Fighting Vipers and Dragon Force in April
SEGA Ages brings the Saturn to the PlayStation 2.
By Anoop Gantayat
January 26, 2005 - Following last year’s conversion of Virtua Fighter 2 for the Japanese market, Sega has been pretty quiet regarding its SEGA Ages series of classic remakes. That’s about to change, though, with the upcoming release of Phantasy Star II and, as we learned today, two high profile releases for April.
On April 28, Japanese shops will take shipment of Dragon Force and Fighting Vipers under the SEGA Ages label. The former was originally a Sega Saturn strategy title that came to America via a memorable localization job by Working Designs, and the latter was originally a Model 2 arcade title that one-upped Virtua Fighter 2 in the visuals department with real-time lighting effects.
There’s been no word yet on what we can expect from the conversions. For Fighting Vipers, we’re expecting something close to the arcade original (lets hope it will be closer than the Virtua Fighter 2 conversion, which despite SEGA’s claims of arcade perfection, had some obvious flaws). For Dragon Quest, we’re praying that 3D Ages retains the 2D visuals that helped to make the original one of the most memorable of the 32-bit generation.
Holy crap, Dragon Force? That’s interesting…wonder how it will turn out. Are they even allowed to use Working Design’s translation? Or are they going to have to retranslate the game?
Actually, Working Designs has expressed interest in the Dragon Force remake and want to bring it over here. I’m not a fan of Working Designs, by any means, but Dragon Force and Popful Mail were wonderful localizations, in my opinion.
I always thought that Working Designs championed the cause of bringing unappreciated Japanese RPGs to audiences outside of Japan, until I learned that even they only care about how much money they can make from them…
I doubt Working Designs is really raking in the money… their games never even chart the top twenty games in the month of their release- I amazed they are still in business. …
As far as I know, Working Designs is a very small developer. Their latest endeavour was Growlanser Generations, and rumour has it that Growlanser 4 is the next game on their list of RPGs to localize.
Working Designs is a very small company and their sales have never been that high. (I think the Playstation Lunars have been the only ones to ever break 100,000 units.) While money is a factor, Vic Ireland (pretty much the driving force behind the company) is very concerned about releasing a game “just so” which is why their release dates are so few and far between. If they really cared about money and only money, they wouldn’t do half the things they actually do to the games. Most localizations have minimal intrusion into the code (ideally just dumping in the new text and voiceovers, and then moving on), but Working Designs will go out of its way to change things and possibly add new features. That adds a lot of time to localization. That’s why they tend to release only one RPG a year, if that.
I have a particular fondness for Dragon Force so I wouldn’t mind seeing a remake of it come stateside, but I have to wonder if Working Designs is capable of doing it and releasing it in a timely manner. We’re getting closer to the end of the PS2 life cycle and if they take two years to translate it there might not being any PS2 shelf space left in stores by the time they’re done.
Are you a fan of Working Designs, Rune Lai? They abandoned the Sega Saturn over a dispute with Bernard Stolar, but I’ve since read that that was merely an excuse to move onto “more profitable pastures”. Perhaps if they’d been given an incentive to stay by Sega’s side, then Dragon Force 2 would have been given the same localization treatment as the first game.
Is is possible that Sega chose to rerelease Dragon Force because the translation work has already been done? Judging from screenshots taken from the PS2 incarnation of Dragon Force at Sega’s official website, it actually looks like a mere port rendered in a higher resolution to negate any blocky-ness.
If Sega actually bundled this game together with Dragon Force 2, they would actually be doing something right for a change. But of course, that would be asking too much, wouldn’t it? Even on the PS2 with its 70+ million strong userbase, there still isn’t a viable market for Strategy/RPGs outside of Japan… or so I’ve read. Strategy/RPGs have met with little success outside Japan (with a few exceptions), so they’ve been relegated to a niche genre within a niche genre. I think that’s quite tragic.
If I’m not mistaken, it was Mr. Stolar’s fault. Back in the Saturn days, he was firmly against the release of Japanese RPGs in America. He didn’t beleive they were mainstream enough, and thought it might give the Saturn the wrong image. Naturally, this would have lead to a disputed between Stolar and WD, which eventually lead to the two companies going their seperate ways.
Saturn lost Sega a lot of it’s old partners. EA was another big one. And as with WD, Sega lost EA because Sega screwed them over by not letting them know ahead of time that the Saturn was being discontinued.
Actually, I can tell a small difference in the anime - it looks like that’s been updated, as well. Gameplay, however, looks like a filter has been passed through it to get rid of the pixelization…like you said. There’s definitely been SOME updates though.
Actually, before you guys get all excited about these games… take a look at all the other Sega Ages remakes. Let me know if you find a single one worth spending money on, because I haven’t. They have unanimously been crappy
And Rune Lai knows that there is no love lost between Working Designs and I. Oh, Vic Ireland, how I loathe thee
Must get that clunky box first so I can finally play Orta…glares at his Gamecube
