#vgperson

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My site has an RSS feed with basically everything I’ve done back to 2020, so I'll mainly be going over things from that.

In January, Kenshi Yonezu released Plazma for Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX and BOW AND ARROW for Medalist. (Natalie.mu interview, Tsuruma Ikada interview)

I spent a good amount of the following months translating and then beta-testing Absented Age 2: Ghostbound, the sequel to terunon's Absented Age: Squarebound from several years ago, which ultimately came out in August. It's a good game! Of course, what's also a good game is Blue Prince, Void Stranger, Deltarune, Fantasy Life i, Donkey Kong Bananza, Squeakross, Silksong, uhhh…

Right, IRIS OUT in September! And of course, JANE DOE too! (Interview) Then in October, there was 1991 for the live-action 5 Centimeters Per Second. (Interview, interview about all three)

Then I made a cat for Ring Racers. Then later I got obsessed with Iyowa's Obstacles to Strolling (AKA "Everything") and eventually wrote singable lyrics for it. Which is, I guess my first proper Vocaloid translation in several years.

…Hmm. Doesn't look like all that much, does it? Absented Age was a big project, but it can only really account for about 2 months of time focused on it at most, with the bulk of the work being in January and February. I did work on a few smaller paid projects not mentioned here. I drew a number of pictures when I felt like it. And I posted Vocaloid Highlights every month like usual. But a lot of my time did simply go into playing a lot of games both new and old, with some taking a lot of time. Uh, including From Software's whole Soulsborne catalog. You can read about that here.

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Two (non-age) absences to discuss: First, the paid version of Witch's Heart Wilardo's Conclusion with added content. As much as it pains me to say it… you can pretty much specifically blame Silksong for me not having done that yet. (But it's really good, so don't…) I hadn't been keeping up with what IZ was doing, and I had all but forgotten about them mentioning their plans for a paid version, so I only heard about it when it came out just days before Silksong, and I knew I wouldn't be able to squeeze it in before then. Even now that I'm free of Pharloom's grip, I've had a hard time working up the motivation to sit down and start; the unique situation of "having to manage a separate paid version and send IZ the files and figure out the details of all that" doesn't help. But I should get to it eventually… (both meanings of "should")

And of course, Your Turn To Die is not being finished in 2025 after all. Even as the official translator, I'm not much more privy to the state of its progress than the rest of you. While my struggles to put out much public translation work this year may invite pessimism, I can at least say that it's not "done and awaiting translation" or anything. So it's not me holding it up… uh, unless there's been some kind of horrible miscommunication.

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As usual: my site has an RSS feed with basically everything I’ve done back to 2020, so this will mainly be going over the same stuff from that.

I didn't do much public in the first three months of the year; I was playing a lot of games (and continued to throughout the year) and planning out a particular game project which has somewhat fallen to the wayside as of late. But guys. It's gonna be so good if I can actually make it.

In April, Kenshi Yonezu released Bye Now, See You Someday! (interview, interview, tangential interview). Then in May, it was Every Day (interview, interview, interview, interview, interview).

Then there was the lead-up to and release of LOST CORNER in August, with RED OUT (flashing lights warning), Junk, and the rest. (Interview, interview, interview.) And about a month later, the madman went and released the new Donut Hole music video.

Around this time, social media conditions spurred me to create an art gallery page on my site, to both archive notable pieces from over the years and post new ones. Truthfully, I've been doing periodic drawings just for fun for about 2 years now, just… not posting them here. I also haven't felt like I should include every new drawing in the RSS feed (partly because it feels bothersome, partly to minimize the effort of the posting process), so you'd have to check manually to keep up with it. But if you're interested, there you go. (P.S. It's called a gallery because it's fulla gals.)

In October, I posted my translation of Sugaru Miaki's first new novel in 6 years, The Town of Sakura. It's hard for it to compete with some of his past works, but it's pretty good, yeah. (And you thought there is never an interview online? Think again.)

