Things which are annoying for fans...

[gekiganwing]

I experienced my first H game in late 2001. I didn't become one of the crazy-dedicated people who learned written Japanese just to understand a few games. Since then, I've experienced an awful lot of letdowns and disappointments as a fan of the weird, neglected category of games which includes visual novels, dating simulations, sim date RPGs, and so on.

Annoyance #1: adaptation displacement. I got that term from tvtropes.org. That opinionated wiki states, "...even sources that were popular at the time can disappear in the shadow of a successful adaptation." In other words, a spinoff which overshadows the original material.

Right now in ren'ai fandom, this is a constant problem. The only example I know of a professionally translated H game with an equivalent pro-translated H anime is Gibo. For almost everything else, the anime/manga have been translated, but the original game is almost unknown to everyone except a select few individuals.

If you look through fan translations, you can now find complete English translations of three H games: Utawarerumono, Wind, and Tsukihime. Two out of those three have anime which has been licensed, and the third has long since been fansubbed. All the other attempts to create game fan translations are either in the works, partially complete, or cancelled.

These days, I rejoice when a fan translation is released to the public. Only a few slightly-crazy fans might be experiencing these, but as long as they're getting made and released, I figure that'll cut back on ignorance among fans.

And somewhat related to this is the "Newgrounds effect." I experienced this while trying to research the untranslated Galaxy Angel games. The fan-made game completely overshadowed any discussions of the originals.

Annoyance #2: the "obscure corner of fandom" effect. There are anime fans out there who like boy x girls stories, girl x boys stories, and so on. But even if their favorite series began as a game, it's almost certainly not in English, and therefore they probably haven't played it. The same applies for licensed spin-off games.

Only a small number of English-speaking gamers have experienced a romance game. And I suspect that only a few of them were impressed at all. You might find the occasional fan who likes RPG-fusion games (Riviera, Thousand Arms), or the individual who still remembers True Love 95. But only a few gamers honestly like visual novels.

Annoyance #3: finding information about an untranslated game *in English* on the company's own site, but knowing there's only a one percent chance the game will be translated. I found an example of this today at http://red-entertainment.co.jp/eng That site discusses the Sakura Taisen series, and if you explore the site a little further, there's mentions of Kita e.

I won't get into licensing just yet. There's a lengthy thread about it at My Neoromance here: http://forum.my-neoromance.com/index.php?showtopic=78

[GLACIER]

Annoyance #3: finding information about an untranslated game *in English* on the company's own site, but knowing there's only a one percent chance the game will be translated. I found an example of this today at http://red-entertainment.co.jp/eng That site discusses the Sakura Taisen series, and if you explore the site a little further, there's mentions of Kita e.

Really? I actually wish more developers/publishers would do this. It's always good for accurate information to be readily available (and easy to archive) even if a game is never localized.

[Watercolorheart]

What is this Thousand Arms you speak of?

I have attempted Riviera but failed miserably on an emulator ... I may try to find an old (re: nonexistent) copy for my DS, since I become more dedicated when absolutely bored for entertainment in transit.

[Nafai]

@BCS: It's a PS1 game that was basically an RPG that allowed you to engage in dating-sim type gameplay in towns to increase the affection rating of your female teammates, in order to gain bonuses when smithing (you play a smith) with them as your partners - or so I remember. never did finish it. I liked the idea of the dating-sim portions but the RPG parts weren't well executed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Arms

[monele]

For annoyance #1 : if the anime version is non-H while the original game source was H... don't be too surprised the anime version overshadows the game ^^;... You can't expect everyone to dabble into H games
Actually this goes for annoyance #2 too ^^;... I mean, True Love might be a romance game, but it's still a H game firstmost. I think for many people, liking a particular romance anime, then discovering it came from a game and being all "yay!" and then discovering it's an H game is pretty disappointing... maybe even disgusting to some.

My annoyance #1 : why are there still so many H games?

[musical74]

@BCS: adding what Nafai said, it's not surprising you haven't heard of it...the RPG part of it was pretty bad <and confusing>. I used to have it too and found that they couldn't decide if it should be an RPG with dating elements or a dating sim with RPG elements...kinda wished you could go on a date with the female baddie too...she seemed a better choice for a date than some of the heroines! It's not a BAD game, just too many flaws that make what could have been a great game into an OK game.

