier difficulty between #2's JP and US release. JP&US1 are the same. Its hard. JP2 has one difficulty which is the same as US2's hard mode. Then 3 to 6 are all the same and they're all easier than 1 and JP2. Seems like after JP2 came out they decided to lower the difficulty and implemented it in US2 then stuck with that that the entire series.
@@Furluge Interesting... I didn't know (or just forgot) that MM2 didn't have an easy ("Normal") mode in Japan. I wonder if the Japanese devs always intended to add an easier difficulty, but implemented it after the "gold" build had already gone out (wouldn't be the only time something like that happened), or if the US devs came up with the idea, but then the JP devs saw the positive reaction to MM2's gentler difficulty and decided to tweak the series going forward. Or maybe the most likely case is that games were getting a little easier in general, so the Mega Man series started to move in that direction. The US team just happened to be a little ahead of their time.
I think popful mail, lunar, and arc the lad collection were probably my top 3 working designs games. I still need to get around to playing magic knight rayearth tho.
While WD's rewritten dialogue might be a bit over-the-top, it looks like it makes the games more enjoyable, interesting, and memorable. JRPGs are notorious for their overabundance of dry, repetitive dialogue (depending on the game, of course), and I can think of a bunch of more recent games that could probably benefit from some punched-up translation work (whether WD or Woolsey-styled).
I disagree, I'd like the product to be as close to the original as possible and within reason (translation isn't a perfect 1 to 1 especially with different languages). Anything else is essentially censorship imo
I grew up in Redding CA, and Working Designs was someone of a source of local pride. I was working at a Software Etc (now Gamestop of course) when Magic Knight Rayearth came out on the Saturn, and they hand-delivered us 3 copies. I was able to snag one, but holy hell I wish I had just taken the whole case. :)
Really glad you covered this! I still love playing Alundra and Elemental Gearbolt, and I definitely agree that Working designs brought some real gems to this side of the world, even though they needlessly cranked up the difficulty. I for one am very thankful for those Un-worked Designs patches.
YOU BROUGHT BACK THE FART! AND ON A VIDEO ABOUT ONE OF MY FAVORITE GAME COMPANIES. God bless you! I picked up a few of Vic's own copies in the mid 2000s signed by him, some of my most treasured possesions.
They changed an entire character in Vay from having wind based teleportation, to being cursed with Eternal Seismic Flatulence. This also gave them the "clever" idea to change the name of the bronze helmet to a "filtration mask" and forced you to put it on all of your characters before being teleported, or you get a game over. If that isn't "changing the story", I don't know what is.
I know they get a lot of hate these days, but those Working Designs’ games are some of my favorites! I love the packaging and translations! And back in the 90’s, they were one of the few companies bringing over Japanese games that might not have been localized otherwise.
@@Will45_ They localized and published the games over here in the U.S. I think it’s just a tendency of the language, for example, we call a ton Nintendo properties “Nintendo games” even if they’re not developed by Nintendo, but only published by them.
Zach Meston and I used to talk about games a lot on AIM back in the day. He was a member of a game collectors group on a forum we all used back then. I have both of those Lunar game guides still. He let me know that all the pictures were in them were taken with a digital camera off of one of their Dev machine monitors.
The question isn’t whether a translation is literal, the question is the translation faithful to the source. People might not appreciate a translation that isn’t faithful to the themes, messages, tone, and characterization of the source material. People might enjoy a translation that isn’t faithful to the source but other’s may have wanted the original story faithfully told. Framing the issue with translation as whether it is literal misrepresents the issue. A parody translation might be popular and fun but desiring a faithful translation is a legitimate desire. I played these games in my youth and I don’t remember the translations well. Now that I’m older I have grown fatigued with reference humor and would appreciate faithful translation.
Yessss!!!! You did an overview of Silhouette Mirage PS1, thank you, been recommending it for years. I feel the exact same way when I play it, I pop it in ready for a run n gun, but then you remember you kinda gotta play by the game's rules/mechanics, but after 1 level, I'm sucked back in and can't wait to get to the next level. I love this game. And apparently in Japan, this game was much more religion based, Silhouette and Mirage being good and evil, I remember reading somewhere the entire story was changed(due to possibly Sony being scared people would think it's a Christian game or maybe there was too heavy an emphasis on it, I'd love to know the full story). I would really like to see how deep they went with the religious stuff, how far the rabbit hole went in game. I love games where the goal is to kill the devil, Ghosts n Goblins series, Cursed Castilla, Castlevania series, Cuphead, it's a fun sub genre I collect. And it goes with my absolute favorite sub genre to collect and play of all time, 32-bit 2D beautiful sidescrolling action games. What a video, more Sackaltine, please.
Did you know that in the Japanese version, the weapons you buy in the shop don't drain your spirit? Also, everything was cheaper so you didn't have to wail on nearly every enemy for gold coins? I love SM and I'm glad we at least got to play it, but I can't forgive Wrecking Designs for how dirty they did it.
@@starlitalpha7 Really? No, I didn't know that, and I love SM. Thanks for letting me know, I can't believe Working Designs did that, I had no idea. In hindsight, it totally hurts the game, if you want to get anywhere in the NTSC version, you MUST collect those coins, constantly balance and choose which shot to power up and purchase, I can see how it's artificially made harder. That part of the challenge wasn't baked into the gameplay from the start, it was inserted after the fact, wow, I see that now. I need to play the original Japanese version. Looks like I'm gonna buy a Japanese copy for PS1 or Saturn, though I'm not gonna feel bad if I play a burned copy on my modded Saturn or PS2 first, since I own the American PS1 release. Who am I kidding, I usually never feel bad playing a burned copy of a game, especially when it's something super expensive that I'll never buy, like Super Tempo on Saturn(which I think is a very fun game that not many will experience).
Can you imagine back when the internet was so slow it took overnight to send a game? Yes Joe I am old so I remember those days, my first internet usage was in 1992 or 1993 so there wasn't any pictures, video, audio at all. None of the students were at all impressed but our teacher said it'd be big. Guess Mr. Savard RIP knew what he was talking about. I had bought an ink jet a year or so later and he was impressed with it's quality and cheapness compared to laser printers. That was with my $2000 386 which had I believe like a 120 MB hard drive.
@@solarstrike33 Had to look that up. Yup, all thanks to one teacher that loved computers. The school always had a computer room but he got a whole new room renovated and air conditioned with all new macs and laser printers. Honestly it was more than your average Jr High school had at the time. Looking back I wish I had learned more about computers in the 80's and 90s, maybe I'd have been making video games instead of just playing them.
In Silpheed The Lost Planet, I believe the voices in the cutscenes were English already in the Japanese version. That's why they don't sound like Working Designs' work. Amazing video, by the way. So much work... (and designs!)
Glad as usual to see Popful Mail here. I freaking ADORE that game! And I 100% agree with everything you said, I love the liberties they took with the translation and I welcome the added challenge too. You must be quite the gamer to not consider this game to be too tough. For the average gamer I imagine this game will be tough as freaking nails. Most seem to get stuck on the Golem boss, and for good reason. He is freaking TOUGH! Good news is if you can beat him then you should be able to beat the game as it doesn't get much tougher than that guy.
