XSEED Games announced Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven for North America last week. No such confirmation is out there for Europe and Australia yet, but you can rest easy knowing that the game will be available in these regions as well. Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven has been rated in Australia, meaning it’s just a matter of time before an official announcement is made. Marvelous will be publishing directly – much like Senran Kagura Burst.
Nintendo Life has now published its full interview with Damon Baker, Nintendo of America’s senior manager in marketing and licensing. You can find the full thing here, though we’ve grabbed some excerpts below. Topics include how the content for Nintendo Direct broadcasts is chosen, third-party Wii U support, and more.
Capcom published another Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate localization blog on its website today. We get to learn about how some of the English monster names were chosen (and the name for Cathar).
Below is an excerpt from the blog:
Naming a monster like Seregios is a big deal because it’s one of the main monsters in the game, and you don’t want to screw it up. At the very least you want to give a couple of solid ideas and hash things out with the director. Before we sat down with the director Fujioka-san and lead designer Tokuda-san, we were given a couple of keywords to hit when coming up with names. This included talons, legion, Rathalos’ rival, gold, scales, speed, dive bomb, and so on. The names that we came up with were
Seregios: a Romanization of the Japanese name. I chose an R instead of an L in the middle to make it look like serre (talon in French) and serrate.
Aurelos: a combination of aer (Latin for air), Regius (Latin for King) and a traditional Monster Hunter suffix, los. We were going for “the king of the skies to rival Rathalos” vibe with this one.
Ceralos: a combination of celertias (Latin for high speed) and Regius.
Aegios: a combination of aer and Legion, which the Japanese name also utilizes.
Aurthelos: a combination of Aur (Latin for gold), and a traditional Monster Hunter suffix, thalos. We were going for “the golden rival of Rathalos”.We probably didn’t do the other suggestions any favors by adding the Romanization of the Japanese name into the list, but we all agreed that much like Gore Magala and Kecha Wacha before it, the name itself sounded good and is easy enough for more people to pronounce (although some people might end up pronouncing it “Sir Regios”…). We also liked how the original name had this sort of cutting sound to it compared to the ideas we came up with, so there weren’t any objections when Fujioka-san decided to stick with the original Japanese name.
You can find more on Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate’s localization here.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King was one of the notable titles to have been released on the Wii Shop Channel as a WiiWare download. Siliconera now has an interview with developers Fumi Shiraishi and James Margaris, who discussed the game’s origins. Here’s what the two shared:
Fumi Shiraishi, Co-founder of Dark Roast Entertainment: My Life as a King started with trying to come up with a cool game that would still work within the downloadable size limit. I think we’ve seen RPGs before that had elements of city and hero management, especially Romancing Saga 2, so thinking about how to make the game work came very naturally to everyone. I remember when I pitched the idea to Tsuchida-san, our producer and creator of Arc the Lad and the Front Mission series. He loved the idea right away, saying he had wanted to work on a game like this also.
A side story is that I was sitting next to Kawazu-san, the creator of Romancing Saga 2, during the launch party for My Life as a King… and I didn’t have the guts to tell Kawazu-san that his game was the original inspiration…
Kotaku has gone live with a new interview featuring commentary from Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma. Aonuma touched on how Zelda dungeons are made, and shared more on The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
Find a breakdown of the interview below. Also be sure to check out Kotaku’s full feature here.
If you missed out on the GameCube Controller Adapter for Wii U when it came out last year, then you’ll be pleased to hear about a new update from GameStop. The retailer claims that the adapter will be in stock once again soon. No word on when exactly, but keep your eyes peeled!
Damon Baker, Nintendo of America’s senior manager in marketing and licensing, has offered further comments regarding the company’s decision to only release the New 3DS XL in North America. Unlike other territories, the standard model that supports cover plates is not being sold in the states.
Baker told Nintendo Life:
Yeah (laughs). Look, the face plates are super cool, but we’re a different market. And now we have clear differentiation between those three systems. Before, there was a very limited difference between the 3DS and 3DS XL: other than size. It was the same resolution, same functionality… now, there’s the 2DS, 3DS, and New 3DS XL, all of which have their own functionality and features. The different price points give it a clear message for consumers. The core audience… we weren’t going to win with them on that decision. But we had to think about expanding the user base, we had to be able to market it and make it easy to pick up for consumers.
Baker also commented on the topic of community feedback online. Regarding this, and how Nintendo’s social media accounts tend to avoid direct engagement with consumers, he said:
I’m there daily, multiple times a day. You have to go there with an open mind. I’d love to get to a point where we have marketing channels where we can promote direct communication with the community, where people comment on stuff and Nintendo can communicate back. That’s my dream. Right now, PR is driving our social media, we’re not actively engaging the community, or very rarely. People have a fascination with Nintendo and want to be close to it and we feed off that excitement. We need to be more active there.
