The Sakura Wars/Taisen Localization Project

[Jedi]

http://operationrainfall.com/introducing-kiss-me-sweet-the-sakura-wars-localization-project/

Sega has a huge series sitting mostly in Japan the 5th Sakura War's game was in the west under the name Sakura Wars So Long my Love. The first game came out in 1996 and was a smash hit.

Anyways this amazing series is a blend of Visual Novel, Dating Sim, Tactical Steam Punk Mecha RPG. A strange but refreshing blend

The character interactions are golden, the writing is great. The characters are great. I played the games in Japanese with translation guides and I'd have to say. I'd love to see these come over via steam or ANYTHING. With Project X Zone also showing some of the characters the series has to offer like the lead you play as in the first 4 games. Ichiro among them is making me think this will get alot of attention.

The Original Sakura Wars when it first came around was wanted 2nd to ONLY Final Fantasy 7! [Japan only I know but] THINK ABOUT THAT.

According to Famitsu's 1996 top ten wanted list, Sakura Taisen scored second place just below Final fantasy VII The game went on to win the Game of the year prizes at the CESA Awards and Semi-Grand Prix Awards in 1997. Sakura Taisen later ranked #13 place in the Famitsu's 100 all-time favorite games list.The first four Sakura Taisen games all made Japan’s “Top 100 Games of all time” as voted by fans.Famitsu gave Sakura Taisen V a 37/40 (10 / 10 / 9 / 8) score^. In Japan, Sakura Taisen V was the 91st best selling game in 2005.In 2009, Sakura Taisen scored first place in the Famitsu list of most wanted game sequels of all times. In 2010, Sakura Shinguji ranked 17th among the 50th Famitsu best video game characters

Edited July 16, 2013 by Praetor Jedi

[Blademaster!]

I've seen a lot of good stuff about the Sakura Wars games, and am actually really interested in playing them. I should probably get the one released on the Wii if I can find it used somewhere.

[Jedi]

I've seen a lot of good stuff about the Sakura Wars games, and am actually really interested in playing them. I should probably get the one released on the Wii if I can find it used somewhere.

Probably could find it for a good price on Amazon. Tis what I did. Or maybe ebay or something.

Edited July 16, 2013 by Praetor Jedi

[Siruppercut]

I love the Sakura Wars series but after the poor sales from Sakura Wars 5. I seriously doubt NIS would bother with the series anymore. I think the game would have sold better if they localized the first or second game which had Sakura Shinguji and Ichiro Ogami. NIS did a very good job with the localization of Sakura Wars 5 and even including dual audio. I don't generally like English dubs but it was ok. I just didn't like the character casts as much as the first and second games. I would rate Sakura Wars 5 as my 4th favorite in the series.

[Lord Glenn]

While more attention to the series outside of Japan would be a good thing, I can't see this doing that much in the grand scheme of things. (The Steam option would be nice, but there are many more SEGA titles that should be put up on it first.)

So Long, My Love was not a financially successful localization effort for NIS America, and while they are a niche publisher and thus can't really afford to market and advertise the game, I honestly don't think it would have helped much. The game released in the twilight years of the PS2 in North America and on the Wii, which really wasn't an ideal system for its target demographic (in that a large portion of the Wii's install base really only cared about core Nintendo titles, Wii Sports, and Wii Fit). Not exactly a great environment to release your title in.

Furthermore, the series has been basically stalled since SLML came out in Japan; it had a spin-off dungeon crawler game on the DS in Japan, a compilation release of ST1 and ST2 on the PSP, and a stage show last year. Sakura, Ichiro, Erica, and Gemini showing up in PxZ is a start to bringing more recognition to the series, but let's face facts: them being in the game is purely because the games are so huge in Japan. The game wasn't going to be edited to remove characters for its localization, hence why the Valkyria Chronicles III characters are still in the game too. There's also the fact that a localization effort would be much more than just translating text at this point. The most recent versions of the games (save SLML and the PSP compilation) are on the PS2, so they'd need to port the games to be played on a more modern platform.

Let's also not forget SEGA Sammy's recent track record of absolutely brilliant executive decision making (</sarcasm>) that forced them to restructure last year. If I was Ouji Hiroi and Red Entertainment, I wouldn't want SEGA touching the franchise ever again unless the executives weren't involved at all. Sure, Sega Wow was probably one of SEGA's top development teams (and definitely their top RPG studio of recent memory - responsible for Skies of Arcadia, Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars), but even the threat of SEGA's execs meddling in a potential game would be enough to scare me away.

EDIT - Oh, that's right, there was a mobile card battle game for the series a year or two ago, too. I remember it because there was a huge hubbub that Hiroi caused by saying that he had an announcement and everyone jumped to the conclusion that he was going to announce a ST6. Also, there was a big deal about the series' 15th anniversary back at the end of 2011 with new merchandise for the series, but that has only produced 3 items (and all of Sakura) so far. You would have thought that a big anniversary event would have been the time to show that you wanted to keep the series alive...

