Watercrown Productions

And we’re back again.

by on May.22, 2013, under Uncategorized

Well. Through a series of snafus that were a long time in the making, my site went down for a couple months there. But don’t fret! Watercrown Productions is back and back in business (sorta). It’s missing a few posts, and not all the graphics work, and the sidebars need fixing, but (hopefully) soon things’ll be back to business as usual. Stand by!


26 Comments for this entry

  • PlaystationPlus

    Dear Lord,

    your corebound post is gone, and with it, my faith in God.

  • DD

    Sorry if this is not the best place to ask, I can not really see anywhere better to do it. I recently found out that you were at some point working on a Death Note: Kira Game translation. Is that still in progress?

    • Ryusui

      It’s been on the backburner for some time. I hope to get it done eventually, though. I’m sorry for all the procrastination on my end.

      • KyoX

        Hi, Ryuusui!

        First of all, i’m actually playing your BOF2 retranslation and found it awesome! Congratulations on your excellent work!
        How can i do to translate it to Portuguese? Can you help me, since i can’t modify it without failing on checksum verification?

        Thanks in Advance! And congratulations again!

    • Joshua

      Hey! I hope everything’s going well for you!

      My spouse is playing through the Breath of Fire series, and I was wondering, is there any progress on the BoF1 retranslation? He’s playing your translation of BoF2 right now and I would rather his experience with the first game be as high quality as you made the second.

      Sorry if you’re getting tired of hearing about it, though! Feel free to tell me to stfu.

      • Ryusui

        If anything, you’re the one who’s owed an apology. The nonsense with Persona 5’s localization turning out half-baked inspired me to make some more progress, but the script still has a long way to go and I regrettably have other commitments in the way of spending time and energy on it. I really want to get it done, but I’ve plain gotten sidetracked. ^_^;

        • Joshua

          Oh, no need to apologize at all! You’re doing us a service. I’m just glad to know you haven’t abandoned it. Thanks for your reply!

  • Neophoton

    Just wanted to chime in for BoF1’s retranslation — Although I don’t have time for any translation work myself, I’d be willing to offer assistance on beta testing if desired.

    Only past history I have is with the group called TransGen — We did Namco x Capcom (all of the early chapters and the final chapter are my work for checking, space constraints be damned) and a few other games.

  • Guy

    I don’t know if you’re still working on the BOF1 retranslation, but I adored the work you and the others did on BOF2. And if BOF1 is still happening, I sincerely look forward to it.

    • Ryusui

      BOF1 is still happening – it’s just been a bit backburnered for a while. One of the legends happens to be in on the project – in fact, she contacted ME to help her with it rather than vice versa. Once I get some other stuff out of the way, I’ll be back to working on the new English script in earnest. Your patience will (eventually) be rewarded! :3

      • Guy

        You’ve no idea how excited I am. The translation you all did on 2 was one of the highest quality I’ve seen in ages. Hell, I’d place it right up there with Mato’s Mother 3 translation. Keep up the excellent work man^^

  • Nina windia

    Just wanted to ask if the BOF1 project is still active (I know it’s been asked but I just to give another push for it 🙂 l.

    The patch for BOF2 is the best btw 😀

  • Hiroshi Mishima

    So hey, first up.. wanted to extend an incredibly heartfelt thanks to you and everyone else who made the Breath of Fire 2 retranslation possible. As someone who grew up with the original.. it was a good game, but clearly a mess, and it’s been wonderful being able to know what everything in my inventory actually is, and what the Prologue meant, and so forth.

    Secondly.. did the Japanese version REALLY contain all these references to breasts? If so, that’s a little sad, especially that bit with Gigi. Especially in a family game, but I guess that’s 90s Japan.

    Thirdly.. I know SOME of the jokes aren’t from the original script – Harry Potter, Kingdom Hearts, etc – and I was wondering if the original dialogue there was either really bland or didn’t translate well.