Personally I hated them, changing dialogues and sometimes story was bad enough but cutting or censoring games was annoying, but thanks to them I learned japanese.
This will be controversial, but I don't see the problem with spicing up random NPCs like they did in Alundra and such. I don't think they ever drastically changed the stories in any of their games. Although, I do have a problem with them screwing up the game balance in nearly every one of their releases.
@@maxxdahl6062 Some people are just huge sticklers for accuracy, perhaps not realizing that a lot of figures of speech and wordplay do not translate 1:1, if ever. As for me, as long as it isn't completely butchered to appeal to a "wider" audience, I don't have a problem.
On one hand I appreciate WD for giving gamers a chance to play games we might never have played otherwise. On the other hand...they had a nasty habit of writing script wholecloth, introducing nasty bugs (like NISA), and cranking up the difficulty for _reasons._ Bill Clinton jokes. In _Lunar._ Seriously?
I'm betting the main reason for the added difficulty was to prevent rentals from hurting sales (though they could have made it difficult exclusively for rental stores while leaving the original difficulty for retail).
They really aren't with bothering with except in perhaps one instance. They're not particularly hard. Also keep in mind that video game rentals are illegal in Japan but not in the USA which is where some of the changes stem from. Regional differences in difficulty like this were very common at the time.
I just started playing alundra two weeks ago. My first time playing a working designs game. I’ve heard of their legendary status for years. There is a character named Bonaire in it. And when I realized what Bonaire sounds like if you say it out loud after the character says “that girl is real Bonaire material” I knew I was in for something special.
As a huge RPG nerd, I have such mixed feelings about Working Designs. Predictably, I'm not a fan of their humor or localization decisions, though I have more issue with them fundamentally altering a game's balance than the dialogue changes, but also, if it weren't for them, many of these game would have never had any release outside Japan at all. They also made some amazing box sets with collectables as standard releases, the Lunar Complete games being excellent examples. But I still feel like they made each game they touched worse in some way or another... it's like they both deeply respected the source material while simultaneously doing the exact opposite xD Either way, that ending skit was spot-on
I can enjoy their localization decisions more in some games than others, but I feel the dated references in particular have become more endearing with time. Political jokes and such tend to age very poorly, but a movie quote or mention of a pop-culture figure from the day (without a loaded or obvious intention) is at least inoffensive at its worst and vaguely nostalgic at its best.
Those aren't limited editions, those are the normal editions. That's just how they rolled. The difficulty changes are, except for perhaps one game, not that big a deal a deal and pretty on par for the era. If you find Lunar 1 on SGCD there's no way you're finishing anything in that time period as it is quite easy even after the changes.
@@Furluge I know they aren't actually LE's, but they very much have the same energy as modern limited editions, I was more going for ease of conversation. And it isn't that they made the games "too hard" for the most part, just that the changes they made just seemed arbitrary or unnecessary. It's more the principle of changing things because they felt like it without the knowledge of the original creative team, rather than what those changes were. I'd feel the same way if they had made the games easier
@@HybridAngelZero It's really just a product of the games market at the time. Lots of changes to difficulty between region were common. If you play retro games you have to learn to accept it.
@@HybridAngelZero Oh but seriously though, I think it was important to point out these are the regular releases because we got all that for standard price. And this was in an age where releases like this weren't a thing.
I remember really treasuring the Working Designs games back in the day. Not only was the packaging always top-notch (for instance, even the *plastic* for the Saturn cases was of higher quality than most games for the system), but they had a 'feel' that love and care was put into them and that they weren't just shovel-ware cash grab ports. I was a bit late to the Saturn scene, but I managed to buy both Magic Knight Rayearth and Panzer Dragoon Saga when they came out, and, honestly, I enjoyed Rayearth more because it gave the impression of being the result of a labor of love. Even though I know I'm *supposed* to think Saga was the best thing on the system, it just felt hollow by comparison. On the other hand, the translations could sometimes be a bit irritating. I remember watching the Silver Star Story Complete "Making Of" disc and being extremely annoyed when they mentioned that they decided that a character, who was a hermit in the original Japanese version, actually needed to live alone because he "had bad gas". I think I actually rolled my eyes when they said that.
The translations are one thing, but Working Designs' arbitrary gameplay alterations (often making the games substantially more difficult than their Japanese counterparts) have kept me from seriously diving into their releases.
Have you considered changing hobbies to knitting? With perhaps one exception they aren't hard at all and are about on par with other releases at the time. You dont ever need to grind in the Lunar games for example.
@@Furluge Not big on knitting. Model kits are more my speed. Glad you enjoy the added challenge of Working Designs' releases. Generally speaking I just prefer to enjoy things as close to their home territory release as possible.
@@delta7890 There's literally only one set that's no longer maintained and it only exists because of one autist who does nothing but shit on WD, because, like you he came to retro games later and thinks they're all too hard.
I Joe. I've been following your program for a few years. The show content is impressive in a technical, creative and descriptive sense. It is brilliant in the narration with a humorous and sardonic touch. Parabéns!
When people talk about Working Designs, one point that seems to enter the discussion often is that JRPGs are written "dry" in Japanese and deserve to be "improved" by translators changing the story. I can't comment on the changes Working Designs made because I have never played any game they have translated. I don't need to, because I'm literate in Japanese. On that topic I can write with authority. And I would like to say in the strongest possible terms that if you have been told Japanese RPG dialogue is dry, YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO. JRPGs are if anything an oasis where creative and inventive writing flourishes in ways that would be difficult to accomplish or censored in other mediums. Now, I could simply assert this, and my argument would have equal weight to those who claim the writing is dry. It wouldn't be _quite_ equal weight because I actually know Japanese and my opinion is informed, but I can't easily prove that to an outside observer. Instead, I'd like to cite a few examples of creative Japanese writing that may be familiar even to people who only know English. ・The phrase "Puff-Puff" from Dragon Quest ・The dialogue of Ayla from Chrono Trigger ・The entire caveman chapter of Live A Live ・The character Selphie Tilmitt from Final Fantasy VIII ・Mother 2/Earthbound in general ・The Ruins of Alph in Pokémon GSC/HGSS ・The TALK function across the entire Megami Tensei series For the purposes of the above list I limited myself to only the most obvious examples from the most well-known games, but there are far more and if anything obscure, untranslated games are especially creative. These are also examples that are so extreme they survived translation, most creativity and nuance suffers greatly when translated. I challenge anyone to call any of those examples "dry". From an RPG with no dialogue, to having a chapter where all dialogue is in code, to coining a new word and so much more, JRPGs are anything BUT dry and boring. This lie that JRPGs have terrible uncreative writing pisses me off because every time it's repeated another person decides not to learn Japanese. Because of that, I'd like to stay on my soapbox for a moment longer and be very direct. If you like Japanese RPGs, LEARN JAPANESE. You can learn Japanese using JRPGs as a textbook. It isn't even hard. Well, it is, a little, but it's mostly just tedious memorization. That's something anyone can do, especially JRPG fans. If you can memorize the names of 900 Pokémon, I assure you that you can memorize 2,000 kanji. You don't even need all 2,000. Most JRPGs are written at about a 5th grade reading level. You can get through 90% of them with only the easiest 100 kanji and a good electronic dictionary like Aedict. If you love JRPGs, if you truly love the way they make you feel and inspire you, you owe it to yourself to learn Japanese and read their original text. Don't get a translator to tell you what a character is saying, hear their voice yourself. It makes every moment so much more magical. An hour or less of studying every day can change your life. Please, at least consider it. Thank you for reading my manifesto, I hope you enjoyed being subjected to it as much as I enjoyed getting it out of my system.
