Just wanted to chime in since I was mentioned here and put out a video about the PCE Works XSC set. Now that I am more aware/informed of the situation thanks to NightWolve and several viewers regarding use of the Xak III/SOII English fan translation patches, I would have approached the video I made much differently and would have made talk about the controversy behind the set and PCE Works a priority of the video. That, or I would have just passed on making it completely.
I'm not a professional YouTuber by any means, and I've not received a single dime (or less) from doing what I do. I put a lot of effort into my content so I can share my love of this thing we all have in common called gaming, and in my case, I like to let people know about great games (IMO) that remained Japan-only. So when I am regarded as someone "uninformed educating the clueless," I don't take it lightly.
Two months ago when I began working on the video, I tried to do some research into PCE Works, but all I really had were other YouTube videos to go by and very little in the way of text or webpages mentioning them. I wasn't a member of this forum until today, and as it's not a public one, I had no idea about just how deep "the rabbithole" went, you might say. I'm not trying to blame him at all for my misunderstanding of repros/PCE Works, but I really respect Johnny Millennium/Happy Console Gamer, and when I first saw him talk about the Best of Japan set and how "great" the folks were behind them, I took that to heart and that's really what formed my initial impression of them.
Since I knew I was getting a PC Engine, something I've wanted for over two decades, I was excited to play all the great games I missed out on over the years, and thought it was worth a shot reaching out to a company that I thought was really a positive force in the PC Engine gaming scene. But reading this thread and receiving feedback from others through comments, I understand that's not the case. So yes, I was ignorant, but I feel my intentions were good, misguided as they may have been. And my god, I had no idea about Xseed!
Anyway, my apologies for the long post, I just wanted to address this issue here where it felt most appropriate. For what it's worth, I updated my video description a couple of days ago to address the situation of the English patches (I may update it again to make it more detailed), added an annotation, and have provided links to places where they can be downloaded without monetary commitment. And my apologies if it seemed I was purposely misleading anyone with my video. That being said, I don't think I will or really can receive/cover another set from PCE Works in the future. I'll stick to what I know best, legit, Japan-only releases. I've gone on long enough, so to end this post, I want to say thanks to NightWolve for his excellent work translating an excellent game, and I look forward to becoming more engaged in the world of PC Engine gaming. Take care.