I'm no huge fan of the series but it seems like Ultima is trying to capitalize on how cool Japanese stuff is in America these days. I'm sure it will be a shallow attempt to cash in.
For a real fun Japanese experience, VM Japan, from Falcom is a cool Japanese mythology based tactical RPG for the PC. I still enjoy a game of PC RTS Shogun Total War (the developers aren't Japanese but they put a LOT of research into the history), which was the first Total War game.
Japanese English translation has come along way. My GF was translated for Northland and Deus Ex 2 (I know, I know, I told her to try for something cooler next time) and I was able to watch the whole process (and help out every one and a while). Teams of people work on it (some, like her, in the U.S. or who speak as well as native speakers).
The current dilemma in translation from Japanese to English I say is between good literal translations (or not translating some things at all, like dialogue) or completely redoing the translation (especially for games) by adding new dialogue and such, like Working Designs was known for.
Just to chime in, viruses aren't really considered "life." They require real cells to reproduce and I've read that they are probably not a kind of pre-life, but more likely a simplification of early living things.
Yeah, you're right. Japanese seiyuu are often singers and actors in their own right (Megumi Hayashibara, Akino Arai, and Ai Orikasa come to mind) and a lot of singers do voice acting for video games in the U.S...right?
Well, I do remember Poe being a horseman in the Apoclopyse game that never game out.
Though, to be fair, now that I think about it, Sam and Max Hit the Road was some great American voice acting.
You sir, are a dork. I used seiyuu because there's a seperate seiyuu industry, different from the way American voice actors are cast. There is a stable of talent pulled from actors and singers. Should I have posted it like:
In games I have rarely experienced good American voice acting (if you can count Zelda/Mario I guess they're the exception - i.e., they don't really say anything). This is games.slashdot.org. Converesely, I have rarely heard bad Japanese bad acting in games.
What is bad Japanese voice acting in a game, then?
The Japanese do voice acting much better. The voices are more emotive, even the sterotyped (big tough guy, for example) voices sound like they have more heart, and they can pull seiyuu (voice acting) talent to do such work. American voice acting blows chunks in comparison. Seiyuu talent works on games and anime, which Americans treat as throw away.
I was planning on not buying anymore RPGs dubbed in English (Phantom Brave, yay!) but Final Fantasy 12 might make me change that. Hopefully Dragon Quest 8 will come with Japanese.
...comes from the presence of it in Japanese culture. The Japanese are much more open about sexuality on the entertainment level than Americans are: Janet Jackson shows one so so breast and the country freaks out. One of the most popular doramas (an hour long sitcom / drama) in the last few years was GTO (based on anime and manga), which should characters watching hardcore porno (and showed the porn). That sexuality has been a part of Japanese culture since the explicit Tale of Genji and later explicit wood block prints.
This extends to homosexuality; it's no secrect that priests and samurai often performed homosexual acts. Beat Takeshi Kitano was in a film about this, Gohatto, which presented members of the Shinsengumi as homosexual.
As mentioned Yuri and Yayoi are popular manga genres exploring lesbian and gay themes respectively. Even other popular media can have references to it; I remember in Final Fantasy VII Cloud getting his HP restored after visiting a brothel and being fapped (nothing is shown) by another guy. A lot of it can be done jokingly.
I'm surprised at the caliber of comment on this article. Who watches PBS anymore? Why watch that old channel? I'm in college, I watch Dave Chappelle and Cartoon Network. But I also watch PBS: they show delightful British comedies (unfortunately our affliate has pulled Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, and Flying Circus now). Lehr's show is one of the best news programs on television.
Not to mention that you slashdot people should enjoy PBS's science programs (as a child I lived and breathed their animal documentaries, and I still find the birds series a joy to watch) and perhaps their history (their documentaries on the Prophet Muhammed and Islam the last few years were great).
If PBS is mad at conservatives, it should be. America had a chance to have something as brilliant and deep as the BBC. That NPR and PBS aren't is the fault of the conservatives who seem hell bent on funding idiots like Rupert Murdoch and their "news."
I just started reading American comics again (I read Japanese manga in Japanese if I want someting like that, in my younger years I read spiderman, batman, etc.), with Sam and Max, 1602, The Watchers, The Maxx, and getting around to reading Sandman (I've already read Dream Hunters and Death: The High Cost of Living). Other than S&M and Dream Hunters, I'm struck by how bad the art is - the interesting character designs and clean, efficent, and often (but not always - most of the popular manga in America is like that but not all the manga in Japan) stylish manga of Japan.