    Anyways, regardless, I’ve been extremely impressed overall with the work you did. Like someone else said, this is easily comparable to the Mother 3 one that Tomato did. If you really DO end up finishing Breath of Fire 1 retranslation that would be like a dream come true cause I’ve been thinking this whole time while playing the new version of BoF2, wouldn’t it be awesome to see BoF1 get this treatment.

    Sorry, got carried away there. Just really wanted to say thanks for all the work you put into it.

    • Ryusui

      Thanks. Funnily enough, the hacker for the BoF1 retranslation project approached me to help with the translation end of things. By an amazing coincidence, she goes by the username Myria, and she actually worked on the original Final Fantasy V fan translation. And she’s awesome. In the short time we worked on the project, she rebuilt the menu system to look more like the one from BoF2.

      And yeah, the sexual humor was in the original. It’s kind of a cultural divide – stuff like that gets far much leeway in Japan, or at least it used to once upon a time. As for the reference humor, I’ll admit most of it I added in, like the guy who drops Axel’s catchphrase in Colossea, or Bosch paraphrasing Strong Bad, but the restroom scene was always a gag in the original. You might remember the NPC inside screaming about “Hanako,” which refers to the urban myth of Toire no Hanako-san (“Hanako of the Toilet”), a harmless-buy-creepy ghost said to inhabit school restrooms; Harry Potter’s Moaning Myrtle was practically a drop-in replacement. That said, Watts’ riddles in the original Japanese version were a rich vein of pop culture references; the versions in the new translation aren’t identical to the originals, but they’re closer to the spirit of the originals than the ones in the US version.

      And now I have to come clean: there are two in-references to my previous translation work on the first Sylvanian Families game. One of Watts’ riddles paraphrases an extensive part of the intro (to be fair, the riddle’s shtick was always to drop the answer in the very first paragraph, then confuse the reader with irrelevant details), and an NPC in Fort Nageur’s dungeon quotes one of my favorite lines I wrote for the translation: “It smells so good…maybe I could sneak a bite while no one’s looking?”

      For the most part, though, I deliberately chose references that wouldn’t stand out as references. That’s the problem with a lot of referential humor: it sticks out in a way where it’s obvious something is being referenced, even if you don’t recognize the source, and if that’s all there is to the joke, it annoys instead of entertains. Even the reference to my own work was put in a place where it wouldn’t stand out as an obvious change even if you compared it with the original script.

      • Hiroshi Mishima

        Yeah, I figured you would have to do that insofar as some of the cultural references go. It’s pretty typical for RPGs – I remember watching a documentary with Lunar 1 on the PSX where they discussed how to handle that sort of thing.

        Always enjoy hearing about the translator’s experience, so I’m glad you replied so quickly. Thanks again! Sounds like BoF1’s in good hands with her in charge, I recall the FFV translation.

  • Aracus

    Is this thing still bacburnered? If not I’d really love to see it

  • Gabourael

    SO… is the retranslation of BoF 1 still alive? Would be so nice… ur BoF 2 script was AWESOME! Thank you!!! d:OD

    • Ryusui

      It’s been mostly backburnered, but I have made some steps towards continuing the project recently. Things will probably pick up if/when I have a translated script completed.

      • Harry

        So, any progress. 2016 is coming soon and I have really held off on playing Breath of Fire II because of the hope for a retranslation for Breath of Fire I.

        • Ryusui

          Currently working on some tweaks to my script tool. I’m realizing how much I hate actually having to write/edit text in my editor. XD

          The plan is to set it up where I can export both the English and Japanese scripts side-by-side to an external file, then reimport that into my editor for formatting.

  • ButterScotch

    Happy 2016!

    Will this be the year for BOF I to be retranslated? By all means, do what you need to do. Evidently, we fans are really looking forward to your continued efforts bear fruit.

    Do you think it’s possible we can get a retranslation this year? We’d love to have some updates!