Edited July 17, 2013 by Lord Glenn

[Siruppercut]

I also felt the Wii was a poor choice of console. From VG Charts PS2 sold 28k first 2 weeks and the Wii 12k. Even if the figures are not accurate. PS2 sold over double of what Wii sold. Also the Wii version only had the english dub.

I'm a sucker for Limited Edition stuff. I own the Sakura Wars LE Dreamcast. Was disappointed the entire console wasn't pink. I had to airbrush the non pink areas because it looked odd and was bothering me. All the LE games 1-4. Even bought 2 LE copies of Sakura Wars 3 for the VMU and the music box. Also bought Sakura Wars Online Teito just for the pink keyboard.

If I was a smoker. I would have bought a Sakura Wars 4 zippo lighter.

[Jedi]

While more attention to the series outside of Japan would be a good thing, I can't see this doing that much in the grand scheme of things. (The Steam option would be nice, but there are many more SEGA titles that should be put up on it first.)

So Long, My Love was not a financially successful localization effort for NIS America, and while they are a niche publisher and thus can't really afford to market and advertise the game, I honestly don't think it would have helped much. The game released in the twilight years of the PS2 in North America and on the Wii, which really wasn't an ideal system for its target demographic (in that a large portion of the Wii's install base really only cared about core Nintendo titles, Wii Sports, and Wii Fit). Not exactly a great environment to release your title in.

Furthermore, the series has been basically stalled since SLML came out in Japan; it had a spin-off dungeon crawler game on the DS in Japan, a compilation release of ST1 and ST2 on the PSP, and a stage show last year. Sakura, Ichiro, Erica, and Gemini showing up in PxZ is a start to bringing more recognition to the series, but let's face facts: them being in the game is purely because the games are so huge in Japan. The game wasn't going to be edited to remove characters for its localization, hence why the Valkyria Chronicles III characters are still in the game too. There's also the fact that a localization effort would be much more than just translating text at this point. The most recent versions of the games (save SLML and the PSP compilation) are on the PS2, so they'd need to port the games to be played on a more modern platform.

Let's also not forget SEGA Sammy's recent track record of absolutely brilliant executive decision making (</sarcasm>) that forced them to restructure last year. If I was Ouji Hiroi and Red Entertainment, I wouldn't want SEGA touching the franchise ever again unless the executives weren't involved at all. Sure, Sega Wow was probably one of SEGA's top development teams (and definitely their top RPG studio of recent memory - responsible for Skies of Arcadia, Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars), but even the threat of SEGA's execs meddling in a potential game would be enough to scare me away.

EDIT - Oh, that's right, there was a mobile card battle game for the series a year or two ago, too. I remember it because there was a huge hubbub that Hiroi caused by saying that he had an announcement and everyone jumped to the conclusion that he was going to announce a ST6. Also, there was a big deal about the series' 15th anniversary back at the end of 2011 with new merchandise for the series, but that has only produced 3 items (and all of Sakura) so far. You would have thought that a big anniversary event would have been the time to show that you wanted to keep the series alive...

This is why you raise awareness. Share this with as many people as possible. Don't let the idea just sit and waver there. Do something about it. I've been sharing via, Facebook, Skype, Steam and many many other places. No one thought Xenoblade, The Last Story or Pandora's Tower would come over here. But people still supported for it, talked about it. Tried for it. What do you know they managed to get them over to the west. Make SEGA know we want this. Make everyone involved with it know we want it. Tell people about the series. This is partly what this thread was for as well.

Edited July 17, 2013 by Praetor Jedi

[Lord Glenn]

This is why you raise awareness. Share this with as many people as possible. Don't let the idea just sit and waver there. Do something about it. I've been sharing via, Facebook, Skype, Steam and many many other places. No one thought Xenoblade, The Last Story or Pandora's Tower would come over here. But people still supported for it, talked about it. Tried for it. What do you know they managed to get them over to the west. Make SEGA know we want this. Make everyone involved with it know we want it. Tell people about the series. This is partly what this thread was for as well.

There's a distinct difference here between Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower compared to Sakura Wars. The former titles were all new at the time and were on a then-current system. Sakura Wars doesn't have that luxury. The fact that consumers might have been able to influence Nintendo and XSEED to localize games for Europe and North America doesn't just make the rest of the reasoning in my post go away; poor sales of the only game to make it out of Japan is a very large hurdle, there haven't been any new games in the series released for a localization studio to capitalize on, leaving only the older titles as available options, which gives the additional problem of being more costly due to the game code needing to be ported (which means that they would need to sell that many more copies for the risk to be worth it).

When Valkyria Chronicles III was new, people were clamoring left and right at SEGA that they wanted it to get localized. (We'll leave the fact that VC2 was easily the weakest game of the series and far too full of modern anime tropes and cliches, which likely added to its poor sales in the West, to the side. (Its poor sales probably being the determining factor in why SEGA didn't localize it.)) Despite the constant wishes of people, there hasn't been any movement on this front. If a newer title with a somewhat established group of fans wasn't able to sway SEGA's overlords to see fit to localize it, I have serious doubts that a game which had a very luke-warm reception outside of Japan would sway them to localize even older titles for platforms that aren't even relevant any more.

Edited July 18, 2013 by Lord Glenn