Oh - almost all the Mahou Shoujo of the eighties were there.
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Let Megatech Satisfy Your Primal Desires (REDUX)
- Thread starter Caravels of Portugal
- Start date
Agreed. Before America received dubbed versions of Sailor Moon by DIC Entertainment and Cardcaptor Sakura by Nelvana, the western European countries, that is Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, and West Germany, acquired magical girl anime that were dubbed into their local languages respectively. Shows included were Sally the Witch, Majokko Megu-chan, Hana no Ko Lunlun, and Magical Princess Minky Momo, to name a few, were still fondly remembered by kids who grew up watching these shows. Additionally, these shows were also popular in Latin America, where Spanish dubs were aired. And the Italian cartoon shows, W.I.T.C.H. and Winx Club, take heavy influence from Sailor Moon in terms of premise and artstyle.
To @Nivek:
I've also discovered that Megatech Software, in real life, did attend E3 1995. I first found this piece of evidence while I was researching the company. It was a map of the venue for E3 1995 along with a list of exhibiting companies. This article was found in the June 1995 issue of GamePro magazine, which published this article as part of a special feature on the then-upcoming trade event and upcoming games.
According to the map and the accompanying list, Megatech's placement in the venue was at booth #3524. However, I cannot seem to pinpoint its exact location in the map. If anyone has the time, please find the exact locations where their booth was located at in the map.
Since the image obtained is too large for the forum, I'll post this as a link:
GamePro Issue 071 June 1995 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
GamePro Issue 071 June 1995
archive.org
As my final remarks before resume writing the next entry of the chapter by next week, assuming I have sufficient free time and opportunity to research and write.
For anyone wondering what will happen in the following chapter, it's a closely-guarded secret to avoid spoiling further events. But I'll drop you a hint - Megatech Software localizes a game, whose name shall remain an enigma, in their very first localization subcontracting work for another company. The name is not Fire Emblem by Nintendo, by the way. Rather, it's the first installment of an extremely popular Japan-exclusive game series, which was released for the PC Engine, or for American readers, TurboGrafx-16. Also guest-starring in the chapter, a certain small bishoujo game developer in Akibahara. You may know that name.
I've went through an entire month scrounging for material to provide content of the opening chapter of the timeline. It was insanely difficult because Google Search always prioritizes popular results from optimization and Wikipedia's articles on the subject are severely lacking in density. It was worth it after all.
In the age of constant reboots, remakes, and franchise sequelization of Hollywood, and the obsession of the anime industry to draw in the otaku audience at the expense of the general audience, I think it's the future of such industry practices to adopt AI-based technologies. A year ago, part of the reason why the Writer's Guild of America went on strike was that Hollywood executives attempting to exploit ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence software to replace writers and avoid paying them their salaries. The strike was successful to convince Hollywood to set up limits on the use of AI, for now.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/hollywoo...intelligence-39ab72582c3a15f77510c9c30a45ffc8
I mean didn't the deal also effectively allow them to US AI if they got the permission of the union/actors? Or was that the actors/voice actors one?
Either way I do have to say that while not ideal, the alternative would just be no real work as investors move on towards other investment options and just leave the old art behind.
It sucks how little documentation there is on the entire subject in general since at some point you are chasing rumors and doing archaeology more than anything.
the issue is that a lot come from old magazines that a lot aren't online and the most 'professional' based articles are either paywalled or are very superficial at times
It does not help that now a days there is also the possibility that the internet article might also be wrong which does not help in finding information.
I mean, I would agree with both of your statements.
Researching fandom history is like archeology, except it's for non-physical remains. The Internet is a vast and accessible pool of information, but most of the information presented, at least on the surface-level, is frivolous and indistinct. The search engines always prioritize popular pages instead of specific results, and major websites simply want revenue, views, and clicks over quality content. Not only that, but much of early fandom history is lost and poorly-documented, particularly certain niche topics or companies.