My #1 annoyance: "games* that are essentially *bunch of H pictures with a very very very thin excuse for a story*

[Ignosco]

Right now in ren'ai fandom, this is a constant problem. The only example I know of a professionally translated H game with an equivalent pro-translated H anime is Gibo. For almost everything else, the anime/manga have been translated, but the original game is almost unknown to everyone except a select few individuals.

If you look through fan translations, you can now find complete English translations of three H games: Utawarerumono, Wind, and Tsukihime. Two out of those three have anime which has been licensed, and the third has long since been fansubbed. All the other attempts to create game fan translations are either in the works, partially complete, or cancelled.

Bible Black and Discipline: The Record of a Crusade have licensed H games + anime as well.

For H games, One: To the Radiant Season has been fan-translated, along with a few other lesser known games (list here). Mirrormoon's translation of Men at Work! 2 was also released a few days ago.

[Mistik]

To me the most annoying aspect of visual novels are H when there needs to be none. I would say the best example would be the default girl's path in "Wind, breath of heart" the player goes through a emotional, powerful ride, but at the end they just throw in a sex scene after all the story is over, just because. It kind of ruined the path for me, and I played the clean version from there on out.

[flowerthief]

"Adaptation displacement" -- Thanks for that term. It definitely applies to game->anime adaptions bigtime. Of course it's much more widespread with book->movie adaptions.

I think the reasons for both are apparent.
It takes much less time to watch a movie than to read a book. Busy people choose the movie.
It takes much less time (work) to translate an anime than to translate a game. Busy translators choose the anime. Especially them visual novels--the amount of text in those things is enormous. It's impressive to me that any of them get translated at all.

Now you would think this would result in translators selecting games to translate which focus on REAL GAMEPLAY (more like the True Love 95 variety) over the text-laden visual novel. You would think it would require less work to complete such a project and therefore have a higher chance of seeing completion. You would also think a gameplay-driven game would appeal to a wider audience and therefore be more worth translating...

[papillon]

A gameplay-driven game requires less out of the translator but a lot more out of the beta-tester!

[Jake]

It takes much less time to watch a movie than to read a book. Busy people choose the movie.

I'm a busy person, and I nearly always choose the book. I read a lot more books than movies. I can pick a book up for five minutes, read a bit then put it down again; I can do this more or less anywhere. Books, with their conveniently-ten-minutes-of-reading chapters, are designed for this kind of consumption, while movies are not. Movies are typically a lot more constraining, you have to be able to allocate a whole two-hour (or so) contiguous slot of time and you have to do it somewhere with a TV and a DVD player (or other, similar equipment).

It takes much less time (work) to translate an anime than to translate a game. Busy translators choose the anime. Especially them visual novels--the amount of text in those things is enormous. It's impressive to me that any of them get translated at all.

Similarly, while I've not done work on either thing, I'd expect that a game is generally more forgiving scheduling-wise, partly for the same reasons. You're working with an entirely textual format, so you can do the translation work more or less anywhere - on a train, at work in your lunchbreak, whatever. You could even work from printouts of the text, so you wouldn't necessarily need a computer. On the other hand, to translate anime you're working from an audio source, so you have to spend a significant amount of time at the PC/TV getting the right dialogue - and when you've translated it, you have to spend a significant amount of time at the PC getting the timing right on the subs.

Professionally-speaking, there are also other considerations; 'translating' an anime not only involves subtitling work, but also dubbing. One has to not only find the cast members and pay them, but also write an entirely new script so that the utterances in English a) fit the lengths of the original Japanese sentences, b) in the same order, c) while still not just making sense, but sounding natural. This is, believe it or not, pretty hard. Conversely, with a VN even if you are dubbing it, you don't have to worry about timing or even to an extent order of dialogue, because you're not constrained by a fixed runtime, and thanks to the nature of the medium you can probably re-order the dialogue lines if you need to anyway.

[GLACIER]

It takes much less time (work) to translate an anime than to translate a game. Busy translators choose the anime. Especially them visual novels--the amount of text in those things is enormous. It's impressive to me that any of them get translated at all.

I think a difference in skillset is another factor. With anime fansubbing, many translators are okay at understanding spoken Japanese, but would have great difficulty reading the written script. Consequently, there are far fewer translators who have the ability to tackle something like a visual novel.