Long time no see, everyone!
Sorry for the radio silence on my end these past few months. It's a long story - one that sounds more like a third-rate soap opera than a half-decent excuse, so I'll spare you the details for the time being. Suffice to say, crippling real-life problems (and some inexplicable browser issues) have severely cut down on my online presence at Schwer and Schwer Alike for the past while.
On the bright side, the downtime has allowed a lot of projects-in-the-making to start to bear fruit. I'll be making an official announcement in the next few weeks about the ones directly related to Darkside Translations and our projects (naturally, that includes Rosenkreuzstilette). Before that, though, I'd like to shine a spotlight on a few developments that I'm sure those of you with good taste in entertainment can appreciate.
It's no secret that Ys is my favorite video game series of all time. As a huge fan of Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, and Megaman, that's saying quite a lot. Long before Mint and I teamed up to localize Rosenkreuzstilette, I had the honor of working with Falcom Fan Translations' Jeff Nussbaum and Nicholas Livaditis to help bring the series to the English-speaking world. As you can imagine, we were psyched when XSEED Games announced that it had secured the English-language rights to the series' PSP entries, and I was even more excited to learn that they wanted to use Jeff's scripts for the official English versions of Ys I & II Chronicles and Ys: The Oath in Felghana.
I'm tempted to go on a fanboy rant here, but I think I'll let the games speak for themselves.
As of this writing, XSEED has released Ys I & II Chronicles (PSP), Ys: The Oath in Felghana (PSP / Steam), Ys Seven (PSP), and Ys Origin (Steam), as well as Falcom's amazingly well-written The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (PSP). I highly recommend checking them out.
NEWS FLASH: For the next 24 hours (ie: until 1:00pm Eastern tomorrow), the Steam version of Ys: The Oath in Felghana is just $5.09, so grab it while you can!
You might remember that, back in May 2012, my friends at No Name Losers released a full English localization of the visual novel ef - a fairy tale of the two. What you might not know is that, since then, ef's original developers have joined forces with the group to give the title a commercial English release (NNL is officially "A division of minori Inc."). Moreover, several members of Darkside Translations are credited for their contributions (including yours truly, though my name only appears in the ending credits).
The first half of the story, ef - the first tale, goes on sale at MangaGamer.com today (warning: this link is not work-safe). If you missed the opportunity to check it out last time, you now have another chance.
I'll be at Otakuthon 2012 in Montreal next weekend (August 3rd through 5th), both as an attendee and as an event host (you can find me with my co-panelists at "An Introduction to Visual Novels" and "The 2011-2012 Visual Novel Review" - and, yes, Katawa Shoujo will be featured in both panels). If you're in the area, be sure to drop in and say "hi".
That's all for now. Once Otakuthon is out of the way, I'll get cracking on our next big announcement.
Stay tuned!
For those that haven't read the earlier comments posted in the previous blog posts, it seems that Pamela Arwing will be taking the helm as the Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel's "Zero". Yes, the Black Cross' head Dark Magi, of all magic-users. Just yesterday, WOMI has shed some light (literally and figuratively speaking) of the bonus game's title with a new screenshot of game's title screen. [erka:es] would like to present to you all Rosenkreuzstilette Weißsilber. How will Pamela play out in her side-game, and will she'll anything like Grolla in the previous game? Only time will tell when the game hits Comiket sometime this year.
I apologise for the lack of activity/contributions here at Schwer And Schwer Alike. Many of you youngsters out there are blessed with freedom of having your own personal computers (be it a desktop or laptop, and your operating system is Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh) while I am absolutely NOT one of the lucky ones (or even the wealthy ones for that matter) to have that kind of privilege. Even as we speak, I'm using the Wii's horribly outdated Opera Internet Browser to make a blog post for the first time, and I can tell you all that the newer versions of Google's Blogspot doesn't like this internet browser. As much as I want to share the screenshots of the recent updates of the games, there are things you cannot do with this thing. So please, bear with me on this...
We here at Schwer and Schwer Alike would like to extend a warm welcome to Nene Ayatsuki, the newest member of the RKS voice cast. She will be voicing both Rink and Lecht Refraktia for Rosenkreuzstilette ~Freudenstachel~, and in listening to her voice samples, I have to say that I think she’ll fit right in. Congratulate her and give her your best regards on Twitter, if you would be so kind, and listen to the sample page on her site by clicking the small banner.
On a related note, Grolla Seyfarth dere yessssssssssss.
