Why the game was never localized

Talk about Kojima's hard sci-fi masterpiece.
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shidoni
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Post by shidoni »

^
Eh, word.
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Post by Kojima_Devotee »

seraphssavior wrote:Like I said, there's no way in hell that's the real reason, but it's an easily acceptable one so we can all stop fighting. Forget making sense for a little bit, and just enjoy the fact that it is now being translated by people who give a damn, and aren't gonna screw it up.
Yes - There's no way we can agree on a theory, especially since we have so little information to go on. The rest of the Internet can fight about it, but we're all set over here - We've got an excellent translation on the way. :grin:
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Re: my new theory.

Post by Marc »

ratperson665 wrote:That's more than enough proof to me that Policenauts is his baby. His favorite creation.
I agree with ratperson on this, from Japanese interviews (as the Western press almost never talk about it).

I think Snatcher's poor sales were probably a big factor why Konami didn't want to localize it. It was also a lot of text to translate and voice to dub in those days (meaning a bigger loss if it sold as bad as Snatcher).
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shidoni
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Re: my new theory.

Post by shidoni »

Osiris wrote:
ratperson665 wrote:That's more than enough proof to me that Policenauts is his baby. His favorite creation.
I agree with ratperson on this, from Japanese interviews (as the Western press almost never talk about it)

I wanted to agree with him on that too, but I didn't have the balls. :sad:
He knew it wouldn't be well recieved in America. People would've looked at it as... some kind of cliche. I don't think anyone would've understood lol.... about 10 years too late in western eyes I think... Kojima is so much a part of the 80's generation, what with his very Nam-inspired heroes and values...
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Post by Marc »

We'll see if Jeremy has anything to add to this in the upcoming TUS podcast interview (my money's on he will).
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gatse_becker
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Post by gatse_becker »

I agree with Marc... poor sales always seemed to be the reason we where given when we started the petition back in 2000. Honestly I think only Kojima and a select few at Konami Japan really know what happened with this, and honestly we are probably likely to never find out. Its a shame really... if the Sega CD would have had a larger installed consumer base, and Konami would of had better marketing, we may have been playing Policenauts on the Saturn.
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Post by Nexus_6 »

One factor that I think people tend to overlook is that by the time the English version would have been released in the US, the Saturn had waned considerably in popularity (not that it was all that popular in the first place). Perhaps if they had been translating it on a more popular console like the PSX, they would have thought twice about canning the project.

Personally, I would have been happy if they had just done a text translation only like others here mentioned, but they probably assumed that the majority of western audiences would not take to non-English speaking characters.
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Re: Why the game was never localized

Post by Junker Gear Snatcher »

There are many factors at play here.

First of all: Kojima isn't worried about his "babies." He asked Silicon Knights to head a remake project of Metal Gear Solid. He's also intertwined Policenauts, Snatcher, and Metal Gear, while also making the odd Zone of the Enders reference and Boktai has at least one Metal Gear reference (as I heard, never played the game myself)

Secondly: The Japanese LOVE English. We may love Japanese products, and some of us the Language, but a Japanese person can learn, use, and apply English to their lives much easier than we can with Japanese (Japanese can only be applied to hobbies, fads, and Japanese stuff) (English can be used the world over by a Japanese person)

Third: Even the highly acclaimed Metal Gear Solid is not the end all to be all, it's great and deserves more than it gets in my opinion, and although US sales are good, many of the "fans" aren't really fans at all... they just play and like the game while ignoring the characters, themes, subtly and story.

If a remake COULD be made easily, it would be, Kojima would seek it out.

No... Kojima's no fool, short of remaking Snatcher and the Policenauts, or a sequel similar to Solid to Metal Gear. the best way to distribute it is let this translation project flourish, we're the demographic... the next generation of Policenauts.
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