Finally, in November, one more Kenshi Yonezu song: Azalea (interview). And of course, as per IZ's new rule, I had a fairly leisurely month to work on Wilardo's conclusion of Witch's Heart.

Oh and if you wanna see all the good games I played this year I made a list here. Okay bye

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Nankidai did not finish Your Turn To Die this year on account of raising a baby. He recently moved residences "as part of a plan to go bankrupt if I don't finish next year." He'll… be okay, I hope.

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As I mentioned last year, my site now has an RSS feed with basically everything I've done back to 2020, so this will mainly be going over the same stuff from that, just with added context.

In January, I finally sat down and properly realized an idea for a short story I'd had sitting around for a while: From the Sidelines, about a fantasy RPG expedition going sideways. I remain very proud of it in both concept and execution, and hope people read it.

In February, Your Turn To Die was released on Steam Early Access, receiving character profiles and some bonus mini-episodes, adding two more later in the year.

After finishing From the Sidelines, I carried that momentum to revisit my Ut0p1a story series about funny computer animals. I'd always meant to continue it - and conclude it - but hadn't been satisfied with the ideas I had for it until totally rethinking them this year. In March, I posted the remaining stories one after another: Right to Code and Left to Code. I'm very proud of these as well. Also in March, Kenshi Yonezu released LADY. (Video, interview)

In April, Uri released the Data Book of the Strange Men Series, a big collection of the writing she's done on the games in the series, with a lot of new parts as well, all translated by me.

Then in May... uh, well, let's see. In April, Capcom released the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection. I always adored the Battle Network games, and was initially excited that they finally did the thing... but by the time it came out, I was pretty disappointed by how, while you certainly couldn't call them low-effort ports, the effort didn't extend everywhere I thought it should, with the biggest offenders being the total absence of any "convenience features" except Buster Max Mode, the bad font, and the almost entirely untouched translations.

So, I ended up deciding I might as well just replay the originals, and that was a fun time (aside from the parts that were bad). Doing this, I couldn't help but notice how... turbulent the translations were, even if I'd always known they were less than ideal. I mean, the first two games just used periods for ellipses despite the tight character limits, then in BN3 they had an ellipsis character... but it's center-aligned, Japanese-style? Aside from the intro, which has normal ones? Gosh, somebody should fix that - it's simple enough to find and edit in YY-CHR. "JapanMan" is silly, too - I wonder if anybody made a patch for that? Wait, what do you mean there's just a tool to extract and insert text in all the Battle Network games including the Legacy Collection???

Thus began a journey that sort of occupied the rest of my year. First I did the BN3 Translation Revision, trying not to worry too much about cross-referencing the Japanese text unless something seemed wrong, so that I didn't spend too long on the project. Then I began to consider BN2, with its unfortunate "foreigner" text that would need some more significant reworking. I established more convenient tools for comparing with the Japanese script, and thus did a much more thorough job with it, releasing the BN2 Translation Revision in June (AKA Princess Pride Month).

Finally, after giving myself time to recover and actually finish replaying the series, I knew what I had to do to close things out. With the BN4 Translation Revision, you can finally play Battle Network 4 with a translation that isn't such a mess. Whether you'd want to is for you to decide, though if you can get over the structure, I don't think it's the worst game in the series by any means. (Oh, and in December I also updated the BN3 Revision to 1.1, doing a thorough pass with the methods I'd honed. But I think I'm pretty much good on MMBN translations now.)

Anyway, backtracking to other things that happened during my Battle Network haze... June had Kenshi Yonezu's Moongazing (video, interview), and July had Globe (video, interview, interview).

Last but not least, released in November, I translated Refind Self: The Personality Test Game, a short game from Lizardry (creator of 7 Days to End with You) with a fun concept.

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Obviously I was right to have said "no promises" last year. But really, Your Turn To Die should get its final part on Steam sometime next year, maybe even early-ish in it. That's certainly the goal.