Thanks to SaSA reader Axl007, Rockman Ciel caught my attention, and I must say I’m impressed but by no means surprised. Ciel was pretty great, after all, and making an entire project around her seems like something that needed to happen. Rockman Ciel seems to be an entire multimedia project that includes a Zero-based fan game in progress, a full art series on pixiv, a Web Radio series, and even a project concept art book with full character backgrounds and scenario history. It seems like a pretty ambitious and crazy project, and I hope to see it come to fruition. My hope is that it doesn’t suffer the same fact as Rockmen R, which swiftly received the C&D hammer from Capcom and is no longer available. We’ll see how that goes.
You may remember Hisaoman, the (arguably tasteless) Katawa Shoujo fan game with a Rockman touch. It turns out that this game was supposed to be released shortly after the release of the game early this year, though the forum thread stated “around this November (2011)”. There hasn’t been a lot of news concerning development, and it almost seems like the project may be on the backburner, as his latest post on Newgrounds seems to be more concerned with Ragnarok sprite animation. However, KS hasn’t been completely forgotten, as he released Katawa Shoujo: Symphony of the Feminists back in February, which features a Rockman-sprite Miki. The game itself is really silly and pretty fun, though the SotN PSX-inspired dialogue leaves a lot to be desired. Well, if anything comes up with this project, we’ll definitely mention it here. This is really turning into a Mega Man fan game blog, isn’t it?
I’ve been looking to change up the site layout a little bit by adding links to the sidebar and implementing pages, most notably with information about obtaining and working with Rosenkreuzstilette. Currently, I’ve added links to the Rockman-inspired various fan projects, as well as related blogs, including the re-addition of zaku6’s. I imagine I’ll be able to clean this up a lot by adding an overall “Link” page. I really want to revamp the sitenav and get everything as neat as possible. In addition, I will need some help from some of SaSA’s readers concerning my "RKSclopedia” project. I plan on moving the wiki entirely away from Wikia and setting it up on Google Sites, which looks a lot neater and will give us a lot more control to prevent future problems and speculations when Freudenstachel comes out. We’ll have a basic gathering of all character and scenario information for the site, and compiling and editing will be done as a group over Google Docs. Once that’s all said and done, we’ll get the ball rolling. The RKS Wikia isn’t going anywhere, obviously, and will undoubtedly be updated as the series goes on. That’s fine. I just want to have the most accurate and well-maintained wiki possible based here on SaSA. I figure that’s reasonable enough. I’ll try and get that WOMI interview done soon, when my friend who can help me with the translation stuff isn’t busy.
If you would like to help with this project, please inquire in the comments or e-mail us directly at grollschwert[at]gmail[dot]com. Let’s continue to improve Schwer and Schwer Alike as the best RKS resource on the net!
With the Twitter account mysteriously still suspended, TEN has opened up an official website for Project LT. Listed on the website are the main staff members of the game project; in addition to Sumikaze Midi (character designer) and TEN (music composer) are Takopi (background design) and Kogarasi sk (main programmer). All four members of the project appear to be pretty talented artists, with Takopi especially good at pixeling. All in all, this is looking pretty promising, and SaSA will continue to keep you up-to-date on new developments.
The Project LT Twitter is currently accepting questions and comments concerning Whiterockman Letty. If you guys have anything you want to say to the Project LT devs, send them a line via Twitter. The best part about it all is that you don’t have to run anything through or by a translator. They are accepting and will respond to and in English, so the language barrier is broken! What are you waiting for?
On the RKS side of things, WOMI seems to be making progress on Freudenstachel. He appears to be working on the voice acting aspect of things, so the scenario/script side might very well be done. This is good news! With this level of progress, we’re definitely looking at a C83 window, and I, for one, think it will be worth the wait. So yeah, there’s your update. Enjoy~
Edit: The Project LT is currently experiencing problems, as Twitter seems to be suspending the account for seemingly no reason at all. Until that gets settled, feel free to post questions here, or send whatever you want to ask to the SaSA Twitter account, and we’ll relay the questions their way when it gets fixed.
Project LT, the Touhou-based Mega Man-style fan project starring Letty Whiterock, has launched an official Twitter account for updates on the project (it’s got a really cool avatar, too!). In addition, the official flash site has been updated with Cirnoman (pictured right), complete with Ride Armor. The picture to the right links to Sumikaze Midi’s pixiv page for the image, so be sure to check it out for the full version. Show your support by following them, as well as Project LT, on Twitter and by posting below. They’re reading this, after all!
I guess SaSA now has two big things it’s following, and we’ll be doing our best to keep you posted on both!