Granted, with the influx of manga, there's a lot of copycat garbage - I can say what I like about th art styles of the above mentioned comics, but they certainly have interesting plots (not that manga doesn't but often there seems to be a pretty high signal to noise ratio).
Someone commented that everyone reads manga in Japan. Which is partially true; even my girlfriend's father read Dragonball as it was coming out, but the Mainichi had a great article about how some of the baby boom generation of men were reading manga on trains rather than novels and that a lot of people found it quite dorky.
I know Debian has its supporters and what not, but won't this move hurt Deb's desktop use? It seems that Debian based distros have been taking off (especially live CD based ones, which install much more easily than Deb). Won't this just put it farther behind?
an online golf game - most likely the least online-needing sports subgenre there is
Nintendo, as always, thinks of Japan first. Minna no Golf was HUGE in Japan (and still is). I know families (i.e., mothers and fathers) who bought copies it was so big.
Uh, the Gamecube is not tanking. It's second overall in the world, in front of the Xbox hypocritical/.'ers love so much. Way ahead of the Xbox in Japan and making quite a bit of money there. Plus a lot of games on all three consoles sell the best on GC (Soul Caliber 2).
Secondly Nintendo is never been over a quick buck. Mario Bros 2 USA was just a Mario packaged version of Doki Doki Panic. They whored out Nintendo characters for awful CD-i games. Nintendo characters used to be on Shasta (yummy;D) and I just saw them the other day on popcorn.
Might I remind you of Nintendo Power, an advertisement Nintendo fans pay for?
Perhaps its not completely germane, since it was announced a while ago, but again, kudos to Slack for moving to X.org so quickly. The faster everyone gets away from X the better we all are.
I'm a bio student and Dr. David Suzuki, a noted geneticist and bio ethicist came to my university (Emory) last semester to deliver a speech about this very subject. He argued that genetic manipulation had enormous potential to do good for the world, but there was little chance that corporations would use it to do good (He says genetically modified food feeding the world's poor and hungry is a sham - we already make enough food for everyone on earth, the problem is distribution, through those selfsame corporations) and that genetic technology was simply moving too fast for people to both come to terms with it and regulate its widespread use.
We're seeing this in the crazy lawsuits and issues stemming from genetic engineering (companies forcing farmers to pay for genetically modified crops that accidently took hold on their land and the supposedly sterlie glolight danios aquarium fish [which arent sterile - indeed since they really are just zebra danios they should breed like mad]).
The further corporatization of science is not a good thing; yes the money does help new research get done, but none of the important sharing of information goes on. We've had open source in biology, through research and journals (Watson and Crick's use of many source to construct a model of DNA comes to mind immediately) and that kind of peer review will be very necessary in genetics.
Gozaimasu is actually the more polite version of arimasu. It doesn't make some phrases polite, it is by itself polite. It doesn't occur regularly in everyday speech, but has been kind of codified in some phrases - arigatou gozaimasu being one.
Clerks in stores and such tend to use arigatou gozaimashita, which, as you mentioned is the past tense of gozaimasu (something akin to thank you for having shopped with us).
I've been using Firewhatever since.6 or so (maybe earlier) and I jumped on Thunderbird when it came out. But at school last semester I used webmail. When I came home I reinstalled Thunderbird,.6 and the.7 prerelease and they both stutter on the Inbox screen. I haven't found anymore info on it and it's only in the mail 3 pane view (when viewing an invidiual message it doesn't happen). Anyone know what the deal is?
Definitely more than I would pay... but remember that space is more of a commodity in Japan than here in the states.
I don't know where these memes get started but yes, Japanese houses are small, but they're not so cramped for space that an unbundled PS2 and DVD player or whatever would have them coming out the windows.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no huge fan of the series but it seems like Ultima is trying to capitalize on how cool Japanese stuff is in America these days. I'm sure it will be a shallow attempt to cash in.
For a real fun Japanese experience, VM Japan, from Falcom is a cool Japanese mythology based tactical RPG for the PC. I still enjoy a game of PC RTS Shogun Total War (the developers aren't Japanese but they put a LOT of research into the history), which was the first Total War game.
