Visual Novel News

Dec 12, 2011 5:59 AM

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As of December 5, 2011, the full English version of the Japanese VN for iPhone “Kisaragi no Hogyoku” has hit the iTunes store.

Dec 12, 2011 6:00 AM

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My Girlfriend is the President – Release Notes

Dec 19, 2011 12:37 PM

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A patch translating all of Little Busters! into English has been released.

The patch will translate the Ecstasy and Memorial Editions along with the standard version, but it does not translate any of the extra scenes and routes that come with them. The translaters announce that they will no move onto translating the Ecstasy and Memorial Editions.

Dec 19, 2011 12:38 PM

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PST Team is proudly announcing that a open beta date has now been set for Sentou Gakuen. It will be available and open to everyone on 29 December 2011 at 10.00AM Pacific Standard Time. This will be the very first anime-styled Massively Multiplayer Online Visual Novel (web based) that has ever been created

Dec 19, 2011 12:39 PM

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After almost four years of work, today the Witch Hunt release the full translation of the fourth and final episode of Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru, also known as When They Cry 4. As usual, the patch is released as a Windows installer, OS-X installer, and standalone zip archive.

Umineko no Naku Koro ni (literally ‘When the Seagulls Cry‘) is a popular murder mystery sound novel created by the authors of the equally famous Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. The story takes place in the year 1986 at a small, secluded island named Rokkenjima, owned by the head of a wealthy family. After a typhoon traps a number of visiting family members on the island, strange and deadly events start occuring.

The English fan translation of Umineko no Naku Koro ni has become well-known for having received official sanction from the original creator, Ryukishi07 of the doujin circle 07th Expansion. Having even a character in one of the episodes named after the group, the Witch Hunt were able to strike a deal with HOBIBOX to make the Japanese game available in the West through DRM-free download.

Over the course of the project the Witch Hunt have kept a very tight release schedule, releasing the translation of each episode before the following episode was released in Japan. For the last episode it took a year time before the full translation was released, the deadline eventually having been set to December 31, as 07th Expansion had announced it would then release a booklet with solutions to some of the puzzles and mysteries.

Dec 28, 2011 6:28 AM

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A partial patch for Koisuru Otome to Shugo no Tate - The Code Name is "Shield 9" has been released. The patch covers the the prologue, Common route, Yukino route, Ren route and some first scenes of other heroines.

Dec 28, 2011 6:29 AM

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A new partial patch for ToHeart2 has been released. This patch translates the routes for Konomi, Tamaki, Manaka, Yuma, Karin, Twins, Yuuki, and Yuuji.

Jan 3, 2012 9:39 AM

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Both JAST USA and MangaGamer have delivered their year-end updates. From the JAST USA end, it looks like Saya no Uta and Hanachirasu will be sold separately, although there will be a discount for buying them together. The two games along with Sumaga are scheduled to be out before Anime Expo. Meanwhile, MangaGamer states that they’re working on a 4th hard copy game from the J-List distribution deal, which will be a game they have already released that they are trying to fix up. Furthermore, they’re also aiming for a end-of-February or beginning-of-March release for DEARDROPS, while the trial version is currently out for people to try out the game. Dengeki Stryker and Harukoi Otome are still in translation, with the former aimed at a release by the time Anime Expo comes around. As for ef – the first tale, it’s still undergoing review by NNL of the latest build from minori, which if it passes, will allow the release to proceed.

Jan 8, 2012 12:32 PM

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The Internet, January 4th 2012 - Four Leaf Studios is proud to present the full release of Katawa Shoujo, free of charge. It's been five long years until this day, with a multinational group of twenty-one developers working on art, music, writing, programming, and direction, to say nothing of the innumerable contributors to the project both past and present, but it's finally here.

Katawa Shoujo is a visual novel set in the fictional Yamaku High School for disabled children, located in modern Japan. Hisao Nakai, a normal boy living a normal life, has his life turned upside down when a congenital heart defect forces him to move to a new school after a long hospitalization. Despite his difficulties, Hisao is able to find friends — and perhaps love, if he plays his cards right. There are five main paths corresponding to the 5 main female characters, each path following the storyline pertaining to that character. The story is told through the perspective of the main character, using a first person narrative. The game uses a traditional text and sprite-based visual novel model with an ADV text box.

The story of Katawa Shoujo is a long one, spanning over a decade. In December of the year 2000, the doujin Schuppen Harnische was released by the artist RAITA of circle Zettai Shoujo. One of the pages in the extras section of the doujin contained a sketch imagining a game about disabilities set in a Japanese high school. If not for later events, that may well have been the end of it. With the sticky in 4chan's anime board in January of 2007, though, interest was suddenly sparked in the idea within, and the idea of creating this game came about. After months of brainstorming, but little progress, a core development team by the name of Four Leaf Studios was formed in April of the same year. With this, Katawa Shoujo was set on the path to its final creation.

Four Leaf Studios is a volunteer group of twenty-one developers from around the world, having come together for the sole purpose of developing Katawa Shoujo. Hailing from many different countries, backgrounds, and professions, Four Leaf Studios became committed to working towards Katawa Shoujo as an entirely free game, with no money involved in the project.

With that, the story of Four Leaf Studios is finished. As a single entity, we will not be producing another game. But even though our story has ended, you will now be able to experience a new story; the story that Four Leaf Studios existed to create.

We hope you enjoy Katawa Shoujo.