So there are two really cool guys in the Japanese doujin scene named Sumikaze Midi and TEN. Why are they so cool, you ask? Because they are currently working on something amazing. Back at C78, Sumikaze created this a really cool-looking doujinshi called “Whiterockman Letty ~Dr. Okuu’s Ambition~” (you can see samples of it here), and TEN uploaded a promotional video for it on Nico, featuring a chiptune version of Letty’s theme and sample pages. All in all, it’s a pretty cool thing. Well, now, there’s a website with an unfinished flash animation featuring two characters: Whiterockman and Momijiman, who appear to be the Touhou equivalents of X and Zero, respectively. There are currently 7 open slots for Cirno, Hong Meiling, Hina Kagiyama, Parsee Mizuhashi, and Yuyuko Saigyouji, and no one has been given any information yet. Could this be an upcoming doujinshi series? Or perhaps, with TEN composing music tracks and posting them on his Twitter, could we be seeing the makings of a new Megaman-style platformer? A fun project, or the game that we’ve been waiting for to fill that MegaMari X-shaped hole in our doujin-loving hearts? It’s definitely worth keeping your eyes open for this one!
Follow Sumikaze and TEN on Twitter, and keep your eyes peeled for updates to the ProjectLT hashtag. This could be pretty amazing, and I’m not just saying that because I’m Letty Whiterock. Well, maybe I am a little bit.
This was a long time coming (as I haven’t been able to find someone to TL English to Japanese for me; I took matters into my own hands), but I finally sent off an e-mail to WOMI about an interview. I just got a response saying that he’s cool with it and will answer any questions that he can. With that exciting news, if you guys have questions for WOMI, please write them in the comments below. Yes, I know I’ve asked this before, but it’s actually kinda relevant now, so ask away! Please be within reason, and be respectful. Thanks!
Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day!
So I’m thinking of starting a podcast dedicated to RKS, doujin gaming, and general ridiculousness. Would you guys listen to a weekly or bi-weekly show? Accompanied art is by まさきち. Click for the big version on Pixiv!
If you follow Mega Man fan game news, you’ve probably heard about Rokko-chan, the amazing full flash game MM tribute featuring the namesake moe Mega Buster girl. If you haven’t, give the game a shot. It’s quite good, has some neat challenges, and should appease you a little bit while you wait for Freudenstachel. However, there’s another fan game that may have slipped under your radar, and the only reason that *I* found it is because I have terrible ideas and like searching to see if other people have terrible ideas too.
So the answer to that quiz I promised you guys and never gave is that Lilly is indeed the best character in Katawa Shoujo, but maybe you disagree. Maybe you didn’t like Lilly very much. If so, then boy do I have the game for you! Meet Hisaoman, a Katawa Shoujo-style NES Mega Man clone, brought to us by Newgrounds user ShadowWhoWalks. The only objective in the game is to defeat Lilly, named Blind-tan in this game. You only have a single-shot Mega Buster (where you fire pills instead of bullets), and you can’t slide. The controls are simple (though the mechanics make the game a bit floaty), and overall, the game is very easy. However, it’s worth it to give it a shot and see how it ends when you win.
By the way, I’m not a fan of the X2 soundfont, but Flame Stag’s stage theme is always awesome.
As if his LP wasn’t enough, JT was nice enough to draw some great Spiritia art for us! …So yeah. Enjoy it~
Don’t ask how I got this. I’ll leave those surprises for later. Until then, enjoy this little preview. Also, as a note, Strudel does not function properly at all. I’m not entirely sure what she’s supposed to do, but she’s pretty worthless as she is right now. Oh well~
In response to a tweet by Kira Buckland, a great voice actress who is gracious enough to be a part of the RKS dub project, I’m going to be plugging the Voice Acting Club Forums. It appears to be a pretty active community with some pretty talented people behind it, and hopefully, we can find some more amazing people to help us get the RKS dub project pointed further in the right direction. So yeah, check them out, sign up, give some feedback, and have fun! Also, keep playing Katawa Shoujo. There will be a test at the end of the month on whether or not Lilly is the best character. (Hint: She is.)
Schwer reader and RKS fan Mhakk Como has been posting some interesting stuff on our SaSA Facebook group. A lot has changed in the newest web trial from the inside, so we can no longer access the other weapons due to exploiting the password system. However, Mhakk came up with a brilliant work-around. Using a replay from a previous demo build, we get to see Freudia try out some new weapons. The first one appears to be an updated version of Eis Lanze, and the second one looks like an icy version of Geister Wand. To be honest, that’s a little disappointing, but maybe there will be some special gimmick and not just a snowflake Schwer shield. The third one is a bit of an enigma. Supposedly, it’s what you get from Trauare, but we’re not really sure what it does. We’ll have to see what happens with that one. Finally, there didn’t seem to be any update on the weapon you get from Dolis. It’s still invisible, so we’re still left guessing. Still exciting, though!
The final release is just around the corner, and all our questions should be answered then!
Hiya, guys. Happy New Year!
