Game companies do strange things

http://www.siliconera.com/2010/01/27...be-in-english/

I JUST found this out.

If the ESRB rating wasn’t enough of a confirmation, we spoke with Hudson about Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.

The game is coming to North America as a Virtual Console import. A representative said Castlevania: Rondo of Blood will be “released shortly” and “it will not be released in English, however.”

Konami made a Rondo of Blood translation for Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, a 2.5D PSP remake that includes the original game, in 2007. Unfortunately, it won’t be used for the digital re-release.

Mostly because I consider myself a Virtual Console advocate, and there's also a perfectly good script already available. I just don't get it.

Then again, I too often forget that a lot of companies do things that just leave us plain mystified. Any thoughts or other examples anyone would like to add?

Why can't they ever just give us what we want? Would a language option be that hard to add?

I've been told that adding a translation to a VC "import" is not allowed by Nintendo. Which makes no fucking sense if true.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

I've been told that adding a translation to a VC "import" is not allowed by Nintendo. Which makes no fucking sense if true.

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Nintendo being hard asses about ridiculous things...
Guess some things NEVER change :\

Guess it's some legal mumbo jumbo related to not fiddling with the original game's code in any way (basically ROM hacking in this case, I suppose). IIRC Pulseman is now available internationally thanks to VC, but it recieved no English translation. No huge loss when it comes to games like Rondo of Blood or Pulseman, but it's too bad we'll never see official English releases of some old gems like Monster World IV or Seiken Densetsu 3 because of this.

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Why can't they ever just give us what we want?

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Because that would be far too easy. Not to mention it would break the first rule of businesses, Never make direct contact with the customer. This would include releasing products at the request of the consumer. It's MUCH better to spend stupid amounts of money in R&D researching what the consumer wants as if we were some kind of herding animal. "Let's make Sonic Advance 4 instead of giving the consumer what they really want, a good Sonic game". It's so much more efficient to spend money trying to identify what the consumer wants than actually listening to them and making products that are actually wanted... :shame:

Case and point in EarthBound. Why the hell hasn't Nintendo re-released it yet? Or Mother 1 and 3 for that matter. Really, the matter of copyright infringement and all that other law BS doesn't matter one bit. No music artist would care one bit if there's a song in some old ass video game that vaguely sounds like a song they made 30 years ago. NOBODY CARES! JUST RELEASE THE EFFING GAME NINTENDO!

Also on the subject of Nintendo. Mother 3 N64DD or EarthBound 64 was inevitably cancelled. WHY?! Because Nintendo short-handed Itoi's team. THEY HAD SO MUCH MONEY! Why couldn't they have put more money into the Mother 3 project instead of letting it rot for 6 years until it's inevitable cancellation. This just baffles me. If Nintendo actually you know, CARED about a game that could have saved the N64 (it would have been compared to FF7), they would have pumped more time and money into Mother 3 and had it released. But no, they basically told Itoi "have fun" with literally no help from anybody actually skilled in 3D. Itoi's staff struggled with a flawed game engine and wasted so much time and money for it to eventually be cancelled. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!

That brings me to another question. WHY ARE SO MANY DAMN GAMES CANCELLED?! There are so many games that were near completion but were cancelled for absolutely retarded reasons. Wasting immense time and money. Moronic I tell you.

I'll get back to this later. There's too much stupidity in the video game industry to cover in one post.

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Originally Posted by Iron Lizard

Why can't they ever just give us what we want?

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Because game companies are bastards ;)

it probably has something to do with Nintendo not wanting to tie in another party when licensing games. If they license it exactly as it was (untranslated), they only have to deal with one person, if they license a translation, more hands are going in the cookie jar and shit can get complicated. Also, they probably want consistency, it wouldn't make sense to have some games translated and others still in its native language.

Is this just the voiceovers that aren't English or is the entire game in Japanese?

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Originally Posted by Guntz

Because that would be far too easy. Not to mention it would break the first rule of businesses, Never make direct contact with the customer. This would include releasing products at the request of the consumer. It's MUCH better to spend stupid amounts of money in R&D researching what the consumer wants as if we were some kind of herding animal. "Let's make Sonic Advance 4 instead of giving the consumer what they really want, a good Sonic game". It's so much more efficient to spend money trying to identify what the consumer wants than actually listening to them and making products that are actually wanted... :shame:

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Life lesson: You can't please everybody, because you'll end up satisfying nobody.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

Case and point in EarthBound. Why the hell hasn't Nintendo re-released it yet? Or Mother 1 and 3 for that matter. Really, the matter of copyright infringement and all that other law BS doesn't matter one bit. No music artist would care one bit if there's a song in some old ass video game that vaguely sounds like a song they made 30 years ago. NOBODY CARES! JUST RELEASE THE EFFING GAME NINTENDO!

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Nintendo has said 'Nothing' about Earthbound, you would blame the fan-base know-nothing circle jerk on them? :D

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Originally Posted by Guntz

Also on the subject of Nintendo. Mother 3 N64DD or EarthBound 64 was inevitably cancelled. WHY?! Because Nintendo short-handed Itoi's team. THEY HAD SO MUCH MONEY! Why couldn't they have put more money into the Mother 3 project instead of letting it rot for 6 years until it's inevitable cancellation. This just baffles me. If Nintendo actually you know, CARED about a game that could have saved the N64 (it would have been compared to FF7), they would have pumped more time and money into Mother 3 and had it released. But no, they basically told Itoi "have fun" with literally no help from anybody actually skilled in 3D. Itoi's staff struggled with a flawed game engine and wasted so much time and money for it to eventually be cancelled. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!

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The N64 didn't need saving, it was making money. If you didn't realize, Pokemon happened to come out to great success and made Earthbound a conceptual redundancy.

Earthbound was never successful in North America. It was niche but that was it.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

That brings me to another question. WHY ARE SO MANY DAMN GAMES CANCELLED?! There are so many games that were near completion but were cancelled for absolutely retarded reasons. Wasting immense time and money. Moronic I tell you.

I'll get back to this later. There's too much stupidity in the video game industry to cover in one post.

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They can get scrapped for recycling ideas, could have been bad games, could have been write-off projects intent on offering hands-on experience for teams working on the hardware all along with the 'potential green light' including the motivational perks of advertising & hype.

There are lots of reasons the cogs in the machine keep turning the way they do.

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Originally Posted by GeckoYamori

Guess it's some legal mumbo jumbo related to not fiddling with the original game's code in any way (basically ROM hacking in this case, I suppose). IIRC Pulseman is now available internationally thanks to VC, but it recieved no English translation. No huge loss when it comes to games like Rondo of Blood or Pulseman, but it's too bad we'll never see official English releases of some old gems like Monster World IV or Seiken Densetsu 3 because of this.

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Pulseman was released in English on the Sega Channel, wasn't it?

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Originally Posted by j_factor

Pulseman was released in English on the Sega Channel, wasn't it?

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now that you mention it, yes it was. I'm startin to think the Sega Channel games are just lost altogether.

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Originally Posted by 17daysolderthannes

now that you mention it, yes it was. I'm startin to think the Sega Channel games are just lost altogether.

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Yep. See why I don't like downloaded games? SEE?!

Even Satellaview games have been dumped (namely Radical Dreamers). Pretty odd how Sega Channel has evaporated into thin air.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

Even Satellaview games have been dumped (namely Radical Dreamers). Pretty odd how Sega Channel has evaporated into thin air.

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Probably because some people prefer more Shitendo... I mean Nintendo rather than Sega