Mato Tree

The Internets

May 17th, 2013 5 Comments

The last couple of weeks I’ve somehow gotten on gaming sites’ radars without really doing anything. But the weirdest thing of all is hearing Internet people say my name out loud. I still gotta get used to that

Here’s me mentioned on Screw Attack’s news thing

Here’s my mentioned in GameTrailers’ Pop Fiction series

GameTrailers

The last two weeks in a row I’ve also been mentioned on Kotaku’s “Random Encounter” article series for completely different things too.

So I should probably say hi to the Internet back. Hi!

A Status Update of Stuff!

March 21st, 2013 19 Comments

A lot’s been going on the past month or two. I programmed a game! I’ve started moving Legends of Localization to its own site! I had a MOTHER 2 live stream party playthrough wacky weird day with the Fangamer folks when the game was re-released in Japan earlier this week! I did other stuff I forget!

At some point when things slow down (if they do?) I’ll make more detailed posts about all sorts of new stuff, but right now the big question I’ve been getting is what’s up with Legends of Localization. As mentioned, I’m in the middle of moving LoL over to its own dedicated site. Most of it is already over there now, I think. I’m in the middle of converting and moving the EarthBound/Mother 2 comparison stuff over to the site too. Once I’m done with that, I’m going to jump back into normal updates with Mother 3 and Final Fantasy IV. What I’m thinking of doing is rather than spend a week or a month on a single page, I’ll update sections/pages with smaller updates on a more regular basis.

I also haven’t discounted the idea of pausing Mother 3 yet again so I can power through the Mother 1/EarthBound Zero comparison as discussed here, but I feel really bad for leaving FFIV hanging for so long that I probably shouldn’t. What I need is more time in the dayyyyy

A Question for Legends of Localization Readers!

January 19th, 2013 17 Comments

Something I’ve debated doing for a while now is allowing people to comment on individual pages on my Legends of Localization projects. Like, each individual page that takes up a chapter or town or whatever. An example of what I mean is this. Would it be good to allow comments at the bottom of pages like that?

Is this something that would be good to have? Or do you feel it might detract from the pure info dump-ness of it all? Let me know!

Anime Explosion!

January 16th, 2013 6 Comments

Yesterday I got a ton of recent-ish stuff I worked on!

I sometimes forget how many different shows I’ve worked on, but when I see it like this it’s like oh man holy crap. This is just a tiny piece of what I’ve worked on over the past ten years or so too

Speaking of which, I also took some time yesterday to update my list of translations. It’s not fully up to date but a bunch of stuff hasn’t been released yet

New Releases: Shakugan no Shana Movie and S OVA

January 15th, 2013 3 Comments

I keep forgetting to post about stuff that I’ve worked on that’s being released, so here’s some stuff that comes out next week (although you can probably get it early from some places I guess):

Shakugan no Shana – the Movie

If you’ve never seen or read Shakugan no Shana stuff before, this is a good introduction! It’s a retelling of the first story arc, but in theatrical form obviously. It’s hard to explain this series, it’s a combination of Japanese high school stuff (hardly surprising) but also monsters/beings that can devour people’s existences. If your existence gets eaten, the world changes as if you never existed at all.

If you’re not into anime, I’d at least recommend checking the Shana series out for its music – it’s done by Kow Otani, who gamers might know as the composer for Shadow of the Colossus. In fact, I didn’t realize it at first myself until I was like, “Man, this sure sounds like Shadow of the Colossus music.” And then bam, it suddenly made sense why!

You can get the DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon here. It’s got lots of extras too!

Shakugan no Shana S (OVA)

I’m not 100% sure, but I think this takes place during Season 2 (which was released last month) – it’s basically a bunch of side stories that are more lighthearted and less serious than the main series. I really enjoyed working on these because of that. This has lots of extras too! It’s on Amazon here.

And that’s all for now, but I know I’ve forgotten a few recent releases that I’ve worked on, so I’ll post about them another day!

New Legends of Localization: MOTHER 3

January 14th, 2013 9 Comments

I’ve been talking about working on my MOTHER 3 translation notes forever, and finally I have something to show for it! There’s a new Legends of Localization page up now for MOTHER 3 here! Check it out, there’s lots of neat info, including stuff that’s never been revealed before until now!

I’m still not sure how I’m going to juggle this with my Final Fantasy IV Legends of Localization, but since I’m hoping to turn these MOTHER 3 notes into the first LoL book at some point they’ve taken a little more priority. I’d like to continue both at the same time though, so we’ll see!

The De-Evolution of Video Game Localization

January 13th, 2013 3 Comments

Nadia Oxford recently posted an article on 1up.com about the recent issue in which mobile games and indie games generally don’t have good localizations. It’s an interesting read and features commentary by Alexander O. Smith (a living legend in this industry) and me!

Check out the article here!

Journal: Jan. 11, 2012

January 12th, 2013 3 Comments

More of the same today – good exercise, ate pretty well until the end of the day, did a lot of work, got a lot of project work done. In the FF7 LP I’m up to where you leave Cosmo Canyon – I always forget about that dungeon below/behind there that you gotta do. It’s nice and spooky, I don’t know how I keep forgetting about it!

I also got about 15 minutes to play Pushmo – what little I’ve played is really neat! But the game programmer in me can’t help but focus on all the little bells and whistles that nobody else notices, like trying to figure out the easing function used when the congratulations message bobs up and down I even started taking notes so that I can use ideas for my own stuff.

I also took a nice walk with Poe through the desert area behind our apartments. We live away from the main city so it’s still nice and isolated in a way. It makes me miss when I used to walk around the little desert mountain across the street from where I grew up.

Relaxing at the end of the day:

Journal: Jan. 10, 2012

January 11th, 2013 No Comments

Did lots of good work and lots of good exercise today. I also got a lot of other stuff done, all around a very productive day. In the FF7 LP I’m watching I got past the first Chocobo race and to where you fight the Turks outside of Gongaga or whatever that place is that I always forget exists in the game.

I ate well all day until maybe dinner when we had some delicious green curry:

I love all kinds of curry – we usually have three or four different kinds in the house at any one time. Make a curry flavored anything and I’ll probably buy it!

Journal: Jan. 9, 2012

January 10th, 2013 1 Comment

More of the same today – got up late and didn’t exercise as much as normal I think I’m going to rearrange my exercise stuff a little bit.

I had lots of job work to do but I also managed to get some time for other things, which I spent mostly on working on the MOTHER 3 translation notes. It’s gonna be at least a few more days until I’m happy enough with things to post the start of them online. I feel torn between doing FFIV and MOTHER 3, I feel like I’m cheating on FFIV somehow, heh.

I’m also worried that I might be overdoing stuff with the M3 notes and going overboard with detailed stuff. I think what I might do is only highlight some of the really big stuff now and save the detailed stuff/slightly-off-topic stuff for the print version which I still hope to do. If I do it that way I can get these pages up more quickly too.

You know what’d be cool? If for the print version of the notes I included scratch n sniff cards like how EarthBound’s guide had those smelly cards. I wonder what some good smells might be to use.

I also continued work on the Challenge Mode for PopShoot, but with so little time per day it’s going to take a while to get it to where I want it to be. Plus it’s hard to even think up challenges for it. This is gonna be tough. I also really need to reorganize the code but I know if I do that I’ll get sick of it and progress will stall on it. I don’t want that to happen, this is a really fun game!