I really hate the dichotomy that you either want hyper literal translations or super liberal translations that play fast and loose. The fact of the matter is that Japan and its culture isn't incomprehensible to English speaking audiences. Cultural references and quirks should only be removed if absolutely necessary. My problem with Working Designs' translation philosophy is that, for the most part, they just made a bunch of stuff up and weren't adapting anything for English speakers. They just felt clever adding in their lame jokes and writing.
Popful Mail...if I ever travel back in time to 1994, I will move heaven and earth to get a Sega CD and a copy of this. Popful Mail was way ahead of its time.
Hey everyone. Vic Ireland contacted me with a few clarifications that I'd like to share:
0:37 - Ireland wrote mostly for Turbo Play, which was a sister publication from the folks who made VG&CE. I only have one issue of that magazine sadly. That and the other one available for download on the internet do not feature him credited, so I had to go with my observations. I would've loved to show his name on an article or review. EDIT: Found and instance of an Ys III review written by Vic in the December 1991 issue of Videogames & Computer Entertainment (after or around the same time as the first TurboGrafx-16 releases from Working Designs came out, so I didn't look far enough ahead in my search). archive.org/details/vgce_91-12/page/n45/mode/2up?view=theater
18:31 - I say that they re-recorded the cut scenes since they couldn't get the isolated audio tracks. This is not true. They re-recorded them because the Japanese version's audio was weak. I certainly agree with that assessment.
20:52 - Vic says he implemented the pay to save mechanic to prevent "save scumming back when I cared how people play". He seems to regret its inclusion. I still say that it didn't affect my playthoughs at all, though I can see why people would object to it.
23:00 - There is actually some Working Designs humor in Iron Storm. According to Vic "if Japan wins where the US eventually stages an economic invasion of Japan, flooding it with inexpensive autos, TVs, radios, and gadgets. The resulting trade imbalance enslaves Japan to the US. " I would've loved to show this.
34:12 - Regarding the increased difficulty in Alundra, Vic says "I didn't only buff monsters in Alundra. It was more of a balancing. For the final boss I reduced its HP and increased its attack power. The Japanese version took FOREVER to kill. It was a tiresome attack sponge. I made it easier to kill, but more deadly if you got hit so the battle was a more reasonable length. Someone who formerly complained bitterly about WD "meddling" on Alundra wrote me an apology letter after they played the Japanese version and realized that I did inarguably change at least some of it for the better. Also, the opening animation with the rock music was just for the US version. Did not exist in the Japanese."
39:44 - Magic Knight Rayearth. I probably should've mentioned that the hard drive crash happened at Sega in Japan before Working Designs got the game. I did when I talked about this one in the "Last Officially Released Games 2" episode. Regarding if it was just FMV data or not, Vic clears things up with "Rayearth source code was absolutely partially lost on the Japanese side in a crash before we got it. Anyone that says it was just FMV lost has no idea what they're talking about. Tim had to really jump through a crazy amount of hoops and hack out chunks of binary, already compiled code from the retail Japanese release to fill in the gaps in code libraries that were lost or damaged to eventually get the English version to actually work."
45:45 - I said Vanguard Bandits' Japanese title was Epic Stella when it's actually Epica Stella. Vic adds some more fun trivia about the game: "Vanguard Bandits" was actually called Epica Stella in Japan, not Epic Stella. Vanguard Bandits was an accidental title. We were spitballing after we got the legal notice from Midway about Detonator Gauntlet infringing and someone jokingly said "Panty Bandits" to someone else some distance from me and I misheard it as "Vanguard Bandits." It actually was a way better title than Detonator Gauntlet, so it worked out OK. Also, the surround assist feature of the game (where if you have allies adjacent to an enemy you are attacking, that helps you) that really improves the strategy did not exist in the Japanese version. Ken worked a long time on that to get it right and it turned out great.
I'll add to this post if Vic adds more clarifications.
Hi Vic!
Hah, thats awesome that he watched and added some more info!
Whoa, Vic contacted you? Awesome. I tried to get a hold of him a while back, but I guess I was reaching out to a dead email...or maybe he never saw it. Oops.
Still, that's really cool. I know Coury of My Life in Gaming tried reaching out to him a few times too, in the hopes of getting an interview with him or history about Working Designs in general.
@@PixelPhoenix He's on twitter, but he largely vanished from the internet after the disastrous launch of Summon Night 6.
@@cj_iwakura Why was it disastrous? Poor sales?
This is probably one of the most anticipated episodes of Game Sack for me, and seeing the duration of it, I applaud your hard work Joe. Thank you for making my Saturday nights great!
Glad I’m not the only one so pumped for an hour long episode hell yeah let’s go baby
@@slycooper4067 Hell yeah my Thievius Racconus :)
@@BladeBlur ❤️ been my username/gamer tag since the first game dropped. (Cooper is also my name IRL) Quick story I hope makes you laugh:
My mother purchased a new Chrome Book. I drove over to help her get started and get some of the stuff she needed on the thing etc. I initially used my google account to set it up, added hers after, forgot to log out before I left. She called me a little after and said “uhh why did you make my Google name SPY COOPER Or something?” 😝
@@slycooper4067 haha cute story :)
I immediately clicked on this before seeing your comment, and couldn't agree more!
What do you think of Working Designs? Love 'em? Hate 'em? Do you wish they had localized Chrono Trigger? Final Fantasy 7?
Glad they didn't touch Chrono Trigger but I liked them well enough, better than no translation at all.
sweet video drop! i love working designs more than dislike, and their nsfw jokes snuck into magic knight rayearth got me so confused when i was a teen playing it for the first time.
Hate them. I'd rather have the original voice acting in my games and I don't really enjoy their usual gameplay changes. Doesn't help that the games are super expensive nowadays.
Oh, the things they would have made Barret say!
"I pity the fool who don't fight for the planet!"
Are you having issues with your microphone or did you compress the audio too much?
Best episode ever! Thanks Joe.
I miss Working Designs. They really brought alot of the rpg games out here. Not to mention the love they put in their product cases. Especially when it came to collectors sets. We really don't see them much anymore which is sad.
As a Lunar fan, I have a love genuinely/love ironically relationship with Working Designs. I will admit that a lot of their earlier translations have aged poorly... but a lot of translations from that era have aged even worse. And yeah, the changes they made to the diffculty is unacceptable. Their PS1 era translations were honestly fine, though, aside from a few questionable line changes.
Personally I think their song dubs were great, the boat song in Lunar Silver Star Story in particular I think is better than the Japanese version.
Their packaging and collector's editions are absolutely gorgeous though, you can't deny that.
And now Lunar is getting a release on the Sega Genesis Mini II coming in October! The Sega CD versions of the Lunar games are confirmed for the Japanese version, but I'm hoping they'll come to the American version and help flesh out the roster of rpgs.
lunar needs to be on steam
@@PaleHorseShabuShabu I wouldn't get your hopes up.
