Sunday, May 2, 2010

One Last Thought on Tatio

Here's a link I should have put in the last post: a former Taito employee's recollections of working for the US office, specifically during the localization/reworking of Power Blade. This fellow obviously has a bit of an axe to grind, but he does describe some rather strange decisions on Taito's part.

6 comments:

flywheels said...

I LOVE Power Blade. Just got Power Blade 2 and the Famicom version of PB, Power Blazer. I prefer the U.S. version hands down.

qaylIS aka Nicolas Deußer said...

Doc, dude...I am a student, I don't have time to read all that content of the interview, could you give me a heads up? I am a very busy man...

Doctor Sparkle said...

Kids today! I'll have you know when I was in college I managed to find time to read "À la recherche du temps perdu" and "War and Peace" in their entirety (as well as a number of less demanding books.)

qaylIS aka Nicolas Deußer said...

Holy mother of christ, these are really big books...I haven't read a book, just for the fun of it, for at least 3 years...except sourcebooks for role playing games...

qaylIS aka Nicolas Deußer said...

Oh yeah, and just as I talk about pen and paper RPG Sourcebooks, you may remember that I talked about the great PC-RPG Drakensang from 2008. It is based on the biggest german RPG, Das schwarze Auge, known as The Dark Eye in english speaking countries. I was told that an article about it has arrived at hardcoregaming101, so it is just logical to link it in here, for everyone who is interested: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/arkania/arkania.htm
For anyone who wants to find out more about The Dark Eye, just a warning: It is very german...means, it is extremely complicated, and the world is overwhelmed with philosophical density of epic proportions. For example, for a campaign I am constructing I had to look up an emperor of an state, and just found out that every emperor of it is documented...in an history over a thousand years.

Doctor Sparkle said...

CV - That makes perfect sense about Contra as Germany is obviously a big fan of video game censorship, with its famous index of banned works. Its funny that the country that gives us movies like Necromancer would be freaked out by something like Contra.

qaylls - I've read that article about the Arkania games, and found it very interesting. I wasn't aware of all the pre-Drakensang games out there, since as far as I know, the earlier Arkania games weren't that well known in the US. The whole continental PC game scene is a little mysterious over here, since there is undoubtedly a lot of stuff that never gets translated, and continental game developers don't hold the same fascination for US gamers that Japanese developers do.

Though "Die Schwarze Auge" sounds like it ought the be the name of one of those 60s Krimi films instead of an RPG rulebook.