Xanadu II Translation Development Blog

[ParanoiaDragon]

I thought I heard Falcom originally considered DoY cannon. Though that might've been based on the fact that when they were shopping around for someone to do an anime, it was based on the DoY art style, rather than MotS?

[SamIAm]

I'm not sure about that one. If you're really interested, I could try to track it down in Japanese.

----------------

A couple things I've read about Yoshio Kiya, director of the Dragon Slayer series who quit after The Legend of Xanadu 1.

- He's from the same part of Japan where I live now!

- Became a certified auto mechanic out of high school.

- Loves motorcycles. The president of Falcom bought him multiple cars in exchange for making him promise not to ride motorcycles because of how dangerous they are. Started riding again after quitting Falcom.

- Got his first PC, an NEC PC-6001, at 20 years old, which should be in 1980.

- Developed the original Dragon Slayer on his own over the course of about six months before actually joining Falcom (not sure if he got help with the art, though). It went on sale right after he was hired, which would be in 1984. He had apparently sold a few of his other home-developed games to Falcom before that.

- Was director and main programmer of all the games in the old Dragon Slayer series, except The Legend of Xanadu 2, which was made after he quit.

- As director, was a self-professed dictator. Got personally involved as much as he could, but stayed away from the music side of things. He is listed as a scenario writer in some games.

- Was only the director of Popful Mail, not the main programmer. Same goes for Brandish.

- After leaving Falcom, joined the company Nihon Application, now called Creansmaerd. He still works there today, and his job doesn't seem to be related to games, at least directly. Creansmaerd seems to be a digital payment system company. Wikipedia says he's he's involved in some kind of games division, though.

- Post Falcom, he was closely involved in only five games. Four are in an obscure PC series called Gekirin.　Here's one.

- The other and last, very sadly, was Last Imperial Prince on PC-FX. He was the producer. I say sadly because this game sucks. I wonder if he was burnt out at this point. I at least like to imagine that the low quality of LIP was do to resource constraints and other staff problems...

[NightWolve]

- Became a certified auto mechanic out of high school.

- Loves motorcycles. The president of Falcom bought him multiple cars in exchange for making him promise not to ride motorcycles because of how dangerous they are. Started riding again after quitting Falcom.

Hah, cool dude!

[NightWolve]

I didn't know, so I just looked it up.

Hiromasa Iwasaki was a very prolific and prominent Hudson programmer. He contributed lots of articles and reviews to PC Engine magazines, and even showed up on TV a few times. One of the more impressive things he did was port Ys I&II.

I can't find it ATM, and I know I've seen it before translated somewhere, but he shared that it was his idea to put both Ys I & II together to make it a more fuller/complete game. That was a condition he put forth, only wanting to port it if he could put them both together, something like that. Falcom later copied the idea with the limited edition of Ys I & II Complete back over for the Windows PC platform, putting them together and allowing for the launching of Ys II right after beating Ys I.

I thought it was here, http://shmuplations.com/ys/, but maybe it was in crazy John's Kickstarter book ? Darnet, I can't find where that interview was... I'm sure someone here must remember it, might've got linked here somewhere.

That's right. That's exactly what it says on that page.

Alright, more Ys history tangent time. Yep, it was our good pal crazy John in an issue of GamesTM!

Speaking to main programmer Hiromasa Iwasaki, who was a freelancer for Hudson at the time, reveals amazing things. "In winter 1988, I loved to play Ys II for PC, and when I played, Shinichi Nakamoto [executive producer at Hudson] came to my place and he said: 'Do you want to transplant it to PC Engine?' I replied to him: 'Mr. Nakamoto, I wanna do it if you can accept my condition. Ys is one story made from two parts of a game. I want to transplant two games into one CD. If we do so, we can promote how the capacity of CDs is bigger than ROM cartridges.' Nakamtoto soon replied: 'Okay, we will do this.' So we visited Tokyo, went to Falcom and made a deal."

And that ladies and gentlemen is how history was made: Ys Book I & II.

[elmer]

You posted that a while ago now ... but I just wanted to say "Thanks!" ... that's an interesting read. 

[NightWolve]

You're welcome! I had help for that too, SkyeWelse, who offered to scan the mag into readable form. My biggest donor (a friend who works at Intel) actually donated a copy of that GamesTM magazine to me, so I also own it and could've done it, but SkyeWelse saved me the trouble/grunt work. Anyway, it is some legendary history-making of how "Ys Book I & II" came to be merged proper ever since and it's great that behind the scenes stuff like that got captured to cherish the industry that much more!

[geise]

I love Ys Book I & II so much!  Thanks for the Ys history lesson.

[ashrion]

You know when we will have the xanadu one available?

You can not talk to the pc engine works, to create a beautiful edition?

Only able to reach the 5 level without knowing any Japanese.

thanks for yor work ^^

[elmer]

You know when we will have the xanadu one available?

When both it and Xanadu 2 are done. Unfortunately, there's no exact way to figure out when that will be.

You can not talk to the pc engine works, to create a beautiful edition?

<sigh> Again? <sigh> 

Nope.

Only able to reach the 5 level without knowing any Japanese.

Then I think that you're going to be in for a real treat when we're finally finished, and you can play through the game and understand it.

