With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. This one comes from one of our translators, YukkuriS.
“Hey, how about we do an April Fool’s gag about hard copies?”
Little did I realize that joke with Kouryuu would be the start of something that was anything but a joke. That was 2010. At the time I was working at Hendane! and decided it was good fun to join in the April Fool’s Day shenanigans online. The idea came to mind simply as a joke but also stemmed from my own personal opinion on how Mangagamer should sell their games.
I still remember when I first heard about Mangagamer and noticed them appearing at Anime Expo. Truthfully, I was skeptical about their business plan and what they expected out of the Western market. As an avid collector and part-time eroge peddler, I felt that selling physical copies, especially limited edition versions was a better plan of action. As the months went by after the success of our joint gag, there hatched a plan to actually do that. This collective effort lead to the first adult hard copy release from Mangagamer which was Da Capo 1.
While the packaging of Da Capo 1 did unfortunately leave a lot to be desired, I am willing to believe that what was an initial joke still bore fruit. Flash forward to the present and there’s plenty of hard copies to go around for a lot of Mangagamer’s games. I think things turned out okay.
Although none of the above has anything to do with my work as a translator, nevertheless I did get on board in 2012 to do translation work with them. I’ve been pretty lucky to get games I’ve enjoyed working on. Just give me some happy nukige and all is good in the world.
It’s been an interesting ride so far and I’m glad to be apart of this ragtag band of misfits. I’m looking forward to seeing what Mangagamer is capable from here on out.
Oh and remember to buy Guilty.
Waiting for Imopara! >_<
Didn’t you say that you like to translate HAPPY nukiges? So why do you recommend “Guilty”? O.o?
It’s kind of an in-joke more than anything else. You’ll usually find me saying that at random during MangaGamer’s panels at Anime Expo. I forget how that got started…
I was about to say, if that was an example of a happy nukige, I’d hate to see what you consider an unhappy one. I couldn’t even make it part the first ero scene before I had to switch over to Shuffle ^^;
I wish the hard copies from MG were at the same level of the Japanese market, as well as the limited editions. For example: August’s Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai Special LE brought nendoroids, a special music arrange CD, a dakimakura cover, event CG roughs and a 100 page book on world material on its limited edition. Over that, the clients that ordered from stores like Sofmap got a full color bedsheet with a design, Getchu, Melonbooks, Toranoana and others got unique tapestries, Amazon.co.jp got a cup rest design, etc.
The difference between the Special and Normal LEs (this only brought the world material book) was of 4000 JPY, but damn if it wasn’t worth it.
Alas, it will probably never happen here, but I believe it’s one of the reasons sales happen.