Working Designs officialy dead...

[TBoTB]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?Disp...ay&cId=3146301

Working Designs, most known to me by their famous lunar games, Silver Star Story and Eternal Blue. If anyone hasnt noticed, you could buy those games and get all the extras, those same extras that overseas would get regularly at the drop of a hat but would manage to skip us for reason of some publisher being scared that it wont sell in the west. Working Designs offered their best from the start and didnt hold back like most of these other developers / publishers out here.

Ireland used a term that is very fitting to what he was talking about and thats JRPG. What is a JRPG? Final Fantasy is not a JRPG when it hits our shores and if thats not a clue then you need to re-read what he said. WD held nothing back in their releases and localizations. To date i still beleive that Lunar I/II have some of the best voice actors ever and they werent even all that well known. I watched the making of Lunar cd that came with one of the games and was amazed at how they strived to maintain top notch voice acting. Comparing to some of teh titles today (Baten Kraitos, Tales of Symphonia) i'd rather listen JP VA which are most of the time better than most EN VA.


I guess im just fustrated becuase WD was a minority in the gaming industry, they gave the customers what they had. Now that they are gone, the minority of gamers that appreciated the eastern quality / influence will have to pay the price while the majority of gamers sit back and enjoy their hollywood-ized games. It is a sad day indeed...

[Taskmage]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

That's a crying shame. I really enjoyed Lunar, Vay, Alundra ... and I believe I have Working Designs to thank for the PS2 Silpheed reaching the US as well. Hopefully they'll reform or get absorbed into another company so they can still do their good work. Nippon Ichi is sortof a kindred spirit.

[Macht]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

Oh hell no! I can't believe that post, no way.

Aside from being almost collecting nothing but Square-Enix games I also have a good sized collection of games from WD, including Lunar I & II love them both.

Man, that's a real shame

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

I was disgusted when I heard the news about WD. There is a lot more to this story than the public knows. What a huge blow to every RPG lover.

[TBoTB]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

...There is a lot more to this story than the public knows. ....

!?!?! Do tell if you know something. T_T

[Karinya]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

I can't believe I'm seeing people post in FAVOR of WD... Haven't they been infamous for years for having the worst editing hackjobs in the industry? Plotlines completely rewritten, sophomoric (or worse) humor added even in completely inappropriate situations, interesting and serious characters turned not just into comic relief, but BAD comic relief. And let's not forget the puzzles that are completely unsolvable in the WD versions of the games because the clues are incomprehensible or just plain wrong.

WD took great games and made them mediocre, it took pretty good games and made them awful.

And their voice acting was pretty bad, too. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to play Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, or maybe Xenosaga (Ep I! Ep II had a different and considerably worse voice cast).

If even one game that would have been butchered by WD now gets picked up by a company that will translate it more faithfully, I say hurray.

If WD really is dead, let me be the first one to drive a stake through its heart and bury it at the crossroads at midnight, to ensure that it never rises from the grave to terrorize (well, ok, disgust) the gaming community.

[Macht]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

Am I missing something? I swear Valkeryie Profile and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time were done by Enix (Now Square-Enix). As for Xenosaga they were published by Namco, so what did WD have to do with them?? They assist in making those or something?

Must be missing something because the developers for ones like Valkeryie Profile says Tri-ace, nothing about Working Design.... Most likely the developers for the others were Tri-ace too or Monolith they seem to be the most common two I usually see.

Damit man, that probably means I should find a copy of the Growlancer stuff if I still can. As far as detail it seemed intresting enough.

[COSMOS]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

Correct, Valkyrie,Star Ocean TTEOT, are tri-Ace and Square respectely. My bf has those great games (lunar,growlancer,Arc the lad) I even played them. ^^ great,all of them. Its a sad day in gamerdom when WD rode into the sunset. ><

[Macht]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

Correct, Valkyrie,Star Ocean TTEOT, are tri-Ace and Square respectely. My bf has those great games (lunar,growlancer,Arc the lad) I even played them. ^^ great,all of them. Its a sad day in gamerdom when WD rode into the sunset. ><

Never went for Arc the lad, don't know why it just didn't grasp my intrest. BTW, a little of topic but is it me or does anyone seem to think that DragonQuest 8's characters look a LOT like the characters from DBZ? Some of them that seem like allies even look like guys that were enemies in DBZ.

What's sad is my dark little secret:

So far to date every WD game I've bought happened to be the last one sold by that company both Lunar and even Alundra. Strange too, because I've always loved each one of the WD games I bought don't know I just happen to buy them when it's the stores last copy. Took me a while but looks like I found a brand new Growlancer's of the limited collector's edition type for a decent price, be funny if it happens to be last they had in stock

[Caspian]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

Never went for Arc the lad, don't know why it just didn't grasp my intrest. BTW, a little of topic but is it me or does anyone seem to think that DragonQuest 8's characters look a LOT like the characters from DBZ? Some of them that seem like allies even look like guys that were enemies in DBZ.