I'm trying to find a way to pitch my 'Lunar story.' Hopefully, Victor Ireland will turn up soon. I feel very confident that he'd enjoy this!
I wouldn't say so. Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, EarthBound, Pokémon Red and Blue, Final Fantasy IX, Vagrant Story, Phantasy Star IV... all of these games had great translations by that time. Games like FF7, Tactics and Legend of Dragoon were certainly lackluster in this regard, but it's not like every game was still incomprensible like Breath of Fire 2 by then.
Working Designs was the only reason we could play these games outside of Japan and back in the days that was awesome but nowadays i mostly patch the games with un-worked patches because they often changed and rebalanced to much in my opinion.
Have you actually tried playing some of the games unpatched? Popful Mail specifically becomes a complete joke to get through. They made the game a LOT more interesting difficultly wise.
@@ProfKisuto i played the unpatched game many years ago and after that video i started to replay Popful Mail on my RG351 and I must say I prefer that its easier.
It's so weird that Working Designs clearly loved these games, and also decided to mangle them.
It's like... "hey! I feel so passionately about these niche Japanese games that Americans don't get to enjoy! I strongly feel they would find fans here! I want Westerns to enjoy these cool treasures! BUT ONLY IF I MANGLE THEM FIRST"
Good idea. I should do that as well.
My best friends family in HS sponsored a foreign exchange student from Japan. So I got to play Japanese titles...with live Japanese to English translation!
I miss them so much. I don’t have many things left from them, except my Growlanser ps2 release.
Thank you for making this episode.
I loved how they snuck little messages in their magazine ads in the copyright section :)
I was lucky to snag a copy of each lunar for PS and well, wish upon a star.
"they even made french people seem normal", i almost spit my coffee over that one.
18:28
Everyone loves a good french joke. EVERYONE!!! I bet there's someone in Cambodia laughing at french people right now.
Love Popful Mail and its legendary English dubbing and I especially like that line. The voice of said purple gargoyle thing sounds weirdly similar to the Big Brother show's Zingbot and like he sucked helium outta balloon.
@@Will45_Except maybe french people 😊 They mostly make jokes about U.S. : fun things mass shootings, opioid crisis, rampant racism etc.
@@remka2000 frog detected
My friends and I were obsessed with that Lunar theme song when it first came out! Hearing it brings back memories!
Working Designs brought some pretty great games over here. Their translations don’t bother me. As long as the basic idea of the story comes across I don’t care if some random NPC says some dated 90s humor. Alundra is one of the best games ever. I’m definitely glad we got that one. It out-Zeldas some Zelda games, and I think the music is really good. The puzzles get way too convoluted at times, though, sort of like Lufia II. Those puzzles where you push blocks on ice and they only stop when they hit a wall or something are just bad.
Alundra is an amazing game. Very dark, incredible music and challenging puzzles and enemies. I hold it up there with Story of Thor/Beyond Oasis and Soleil/Crusader of Centy as my top 3 action adventure games.
Alindra is better than any 2d Zelda. Also is more mature and dark, with great story, puzzles, top graphics, platform elements, secrets. This game have everything. Best 2d action adventure ever.
I don't remember any convoluted puzzles in Lufia II. Then again I haven't played through it in about a decade, maybe it's time to give it another go.
Popful Mail's translation is so powerful. I hope video games go back to insanely funny translations like that. This episode definitely got me interested in some of their other games. Exile has always been on the radar so good to know there's more to it than I thought.
I hope not, and I am happy that there seems to be a bit more of QA these days, even when translations are not done in-house. I understand that some local references might be hard to translate but this is the nature of the job. Blatantly changing them "because its funny" shows a clear lack of respect of the original material.
@remka2000 what if it was a extra with a game you can use after the 1st playthrough?
@@remka2000 ACK!!!
@@remka2000do you feel this way about Ghost Stories and MXC
@@Sarahm2261 A bonus "abridged" gag translation would be fine with me. I just don't like translations pulling in dated gags as part of the main translation. It was cringe when WD filled their games with Bill Clinton and Wheaties and it's cringe today.
Just listened to the interview with Vic Retro Hangover did where you were a guest. It was great to publicly hear to from Vic after so long and it's clear that he still has a passion for this work but the realities of the modern market make the kinds of releases Working Designs did very difficult. Especially as most companies brought their localization efforts in-house or shifted to larger publishers.
That ending skit alone earned the thumbs up. Thanks for the trip down amnesia lane!
lot of nostalgia in this one for me. I always enjoyed the dumb and silly translations. Sometimes you get a chuckle sometimes you don't, its all good
It's like the original English dub of Sailor Moon; at the time, maybe I rolled my eyes at the '90s-ness of it all, but you start to really, really love it as more time passes. Working Designs' humor is so unique and fun when you compare it to the slick, polished, and either overtly political or overly sanitized stuff we have now. I can only imagine many early Japanese localizations with that 90s flavor now, especially Popful Mail and Vanguard Bandits.
More continues can be earned in Parasol Stars, they are hidden well though. The bubbles, or enemies when thrown into certain spaces on each stage, and you uncover hidden items. You can hit each area multiple times with bubbles or enemies, and each time the bonus items you uncover increase in point value, eventually you uncover a 100 yen coin, collecting it earns you a continue. Bonus doors in boss rooms (like Rainbow Islands) can be uncovered by collecting 3 "miracles" in each world, if you get 3 of the same, you get a bonus door on the boss stage, entering it and you can actually find a large Yen coin that awards you 99 continues, finding a rainbow necklace which pops up every 77 levels played, within the stage, also awards you 99 continues.
Came here to say this, but while I knew about the Miracle Doors, didn't know about the large Yen coin or the rainbow necklace! Been playing this game for going on three decades and still learning new things, no wonder it's my all-time favourite.
oh so that's how i kept getting 99 continues lol
Joe I know you’ve never been one to overly flex your collection but I know it’s gotta be incredible. You actually inspired me to collect because of how knowledgeable you are. It’d be cool to see your collection. Maybe a montage style video going through your shelves. Thanks again for your content as always!
Yes please
I second this.
Yeah Joe and while you're at it, can I borrow your snatcher
Wasn't there a GS episode where Joe and Dave would show us around their houses and show the games/consoles/gaming related stuff? Or was it like a fever dream of mine? 😀
@@ILikeGoils no you're right and you can still view it. Great episode. Must be like 10 years old at least
I remember hearing this game company's name despite never playing a game from them.
As it's over an hour long, we're in for the long haul!
Vanguard Bandits is one of my favorite games ever, and it's great to see someone else even know it exists, let alone appreciates it's quality
This might be the most expensive episode in GS history.
In terms of the total cost of the games covered or just the overall production value?
@@Sagi.Baten.Kaitos I'm guessing I was talking about cost of games covered.
I hope the script writer for Albert Odyssey's translation never apologizes to anyone. That thing was a masterpiece
The ebonics joke made me spit out my drink
The 90's were a wild time
Joe, you are without a shred of a doubt a true, honest, genuine soul. This episode is by far one of your very best. Working Designs games have always been really special to me. I have had many adventures and journeys with various titles, Dragon Force being number one for me personally. You have brought light to many in a world full of chaos just with this episode alone. I just wanted you to know this. Thank you Joe and we miss you Dave. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
BTW, I am heading over to my local BlockBuster Video to go rent Iron Storm I have always wanted to play and Beyond The Beyond really blows. Same story with me too. Damn you, Samson and your curse!