One of my best sources in searching information about Megatech Software is Google Groups. It's where I found the claim that the company attended the first E3, E3 1995, and they exhibited a demonstration of a then-unidentified game, tentatively titled 'Magazine Master' at the venue. This game was some sort of business simulation game, based on the vague description, where the player takes on a role of an editor trying to turn the fortunes of the company. I was able to confirm Megatech's presence based on the June 1995 issue of GamePro, but I was unable to correctly identify the identity of 'Magazine Master' even though I searched through MobyGames and VNDB for a match.
On the bright side, an Internet Archive user released a scan of a catalogue from Megatech Software, dated somewhere between 1993-1994. I've disputed the claimed date of October 1995, since the catalogue does not mention or feature Power Dolls by Kogado Studio. There's nothing new, except the company was a member of Software Publishers Association, currently known today as Software and Information Industry Association.
Sweethearts and Old Flames (Part 2)
New
Excerpt of a cease-and-desist letter from TSR Inc.
17 December, 1993.
[Sensitive Information redacted]
RE:
To Kenny Wu:
We, the legal team of Lorraine Williams, represent TSR Inc. (‘TSR’) on behalf of CEO Lorrain Williams. TSR Inc. is the sole owner and publisher of Dungeons & Dragons and associated intellectual properties, and tabletop and card games. The purpose of this letter was to raise awareness of a potential trademark infringement case. It has come to our attention that you and/or your company, Megatech Software, has attempted to file a trademark application for ‘Dragon Knight’ (U.S. Application No. [Number redacted]), and intend to release a software bearing the trademark. We believe the trademark application infringes on TSR’s trademarks.
“Dragon Knight” is a registered trademark (U.S. Application No. [Number redacted]) of TSR Inc., and used in conjunction with “Dragonlance” IP of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically as part of a series of books aimed at younger readers. “Dragonlance” is designed by Laura and Tracy Hickman in association with Margaret Weis, and all rights reserved to them.
All in all, we presume you understand the source of our concerns regarding a potential trademark infringement case. In order to remedy this matter, we recommend Megatech Software should directly end registration of “Dragon Knight” as a trademark and further uses of any trademark containing any terms associated with “Dragonlance” and “Dungeons & Dragons” and thereof.
Failure to comply will result in legal action by TSR Inc. and may incur heavy financial penalties. Trademark infringement is a serious issue. Identical trademarks by different companies without distinction lead to confusion among customers and erode trust in the goodwill of the company and associated products and services.
We hope you understand our demands and expect Megatech Software’s full cooperation in preventing trademark infringement. All rights reserved to TSR Inc. and other associated game designers.
Sincerely,
The legal team of Lorraine Williams.
--#--
18th December, 1993.
Kenny held the letter from TSR Inc. with disbelief and shock. It was the first time a company noticed Megatech Software, as well being the first time he received a legal notice from another company. The letter slightly crumpled under the slight pressure from his fingertips.
He lowered the letter to see his friends, Erwin Mab and David S. Moskowitz, lounging in the living room of his residence. The horror film, Scarecrows, played on the television which Erwin was watching. It was nearly Christmas this time of year; the decorations were mounted on the walls with lights on the outside. Yet the choice of film seemed inappropriate for the festive season, as Kenny wondered whether they should watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or something else, maybe a Christmas-themed anime. But such themed anime did not exist, at least, from what he could try to find.
David slouched against the kitchen doorway, glancing at the letter Kenny was holding. He was dressed in a tawdry, gaudy Christmas sweater, hand-made featuring Spawn by Todd McFarlane.
“Lorraine William’s a bitch,” he blurted angrily as he walked up to Kenny. “She’s a real pain in the leg. I don’t think we can simply walk up to TSR, and politely negotiate a deal with them, asking them for a permission to use that name while telling them it’s the name of a Japanese game. You think they’d be swayed by this reason. I don’t think it’s like Sesame Street. She has an army of lawyers under her hand. This company, I mean, Megatech Software is small fry compared to TSR. We’d lose even before we get into the main proceedings at court. A friend of mine who once worked at TSR said he saw her run the entire company to the ground, including Buck Rogers crap. He sensed a hunch of TSR in ruins, so he resigned from his post and flown to greener pastures.”