[SamIAm]

You know when we will have the xanadu one available?

You can not talk to the pc engine works, to create a beautiful edition?

Only able to reach the 5 level without knowing any Japanese.

thanks for yor work ^^

We appreciate your interest.

Elmer and I don't know exactly when we will be finished. Both games will be released at the same time. It is likely that we can do it before the end of the year, but we cannot promise anything.

Basically, we don't want to see any reproduction-editions. There are too many legal and ethical problems with them.

We especially don't want to see PCE Works make reproductions. The person behind PCE Works, a guy named Tobias, has a history of lying and stealing. He tried to sell his reproduction of Sapphire as the original version, and he has used many translations without permission.

I understand your desire to have a nice physical copy, but please understand that we want to be respectful to the original developers. We also want translators like us to be safe from legal trouble, and not to feel like their translations may be stolen.

[jtucci31]

Xanadu 1 comes in a nice double case that has space for a burned cdr of the translated game for when the time comes

[ashrion]

thanks reply, only one clarification.
i today 440 original pcengine games and all complete fx, incluide fxga- fx board and pc9821 from use boards, all spine cards

440 games, all expensive games original, falle all game to sport, mahong, pachinko, all shooting games,
all games whit spine card, all games in greath condition.
My fisrt shappire buy in 1997, suruga shop 54500y, buy in japan akihabara dead of the brain 1&2 in end 1999.

Yes item of tobias i don t like only copys shappires, faussette, or kazekiri is a shit, buy others stile twin bee or force gear of tokimeki is fantastic idea.

Many more new games, made by fans, who did not reach the quality of official 1987

[elmer]

It's been a long time since I updated this thread, but I'm glad to say that I'm finally playtesting Xanadu 2 and finally getting to see and enjoy the differences between Xanadu 1 and Xanadu 2.

Of course, it's also and opportunity to help find and fix the (hopefully few) bugs in my translation coding, and in SamIAm's actual translation.

So far, the game is beautiful ... but it's pointing out a few areas that I put-off polishing, or even really looking at too deeply

Xanadu 1 is a massively-complex game, but it runs through a fairly straight-forward game engine.

In Xanadu 2, Falcom took the opportunity to refine and tweak a whole bunch of things.

That makes the game look and play a lot more "polished" than Xanadu 1 ... but it also means that there are a lot more "edge" cases and one-time-use code that needs to be fixed.

When playing yesterday, I found the first "big" screw-up in the translation.

I was playing, and moved to a different area and suddenly this text box popped-up that was full of garbage characters.




Well, after hours of tracking down, it turned out to be the "You've played for an hour, now take a break." message.

But that message is a part of the Game Code overlay ... and that overlay is full, so there's no room left to fix things.

What followed is the entire day spent reorganizing memory and testing the results in order to free up enough space to put in the proper message in the proper place.

While I was at it, it annoyed me that that message was displayed in white (actor speech color) text instead of cyan (game narration color) text, and so I tried to fix that at the same time.

Here's the result ...




Now ... I really need to get rid of that annoying half-space before the flashing cursor ... but perhaps I can put that off for another few days.

Tomorrow it's back to playing the game again! 

[technozombie]

It's been a long time since I updated this thread, but I'm glad to say that I'm finally playtesting Xanadu 2 and finally getting to see and enjoy the differences between Xanadu 1 and Xanadu 2.

Of course, it's also and opportunity to help find and fix the (hopefully few) bugs in my translation coding, and in SamIAm's actual translation.

So far, the game is beautiful ... but it's pointing out a few areas that I put-off polishing, or even really looking at too deeply

Xanadu 1 is a massively-complex game, but it runs through a fairly straight-forward game engine.

In Xanadu 2, Falcom took the opportunity to refine and tweak a whole bunch of things.

That makes the game look and play a lot more "polished" than Xanadu 1 ... but it also means that there are a lot more "edge" cases and one-time-use code that needs to be fixed.

When playing yesterday, I found the first "big" screw-up in the translation.

I was playing, and moved to a different area and suddenly this text box popped-up that was full of garbage characters.




Well, after hours of tracking down, it turned out to be the "You've played for an hour, now take a break." message.

But that message is a part of the Game Code overlay ... and that overlay is full, so there's no room left to fix things.

What followed is the entire day spent reorganizing memory and testing the results in order to free up enough space to put in the proper message in the proper place.

While I was at it, it annoyed me that that message was displayed in white (actor speech color) text instead of cyan (game narration color) text, and so I tried to fix that at the same time.

Here's the result ...




Now ... I really need to get rid of that annoying half-space before the flashing cursor ... but perhaps I can put that off for another few days.

Tomorrow it's back to playing the game again! 

Today I learned my mom has something in common with Japanese game developers. I never listened to her and took breaks, and I sure as hell am not putting this game down when I get my dirty paws on it.

[SamIAm]

Nice work, elmer! Things are coming right along for both of us again!

While I was at it, it annoyed me that that message was displayed in white (actor speech color) text instead of cyan (game narration color) text, and so I tried to fix that at the same time.

Here's the result ...

That looks good! I might like to get rid of the line-break after the first sentence, but we'll just see. That's the kind of minor detail we can settle on during a later phase.