I was first made aware of Working Design thanks to Game Sack, so this is perfect.
Same! I knew of Lunar and maybe another game but didn’t know a lot of other games I’ve seen/read/heard about were from them as well.
Never heard until now 🤷🏽♂️
Ignorant fool I am…
@@lifespanofafry1534 not at all they weren’t exactly a hot topic of conversation back in the day and even now
@@lifespanofafry1534 and now you do know more about them so that’s a huge win in my opinion
@@slycooper4067 🤗🤗🤗
As always, top notch. Every single week I’ll take a peek for however long a sack needs to be
Wow. Hats off to Gamesack, I only grew up playing a handful of these titles and had NO IDEA of the rich history of Working designs. Thanks again Joe for an amazing video man!
The translation notes were the best thing and I really wish others had done it back then (or even now)
This was one of the best episodes of GameSack I've seen in a long while.
Another thing of note for Growlanser is that the nicely animated opening cutscenes from the Japanese version were replaced with generic character art portraits and music. That always saddened me cause Satoshi Urushihara's artwork is always a sight to behold, and his animation is stellar too.
The Iron Storm translation drops the ball hard when it comes to naming the german units, especially the Navy. It´s a garbled mischmasch and more like a wordle task to figure out what is what.
Chances are it's romanized Katakana. Japanese gets weird when it translates foreign words. Ex: Google is officially Gugulu in Japan. Everything has to fit the syllables laid out in the kana.
Definitely sounds like it was out of their wheelhouse and they should have got someone to find the correct German spelling.
@@Furluge only reasonable explanation but still a huge fail. How hard could it have been to look up the names back then, internet was already around.
@@Retro_Royal Internet in 1995-1996 was not the same as it is today. Internet access would have been on a per hour in the USA as AOL didn't start offering $20/month internet until later in the 90s, around 96 or or 97 or so. Wikipedia, inaccurate as it is, didn't exist yet.
At some libraries you might be able to get access to some online encyclopedias like Britanica or you might have some CD Rom based encyclopedias. Regardless if they had really put forth their best effort they could have likely found someone or gone to a local library and researched names I imagine. I'm sure plenty of wargames in the 80s had already done the legwork there and I easily found books on them in my library at the time.
Another possibility I just thought of is they may have run into character limit issues with unit names. I remember that was one of the problems with Lunar and a lot of Retro games have issues like that in the English versions.
In either case, probably not their best work. It's a bit hard to guess which one it is without seeing the names. I did notice an obviously abbreviated name in the clip shown here though.
This episode is one of Game Sack's best. I LOVE Working Designs, and the coverage here goes into the awesome guides and manuals you'd get with these old games (which very, very few channels have).
And if anyone is wondering what the rule is for localization, like, "when is it okay to add humor and such," the answer is this: it is pretty much only okay when Working Designs and ADV do it.
Every WD localization was basically like Ghost Stories.
@@kekeke8988 Not even close to what Ghost Stories was. WD changed fluff dialog, not the plots of the games.
It's best to mention that Magic Knight Rayearth was directed by Rieko Kodama, the character artist of Sega Ninja, Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star II, one of the artists on Sonic the Hedgehog, the director on Phantasy Star IV, and the producer of Skies of Arcadia.
The VA for Popful Mail is wild. Thanks for covering this, was really curious about what other titles they had done other than Dragon Force and Silhouette Mirage
"Games with good stories cannot be made without CD-Rom."
Chrono Trigger: *farts*
I wouldn't have been able to babe a single Working Designs game prior to watching this video.
This is one of the reasons I love this channel. I learn so much about gaming history watching these videos. Really great stuff!
Personally I like fan translations most of the time a lot of love goes into them.
I always wanted to fall asleep hearing about the entire Working Designs catalog, thanks Game Sack!
Hahah... This was my Sunday and Monday night. Some of the best sleep I've had recently
What an absolute treat and undertaking! This is a fantastic episode! Your hard work shows and was enjoyable from beginning to end. Your knowledge of Working Designs also shows in your skit at the end. I LOL'd! Keep up the excellent work!
I love the fact that they existed and brought over many games which would have stayed in Japan otherwise. Their packaging was also great, especially for the Lunar games on PlayStation. I didn't care for all those pop cultural references, which really just break the immersion. I have to be honest I'm glad they didn't localize Phantasy Star IV. Imagine Professor Holt hating to miss Melrose Place or a Zio's cult member sorting his ABBA collection... yeesh!
I had a love/hate relationship with Working Designs in the 16-bit era. On the one hand it was great to be able to play games from Japan that no-one else dared to bring to the US and I really enjoyed Cosmic Fantasy 2 on the TG-16 CD even if it's a SUPER basic and grindy RPG. On the other hand I absolutely hated how WD decided to make many of the games they translated unfairly hard with Exile 2 in particular basically being broken.
I didn't realize that they managed to hang in there until 2005. Well done on this video! I really enjoyed it!
I liked their sega cd stuff, they mostly fell out with me afterwards in the PS1, etc era.
[REDACTED] This is why you don't make a comment while the video is still running.
My thoughts exactly. I would add some of the stuff in the translations is quite cringe worthy and most probably not really faithful to the original text.
They did it to combat the video game rental market. It's one of the reasons why games brought to America had unnecessary difficulty increases.
@@f937r Yes for those are are reading this and don't realize, video game rentals are illegal in Japan. It's also part of why the second hand market for video games is so big in Japan.
If you're really curious you can for example see line by line examinations of the translation for Lunar 1 & 2 on LunarNET. They're not exactly massive changes overall. If the localization is ruined for you because a fairy NPC says Ghaleon has an ABBA collection then you probably aren't enjoying the story to begin with regardless of who did the localization.
My intro to working designs was Alundra and that is one of my all time favorites. The manual and map that comes with the game are beautiful! Great video Joe.
Pretty odd i was just watching sega lord x’s video on working designs on the Sega CD. Now this drops? Cool 😎
Technically the reason they went out of business was because they were going through the localization equivalent of development hell with the unreleased English version of Mystical Ninja Goemon Zero that they spent over 2 years on but was cancelled shortly before completion.
Thank you scea :p
It was more than a "spat" between Bernie Stolar and Victor Ireland. Sega of American's management and then Bernie Stolar once he became Sega of America's CEO, blatantly delayed and hindered Working Designs repeatedly with every 2-D JRPG game Ireland wanted to localize and publish for the Sega Saturn because of some kind of "approval" and "quality assurance" process Stolar demanded of Working Designs, and Stolar having yelled at Ireland that 2-D Games and RPGs "don't sell in the US".. which was very wrong as 2-D fighting games like Marvel Vs Capcom and Street Fighter Alpha were HUGE in the arcades, and then FF 7 on the PS proved that RPGs can become a huge success with the right marketing and big time ad campaign.
The arguments between Victor Ireland and Stolar and all the special "conditions" were major difficulties and are **why** Working Designs did NOT localize and publish the original Sega Saturn remakes of Lunar and Lunar 2 (named Lunar Silver Star Story and Lunar 2 Eternal Blue) in the US, and instead WD then started localizing the Playstation ports of those two Lunar remakes...
