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Main => News/Info => General => Announcements => Topic started by: NightWolve on Apr. 19, 2012, 07:54:28 AM

Title: Audio Interviews with Victor Ireland & John Greiner (ex-head of Hudson Soft).
Post by: NightWolve on Apr. 19, 2012, 07:54:28 AM
I thought this was newsworthy, figure others would be interested. I was a big fan of Working Designs BITD and was sorry to see it go (in sharp contrast to many sideshow freaks and detesticles that ACTUALLY cheered at its demise...)! It's interesting to hear Victor speak for the first time. Kind of a long interview, but I listened to all of it; I'll probably have to listen to it again for parts I wasn't quite paying attention to. 1st interview links:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/anncast/2012-04-13
http://animenewsnetwork.cachefly.net/anncast/anncast114.mp3

Vic talks about the Exile 2 localization difficulties at about 98:30 minutes into it and how they accidentally made the last level too hard. Plenty of other interesting things throughout this interview if you've got the time.

April 25, 2012: Another interview from Retronauts with just Vic (only an hour long) that I found far more interesting can be found here:

http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3156908&ct=PODCASTS
http://podcast.the1upnetwork.com/flat/Retronauts/R042612.mp3

Some discussion by fans can be found here:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=11604.0

Highlights from 1st interview:
Quote
00:30 Victor Ireland and John Greiner introduction and how Victor got his start with JRPGs

12:00 Working Designs' famous "conversational" translations

17:20 Censorship in the early days of game localization

20:50 John Greiner's days at Hudson Soft and pretty much the entire history of the Turbografx 16 (plus: the real story behind JJ and Jeff!)

45:10 The closing of Hudson Soft and what's up with all those old properties

50:10 The Class of Heroes II kickstarter and why they're trying to raise half a million dollars to localize a game

01:06:30 Victor's take on the current state of JRPGs

01:23:50 Twitter time! Monkeypaw Games and their philosophy on localization, The Playstation anti-2D policy and oh, so much more!

Quicki Highlights from 2nd interview:
Quote
Some more details about how he started off as a programmer with Working Designs.

He guesstimates the TG-16 CD install base being under ~20,000 people and not much more than that after the Turbo Duo arrived, Sega CD was maybe 3 times that.

Winding up publishing the last official US title for the Sega Saturn.