Happy 2012, everyone! We hope that the new year has been good for all of you! It sure was for us when we found out that right on New Year’s Eve of 2011, our website had registered over 600,000 unique visitors since February 2008! It’s quite a milestone and one that very few of us ever thought we’d reach haha!
Anyhow, onto some Front Mission news!
Gun Hazard Radio Drama Series Released!
As some of you may already know, several of our team members were engaged in localizing the Gun Hazard radio drama series from Japanese to English. A small pet project that one of our team members was very passionate about, if only because they LOVE Gun Hazard! Well, now we’re pleased to say that this project is done. Check out our project website for the links to this nifty holy grail that expands on the world of Front Mission: Gun Hazard, released before the video game came out in Japan!
Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style Invades France!
Are there any Front Mission fans living in France? If they do, feel free to check out the first volume of Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style (including a nice motion comic trailer of it!)…now in the French language! French publisher ki-oon has also released a sampler of the first chapter of the omnibus, which can be found here. If you’ve never been exposed to what Front Mission is like outside of the video games, then you’ll be in for quite a surprise! Be warned though; this seinen manga is deliberately made for the adult audience (much more so than the other expanded universe media) and is NOT for the faint of heart.
Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style Lives On In Japan!
Still a heavyweight in the seinen manga realm and in Square Enix’s own manga line-up, Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style will continue to have new chapters well into 2012. The ninth volume is already confirmed for release and according to Kyle (who was in Japan for the past few weeks), it’s very likely that the series will continue into 2013. So while things don’t look very good for Square Enix Co., Ltd. in the future, at least Front Mission remains defiantly alive with continued support from its Japanese base.
Today is the four-year anniversary of the Front Mission: Series Translation Project! It was December 17, 2007 when this whole shebang started, and now it’s December 17, 2011!
So anyone who’s been following this blog and our website might notice that there’s been practically NO updates since June of this year. And maybe that there were new people running the whole gig…this is correct. Oh, and maybe some people are wondering if the Front Mission: Series Translation Project is dead or alive. Well, speaking on behalf of the founders (since I did help co-found it with Angelo, Imran, Kyle, Wilson and the others – see the About page on the website), I’ll make this as straight and clear as I can.
On the “New” Management…
Basically, around fall of 2010, some “fans” of Front Mission were sucking up to us and saying how they wanted to help contribute to the project. After about a few months of this suck-up job, the team decided to let these people take over the mantle. The main reason for this, in my opinion, was that all of us who had been here since day 1 were moving on to new things…and we didn’t have the time to dedicate work on the projects. I myself can’t dedicate much work because I’m in the process of starting up a small, “indie” game development studio and that’s been eating up all of my free time. I know that Imran, Kyle, and Wilson have all had new jobs since spring of 2011, but I’m not in the know of what they’re doing. And my good pal Angelo (we go way back since university) has been bogged down with software localization in his new job, only now he’s being paid to make it happen. Not sure what everyone else is doing, but I’d assume they’ve moved onto new things as well.
So with everyone’s productivity dropping like a rock because of new jobs and other real life issues, we thought it would be a good idea to pass down the torch. Around June-ish, we gave the new team all the materials and notes we had, and wished them well in progressing the Front Mission projects. Finish up Front Mission 2 (the translation and editing were long done by spring of 2011), going further into Front Mission Alternative, and doing the side projects too. Now with December’s arrival, it is disappointing to say that the new management did not fulfill their end of the deal. No monthly updates, no reported progress on Front Mission 2, only minor changes to the web pages here and there, and quite honestly, no real interest in getting the job done! As a game developer in real life, this reinforces my point that game development of any kind should remain in the hands of those who actually want to see something done.
Anyhow, we’ve fired those “fans” from their jobs and rightfully so. We’ve also switched to a new web provider because our original one was closing down. The website and this blog will be alive for at least another year. So what happens now?
On Front Mission 2 and Front Mission Alternative…
As I said above, Front Mission 2 from the pure text work is already done. The problem is getting past the game’s encryption…which pretty much has been our major roadblock since fall of 2010. Without getting too much into the technical jargon, Front Mission 2 has a unique encryption scheme that requires advanced programming knowledge to manipulate. When we tried to work around it, the game would spit out all sorts of glitches. An entire mission script could be fully inserted, yet when played in game may randomly spit out Japanese sentences. Another issue involved words mysteriously disappearing (or appearing garbled) from the text window, even when the script was double-checked for technical and linguistic errors! It’s a real pain to deal with, and solidifies my personal thoughts on why games localization isn’t an easy thing to do.
Front Mission Alternative on the other hand, is a more interesting case. The game’s language change option actually changes a little more than just the interfaces and game data from Japanese to English, and vice versa. It took quite a lot of testing for us to figure that out, but eventually we did. So like Front Mission 2, it’s obvious that this game was also meant to show up on English-speaking shores. (which wouldn’t be a surprise, since both games were being worked on at the same time) The main issue behind Front Mission Alternative is the game’s unique font coding. Unlike every other Front Mission, the font is synchronized with the in-game story events in that its appearance is timed with the presentation of the said event. So as the story plays out, the font slowly appears on the text window in a typewriter-esque fashion. Personally I think it’s neat, but this does present programming and linguistic challenges since there is no auto-scrolling of the text (can’t add new lines or a “page” in the text window). And everyone who is familiar with the Japanese language should know how many characters can be compressed into a mere kanji symbol!
So with the original team back in control, we will find a way to deliver the Front Mission 2 localization to all of you, the fans, in some form. Don’t expect us to churn it out quickly since we’re all busy bodies in real life at the moment, but in the words of Adam Jensen from Deus Ex: Human Revolution, we’re going to get the job done! At best, we can release a patch for Front Mission 2 with content equal to our Revised Patch 3 for Front Mission 5: Scars of the War because that’s all we’ve been able to crack…so far. We might try this and release a text guide for the non-mission story events, as that’s an option we were considering during the start of this year. Front Mission Alternative needs quite a lot more translation and editing before it would be ready, not to mention the font programming roadblock.