Me and all the gamers that LOVED the Sega Saturn and RPGs back then were lucky we even got Dragon Force, Shining Wisdom, and the repeatedly delayed Magic Knight Rayearth action rpg localized for the Saturn in the US at all....
many were disappointed about the LUNAR remakes (the original Saturn versions) not getting localized back then... Most of this clash between Victor and Bernie Stolar and what was going on was revealed via EGM and Gamefan magazine interviews with Victor Ireland and many of Ireland's posts on RPG and Lunar fan Newsgroup message boards back in the mid 90's
Just so happy to see Game Sack finally mention Space Harrier.
"Japanese versions of games are almost always the harder versions."
Working Designs: "Hold my beer..."
Actually the Western versions of retro games are usually harder, since the US allowed game rentals while Japan didn't, so they were made harder to deter beating a rented game. There are exceptions though.
It generally depends on genre and other factors. For genres popular in the USA often those had harder versions as game rentals are illegal in Japan.
@@Furluge Release date seems to be a factor as well. Most of the games that were made harder for the US are from the '90s, whereas the ones that were made easier for the US are more likely to be older (and games of that era were already tough enough on their own). But this is not a hard and fast rule, of course!
@@3dmarth Yeah definitely not a hard and fast rule. You definitely pegged a correlation with difficulty in the 80s vs 90s. 90s was when game rentals started becoming more common. Devs were also figuring things out and the US version was often the first chance to do patches and changes.
One example of this, or what seemed like one just based on guessing from what we got is Rockman/Mega Man. It seems like the devs were transitioning to an easier difficulty between #2's JP and US release. JP&US1 are the same. Its hard. JP2 has one difficulty which is the same as US2's hard mode. Then 3 to 6 are all the same and they're all easier than 1 and JP2. Seems like after JP2 came out they decided to lower the difficulty and implemented it in US2 then stuck with that that the entire series.
@@Furluge Interesting... I didn't know (or just forgot) that MM2 didn't have an easy ("Normal") mode in Japan. I wonder if the Japanese devs always intended to add an easier difficulty, but implemented it after the "gold" build had already gone out (wouldn't be the only time something like that happened), or if the US devs came up with the idea, but then the JP devs saw the positive reaction to MM2's gentler difficulty and decided to tweak the series going forward.
Or maybe the most likely case is that games were getting a little easier in general, so the Mega Man series started to move in that direction. The US team just happened to be a little ahead of their time.
I think popful mail, lunar, and arc the lad collection were probably my top 3 working designs games. I still need to get around to playing magic knight rayearth tho.
While WD's rewritten dialogue might be a bit over-the-top, it looks like it makes the games more enjoyable, interesting, and memorable.
JRPGs are notorious for their overabundance of dry, repetitive dialogue (depending on the game, of course), and I can think of a bunch of more recent games that could probably benefit from some punched-up translation work (whether WD or Woolsey-styled).
The Romancing SaGa remasters could really use some Vic Ireland translations. Decent games anyway, despite the boring dialogue.
I disagree, I'd like the product to be as close to the original as possible and within reason (translation isn't a perfect 1 to 1 especially with different languages). Anything else is essentially censorship imo
"dry", sometimes happens to eng to jpn translation too
I grew up in Redding CA, and Working Designs was someone of a source of local pride. I was working at a Software Etc (now Gamestop of course) when Magic Knight Rayearth came out on the Saturn, and they hand-delivered us 3 copies. I was able to snag one, but holy hell I wish I had just taken the whole case. :)
Sony considered 2D to be absolute crap despite starcraft, age of empires and pokemon being the most popular games of the time.
Really glad you covered this! I still love playing Alundra and Elemental Gearbolt, and I definitely agree that Working designs brought some real gems to this side of the world, even though they needlessly cranked up the difficulty. I for one am very thankful for those Un-worked Designs patches.
South Park, Beavis and Butthead, Blink-182... I have no idea why fart jokes were considered the pinnacle of comedy in the 90s.
Fart = Funny. It's just basic mathematics.
“She’d teach me about modern art,
And I’d show her it’s ok to fart”
-Blink 182
Interesting timing, bringing this out just as the Prototype of their Goemon PS2 translation was leaked!
Alundra is one of my most favourite games... ever!
YOU BROUGHT BACK THE FART! AND ON A VIDEO ABOUT ONE OF MY FAVORITE GAME COMPANIES. God bless you!
I picked up a few of Vic's own copies in the mid 2000s signed by him, some of my most treasured possesions.
I fall into the latter as well. I never get angry at translation changes unless they change the story. I liked their stuff.
They changed an entire character in Vay from having wind based teleportation, to being cursed with Eternal Seismic Flatulence. This also gave them the "clever" idea to change the name of the bronze helmet to a "filtration mask" and forced you to put it on all of your characters before being teleported, or you get a game over.
If that isn't "changing the story", I don't know what is.
One thing I noted about Vasteel, the sound vastly improves if it's in mono rather than stereo. I used to merge the two channels when playing vasteel.
I love Working Designs so much...the best collector edition's EVER!!!
Those are just the regular versions of the games.
@@Furluge no sh*t
@@anthonyjohnson9088 so your first comment makes no sense then Sherlock.
@@rickylovesyou thank you Holmes
It's a good day when a new episode of Game Sack blesses my timeline.
I know they get a lot of hate these days, but those Working Designs’ games are some of my favorites! I love the packaging and translations! And back in the 90’s, they were one of the few companies bringing over Japanese games that might not have been localized otherwise.
The only thing i've ever owned from them was Arc The Lad Collection and it was solid, why are they getting hate now?
Never heard or seen them get hate. They are rather fondly remembered.
Yeeeah, watching the video, I can understand why they got critiques for messing with some games.
I don't get how these can be called working Designs games when they created almost none of them.
@@Will45_ They localized and published the games over here in the U.S. I think it’s just a tendency of the language, for example, we call a ton Nintendo properties “Nintendo games” even if they’re not developed by Nintendo, but only published by them.
Zach Meston and I used to talk about games a lot on AIM back in the day. He was a member of a game collectors group on a forum we all used back then. I have both of those Lunar game guides still. He let me know that all the pictures were in them were taken with a digital camera off of one of their Dev machine monitors.
Working Design is like the 90s version of Xseed
But better
Man hood episode, thank for showing all Working Designs software they did and game play footage, your time is certainly appreciated.
The question isn’t whether a translation is literal, the question is the translation faithful to the source. People might not appreciate a translation that isn’t faithful to the themes, messages, tone, and characterization of the source material. People might enjoy a translation that isn’t faithful to the source but other’s may have wanted the original story faithfully told. Framing the issue with translation as whether it is literal misrepresents the issue. A parody translation might be popular and fun but desiring a faithful translation is a legitimate desire.
I played these games in my youth and I don’t remember the translations well. Now that I’m older I have grown fatigued with reference humor and would appreciate faithful translation.
This was thoroughly entertaining, and super informative. Thank you!
Yessss!!!! You did an overview of Silhouette Mirage PS1, thank you, been recommending it for years.