“Sauce?” Erwin mumbled as he glanced at David.
“I’m a former employee of Flying Buffalo, and I’ve been running fandom stuff since day one,” he replied. “Or you just want the eggnog,”
“Eggnog,” Erwin replied. “In the house,”
Kenny shuddered from the chilliness of the room and the sense of hovering fear of legal action from a company once known for publishing Dungeons & Dragons. He never personally met Lorraine Williams, but considering he was managing a video game company and the genuine, if sterile letter was of major indication, alongside suddenly remembering the case where Disney sandblasted murals at a Florida daycare, he should take the cease-and-desist letter seriously.
He sighed heavily, wiping some sweat from his forehead. “Dave, what’s our next course of action?”
“Next course of action?” David replied with a neutral expression. “Let’s comply with the request from TSR. It’ll save us a lot of trouble in the long run. Though I’m not a lawyer, so if you need legal advice, go talk to Steve or Shigeru, or the managerial staff. They’ve got the experience and skills.”
Kenny hung his head, staring at the letter. In spite of the initial frustration and sadness from the potential debacle, he saw it as an opportunity to assert himself in the business as an Asian-American male and an owner of a company specializing in niche video games. But for now, he needed to head to Liberty International offices and inquire Gary Lee and its legal team for advice.
--#--
Excerpt from “Anecdotes from the Game Studio” article by Alyssa Stanheight from the May 2009 issue of CUU: The Future of Interactive Entertainment.
‘Dragon Knight’ trademark dispute: In 1993, TSR Inc., the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game, prevented Megatech Software from using the title ‘Dragon Knight’ for the localized version of Dragon Knight III, citing its trademark for an installment in the Dragonlance series. Kenny Wu, executive producer of Megatech Software, requested David S. Moskowitz to come up with a replacement title, which ended up as Knights of Xentar. The new title was random and chosen for being simple and catchy for containing the letter ‘X’ in the title and the use of ‘Knights’ to approximate the original Japanese title.
--#--
Excerpt from Genesis Does: Sega and the Console Wars (2009) by Jeff Flores.
The Lunar series by Game Arts for the Sega CD is considered two of the best games released for the system itself, and for a very good reason. The Silver Star and its sequel, Eternal Blue, utilized the disc-based hardware capabilities of the system to present a video game story unheard of in its time from an audiovisual standpoint. These games presented fully-animated, fully-voiced cutscenes with bright, sharp graphics and detailed character designs by Toshiyuki Kuboka, who would later become the character designer for the first installment in The Idolmaster, released for the Atari Gryphon. These unique qualities rivaled even the best games for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and their fellow games on the Sega CD.
Game Arts developed the game with the intention of standing out from the glut of JRPG games released for consoles at the time, dominated by the likes of Square and Enix. It was extremely ambitious and innovative project for the company since they only developed action and platformer video games with side-scrolling presentation. Four of their games were brought into America by Sierra On-Line while two were done by Nexoft and Sega. These games were relatively successful for the company, but was smaller in the face of the larger, well-connected companies.
Game scenarist Kei Shigema was assigned as the head writer of the two games. He observed that the standard JRPGs were full of plot, but packed with clichés and conveyed in a cumbersome, banal way, or in his words, “had stories, but had no story-telling”. He wrote the draft of the then-untitled JRPG early on. The original premise of the first game was darker and displayed a strong steampunk influence, drawing from Studio Ghibli’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky and other JRPGs he played for reference..
It centered on a small group of youths to live through in the backdrop of brutal war in outer space with flying mechanical castles and steam-powered rockets. It would be presented in fully sprite-animated cutscenes with excessive detail in the scenes. However, he rejected the initial premise when he learned of Final Fantasy VI by Square, which was still in development. Moreover, Kazunari Tomi, the producer, pointed out the planned animated cutscenes was beyond the reach of the company’s resources in addition to the limitations of the Sega CD hardware and its medium. He also found the premise too dark for the general player to enjoy.
