Ben Judd's Japanese Blog Translations: The "Top Secret Blog"

[gypsyOtoko]

Friday, January 9th, 2009
Title: Bionic Commando: Rearmed Receives Tons of Awards Overseas!

Happy New Year!

At this time of year overseas popular websites tend to announce various "Best of (2008) Awards", and this year in the downloadable category "Bionic Commando: Rearmed" has been nominated several times.

And it just so happens that IGN.com (a rather massive game website in America) has awarded the game "Best 3d Graphics", "Best Soundtrack" and "Best Action Platform Game"!

I don't mean to gloat, but 3 awards is kind of alot.
(Ok, I guess any way you look at it, that would be gloating.)

Addtionally, at GiantBomb.com the game won in the "Best Classic Game Remake" category.

Perhaps it can partly be attributed to the economy being unfavorable recently, however lately game companies have been putting more and more into downloadable titles. And now, downloadable titles and downloadable content have been given their own genre. Until now selling 2D titles overseas for full price has had its difficulties, however thanks to the concept of digital distribution, games that were once hard to make due to cost issues can now be made profitable. I think this is quite a good thing for gamers.

And so, I've started this year on a bit of a high note.
Please continue to look forward to the 3D version

Thanks,
Ben
(Ben Judd)

(Translated by gypsyOtoko)

[gearoid]

Hehe, I was just going to suggest you translate it into English from reading your last post!

I'm moving this to a forum where more people might see it. Good work!

[gypsyOtoko]

Thanks, Gearoid. ^_^

I'll try to get at least 1 out a day until they're all done. And naturally, if Ben has any objections to any of the wording he's quite welcome to make suggestions, or full on edits on his own. Far be it from me to misquote (read: mistranslate) the words of our Beloved Leader.

Cheers

[gypsyOtoko]

December 26, 2008
Title: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

Christmas... It's finally here.
Well, I'm writing this blog on the 26th, but in America it's still the 25th, so I'm still in the Christmas mood.

Christmas is best spent with family, but this year I'm spending it quietly in Osaka once again. Of course, I still plan on being thoroughly engrossed in video games in any event!

And with this blog post, I enter holiday vacation!
Therefore the next blog post will be on January 9th.

I hope everyone enjoys the holiday season.

I look forward to seeing you again next year.

Ben
(Ben Judd)
(Translation by gypsyOtoko)

[Sacula]

Aaaaww! Ben, your always welcome to celebrate christmas in Sweden, instead of being alone .

And we celebrate on the 24th (don't ask me why). So you can have 2 days of Christmas!

[gypsyOtoko]

December 19, 2008
Title: In San Francisco, Home is Where the Heart Is

Up to this point I've talked about various differences between Japan and other countries overseas, and on a similar note, this time I'd like to touch upon our popular overseas community.

Recently overseas publishers have taken on the trend of creating communities and maintaining blogs, bulletin boards, podcasts, and the like in order to create a direct pipeline to the fans. Perhaps you're aware of this, however Capcom's American branch is located in San Francisco, and over there they are pouring a sizeable amount of effort into their community site.

There are even times every now and again where the fans living in the San Francisco area have an opportunity to participate in trials and playtests! Naturally there are things that the creators of a game aren't aware of when developing a game, so we use these playtests to obtain the opinions and observe the play styles of the users to help make improvements to such items. We call this 'focus testing'. Recently we conducted a 'focus test' for Bionic Commando.

The feedback was quite positive, however we did discover some points that we could improve upon. Once you've been working on a game for 2+ years, you begin to forget the way it felt to first experience the game, and whether there were any parts that may have been difficult to become adjusted to at first.

We plan on continuing our focus testing in San Francisco, so if you happen to live in the area or plan on coming for vacation, by all means please come and participate.

It's in English, but you can find the North American community website here:
www.capcom-unity.com

See you next week!

Ben
(Ben Judd)
(Translation by gypsyOtoko)

[gypsyOtoko]

December 12, 2008
Title: BenBen's Lunch Box

(Translator's Note: In Japanese, Ben seems to go by the nickname 'BenBen')

Perhaps among those of you who read the blog, there may not be many who have bought a game overseas before, however one thing to take note of is that the sales pitch as well as actual items being sold vary extensively by country. For instance, in America a store's employees will strongly promote a strategy guide with high sales prospects, strongly recommend used software, etc, etc.

The differences don't stop there: each country has its own reservation specials. Speaking of which, on this blog I'd like to introduce an overseas exclusive item. That item is the 'Bionic Commando Retro Lunch Box'.



As you can see in the picture, being an American style lunch box, it's pretty large. To give you a frame of reference, a typical American lunch may consist of a sandwich, banana, juice and desert; so a large lunch box is more or less mandatory.
(I guess we Americans have never thought of trying to reduce the amount of food we eat...)

You'll notice this lunch box features the package illustration and screen shots from the 8-bit Bionic Commando, so it definitely has a 'retro' style - which has recently been enjoying a boom in popularity.

I wonder what we should do for the Japanese reserves.....? (I'm currently racking my brains on that one.) I'd like to announce that sometime on this blog.

Allright, until next time: Bye, Bye BIONIC!

Ben
(Ben Judd)
(Translation by gypsyOtoko)

[gypsyOtoko]

December 5, 2008
Title: Beauty and the Commando

Black Friday has come to an end, and with that we enter December. Japan hasn't become particularly cold yet, but in my home state of Illinois we already have snow accumulating.

Speaking of America, the other day we had a request from our American branch requesting to
"LEND US THE BIONIC ARM!"

Well, being the legendary Bionic Arm and all, it's understandable that everybody would want a chance to try it on. And with that, please take a look at the picture below!



It's a surprise to see it on such a beauty isn't it!

It seems the foreign press is currently using it to create various amusing situations for themselves, so if I get wind of anything I'll put it up on this blog.

By the way, in Sweden once December comes around the days get incredibly short. It seriously feels like there's only a measly 4 hours of daylight.

If you happen to be a vampire, I highly suggest taking a trip over.
...Ok, so there's no such thing as vampires.... my bad.

I'll see you guys again next week.

Ben
(Ben Judd)
(Translation by gypsyOtoko)

[gypsyOtoko]

December 28, 2008
Title: Black Money?

Yesterday was America's Thanksgiving.
Which means today is what we Americans call 'Black Friday'.
Right now most North American websites are carrying out their Black Friday Sales.

Actually, the 'Black' from 'Black Friday' comes from the phrase 'in the black'.
Both Thanksgiving and Black Friday are holidays for Americans, and so on Black Friday many Americans go Christmas shopping.
As such, in order to attract potential customers most businesses carry out various sales.
Business is generally supposed to be healthier than on other days, and so because on that particular day stores are expected to be 'in the black', and so we call it 'Black Friday'.

When I was in America, I would line up in front of the stores at 5 AM to go shopping on Black Friday.
In America stores usually open at 9 AM, however only on this day do stores make a special case to open at 6 AM.
They don't mess around, do they?
Everywhere you go there's tons of people, and the roads are backed up - it's almost as if you're in Tokyo.

For a simple country boy like me it's scary, man!

Ben
(Ben Judd)
(Translation by gypsyOtoko)

[Carnivol]

Lots of great stuff here

Hope you don't mind if I stickied your thread. If you're keeping this up, I guess it'd be a nice little thing to keep easily and readily available for people to click in on.

(But... hmx0rz... it moved itself up on top! Now why did it do that? Was kinda hoping it'd sneak itself below the FAQs. Gah! Un-/Re-sticking the other ones didn't help. Guess it uses creation date for sorting.)