I feel the exact same way when I play it, I pop it in ready for a run n gun, but then you remember you kinda gotta play by the game's rules/mechanics, but after 1 level, I'm sucked back in and can't wait to get to the next level. I love this game.
And apparently in Japan, this game was much more religion based, Silhouette and Mirage being good and evil, I remember reading somewhere the entire story was changed(due to possibly Sony being scared people would think it's a Christian game or maybe there was too heavy an emphasis on it, I'd love to know the full story). I would really like to see how deep they went with the religious stuff, how far the rabbit hole went in game. I love games where the goal is to kill the devil, Ghosts n Goblins series, Cursed Castilla, Castlevania series, Cuphead, it's a fun sub genre I collect. And it goes with my absolute favorite sub genre to collect and play of all time, 32-bit 2D beautiful sidescrolling action games.
What a video, more Sackaltine, please.
Did you know that in the Japanese version, the weapons you buy in the shop don't drain your spirit? Also, everything was cheaper so you didn't have to wail on nearly every enemy for gold coins?
I love SM and I'm glad we at least got to play it, but I can't forgive Wrecking Designs for how dirty they did it.
@@starlitalpha7 Really? No, I didn't know that, and I love SM. Thanks for letting me know, I can't believe Working Designs did that, I had no idea. In hindsight, it totally hurts the game, if you want to get anywhere in the NTSC version, you MUST collect those coins, constantly balance and choose which shot to power up and purchase, I can see how it's artificially made harder. That part of the challenge wasn't baked into the gameplay from the start, it was inserted after the fact, wow, I see that now. I need to play the original Japanese version. Looks like I'm gonna buy a Japanese copy for PS1 or Saturn, though I'm not gonna feel bad if I play a burned copy on my modded Saturn or PS2 first, since I own the American PS1 release. Who am I kidding, I usually never feel bad playing a burned copy of a game, especially when it's something super expensive that I'll never buy, like Super Tempo on Saturn(which I think is a very fun game that not many will experience).
Nothing better than just over an hour of checking out Joe's Sack!
It has a lot blondish, stubby hairs.
Thanks!
Thank you dryer lint!
Working designs is the reason why restoration patches exist.
Yeah they ruined so many games
The amount of enjoyment I get out of this channels videos is honestly priceless. Fantastic work and thank you for your efforts as always.
Can you imagine back when the internet was so slow it took overnight to send a game? Yes Joe I am old so I remember those days, my first internet usage was in 1992 or 1993 so there wasn't any pictures, video, audio at all. None of the students were at all impressed but our teacher said it'd be big. Guess Mr. Savard RIP knew what he was talking about. I had bought an ink jet a year or so later and he was impressed with it's quality and cheapness compared to laser printers. That was with my $2000 386 which had I believe like a 120 MB hard drive.
Some of us had to deal with a dialup modem well into the mid 00's. Imagine watching Dumbass Mario with a 56 kb/s bitrate.
Sounds like you need to get a colonoscopy
@@wussup12345 :D They do suggest I get one, however it doesn't sound that enjoyable.
Wow, you were even before Eternal September!
@@solarstrike33 Had to look that up. Yup, all thanks to one teacher that loved computers. The school always had a computer room but he got a whole new room renovated and air conditioned with all new macs and laser printers. Honestly it was more than your average Jr High school had at the time. Looking back I wish I had learned more about computers in the 80's and 90s, maybe I'd have been making video games instead of just playing them.
In Silpheed The Lost Planet, I believe the voices in the cutscenes were English already in the Japanese version. That's why they don't sound like Working Designs' work.
Amazing video, by the way. So much work... (and designs!)
Glad as usual to see Popful Mail here. I freaking ADORE that game! And I 100% agree with everything you said, I love the liberties they took with the translation and I welcome the added challenge too.
You must be quite the gamer to not consider this game to be too tough. For the average gamer I imagine this game will be tough as freaking nails. Most seem to get stuck on the Golem boss, and for good reason. He is freaking TOUGH! Good news is if you can beat him then you should be able to beat the game as it doesn't get much tougher than that guy.
Yeah, as long as the "spirit" of what was said wasn't botched, I don't have an issue with off-the-wall localizations, either.
It always makes my day when you release a new video. Thanks For the content Joe
Love it or hate it, they definitely made random NPC dialogue a lot more interesting.
Very true!
Still my favorite games publisher. Still grieving their closure. Thank you for making this video!
Here's hoping we'll get the Lunar games on the rotw's Sega Genesis Mini 2..
Holy Cow! This must have taken a while to do. Thanks for the hard work and effort Joe this was a fun episode!
Personally I hated them, changing dialogues and sometimes story was bad enough but cutting or censoring games was annoying, but thanks to them I learned japanese.
Thanks
Than you mjbreese!
This will be controversial, but I don't see the problem with spicing up random NPCs like they did in Alundra and such. I don't think they ever drastically changed the stories in any of their games. Although, I do have a problem with them screwing up the game balance in nearly every one of their releases.
Yeah it never really bothered me either. If it makes things more fun, why not?
@@maxxdahl6062 Some people are just huge sticklers for accuracy, perhaps not realizing that a lot of figures of speech and wordplay do not translate 1:1, if ever. As for me, as long as it isn't completely butchered to appeal to a "wider" audience, I don't have a problem.
No they didn't really change the story.
Great video. Working Designs was my favorite back in the day.
On one hand I appreciate WD for giving gamers a chance to play games we might never have played otherwise. On the other hand...they had a nasty habit of writing script wholecloth, introducing nasty bugs (like NISA), and cranking up the difficulty for _reasons._ Bill Clinton jokes. In _Lunar._ Seriously?
I'm betting the main reason for the added difficulty was to prevent rentals from hurting sales (though they could have made it difficult exclusively for rental stores while leaving the original difficulty for retail).
Probably one of the best episodes in a while. I really appreciate all the work you put into that. I'm sure it wasn't easy but worth the effort.
There is an “un-working designs” patch for nearly all of these games. Removes the terrible grinding and difficulty. Cool roms
i only wish they'd also remove the dumb shit like references to barney (the purple dinosaur)
@@zenoslime got something against Barney ?
They really aren't with bothering with except in perhaps one instance. They're not particularly hard.
Also keep in mind that video game rentals are illegal in Japan but not in the USA which is where some of the changes stem from. Regional differences in difficulty like this were very common at the time.
@@Rimurutempest8833 you should be asking vic ireland, since the reference i mentioned is a line about using barney tapes for target practice...
I just started playing alundra two weeks ago. My first time playing a working designs game. I’ve heard of their legendary status for years. There is a character named Bonaire in it. And when I realized what Bonaire sounds like if you say it out loud after the character says “that girl is real Bonaire material” I knew I was in for something special.
As a huge RPG nerd, I have such mixed feelings about Working Designs. Predictably, I'm not a fan of their humor or localization decisions, though I have more issue with them fundamentally altering a game's balance than the dialogue changes, but also, if it weren't for them, many of these game would have never had any release outside Japan at all. They also made some amazing box sets with collectables as standard releases, the Lunar Complete games being excellent examples.
But I still feel like they made each game they touched worse in some way or another... it's like they both deeply respected the source material while simultaneously doing the exact opposite xD
Either way, that ending skit was spot-on
I can enjoy their localization decisions more in some games than others, but I feel the dated references in particular have become more endearing with time. Political jokes and such tend to age very poorly, but a movie quote or mention of a pop-culture figure from the day (without a loaded or obvious intention) is at least inoffensive at its worst and vaguely nostalgic at its best.
