Mangagamer.com

[Vatina]

Take a look at this site:
http://www.mangagamer.com/

It doesn't open until July 3rd, but it looks like another company trying to localise visual novels? They have Da Capo and Suika on the front page. They'll make the games downloadable it seems.

Unfortunately it looks like they are going the same route as Jast, and concentrating only on H-games. Oh well...

[PyTom]

Well, they're going with bigger name titles than the zaibatsu normally does. (Da Capo is a big title, with no less than 4 seasons of anime.)

http://www.akiba-ch.com/?p=540

There's a blog post about this that seems to think it legit.

[Cazel]

Hmmm... based on the pages, looks like they chose to localize the original Da Capo, rather than Da Capo PC. Admittedly, getting Kotori and Miharu is good enough for me, but would have been interesting to get the additional characters. At any rate, getting more translated VNs is a good thing.

[gekiganwing]

In Anime Expo 07, Circus held a panel. The company was trying to find a partner company to distribute its games in English. So it looks like a deal has been struck...

I'm glad to see that Mangagamer is licensing games with some brand recognition. Also, that it's limiting its initial licenses to just two. Too much ambition can lead to cancellations...

Looking at the splash page, it looks like this company will be offering demos and (only?) paid downloads. If it works better than Virtual Mate, I'll be glad.

The Suika page has bunches of typos...

(Incidentally, that was the same con where JAST announced localization of Family Project. That translation is slowly drawing near.)

[Samu-kun]

It looks great and all... But I'm in trouble because it looks like the games aren't compatible with Vista 64-bit version. -_-; *curses Microsoft/Ballmer/capitalists/the rest of the universe*

[DaFool]

Did anyone analyze the registrant of the domain if it was the Circus Corporation? If so, it could be finally someone trying to pull a Bandai Visual USA again.

In any case, this is still a good thing. And I bet with all its franchises this one has deeper pockets than Hirameki.

[Vatina]

Hmmm Circus. Is it too much to hope for that they will also bring over the Mai Hime game? I heard it was really good

*Dreams a little*

[Hime]

Nice to know that another VN translation company has been born... I haven't had any particular inerest in Circus' titles so far, but I guess I should check them out when they are released. I really hope that the game translations won't be like the story/character introduction's translations, which I think are rather rigid.

[mikey]

Though I have to say the site is really unprofessionally made (no real information on the company), and if gekiganwing wouldn't say that circus was looking for a partner, I'd be really skeptical about the site, that is isn't what it seems. Maybe July 3rd it will be replaced by some real website - this temporary one may well be a Japanese-made site, since the way the pictures and text are arranged is very non-western, at the very least it's very uncommon. Or maybe this is just some publicity thing, you never know these days. So I'm in a state of... how shall we put this... "reserved enthusiasm" ^_^.

[chronoluminaire]

Wow. If this really goes ahead, I'll be over the moon. Da Capo is one of my all-time favourite anime and VN series, but I've never been able to play it due to them not being translated. If it looks legit, I'll be preordering Da Capo as soon as I can.

[mikey]

Well, they are live now, so it looks like it's really true.

However, forget DaCapo and all that nonsense right now. Because it's not that game (or this Suika thing) which is most important. Not at all - because the 3rd of July 2008 marks a much more momentous occasion in the history of English bishoujo gaming. You see, up until today you may have believed, that as far as game names go, "Do You Like Horny Bunnies" was and would stay the pinnacle of hentai marketing. However - all this has been shattered and redefined by mangagamer's offering "Suck my d**k or die". And so, the golden trophy has changed owners, and Mangagamer has set the standards sky-high now. (Also with titles like "Tasty Shafts", "Sandwiched By My Wife And Her Sister" and "The Queen And Princess As Your Reward"). This is, I believe, the true significance of this new company.

[Samu-kun]

XD... Honestly, when I first saw it, I thought I was seeing a DL site listing. It looks like this company will be essentially floating on the success of Da Capo and Shuika... Because everything else they're selling looks very, very bad. And it looks like neither of those games will be available for us for quite some time anyways. I hope the company doesn't go down under before they release them... >_>

[Samu-kun]

No Mikey... You are very wrong. THIS is the pinnacle of English bishojo gaming. :3

The anti-government guerrillas were fighting agaist the government in the country which was politically unrest.
There was an incident that a little girl was raped and murdered by the guerrillas in a small village.
Mr. Prosper, who is the commander of the military, advanced his men to this small village to hunt the guerrillas.
But the incident was all planned out by him, so that he could have a raping party for himself. The girls, who were suspicious as guerrillas, were arrested. That was the beginning of the insane raping party.

[PyTom]

I'm not sure what the point of launching the site without any downloadable games was, frankly. But I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It looks like Eidelweiss will be one of the real-launch titles, along with a slew of fetish-games.

And giving them the benefit of the doubt doesn't mean I don't have many doubts about MG. Their website is none too professionally translated, to the point where if the games have this quality, it will be a huge problem. Their release schedule seems insane to me, to the point where I'm not sure people could do a proper technical QC at that rate, let alone checking the translation quality. The games seem way too expensive, as they're priced in euros instead of dollars. And I worry a bit about them saturating the market for hentai games.

On the other hand, they do seem to be associated with Broccoli, which is the Gamers chain in Japan. So there's a bit of legitimacy there. And they do plan to bring several interesting games to English, so even if they go under, there will be those games.

Frankly, I think the most important thing they could do would be to start a forum to talk to their customers. It will be much easier to see them as legit if we see them talking to the public, rather than acting as a faceless monolith.

Finally, let me just say that in this world where games are basically murder simulators, I find it refreshing how a game encourages academic progress, using the slogan: "Guess how hard you study if the good GPA can take you to the sex paradise".

[papillon]

They haven't bothered translating the correct names of the games (although apparently if you BUY them, you get the real name in the installer) - perhaps they think those ridiculous names will get more attention from their target audience.

'Which Girl Should I Choose' for instance is in face 'Hinata Bokko' which I think translates as something like "sunbathing". More information here (site NSFW, if that warning needs posting in this thread)

I'm working on getting more information about the other games in the listing. The games were briefly available for sale when they were testing their shopping cart, so some people have already bought them, but they're not 'supposed' to be on sale yet... perhaps a few more bugs will get worked out...