  • Jade

    Hello! I wanted to thank you for the work involved with the BoF2 retranslation, though it’s years late. I’m only just now going through it, I downloaded it years ago, but got…uh…distracted, by other things. So far, so good! I’m definitely noticing the improvements. (Baba is Bunyan, I thought so based on his BoF3 name, but wasn’t certain. It was hilariously bad before because “baba” is an endearing term for “grandmother” in Japanese. xD)

    Other things (like both Bosch and the “moochers” having a sexual attraction to Mina, who I assume is a teenager under 18) make sense in the context of the characters, but I’m surprised this sort of content would have made it into the CERO equivilent of the K-6 rating of the time. Cultural differences and all that, yes, it’s just interesting to see what would fly over there.

    I remember wondering how BoF2 ever made it to the USA at all, with the prominent religious references and (even with the shoddy translation) clear criticism of Western monotheistic concepts. Especially in regards to the megachurch near the end. I was never a religious person, so it didn’t bother me, but it did teach me to wonder and ask, “What if this ‘God’ that seems to be so popular throughout the ages really is like Evan? What if the Papacy in Italy is just manipulating over a billion people to feed some invisible, celestial vampire demon?” Silly questions, perhaps, but how silly, really? I look forward to seeing your version of BoF2’s take.

    I didn’t know a BoF1 translation was in the works until I saw this page! It’s already been almost 8 years since the BoF2 English retranslation first version released, so at this point I wouldn’t hope for it for at least another 2 years, in time for the 10 year anniversary. Hopefully you did manage to make that file system work more comfortably for you, it would be torture to not even be able to have things side by side. And I have an inkling of an appreciation for the monumental amount of work for 1 or 2 people to do this. (Don’t know if Myria still exists)

    I thought about going into an editor, mixing and matching some of the Chrono Trigger literal retranslation with the Woolsey script- excising things that sound strange, leaving in the Woolsey script that sounds better, and flavoring/combining the two where it makes sense. I completed doing that for Truce village in the beginning, then realized with how much time I was taking, it would take over a year to do that for the rest of the game, so I decided to just bag it for now. So yeah, don’t worry about keeping to any time frame.

    This is getting overly long, so I’ll end the comment here. Thanks for the BoF2 work, again!

    • Ryusui

      I hope you enjoy it. Looking back at it years down the road, there are some things I’d probably do differently, but overall I’m proud of the work I did. :3

      As for BoF1…I desperately need to get that script retranslated. It’s been on and off the backburner for the longest, owing at least partly to my perfectionist streak. ^_^;

      • joshuaorrizonte

        I am so happy to see that this is still on the radar, even if it’s still backburnered. I loved the retranslation and I’m dying to see the magic you could work with the first game.

  • Lewis

    I first played breath of fire 2 back in 1995 or so. It was the coolest looking rpg I had ever seen in my 8 years on earth.

    I remember sitting in my friends couch as his dad had just bought him a snes with NTSC support and he had gotten some random games with it. One of those random games was bof2.

    We tried to get into it but we had yet to master the english language. Being 8 year old swedes and all. We played it randomly and usually messed around on the old saves (I had no idea back then but the saves were actually almost at the end. Infinity1 I believe).

    Over the past 20 years I’ve been sporadicly playing it from time to time to get a nostalgia kick but I always ended up putting it aside. Either that or my computer crashed and cost me my saves. I probably tried to play it through once every 5 or so years. (I actually still have the orginal US snes BOF2 cartridge with box and all but no snes to play it on).

    I always found the translation really messy and felt like alot of the story was skipped or presented in a terrible way. That is up until I found this gem. This insane treasure. I’ve been gaming this whole week 24/7 and I finally beat it. I beat this old bitch after 20 goddamn years.

    And it was glorious.

    Obviously the game has it’s flaws and I did want to eat my controller a few times but in the end it was all worth it. Goddamn what a ride.

    I’m rambling alot but I basically just wanted to thank you guys at watercrown. You’ve made my life a little bit more complete! The amount of hard work that you must’ve put into this is really quite remarkable. So from the bottom my soul, eight year old me and current me thank you, thank you for this amazing gift!

    Cheers,
    Lewis

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