Those aren't limited editions, those are the normal editions. That's just how they rolled.
The difficulty changes are, except for perhaps one game, not that big a deal a deal and pretty on par for the era. If you find Lunar 1 on SGCD there's no way you're finishing anything in that time period as it is quite easy even after the changes.
@@Furluge I know they aren't actually LE's, but they very much have the same energy as modern limited editions, I was more going for ease of conversation.
And it isn't that they made the games "too hard" for the most part, just that the changes they made just seemed arbitrary or unnecessary. It's more the principle of changing things because they felt like it without the knowledge of the original creative team, rather than what those changes were. I'd feel the same way if they had made the games easier
@@HybridAngelZero It's really just a product of the games market at the time. Lots of changes to difficulty between region were common. If you play retro games you have to learn to accept it.
@@HybridAngelZero Oh but seriously though, I think it was important to point out these are the regular releases because we got all that for standard price. And this was in an age where releases like this weren't a thing.
I remember really treasuring the Working Designs games back in the day. Not only was the packaging always top-notch (for instance, even the *plastic* for the Saturn cases was of higher quality than most games for the system), but they had a 'feel' that love and care was put into them and that they weren't just shovel-ware cash grab ports. I was a bit late to the Saturn scene, but I managed to buy both Magic Knight Rayearth and Panzer Dragoon Saga when they came out, and, honestly, I enjoyed Rayearth more because it gave the impression of being the result of a labor of love. Even though I know I'm *supposed* to think Saga was the best thing on the system, it just felt hollow by comparison.
On the other hand, the translations could sometimes be a bit irritating. I remember watching the Silver Star Story Complete "Making Of" disc and being extremely annoyed when they mentioned that they decided that a character, who was a hermit in the original Japanese version, actually needed to live alone because he "had bad gas". I think I actually rolled my eyes when they said that.
The translations are one thing, but Working Designs' arbitrary gameplay alterations (often making the games substantially more difficult than their Japanese counterparts) have kept me from seriously diving into their releases.
Have you considered changing hobbies to knitting? With perhaps one exception they aren't hard at all and are about on par with other releases at the time. You dont ever need to grind in the Lunar games for example.
@@Furluge Not big on knitting. Model kits are more my speed. Glad you enjoy the added challenge of Working Designs' releases. Generally speaking I just prefer to enjoy things as close to their home territory release as possible.
@@delta7890 You're gonna have to cut out a lot of retro games from your list then. This was a common practice at the time. No US FF4/FF2 for you.
@@Furluge Luckily there's no shortage of patches out there to restore such games to their original states. 😃
@@delta7890 There's literally only one set that's no longer maintained and it only exists because of one autist who does nothing but shit on WD, because, like you he came to retro games later and thinks they're all too hard.
I Joe. I've been following your program for a few years. The show content is impressive in a technical, creative and descriptive sense. It is brilliant in the narration with a humorous and sardonic touch. Parabéns!
Working Designs - making perfectly balanced games impossibly difficult since 1991
Very funny that you upload a full WD retrospective right after their near-finished Goemon Zero PS2 beta leaks out
Oh really ?? What's the story on that ?
I hate when who's just supposed to port/translate takes too much liberties.
If you're so "creative" just make your own game already.
When people talk about Working Designs, one point that seems to enter the discussion often is that JRPGs are written "dry" in Japanese and deserve to be "improved" by translators changing the story.
I can't comment on the changes Working Designs made because I have never played any game they have translated. I don't need to, because I'm literate in Japanese.
On that topic I can write with authority. And I would like to say in the strongest possible terms that if you have been told Japanese RPG dialogue is dry, YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO.
JRPGs are if anything an oasis where creative and inventive writing flourishes in ways that would be difficult to accomplish or censored in other mediums.
Now, I could simply assert this, and my argument would have equal weight to those who claim the writing is dry. It wouldn't be _quite_ equal weight because I actually know Japanese and my opinion is informed, but I can't easily prove that to an outside observer.
Instead, I'd like to cite a few examples of creative Japanese writing that may be familiar even to people who only know English.
・The phrase "Puff-Puff" from Dragon Quest
・The dialogue of Ayla from Chrono Trigger
・The entire caveman chapter of Live A Live
・The character Selphie Tilmitt from Final Fantasy VIII
・Mother 2/Earthbound in general
・The Ruins of Alph in Pokémon GSC/HGSS
・The TALK function across the entire Megami Tensei series
For the purposes of the above list I limited myself to only the most obvious examples from the most well-known games, but there are far more and if anything obscure, untranslated games are especially creative. These are also examples that are so extreme they survived translation, most creativity and nuance suffers greatly when translated.
I challenge anyone to call any of those examples "dry". From an RPG with no dialogue, to having a chapter where all dialogue is in code, to coining a new word and so much more, JRPGs are anything BUT dry and boring.
This lie that JRPGs have terrible uncreative writing pisses me off because every time it's repeated another person decides not to learn Japanese. Because of that, I'd like to stay on my soapbox for a moment longer and be very direct.
If you like Japanese RPGs, LEARN JAPANESE.
You can learn Japanese using JRPGs as a textbook. It isn't even hard.
Well, it is, a little, but it's mostly just tedious memorization. That's something anyone can do, especially JRPG fans. If you can memorize the names of 900 Pokémon, I assure you that you can memorize 2,000 kanji.
You don't even need all 2,000. Most JRPGs are written at about a 5th grade reading level. You can get through 90% of them with only the easiest 100 kanji and a good electronic dictionary like Aedict.
If you love JRPGs, if you truly love the way they make you feel and inspire you, you owe it to yourself to learn Japanese and read their original text. Don't get a translator to tell you what a character is saying, hear their voice yourself. It makes every moment so much more magical.
An hour or less of studying every day can change your life. Please, at least consider it.
Thank you for reading my manifesto, I hope you enjoyed being subjected to it as much as I enjoyed getting it out of my system.
Yes, I love collecting Working Design games. They were great!
Comfy video time. Im grateful these are still being made.
Also, anyone else hear Kraftwerk at 5:38 ?
Límited run games is the Working Designs of our time, but without the Quality 😂
They don't localize or alter any of the game code like Working Designs did. Limited Run just publishes physically. That's it.
Great episode Joe, would enjoy you taking another deep dive with other developers when you can.
I really hate the dichotomy that you either want hyper literal translations or super liberal translations that play fast and loose. The fact of the matter is that Japan and its culture isn't incomprehensible to English speaking audiences. Cultural references and quirks should only be removed if absolutely necessary. My problem with Working Designs' translation philosophy is that, for the most part, they just made a bunch of stuff up and weren't adapting anything for English speakers. They just felt clever adding in their lame jokes and writing.
Popful Mail...if I ever travel back in time to 1994, I will move heaven and earth to get a Sega CD and a copy of this. Popful Mail was way ahead of its time.
In the UK a spaz is a derogatory term for someone suffering a significant disability or learning difficulty. Not great.
Thank you so much for this! I work the weekend shift and this is helping me get through my morning 👍🏻