Instead, Kei bucked the trend of JRPGs to increasingly incorporate science fiction elements into their plots by settling on a fully-realized fantasy setting. This focused on the lore and history of the game’s setting, as opposed to simplistic ‘good-versus-evil’ plots and fighting bosses expected of usual console JRPGs. By spinning the basic JRPG plot of “collect magical trinkets to save the world from destruction” with compelling characters and ensuring every line of dialogue was witty and humorous, he executed the game’s premise with much freshness and energy.
Toshiyuki Kuboka designed the characters after reading the finished version of the game’s premise. His distinctive anime artstyle was strongly influenced by his tenure as an animation director for Giant Robo: The Earth Stood Still and Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, which he was a character designer for the former while elements from the latter were incorporated into the designs for the cast in Lunar. He made rough sketches for the main cast, with each revision building up to their finalized artwork. Aware of character design clichés in JRPGs, he sought to avert or eliminate whenever these appeared. The garbs worn by the characters were designed with a nomadic, northerly air in the context of its relatively temperate, albeit cool, setting.
On its release for the Sega CD, The Silver Star and Eternal Blue became critically acclaimed for its excellent story, fluid sprite-based animations, and solid gameplay for a JRPG. A tagline for the first game described it as “An instant classic”, which was apropos when applied to the two games. It was the best-selling games for the Sega CD, with The Silver Star and Eternal Blue earning the number one and two positions respectively in Japanese sales charts with 189,480 copies sold while in Western markets just behind Sonic the Hedgehog CD. Sega attributed the system’s success to these games, acting as the killer application and being commended as the best games for the Sega Genesis.
Special note was focused on Working Designs’ translation for the two games. The company was a small publishing firm that previously localized Japanese video games from small Japanese studios. Under the supervision of its director, Victor Ireland, the team adapted the script to their interpretations, instead of doing a faithful translation as expected of JRPGs in its time. They injected humor in the game by rewriting lines of dialogue with jokes, and peppered it with fourth-wall-breaking jokes and pop culture allusions. Aside from the added humor, they censored scenes in the games to comply with Sega’s content guidelines and to receive the MA-13 rating such as editing sprites containing pentagrams and cleaning nudity in specific scenes and monster sprites.
These localization changes were extremely contentious in the game’s fandom and the general anime game community. However, these changes were a marked improvement over the poor translations which plagued JRPGs released in North America prior. It made the games stand out from other JRPGs, which tended to be which tended to be relatively dramatic and straight-laced, if light on plot, and considered by many players who played the Sega CD versions as being an element that made these a memorable experience alongside the animated cutscenes and its overall character development throughout the games.
The popularity of The Silver Star and Eternal Blue warranted remakes for 32-bit consoles, Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation 1. While the Sega CD versions were popular, but the low install base alongside with the hefty price tag of the system required Game Arts had to develop a rerelease that completely overhauled the games with expanded scripts, exclusive extra content, and roughly two hours’ worth of animated cutscenes by esteemed anime studio GONZO. The localized script by Working Designs was carried over for the two games. These remakes introduced the games to a new generation of JRPG fans for 32-bit consoles, those who began playing Final Fantasy VII and Panzer Dragoon Saga on their respective consoles. Only the PlayStation version of the Lunar remakes were brought over for North American audiences, as Sega struggled to manage all sorts of technical issues and marketing messes the Saturn was facing in the West compared to Japan.
Rumors of a third game in the Lunar series, besides the school-based spinoff by Ehrgeiz, excited the then-lively nascent fandom so much they obsessively oversaw any form of news that surfaced. Sadly, the third game would never come to fruition. Studio Alex, a subsidiary responsible for the development of The Silver Star and Eternal Blue, was involved in a legal dispute with Game Arts over the license during the production of the 32-bit era games. This ended with the bankruptcy of Studio Alex and its eventual dissolution in 2003. From thereon, all rights for the game series were reverted to Game Arts. Meanwhile, the original development team resigned from the company and parted ways to work on other projects. With Grandia being the premier JRPG series for Game Arts and Working Designs holding the localization and distribution rights for the game series, there was no possible chance for the third Lunar game to ever release.
