Comments on: Chaos;Head – PC games discover the semi-colon

By: Paul Andre

Paul Andre — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:26:33 +0000

Thank you very much,your site is perfect

==
http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulandredevera

By: Chan

Chan — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:09:38 +0000

An English Alpha Patch is out.

The last few chapters of the game- When everything is put together- is unspeakably awesome.

By: Newprimus

Newprimus — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:09:23 +0000

There’s a fan translation effort underway for this game:

http://www.tsukuru.info/tlwiki/index.php?title=Chaos;Head

There’s a brief description of the game on that site as well. There’s no porn in this game by the way. The protagonist is also fully-voiced. Pretty much everyone who’s played the game thought it was excellent, although the protagonist apparently sets new boundaries of pathetic-ness.

It’s also being made into an anime that’s going to start airing in Japan pretty soon.

By: Fujiiro

Fujiiro — Sun, 18 May 2008 07:53:20 +0000

CHAOS;HEAD’s just great and really cool, and you get to study VIP語,,, but my prejudices tell me that translating it (be it that it’s well performed) kind of ruins 75% of the fun. Maybe you eventually get used to it, but somehow (even tho it sounds kinda nihonjinron-ish) it works a lot better in Japanese… the flow’s just different.. but I mean, it also does take great writer, such as Nasu Kinoko to accomplish such feats…

By: betr

betr — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:37:23 +0000

Until recently, Hirameki International have been trying to localise and publish visual novels in America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirameki

Among it’s product line-up, most people will probably agree that those two titles are the best:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ever17
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Inferno

Phantom of Inferno was Nitroplus’s claim to fame, while Ever17 was considered one of the best KID games. Incidentally, Chaos;Head happens to be a collaboration project between Nitroplus and some ex-KID staff.

By: Alarik

Alarik — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:55:42 +0000

Yeah, story-wise they are quite good. Add to that (usually) gorgeous visuals, great voice acting and nice music and you have quite a piece.

There are usually more story arcs and multiple possible endings which add to “reaplayability”, a lot. Basically to get the whole story/picture you need to finish more arcs (for different persons) or/end to get multiple endings.

I wouldn’t even call them “porn” or “erotic” usually. There are different games/genre for that (eg. Illusion Software “games”). Erm.

Well, I am using quotes here, because as it was already said, using word “gameplay” isn’t exactly the best choice here, I guess.

I would compare visual novels to the classical game books most of you probably know – for example imagine Lone Wolf story with fewer choices and more text :-) It varies from VS to VS of course. Heh, and there could be minigames too :-)

Quite good and accessible (as in English version available for purchase and with profesional translation) visual novel is Animamundi: Dark Alchemist – gothic one (and Victorian feel to it – I mean, alchemy, occultism, Faust variant, etc.).

Generally (about Japanese originals) there are those annoying issues with Regional settins, meh >_> Annoying.

By: AdrianWerner

AdrianWerner — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:17:05 +0000

In recent years the fan translations of visual novels have really picked up, We got full translation of Tsukihime, Wind and Utawarerumono. As well as partial translations of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Umineko no Naku Koro ni and Fate/Stay Night.
We will be getting Clannad translation soon. And those are just examples, there’s more of it avaible

Those are huge projects, the ammount of text is insane (afair Clannad has 10K pages long script)

The funny thing is that those are porno games (aside from Clannad), but they have in reality little porn (like 1% of whole playtime, if not less) and the quality of story and characters writing is above and beyond anything normal videogames have been offering in the past decade.

By: sbs

sbs — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:04:32 +0000

Arnulf: There is a number Japanese games named with german words, I can only remember Ehrgeiz and Einhänder right now but I believe there were some more. I think the latter one was spelled without the umlaut though.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:17:07 +0000

To be fair, UBER is a really awesome word. Good work, Germans.

By: Arnulf

Arnulf — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:07:58 +0000

They did not only discover the semicolon but the umlaut also. Chäos;Head. My mind boggles…

I (as a german native speaker) find it strange that the little preposition über has found that curious usage among the English speaking (and writing) web community. Stranger even the occasional use of ü in band names and such.

Now that some Japanese with their intricate and (for me at least) fascinating own calligraphy go and use some crude latin letters and add some umlaut punctuation to it makes me wonder.

For lack of a better phrase I’d call that culture shock to the power of two.

By: Zhal

Zhal — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:24:33 +0000

Anyone know what song is that in opening cinema?

Other than that not much to say about the visual novel itself, except for some beautiful art.

By: c-Row

c-Row — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:46:04 +0000

I, for one, welcome our new punctuation overlords!