On Other Things Front Mission…
Frankly, I think the only thing that we can absolutely finish in the near future are the translations for the Front Mission Series: Gun Hazard radio drama series. It was something one of our members wanted to learn more about, so we managed to find the scripts after much searching…another nifty little “holy grail” of the franchise. Front Mission: The Declassified Documents (we changed it, Declassified sounds cooler and more 24-ish!) is pretty much 99% done in terms of data collection. The only thing that needs to be done is stitching it all together in some massive 500-1000 page tome (200 is too low a number, even if we were only covering the video games alone!). It’s pretty sick looking at all the data the team’s collected, and that data pretty much shows the all-encompassing power of Front Mission as a brand of various media, or a transmedia (Google that, it’s dead-on of what Front Mission as a whole really is). Maybe we’ll do a Mother 3 and sell these tomes haha! The video series…ehhh, I think it’s a lot easier to work on the big reference book. Too much effort to try and capture the whole thing in a show format. That’s just me though.
Dog Life & Dog Style Coming Soon in French!
Speaking of other Front Mission things, Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style is going to have French releases produce from publisher Ki-oon. This is in addition to the original Japanese and the fairly recent Korean translations of the comic series! The first volume is coming out on January 26, 2012, if you can’t read French. Maybe this means Square Enix Co., Ltd. might just release it in English some day…I hope.
Four-Year Anniversary Stats…
Visitors: 592,898
Downloads: 176,209 (162,682 for Front Mission 5: Scars of the War patches and 13,527 for Front Mission 2 patches)
Top 10 Visitors by Country: United States (1), Russia (2), Poland (3), Brazil (4), Canada (5), France (6), Germany (7), Indonesia (8), Philippines (9), United Kingdom (10)
There’s been internal changes going on with the team as of the past few months, so don’t expect to hear much from the original founders of the project. You could say the Front Mission: Series Translation Project is in the hands of new management… Anyways, I’m Dave. I’m an avid fan of Front Mission since the original Front Mission days and was lucky enough to get a chance to work in Japan to indulge myself in the whole shebang too! I’m not really into forum posting and all, but when I heard of this project I couldn’t help but follow it. And after some back-and-forth communications with the FMSTP team, I now have the fortune (or misfortune!) of being the project’s main spokesperson. I’m not sure what I can say I’ll bring to the table, but I’m well versed on my Front Mission stuff and in some cases, even more so than the folks who started up this project!
Well then, for some new updates, check these pictures out…
At the top of the totem pole, on the front cover, and with premium color treatment!Who needs Dragon Quest and Fullmetal Alchemist when you've got Front Mission?
As you can see, these pictures are about the Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style seinen (adult in Japan-speak) manga (comics in Japan-speak too!). I’m sure you’ve heard of this series before in some ways and of course, through the FMSTP. What you may not know is that this is the only thing left from the Front Mission brand in Japan that’s still active. And not just any ordinary thing – it’s a perennial favorite of people who read the Japanese seinen publication Young Gangan and a perennial best-seller as far as manga goes! The last project of the Front Mission Project line and written by Yasuo Otagaki of Moonlight Mile fame, the Dog Life & Dog Style seinen is an original storyline which revolves around people who get caught up in the Second Huffman Conflict. Well, I can’t really say it focuses exclusively on the imaginary Huffman Island since it’s been focusing less on that and more on world conflicts which hit close to home for some. Anyways, the seinen has been a huge hit in Japan and has done so well in sales that Square-Enix authorized South Korea releases of it in fall of 2010. Not sure it will ever make it outside of Asia though…but I digress.
Since 2007, Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style has become one of Young Gangan’s top 5 seinen series and frequently receives color treatment for new chapters. Those same new chapters are almost always on the front end of a magazine issue and in the case of Young Gangan 2011 No.13, it’s the very first one you see! Dog Life & Dog Style also graces the front covers of the magazine once again, just in time for the release of…Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style 07! The latest omnibus volume collecting several chapters of the Style 7: Return of the Shepperd was a huge sell on Japanese book retailers and Amazon Japan. How huge? Well, just a mere day before its release on June 25, it was already sold out from pre-orders alone. On June 25 itself, it was temporarily restocked before being sold out again and debuted in the top 5 of all new manga for that week itself! And in its debut it trounced both the newest omnibus volumes of Dragon Quest Emblem of Lot ~Heirs to the Arms~ (a very popular spin-off of Dragon Quest) of Fullmetal Alchemist: Complete Edition (Square-Enix’s most popular manga)!
Almost a week since its release, Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style 07 has been rock-solid within the Top 8 best-selling manga from Square Enix’s line on Amazon Japan. With rave reviews of its trademark story qualities and huge sales, this is a remarkable sign that Front Mission just refuses to die even after the end of the original story, and after an underwhelming Front Mission Evolved release in fall of 2010. And the best part of all this is that the series is not even close to being finished! Like the Energizer Bunny, Front Mission keeps going and going and going…
For something new for a change, we’d like to ask you about your thoughts and impressions of Front Mission. Here’s a few questions for all of you to consider:
How did you find out about Front Mission?
Where did you start off in Front Mission? (i.e. the first Front Mission product you bought)
What were your original impressions of Front Mission?
Have your impressions of Front Mission changed over time?
Why do you like Front Mission?
You don’t have to answer everything (especially if you’ve barely scratched the surface of Front Mission!), but we encourage you to answer as many of these questions as candidly as you can. Post your thoughts below or send them to our email addresses if you feel shy!
