Audio Interview with Victor Ireland & John Greiner (former head of Hudson Soft).

[NightWolve]

I was listening to this just now, figure others would be interested.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/anncast/2012-04-13http://animenewsnetwork.cachefly.net/anncast/anncast114.mp3


Vic talks about the Exile 2 localization difficulties at about 98:30 minutes into it and how they accidentally made the last level too hard. Plenty of other interesting things throughout this interview if you've got the time.

April 25, 2012: Added DDan's link to another interview from Retronauts with just Vic (only an hour long) that I found far more interesting:

http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3156908&ct=PODCASTShttp://podcast.the1upnetwork.com/flat/Retronauts/R042612.mp3


Some highlights from 1st interview:

00:30 Victor Ireland and John Greiner introduction and how Victor got his start with JRPGs

12:00 Working Designs' famous "conversational" translations

17:20 Censorship in the early days of game localization

20:50 John Greiner's days at Hudson Soft and pretty much the entire history of the Turbografx 16 (plus: the real story behind JJ and Jeff!)

45:10 The closing of Hudson Soft and what's up with all those old properties

50:10 The Class of Heroes II kickstarter and why they're trying to raise half a million dollars to localize a game

01:06:30 Victor's take on the current state of JRPGs

01:23:50 Twitter time! Monkeypaw Games and their philosophy on localization, The Playstation anti-2D policy and oh, so much more!

[Keranu]

This sounds great, will listen soon! Thanks for bringing to our attention!

[shawnji]

Nice find!  It's definitely a TurboGrafx / PC Engine heavy discussion, and a very interesting look into a few bits of the industry's history.  I've always had a lot of respect for Victor Ireland, even if I didn't always agree with some of his choices.

EDIT: For me, the most significant thing came in hearing that Victor's one year contract with Sunsoft came to an end and then Sunsoft opted not to renew and take care of marketing in North America themselves.  Of course, they haven't done anything with it and seem to have forgotten all about North America.  What makes this really sad is that the entire Telenet library that Victor pushed for Sunsoft to pick up is now just going to languish there.  If you want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth you can skip forward to about 1 hour and 21 minutes in.

[esteban]

I was listening to this just now, figure others would be interested.

HECK YEAH!!!

I can't listen until tonight, but I am eagerly looking forward to this. All of the highlights you posted have piqued my interest.

Is Sunsoft a thriving company these days? It's a shame that the Telenet properties may languish in limbo... 

Do we know if Sunsoft planned on releasing physical media or were they going to focus on emulation/downloads.

[geise]

Dude!  This is awesome!  Thanks for sharing! 

[majors]

Saved to phone, now I just need a layover at an airport with time to kill.

[shawnji]

Is Sunsoft a thriving company these days? It's a shame that the Telenet properties may languish in limbo... 

Do we know if Sunsoft planned on releasing physical media or were they going to focus on emulation/downloads.

I really haven't seen or heard much from them over here, but I seem to recall hearing something about them focusing on Pachinko machines and other weird stuff like that as opposed to traditional gaming.  That's just hear-say, but still...

The impression I got was that all of the planned releases were going to be digital, since Vic mentioned Mr. Gimmick and Batman; which pretty much points to the virtual console since that's where they released that new Blaster Master title.

[roflmao]

Awesome find!  I'll try to listen to it tonight.  Thanks!

[Necromancer]

Nice find!  I'm downloading now and looking forward to later enjoyment.  

[DragonmasterDan]

I'm definitely going to be listening to it this evening

[xelement5x]

Just downloaded and I've listened partway though already, quite interesting.

[Joe Redifer]

Awesome!  Downloaded, I'll try to listen on Monday or so when I get enough time.

[DragonmasterDan]

I just listened to it, 100% sheer awesome. A lot of stuff I already knew, a lot of interesting stories in there as well. Thanks so much for putting up this link!

[TR0N]

Nice i'll download it and listen to it later on.

It's some thing,the animenewsnetwork get's to interview vic when retronauts doesn't and they have made jokes about it that they would 

[SuperPlay]

Great :@) Thanks for the link