Not a coincidence. I think from what Pai, TBOTB, and Grandmom said was that it was the same director as DBZ, hence the same style and very similar characters.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

Not a coincidence. I think from what Pai, TBOTB, and Grandmom said was that it was the same director as DBZ, hence the same style and very similar characters.

Yes Akira Toriyama is both the illustrator for DBZ and DQVIII. DQVIII is absolutely worth picking up too by the way. I just wish I had more free time to play it! Holidays are REALLY cutting into my ME time! LOL

People that slam WD crack me up. They brought great JP games to the US that no other company would do. Back in the day there were LONG waits for RPG's in the states and that is why so many of us were importing and translating for the masses. If you've ever done it, well it takes some of the joy out of playing the game. Ends up being more of a job than fun. So US releases of RPG's were an event and WD filled those needs. Wow they weren't perfect at times, but for us, who the hell cared!!? We were just happy to have a good RPG to sink into. I salute WD for doing something that other companies looked over. They filled our RPG void and I love them for that. They will be missed.

As far as what happened with WD, I won't say that I have a friend of a friend that works there or some hooey. But I will say that I have several old friends that were in the business or still are. We've always talked about issues within the industry and I can say that companies like Sony hold the smaller developers by the balls. Larger ones have more pull but studios like WD do not. Sony decided that the smaller 2D games were not the wave of the future. They wanted blockbusters for their system. They also are looking for new content. (Ya right sequel after sequel or freakin movie spin off crap!) They basically want a more graphics intensive 3D game. Games like this cost big $$$ which smaller studios can't afford. If they put all of their money into one huge game and it flops, well there goes the business. WD brought good games that made a decent profit and filled a niche in the gaming community. It paid the bills. Sony says they "have a vision for the future of gaming", I just wish they had consulted gamers first.

[Macht]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

That's the big secret GrandMom? Kind of something I already knew, being in Marketing you see stuff like that all the time. Sometimes you're the ones doing it and sometimes someone else it the one doing it to you. It's a strategy of chess at a massive level.

Seems like WD could of still filled a niche producing stuff for the Revolution then if that was the case. Either way is a sad day indeed.

I thought it was pretty funny how Lunar: SSS when they made it for US got so much popularity that the Japanese community basically demanded to get the US release as well. To have the Japanese community do something like that you know it has to be good then.

[Karinya]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

Am I missing something? I swear Valkeryie Profile and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time were done by Enix (Now Square-Enix). As for Xenosaga they were published by Namco, so what did WD have to do with them?? They assist in making those or something?

No, those are examples of games with good voice acting, to contrast with the WD releases of (e.g.) the Lunar games.

Someone who thinks WD releases have "good" voice acting doesn't know good voice acting - hence the recommendation of some *non* WD titles that actually DO have good voice acting.


WD took great games and made them mediocre. They took decent games and made them awful. This is commendable how, exactly?

Contrast, say, Atlus - which brought over Brigandine (an excellent game by a tiny JP developer hardly anyone has heard of) without intrusive editing. But they don't have WD's hype budget, so they don't have WD's fans.

[Pai Pai Master]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

I disagree.

Working Designs' translations of classic titles like Lunar (which happen to be my favourite games of all time) were far superior to other titles of the time. Compare the quality of the localizations of Final Fantasy VII and Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, which were released in the same year but from vastly different companies, one obviously much bigger and profitable than the other. On one side you have the localization of Lunar, which is revered by many to keep much of the original humor and drama of the Japanese version, with arguably great voice acting and sheer quality. On the other side you have Final Fantasy VII, with typos and grammatical errors galore, and Sony Computer Entertainment America couldn't even get the name of one of the most important characters correct.

Working Designs will always have a place in my heart, even if it's simply because they brought the greatest versions of my two favourite games of all time to America. Because of them I was able to relive the two greatest gaming moments of my childhood once again, and it's pretty obvious (cough Ubisoft) that they were the only ones worthy of handling Lunar.

[Macht]

Re: Working Designs officialy dead...

Sorry to say Karinya but I can't possibly agree with that. I'll definatly run Lunar in line with other games to see about this, but one of the things for certain is games that are done crappy like you claim would not get a re-realese with the upgraded design as Lunar SSS had recieved. Lunar for the PS2 as well as it's original Sega CD version were both given very high marks even by IGN (Which I can't find on there anymore, seems it was too old they no longer have it along with the awards it had won).

Now if you are talking about "Lunar Legends" the crappy GBA version of Lunar SSS then yes it was a horrid piece of work. To no surprise it was not done by WD it was done by UbiSoft and GameArts, which again doesn't surprise me that it turned out so bad. Lunar Legends had no voice over acting though, so obviously you aren't talking about that.