Japanese English translation has come along way. My GF was translated for Northland and Deus Ex 2 (I know, I know, I told her to try for something cooler next time) and I was able to watch the whole process (and help out every one and a while). Teams of people work on it (some, like her, in the U.S. or who speak as well as native speakers).
The current dilemma in translation from Japanese to English I say is between good literal translations (or not translating some things at all, like dialogue) or completely redoing the translation (especially for games) by adding new dialogue and such, like Working Designs was known for.
Just to chime in, viruses aren't really considered "life." They require real cells to reproduce and I've read that they are probably not a kind of pre-life, but more likely a simplification of early living things.
For Japanese stuff:
http://bunko.theppn.org/
http://www.d-addicts.com/
God bless the moderator who modded this funny.
Yeah, you're right. Japanese seiyuu are often singers and actors in their own right (Megumi Hayashibara, Akino Arai, and Ai Orikasa come to mind) and a lot of singers do voice acting for video games in the U.S...right?
Well, I do remember Poe being a horseman in the Apoclopyse game that never game out.
Though, to be fair, now that I think about it, Sam and Max Hit the Road was some great American voice acting.
You sir, are a dork. I used seiyuu because there's a seperate seiyuu industry, different from the way American voice actors are cast. There is a stable of talent pulled from actors and singers. Should I have posted it like:
In games I have rarely experienced good American voice acting (if you can count Zelda/Mario I guess they're the exception - i.e., they don't really say anything). This is games.slashdot.org. Converesely, I have rarely heard bad Japanese bad acting in games.
What is bad Japanese voice acting in a game, then?
Disgaea. In Japanese.
The Japanese do voice acting much better. The voices are more emotive, even the sterotyped (big tough guy, for example) voices sound like they have more heart, and they can pull seiyuu (voice acting) talent to do such work.
American voice acting blows chunks in comparison. Seiyuu talent works on games and anime, which Americans treat as throw away.
I was planning on not buying anymore RPGs dubbed in English (Phantom Brave, yay!) but Final Fantasy 12 might make me change that. Hopefully Dragon Quest 8 will come with Japanese.
Ask Microsoft about Virtual Boy.
I could as MS about Virtual Boy, or I could ask Nintendo...
...comes from the presence of it in Japanese culture. The Japanese are much more open about sexuality on the entertainment level than Americans are: Janet Jackson shows one so so breast and the country freaks out. One of the most popular doramas (an hour long sitcom / drama) in the last few years was GTO (based on anime and manga), which should characters watching hardcore porno (and showed the porn). That sexuality has been a part of Japanese culture since the explicit Tale of Genji and later explicit wood block prints.
This extends to homosexuality; it's no secrect that priests and samurai often performed homosexual acts. Beat Takeshi Kitano was in a film about this, Gohatto, which presented members of the Shinsengumi as homosexual.
As mentioned Yuri and Yayoi are popular manga genres exploring lesbian and gay themes respectively. Even other popular media can have references to it; I remember in Final Fantasy VII Cloud getting his HP restored after visiting a brothel and being fapped (nothing is shown) by another guy. A lot of it can be done jokingly.
Wait, what about Mario and Luigi? Haven't they been around for a while? ;)
Let's not even mention Toad...
I'm surprised at the caliber of comment on this article. Who watches PBS anymore? Why watch that old channel? I'm in college, I watch Dave Chappelle and Cartoon Network. But I also watch PBS: they show delightful British comedies (unfortunately our affliate has pulled Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, and Flying Circus now). Lehr's show is one of the best news programs on television.
Not to mention that you slashdot people should enjoy PBS's science programs (as a child I lived and breathed their animal documentaries, and I still find the birds series a joy to watch) and perhaps their history (their documentaries on the Prophet Muhammed and Islam the last few years were great).
If PBS is mad at conservatives, it should be. America had a chance to have something as brilliant and deep as the BBC. That NPR and PBS aren't is the fault of the conservatives who seem hell bent on funding idiots like Rupert Murdoch and their "news."
I just started reading American comics again (I read Japanese manga in Japanese if I want someting like that, in my younger years I read spiderman, batman, etc.), with Sam and Max, 1602, The Watchers, The Maxx, and getting around to reading Sandman (I've already read Dream Hunters and Death: The High Cost of Living). Other than S&M and Dream Hunters, I'm struck by how bad the art is - the interesting character designs and clean, efficent, and often (but not always - most of the popular manga in America is like that but not all the manga in Japan) stylish manga of Japan.