Still though, the Lunar duology remains a cult classic for the JRPG genre and the Sega CD. As a cult classic, it deserves to be sat together with the likes of NieR, Xenogears, Skies of Arcadia, ActRaiser, and Digital Devil Story. Disregarding the less-than-stellar Dragon Song for the Nintendo DS, the two games are worth playing despite showing their age and loss of novelty of its special elements.
--#--
Excerpt from “An Unabridged History of Anime Games” (2020) by Cynthia Wu and Hannah Everheart.
The Lunar series by Game Arts left a lasting legacy on Japanese role-playing games and anime games in general. This game series introduced technical elements that would be later present in nearly all modern JRPGs: fully-animated cutscenes and voice acting. It is considered hard for modern gamers to appreciate such elements as this was considered one of the major hallmarks of the series. Yet the quality of the animations withstood the test of time alongside the terrific voice acting alongside the charming English localization by Working Designs. Moreover, this was the earliest exposures of ‘anime games’ to the West, following the inception of Megatech Software and the release of Cobra Mission in 1993, apart from the ur-instances such as Cliff Hanger (1983) by Stern and TMS Entertainment along with the various FMV arcade games by other companies, the arcade shmup U.N. Squadron (1989) by Capcom, and Valis (1991) by Telenet Japan, and obscure entries.
Yet the most definitive and greatest legacy in the annals of anime games was its influence on Megatech Software’s localization of Emerald Dragon. Kenny Wu cited Eternal Blue as an inspiration after playing the initial Sega CD release, and said:
“All the elements in this game [Lunar: Eternal Blue] was special while I was playing it. Although the gameplay was pretty standard for a JRPG aside from the gimmick of positioning the characters, the animation and the voice acting blew me away. It was like Wizardry [1991 anime OVA based on the game series by Sir-Tech of the same name] mixed with Final Fantasy added with a bit of Saturday morning cartoons for a good measure. Working Designs did a great job on the localization. This game and Silver Star Story had the funniest and memorable lines I’ve heard of in a video game. Way, way better than what Dave [David S. Moskowitz] wrote in Knights of Xentar. Yet these made our then-current roster of games pale in comparison. This where I realized I needed to step up my game, if I needed to stay relevant in the industry. Sure, Megatech’s games were popular and funny, but the novelty was wearing off. I began to see them as puerile and rough. This was a reason for Megatech to localize better-looking games and to polish up our localization process.”
-To be continued-
References:
- Lunar Series:
- Hardcore Gaming 101 article: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/series/lunar/
- Translated interview with the development team: https://shmuplations.com/lunar/
- Circumstances behind the nonexistence of Lunar 3:
- FMV Anime arcade games: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2017-01-08/.110758
- TSR Inc. trademark infringement case in Animerica Vol. 3, No. 2: https://retrocdn.net/images/2/25/AnimericaAVI_US_Vol.3_02.jpg
how to spot a newbie, you loss the otaku part of your name, you're just ninja
(it did long ago, as an Adult ova)
Yeah, I knew that Dragon Knight had an OVA adaptation in early 1990s. It was probably a loose adaptation like its relative from the same developer, YU-NO, since the runtime of the first OVA was roughly an half-hour according to IMDB. Likewise, Metal & Lace and Power Dolls received anime adaptations, albeit for the OVA adaptation of Metal & Lace, or Ningyou Tsukai, Kitty Media, who licensed this anime, gave it a completely different title which sounds more of an Exorcist parody than a pseudo-cyberpunk anime.
Now, the next entries for this chapter will be about Megatech Software being subcontracted by a major Japanese game company to localize a video game for the SNES. Here's a hint - it's the first installment of a popular Japan-exclusive video game series that was first released for the TurboGrafx-16, and has a red-headed girl who's the final boss of the game.
Ah. Could Megatech make original games at some point in the future?
Fire Emblem?