Jan 14, 2012 2:39 PM

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In addition to giving a progress report about MangaGamer’s manga and H-anime sections getting closer to opening and game animations to be checked arriving from minori, the official MangaGamer Twitter has also announced that they were working on acquiring two new never-before-announced titles. Unfortunately, the popular guesses of Key, TYPE MOON and Shin Koihime Musou failed to win free Internets. There’s now two hints in relation to the titles: “1) Yo dawg, we herd you like traps, so we put a trap in yo eroge so u can trap it up with all dem chicks!” and “2) How much blood would you shed to stay alive?” Lastly, MangaGamer has also released a SHUFFLE! CG viewer bug fix as a 1.12 MiB zip file that needs to be unpacked into the program folder.

Jan 16, 2012 3:50 AM

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Last night, Amaterasu Translations completed their sixth translation project by releasing a complete fan translation of Liar-Soft’s Forest. This is the third translation of a Liar-Soft title that they have completed, following Sekien no Inganock and Shikkoku no Sharnoth.

The release has been hampered by DNS issues for some users after the server suffered an extended period of downtime earlier this week. The translator Ixrec is now looking at Key’s Rewrite for the team’s seventh project after his break. As of now he expects the translation of Rewrite to take six to seven months to complete and the current plan is to release two partial patches before the final release, one for the common route and one containing all of the character routes.

Forest contains nearly a thousand voice only lines, which have no displayed text to go with them and may be heard at the same time as different, unvoiced lines are displayed in the traditional text box. The group handled these lines by including subtitles near the top of the screen to display these translations. The included read me, in addition to staff credits and installation instructions, includes a list of works referenced in the script in “some form”, a few translation notes, and a detailed walkthrough for the game. The translation notes section lists a couple chapter titles which had a pun or reference that could not be preserved in the translation along with the literal translation of a limerick in the script that had to get a modified translation to keep the rhyme and rhythm.

Forest is a visual novel that was originally released by Liar-Soft in 2004. It focuses on a group of characters in the city of Shinjuku, along with their struggles against the Forest. These characters have gifts, or abilities, as they go up against the riddles that the Forest lays out for them.

Jan 19, 2012 5:44 AM

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JAST USA Have Discussed The Possibility Of Publishing Steins;Gate With Nitroplus.

If you weren’t aware, there’s a fan-translation project underway for the PC version of Steins;Gate. Two days ago, one of the translators updated his blog revealing that he’d been contacted by JAST USA, regarding some sort of “deal”.

After Siliconera reader, Ladius, tipped us off (thanks!), we got in touch with JAST USA founder, Peter Payne, to ask what was going on, and whether the company was eyeing Steins;Gate for a possible licensing deal.

“Yes, we’ve talked with Nitroplus about the possibility of bringing out Steins;Gate in English,” Payne shared with us via e-mail, “although it’s complicated as there are two different companies involved, i.e. Nitroplus and 5pb, and we need the agreement of both.”

“In order to make a title like Steins;Gate be really successful, we need the support of major download software distribution platforms such as Steam; something that’s been lacking when it comes to these titles so far (not surprisingly, as most have been 18+ titles, unlike Steins;Gate).”

Prior to this, in a recent interview with Siliconera, Payne discussed his ongoing working relationship with Nitroplus. “Nitroplus is a hugely successful company in Japan and are also a very cautious one. They would basically like us to publish a title, wait two years to see how the sales are, then decide the next title to publish,” he revealed.

He added: “This is too slow for us and for our customers, so we’re pushing them to let us release more games, several of which we’ve announced and published in our 2011-2012 game catalogue.”

Two of Nitroplus’ adult titles, Saya no Uta and Hanachirasu, will be published by JAST USA this year. Steins;Gate, however, was developed in collaboration with its publisher, 5pb, which is why their consent would be necessary for the deal to come through.

That having been said, 5pb are interested in releasing their games overseas. In fact, one of their other games is already slated for a North American release this year. Fingers crossed that a Steins;Gate deal can be worked out at some point in the future.

Feb 15, 2012 9:02 AM

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Mangagamer has reduced prices on several games in time for Valentine's Day.

Feb 19, 2012 12:34 PM

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Mangagamer made several announcements at Katsucon this year.

DEARDROPS will be released on March 2, 2012.
Dengeki Stryker will hopefully have a demo out by March/April and a full release in May.
Magical Teacher is to be released April 13, 2012.
Koihime Musou has sold over 2000 copies meaning the voices will be released for the game.
Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru and Eroge are going to be translated by Mangagamer.

Jul 5, 2012 3:25 AM

#75

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Been awhile since I logged on around these parts (since January apparently), but felt like sharing some tidbit of good news. It seems that ef - the first tale is slated for release on July 27th.

From minori outright stating for foreigners to not play their games to the complete 180 with the collaboration with NNL, I don't think anyone at the time thought this would ever come to pass.

Interest in ef - a fairy tale of the two mostly began after the widely successful airing of ef - a tale of memories way back in 2007. While rather confusing at the start, the show hit its stride midway through the season and proved itself to be a contender of the top anime of 07.

At the time, I believe there was only a short teaser patch by NNL. I think it was called the "ef supah patch" or something like that. I'm not entirely sure if it covered the entirety of Miyako's route, but it covered the prologue at the very least.

I could go on with the bits and pieces I recall following the inception of this fan project turned professional over the span of several years, but I doubt it would be interesting. Anyway do consider purchasing this product if you are an avid visual novel reader. While my interests currently lie elsewhere and I haven't read one in some time, ef is most certainly worth your money and having NNL leading the charge will ensure a quality release.

Apr 9, 2013 4:07 PM

#76

billng

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Wow, you really are a onemanarmy, nice work.

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