gosokkyu

エンド

  • 戦う人間発電所

owatte shimatta


forgot to mention this here: Game Center Betty, the Nagao rhythm game arcade famous for being a semi-official cat hangout, and which was featured prominently in the recent manga & anime Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia (Insomniacs After School), apparently took substantial damage from last night's earthquake: the manager says they and their cats are fine, but their cabinets weren't as lucky. The full extent of the damage isn't yet known, but they did share a photo of the exterior damage, as seen above.

They have an established crowdfunding portal via Ci-en that they've been using to keep their cats fed and generally subsidise operations, so if you feel inclined to help out, you may want to check it out: subs start from ¥500/month. (Here's an English rundown of how to use Ci-en, should you require it.)



gosokkyu
@gosokkyu

I didn't realise it going in, but 2023 was a milestone year for Shmuplations, the online repository of translated vintage Japanese game interviews: it's ten years old! The site was originally launched by founder and primary translator blackoak as an external host for the STG-related translations they'd been dumping on a certain STG message board, with the occasional dalliance into material covering other genres.

From 2015, the translations produced for the site have been largely crowdfunded via Patreon, with patrons being able to influence what gets translated from month to month; thanks to all those backers, the Shmuplations archive currently sits at almost 450 translations, with an ever-growing vault of material to potentially translate for decades to come, and while I'd like to think we can count on a certain level of public support for the foreseeable future, I certainly don't take anything for granted, so to anyone who's deemed Shmuplations worthy of financial support: thank you, and I hope it's been worth your while.

I've been helping out behind-the-scenes since... 2018, I think?, and while I sort of hesitate to talk on behalf of the site for fear of overstating my involvement—blackoak still does most of translations, handles all the money, runs whatever socials are out there, etc—I also know that blackoak's appetite for self-promotion is virtually non-existent, so I feel an obligation to be a little more assertive: not just for the sake of attracting backers or whatever, but because I really don't think Shmuplations gets the broader recognition it deserves for the sheer amount of material it has curated, and if I've gotta plant that flag, so be it.

Shmuplations posted another 27 interviews this year; read on for a run-down, and some other off-the-cuff observations from 2023:


gosokkyu
@gosokkyu

dropped a boring-but-pull-quote-y rundown on twxttxr, mostly just because I wanna see if it'll get any real traction... I have my doubts: https://twitter.com/gosokkyu/status/1741409789866115563



I didn't realise it going in, but 2023 was a milestone year for Shmuplations, the online repository of translated vintage Japanese game interviews: it's ten years old! The site was originally launched by founder and primary translator blackoak as an external host for the STG-related translations they'd been dumping on a certain STG message board, with the occasional dalliance into material covering other genres.

From 2015, the translations produced for the site have been largely crowdfunded via Patreon, with patrons being able to influence what gets translated from month to month; thanks to all those backers, the Shmuplations archive currently sits at almost 450 translations, with an ever-growing vault of material to potentially translate for decades to come, and while I'd like to think we can count on a certain level of public support for the foreseeable future, I certainly don't take anything for granted, so to anyone who's deemed Shmuplations worthy of financial support: thank you, and I hope it's been worth your while.

I've been helping out behind-the-scenes since... 2018, I think?, and while I sort of hesitate to talk on behalf of the site for fear of overstating my involvement—blackoak still does most of translations, handles all the money, runs whatever socials are out there, etc—I also know that blackoak's appetite for self-promotion is virtually non-existent, so I feel an obligation to be a little more assertive: not just for the sake of attracting backers or whatever, but because I really don't think Shmuplations gets the broader recognition it deserves for the sheer amount of material it has curated, and if I've gotta plant that flag, so be it.

Shmuplations posted another 27 interviews this year; read on for a run-down, and some other off-the-cuff observations from 2023:



Famitsu's shared their new years' dev roundup, which includes comments from 163 devs on their keywords and ambitions for 2024, where they're at currently and what they're looking forward to next year. Most of it's very similar to the 4gamer wrap-up I went over the other day (with a lot of submissions that are virtually word-for-word with that one, even) but there are a few things that caught my eye:

  • Arc System Works' Daisuke Ishiwatari is concerned that the ecosystem for creating mid-tier games has collapsed, with all the focus being on safe, too-big-to-fail projects at the expense of younger developers who aren't being afforded opportunities to foster their own creativity, so their ambition is to create a dev environment that'll "allow us to fail".

  • ArtPlay's Shutaro "Curry the Kid" Iida & Takashi "IGA" Igarashi seem relieved that they're finally in a position to be done with Bloodstained DLC and move onto something new. (It seems Wayforward might have been running point on the final updates, even.) They're both confident they'll be able to make a big announcement next year, and Iida suggests they're already at a point where they could theoretically show something off.

  • Granzella's Kazuma Kujo says he's "rediscovered that which was lost" and will quietly be launching a second studio/production line that'll run in parallel with Granzella...

  • M2's Naoki Horii talks about how they always make yearly resolutions that take longer than a year to resolve, so they want to be able to talk about some of those resolutions in something other than future-tense; he also talks about how they've done a lot of work on ports and reissues but want to go beyond and release something new that'll serve as an extension of the old games we all love, and so they're working hard to make sure they live up to years of expectations.

  • Onion Games' Yoshiro Kimura & Kazuyuki Kurashima are quite blunt about answering every topic with a version of "we're working on Stray Children which will be out next year, please buy it"

  • Hironobu Sakaguchi's at work on a new game: the scenario outline's finished, and they're currently fleshing it out (but also playing FFXIV every day, never fear)

  • Makoto Asada's (Mages) keyword is "sequel", and their answers are basically just them emphasising "sequel", "long-awaited new game", 'Steins;gate 15th anniversary" and I don't pay enough attention to any of this stuff to know if it might be a red herring or he's really being that direct

  • Toshimichi Mori (Studio Flare, ex-Blazblue lead at Arc System Works) just wants to be able to show off what they're working on, as their industry pals have been showing all sorts of stuff and they're jealous

  • both articles featured contributions from multiple SNK reps which mostly just told people to look forward to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves news, or to talk up their expansion plans and aims at AAA dev or whatever, but Yasuyuki Oda did once again mention the new Art of Fighting game in the works at the new Osaka office, and I wonder if it has a more concrete direction than was indicated a little while back