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/2012-04-13http://animenewsnetwork.cachefly.net/anncast/anncast114.mp3Vic 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=PODCASTShttp://podcast.the1upnetwork.com/flat/Retronauts/R042612.mp3Some discussion by fans can be found here:
http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=11604.0Highlights from 1st interview:
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:
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.
