Mangagamer dashes the hopes of Alicesoft fans by licensing their titles for official release in English.
This year's Anime Expo is over, and the news is in: Mangagamer has partnered with Alicesoft, bringing an end to a Golden Age of Alicesoft translations that included Daibanchou! Big Bang Age, Toushin Toushi I and II, Rance 01-04, Kichikuou Rance, Sengoku Rance, as well as several lesser known titles.
To stake their territory, Mangagamer has announced Beat Blades Haruka, a relatively unknown nukige with gameplay elements. The story centers on a delinquent ninja who grants superpowers to female heroines with the power of his dick. Players will need all the milky liquid they can muster to face down the Evil Organization which terrorizes the city, culminating in Power Rangers-like confrontations with each Monster of the Week. The gameplay itself utilizes a complex stat-based system with the success of actions determined by random dice rolls, making the system difficult to get into yet easy to master. Upon victory nothing particularly interesting happens, while defeat is rewarded with gratuitous and highly varied rape scenes, which are the game's main selling point.
With this announcement, Mangagamer has effectively obliterated several in-progress Alicesoft fan translation projects, including a remake of Rance 01, Rance 5D, Rance VI, Rance Quest, Rance IX, Galzoo Island, Daiteikoku!, and AliveZ--making this the single most destructive English partnership ever announced.
Fans are understandably upset.
Other responses were mixed:
I approached Mangagamer staff member and esteemed Canadian Doddler for comment, and he had the following to say:
Peter Payne:
To stake their territory, Mangagamer has announced Beat Blades Haruka, a relatively unknown nukige with gameplay elements. The story centers on a delinquent ninja who grants superpowers to female heroines with the power of his dick. Players will need all the milky liquid they can muster to face down the Evil Organization which terrorizes the city, culminating in Power Rangers-like confrontations with each Monster of the Week. The gameplay itself utilizes a complex stat-based system with the success of actions determined by random dice rolls, making the system difficult to get into yet easy to master. Upon victory nothing particularly interesting happens, while defeat is rewarded with gratuitous and highly varied rape scenes, which are the game's main selling point.
With this announcement, Mangagamer has effectively obliterated several in-progress Alicesoft fan translation projects, including a remake of Rance 01, Rance 5D, Rance VI, Rance Quest, Rance IX, Galzoo Island, Daiteikoku!, and AliveZ--making this the single most destructive English partnership ever announced.
Fans are understandably upset.
...for me and probably some others who have already bought the game from Alicesoft and were waiting for a translation, it is a punch in the balls. After waiting nearly a decade for this translation and getting my hopes up since it was already at over 80%, the change from a few weeks to “maybe at some point next year, maybe not, maybe go fuck yourself” and the prospect of having to pay full price for this game yet again, are really letting me hate Mangagamer.
I say it out loud, i already disliked Mangagamer and now that they are the reason i have to wait so much longer and they want me to pay full price for the translation of a game i already paid for, i will never buy anything from them again. I rather learn japanese or try to pirate the translated versions than pay full time twice for the same games. And, on a side note, I’m glad i never donate until a product is finished, because if i had already donated to you for Rance 6, i would be absolutely furious right now.Source
Great partnership… Every Rance game on hold indefinitely, translation focused on games nobody asked for and after just one day [Rance 6 translator] Arunaru started to block and delete comments on his site for the first time ever because he can’t argue against some of them. If you really are responsible for this, screw you and your timing, you just ruined it for all of us and don’t bait us with faster released Rance translations in the future, you know Mangagamer doesn’t choose games based on logic, as seen by choosing Haruka over an nearly finished Rance 6. Also, they have a record of sitting on a license doing nothing with it and abandoning sequels they consider “too big or expensive to be profitable”. I really hope Haruka will flop so bad that Alicesoft cancels the deal and the passionate fan translators can work on Rance again, hell even if i would start to learn japanese now (really, really considering it with the last good translator gone) and i would begin to translate Rance 5 and 6 with my limited free time, there might still be a chance of being finished with it before we see an official release.Source
I just came here to say I hate you and hope you die.Source
Also I’m gonna pirate Beat Blades Haruka.
Other responses were mixed:
So Rance VI and Quest at like 2017 at best?Source
Opposite of hyped here. Oh well. Haruka is a fappable game I guess
Well I’m willing to try anything by Alicesoft, but I have to say this game doesn’t look all that interesting...Source
I approached Mangagamer staff member and esteemed Canadian Doddler for comment, and he had the following to say:
I was really hoping we could get our hands on Rance IX, which is really recent, or Rance VI, which is one of the best titles in the Rance series and had an almost finished fan translation. Alicesoft seemed willing, and it looked like the deal was almost finalized. But one day someone in the staff room joked that it would be pretty funny if we went for a title no one had ever heard of, just to see peoples' reactions. The idea gained momentum and we ended up scrapping Rance IX for Haruka. Sorry guys, I tried!Kouryuu had the following to add:
Estimated cost of releasing Rance IX: $50,000
Estimated sales of Rance IX: $200,000
The value of trolling the entire Rance community by releasing Haruka instead: priceless
There's some things that money just can't buy.I also approached JAST USA founder Peter Payne and Sekai Project CEO dovac.
Peter Payne:
Mangagamer wins this round, but I bet they're still smarting from Flowers being NTR'd right out from under their noses. <laughs>dovac:
At JAST USA we're proud to have licensed one of the most hardcore and extreme hentai dating sims Japan has ever defecated--and then censored all the extreme elements! We snatch up fan translations and sit on them for years just to make the fans squirm. Mangagamer had their fun here, but they shouldn't get cocky just yet.
Mangagamer calls this trolling? They should have stripped out the H-content and crowdfunded it on Kickstarter, vaguely promising that an adult version would be forthcoming if the Kickstarter was backed--and then mocked the fans' gullibility and bathed in their tears. That's what I would've done anyway.This is a work of satire. All unsourced quotes in this article are fake.
Haruka got released, love how they continually emphasize how if people don't go out and purchase it then no more Rance games. God they're such cunts.
ReplyDeleteHaruka hasn't been released yet. They simply announced pre-orders.
DeleteI probably won't be covering this game any further since I had a fallout with MangaGamer over the Oyako Rankan article. They suspended my forum account for linking to it on their forums.