Granted, with the influx of manga, there's a lot of copycat garbage - I can say what I like about th art styles of the above mentioned comics, but they certainly have interesting plots (not that manga doesn't but often there seems to be a pretty high signal to noise ratio).
Someone commented that everyone reads manga in Japan. Which is partially true; even my girlfriend's father read Dragonball as it was coming out, but the Mainichi had a great article about how some of the baby boom generation of men were reading manga on trains rather than novels and that a lot of people found it quite dorky.
Reloading slashdot...over and over...
I know Debian has its supporters and what not, but won't this move hurt Deb's desktop use? It seems that Debian based distros have been taking off (especially live CD based ones, which install much more easily than Deb). Won't this just put it farther behind?
an online golf game - most likely the least online-needing sports subgenre there is
Nintendo, as always, thinks of Japan first. Minna no Golf was HUGE in Japan (and still is). I know families (i.e., mothers and fathers) who bought copies it was so big.
The Sony MiniDisc didn't fare so well even though it was a Sony product.
The sony minidisc didn't fare so well IN THE US. In Japan, MD's are huge.
Uh, the Gamecube is not tanking. It's second overall in the world, in front of the Xbox hypocritical /.'ers love so much. Way ahead of the Xbox in Japan and making quite a bit of money there. Plus a lot of games on all three consoles sell the best on GC (Soul Caliber 2).
;D) and I just saw them the other day on popcorn.
Secondly Nintendo is never been over a quick buck. Mario Bros 2 USA was just a Mario packaged version of Doki Doki Panic. They whored out Nintendo characters for awful CD-i games. Nintendo characters used to be on Shasta (yummy
Might I remind you of Nintendo Power, an advertisement Nintendo fans pay for?
Well OBVIOUSLY I meant XFree86.
Perhaps its not completely germane, since it was announced a while ago, but again, kudos to Slack for moving to X.org so quickly. The faster everyone gets away from X the better we all are.
I'm a bio student and Dr. David Suzuki, a noted geneticist and bio ethicist came to my university (Emory) last semester to deliver a speech about this very subject. He argued that genetic manipulation had enormous potential to do good for the world, but there was little chance that corporations would use it to do good (He says genetically modified food feeding the world's poor and hungry is a sham - we already make enough food for everyone on earth, the problem is distribution, through those selfsame corporations) and that genetic technology was simply moving too fast for people to both come to terms with it and regulate its widespread use.
We're seeing this in the crazy lawsuits and issues stemming from genetic engineering (companies forcing farmers to pay for genetically modified crops that accidently took hold on their land and the supposedly sterlie glolight danios aquarium fish [which arent sterile - indeed since they really are just zebra danios they should breed like mad]).
The further corporatization of science is not a good thing; yes the money does help new research get done, but none of the important sharing of information goes on. We've had open source in biology, through research and journals (Watson and Crick's use of many source to construct a model of DNA comes to mind immediately) and that kind of peer review will be very necessary in genetics.
I started picking up some oldie, but goodie, games that I can't even play...[including] MK Trilogy.
I think's thats what they call a "feature" in the industry.
Gozaimasu is actually the more polite version of arimasu. It doesn't make some phrases polite, it is by itself polite. It doesn't occur regularly in everyday speech, but has been kind of codified in some phrases - arigatou gozaimasu being one.
Clerks in stores and such tend to use arigatou gozaimashita, which, as you mentioned is the past tense of gozaimasu (something akin to thank you for having shopped with us).
I've been using Firewhatever since .6 or so (maybe earlier) and I jumped on Thunderbird when it came out. But at school last semester I used webmail. When I came home I reinstalled Thunderbird, .6 and the .7 prerelease and they both stutter on the Inbox screen. I haven't found anymore info on it and it's only in the mail 3 pane view (when viewing an invidiual message it doesn't happen). Anyone know what the deal is?
Definitely more than I would pay... but remember that space is more of a commodity in Japan than here in the states.
I don't know where these memes get started but yes, Japanese houses are small, but they're not so cramped for space that an unbundled PS2 and DVD player or whatever would have them coming out the windows.