Hope I manage to get my hands on a Mini 2. There are plenty of games on this list I've never played. I wanna play the CD versions of Ecco I & II so bad. Being able to play the original Mega CD version of Sonic CD & Night Trap is cool.
Puyo Sun on MD/Genesis in particular is really cool, hope I can pick one of these up with the limited stock and all, might need to import one from Europe.
Disappointed in no Snatcher and that the Lunar games are Japan only, but I expected those things to happen (plus the PS1 versions of Lunar are better anyway ). Still a good lineup regardless, especially with the unreleased stuff.
Sad people in Europe will not again be able to experience the Lunars without importing or speaking Japanese. Still, I guess people would only bitch about the WD versions on a Mega Drive mini anyway. I don't know why SEGA didn't just look to translate the text to PopfulMail and leave the Japanese speech in there and just subtitle the FMV, like MS did for RSG on the 360
That would probably have been prohibitively time consuming and expensive. Okunari has talked about all the challenges they've faced with this one compared to the first, due to the pandemic and the chip shortage. Victor Ireland got greedy. Instead of making a little bit of money off of an obscure thing he owns, he's made zero money.
Seems Columns III and StarBlade are the odd omissions from the US/Europe lineup given the availability of western versions, though the inclusion of the new Puyo Puyo Sun port more than makes up for the former. I was hoping MUSHA would make its way west this time too, but I guess the inclusion of Robo Aleste precluded that -- the only franchises featured multiple times are the "classic" Sega IPs. Seeing the (insanely rad) revised Space Harrier II and new Space Harrier ports in action with the Cyber Stick makes me pine for 32X support more than ever, if only for its Afterburner and Space Harrier ports. I'm not aware of any current 32X emulators that support the XE-1 AP or analog controls, which both 32X games featured, and it would have been cool to test that out. But wow, what a lineup! I love the work M2 has put into this and the extra quality-of-life improvements they've made to some of the games.
I don't quite see how with today's translation programmes it would be time-consuming, much less how adding text to the FMV segments would really add to the costs with Popfumail. It just seems Vic asked too much for the voice sections and SEGA got cheap on the translation of the text, unless of course there's an issue with the Japanese voice actors' rights, given Popfulmail used stars like Hayashibara-san
There certainly are convenient translation tools readily available, but there's no way to automate localizing the game.
SEGA did it for Wonderboy on the 360, MS did it for RSG on the 360. SEGA could have translated the likes of Popfulmail if it really wanted to, unless there are rights issues overseas. I get why Lunar 2 might have been too much work, given in Popfulmail most of the speech sections also have a speech box, I don't think it would have been that much hard work these days for a corp like SEGA. Still , I bet most will look to mod their Mega Drive 2 mini anyway.[/QUOTE]
Machine translations are not good and never will be good. Computers cannot parse text the same way humans can. On top of that, Japanese in particular is an especially context-heavy language. The resulting translation would be unusable and would need so much cleanup that it's actually more work than simply having humans translate and edit the text from scratch.
I can just abaout speak 2 languages and sure it's not 100%, but even on my smartphone, real-time translation good and gets, I would say over 80% of the text or speech pretty spot on. That is a world away from even professional programmes of the early 90's would be able to do and its free on the phone If one listens to Twitter talk, all Vic's owns are rights to the voiceovers. SEGA would still need to translate the text anyway. I get why in the Lunar's, that would be an issue, given a lot of the cut scenes only use spoken dialogue, but for Popfulmail that's not quite the case and it's a bit of shame SEGA never looked to bring it over, unless there's issues over costs with the Japanse voice cast. I love the Mega CD and its such a shame people again in Europe will not get to see the Lunar's or Popfulmail officially and to put Sewer Shark in as compo, its so some of sick joke, since its a terrible Mega CD and FMV game
Yep, I was debating getting a Japanese version until this announcement. It seemed odd to ignore their PAL fans until now.
I'm getting mine from Amazon Jp. A shame SEGA Europe didn't look to get some of the CORE Design Mega CD games like Soul Star and Thunderhawk on there to make up for no Lunar's or Popfulmail. If fact its a shame Soul Star isn't on any Mini, that game pushed the system to the max
To me except for a few titles it seems more Genesis orientated than PAL as we’re sharing the same libraries. I wonder if there wasn’t going to be a European release until the outcry and decided to just copy the Genesis library and call it a day?
I think we were always going to get on in Pal land, no doubt it just takes longer to sort out, given all the different regions and languages. It's a shame SEGA Europe never looked to put SoulStar on there to make up for no Lunars. Soulstar is a pure showcase for the Mega CD. Its great line up for Mega Drive titles for the west mind
Oh shit, I didn’t even realize that it wasn’t there. SoulStar is such a no-brainer inclusion for the Mega CD it didn’t even register to me to look for it. That’s a huge disappointment. I guess the new Space Harrier 2 sort of scratches that itch, but it’s really not as visually striking. Oh well. With the limited release, most people buying this are going to be hardcore fans anyway, so it’s not like we need to stuff it with all the games that will change the public’s perception of the Mega CD being a shitty FMV machine.
I guess we have to rely on the modding community to fill the gaps in the library? Or is that something we don’t talk about?
I'm glad Sewer Shark is in there. Any representation of the US Sega CD library would be incomplete without it. I have three copies of Sewer Shark, and I don't even like it!
