From April 2007 to December 2009, Spike has been polling website surfers and people who sent in survey cards to get an answer.

The GLS at this year’s GDC will focus on the technical and managerial aspects of game localization, such as planning, minimizing bugs and maximizing return on investment.

Interchannel is bringing the charming bubble blowing game, Soul Bubbles, to Japan under the name Awatama (Bubble Bullet). But, something looks well… different. In this version the shaman looks like an anime fairy with purple hair.

Watching what Nintendo is doing in Korea has always been rather interesting to me. Unlike other companies that shovel games to the market ripe with Japanese text, Nintendo is carefully localizing each game. Releasing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team in Hangul is of their major localization projects and it arrives in South Korea at [...]

Got the pleasure of checking out the USA/Europe build of Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions and I’m glad to say it’s shaping up well. The team behind Final Fantasy XII took the task to re-localize Final Fantasy Tactics and preserve the fantasy world of Ivalice. Instead of “magic” you have “magick”, the [...]

Nintendo officially released the Nintendo DS in South Korea earlier this year and they have been rapidly localizing games Hangul. Wario Ware Touched, better known as Manjyeora Made in Wario, is the most recent game to get localized in specifically for Korea. You might imagine a game like Wario Ware doesn’t require that much localization [...]

Last week I had a meeting with Microsoft where I got a chance to check out the North American version of Blue Dragon and it is pretty much complete. Remember how Asia (Singapore/Hong Kong) has a version of Blue Dragon with complete English text? I was able to confirm that the text in the Asian [...]

Agetec quietly released the sequel to Disaster Report (aka Zettaizetsumei Toshi 2) in stores last week under a much more western friendly name, Raw Danger. The premise of Raw Danger is similar to Disaster Report, except you are trying to survive the aftermath of a Tsunami instead of an Earthquake. Yeah, Raw Danger looks like [...]

Jerisaka at Square-Haven must have ninja like skills. Somehow he manages to track down people from Square’s localization history. Previously he wrote up an interview with Alexander O. Smith about his work on Vagrant Story. Now there is a new interview with ex-Squaresoft staffer Amanada Katsurada where she talks about her work on Vagrant Story, [...]

Most of the English speaking world is waiting for Microsoft to roll out Blue Dragon this August, but in Asia there is an English version of Blue Dragon on the market… sort of. Microsoft recently put the Asian version of Blue Dragon on store shelves in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore. This release has [...]

After a period of silence and a delay to 2007, Success Corp released a new trailer for Operation Darkness. Unlike most strategy RPGs, which are set in a backdrop of sorcery and swords, Operation Darkness is set in a period where you have modern weapons. Maybe Operation Darkness is better explained as Final Fantasy Tactics [...]

Virtual console options are slim in America this week, only Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire is released. Things are a little more interesting in Japan where Wonder Boy V: Monster World III, Alien Storm, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Syubibin Man and the surprise addition of Sega’s Dyna Brothers. But why would [...]

Ubisoft took a risk when they localized the quirky puzzle game Exit. It didn’t really pay off for them since Exit was largely ignored, despite its originality. While Mr. ESC’s adventure seemed to end Taito announced that a sequel, Kangaeru Exit was in the works and the emphasis would be on thinking rather than action. [...]

  Later this month Square-Enix is releasing Front Mission 1st, a remake of the SNES game with touch screen control and a tie in with one of the characters from Front Mission 5: The Scars of War. Usually import RPGs are text heavy with katakana or kanji menus to wade through, but not Front Mission [...]

  At the Square-Enix approach on localization panel, Richard Honeywood spoke about doing more than simply translating text when localizing Square-Enix titles. For Chocobo Racing they added rails to make the game easier to play and for the Bouncer they did extra motion capture sequences so players would not have a hard time understand foreign [...]

This weekend New York City Comic Con is taking place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center (655 West 34th St) and gamers can spend some hands on time with Naruto: Ninja Council 3. Naruto: Ninja Council 3 is a multiplayer arena fighting game for the Nintendo DS known as Naruto: Saikyou Ninja Daikesshu 4 [...]