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Brain Diving - Lunar Landing




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Sheleigha



Joined: 09 May 2008
Posts: 1670
PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 1:22 am Reply with quote
Makes me sad that this is ONLY digital :/ I'm waiting for them to do a limited print run for this, and then I'll buy it...
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Maximus44



Joined: 20 Jun 2010
Posts: 21
PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 2:57 am Reply with quote
Great article Brian!

Thanks for bringing this book to my attention!


I agree with Sheleigha, it's a shame that this is only in digital.

I am happy to see game arts broadening their company, though!
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Hardgear





PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 10:10 am Reply with quote
Did they leave the Dragon Diamond joke in?
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Chrno2



Joined: 28 May 2004
Posts: 6171
Location: USA
PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 10:36 am Reply with quote
Wow didn't expect a game entry here and Lunar at that. I never knew about his comic. I'm familiar with a couple of others that were scanned and translated years ago. Always loved the Lunar series it was a lot of fun. Great entry.
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bravetailor



Joined: 30 May 2009
Posts: 817
PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:36 pm Reply with quote
Although there are some fans today who sneer at the "simplistic" heroic template that games like Lunar SSS/EB, Dragon Quest and some of the earlier Final Fantasies closely followed, this article helps illustrate why this formula still resonates with many people today, even over some of the more complex and more subversive narratives some of today's RPGs and JRPGs follow (although most JRPGs still by and large stick to this formula in some shape or form)

There's something very clear cut and transparent about how Lunar presents its heroic arc--it's almost classical in the way all the elements work toward burnishing the myth it is trying to tell, and I think this clarity is what makes people remember the game well even though it has been superceded by games with better gameplay, better battle systems, graphics, etc,.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 2:28 am Reply with quote
Heh, still have the games.... Laughing
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DuelLadyS



Joined: 17 Mar 2006
Posts: 1705
Location: WA state
PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 12:06 pm Reply with quote
Sheleigha wrote:
Makes me sad that this is ONLY digital :/ I'm waiting for them to do a limited print run for this, and then I'll buy it...


This is my take, too... it'd be nice to have along my many copies of the game (I actually own every version released in America, although I need a proper case for my sega CD copy.) It sounds like this book's based on the GBA version, at least to start- any idea when it was originally written?
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:47 pm Reply with quote
Ah so they're going with the storyline where Nash comes to Burg directly rather than finding him under a giant basket near the witch's cottage?

Anyway, from what this article says, it sounds like a disappointing read only because of the awkward and somewhat stupid translation (seriously, either stick to sounding like Working Designs or normal, not mix it in with pretentiousness).

With regards to the original Lunar, I own the PSX version, the GBA version (which was the weakest one due to the dialogue being pretty drab and stupid) and the PSP port. Still waiting for Eternal Blue to get its time to shine again and get stuffed with some extras.
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Manonthemoon



Joined: 02 Feb 2011
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 9:34 pm Reply with quote
belvadeer wrote:
Ah so they're going with the storyline where Nash comes to Burg directly rather than finding him under a giant basket near the witch's cottage?

Anyway, from what this article says, it sounds like a disappointing read only because of the awkward and somewhat stupid translation (seriously, either stick to sounding like Working Designs or normal, not mix it in with pretentiousness).

With regards to the original Lunar, I own the PSX version, the GBA version (which was the weakest one due to the dialogue being pretty drab and stupid) and the PSP port. Still waiting for Eternal Blue to get its time to shine again and get stuffed with some extras.


I highly disagree with the novel being pretentious at all like Brian Ruh, the book reviewer, writes. The translator, John Sears, even talks about why the novel was structured the way it was in the notes at the end of the book for heaven sakes or did the reviewer miss that?

Obviously languages and writing styles are different in different languages, which seems like kind of a no brainer here of why it was translated as it was. Personally, it seemed to me that the translator had an extremely deep literary background because he referred to several famous literary classics, poems, and stories in Lunar while still managing to keep everything within the context of the world.

I think the long sentences could have also been a complaint, but I never found them difficult to understand, so what's the problem? Teachers usually teach students to write short sentences, because students for the most part can't write long sentences without things going wonky, but I didn't find examples of that in this novel anywhere. The translator's grammar skills were excellent and the advanced level of grammar that he employed to describe things down to the last detail was impeccable.

I read the novel several times through, in fact, and while I didn't know everything in the novel and had to look stuff up, I was very impressed at how true to Lunar's roots the English translation was. There was also plenty of patronage to Working Designs in the novel which said to me that the translator was very familiar with what Working Designs had done in the past and apparently he was the one who translated Lunar for the PSP, too. Kudos to that!

I have also read numerous other posts written by Brian Ruh, and he admits to his own ego of himself standing in the way of things at times. Just because he is a graduate student doesn't mean he knows every word in the English language and if he is reading books all the time where he knows every word then he must be reading books targeted at little children because I find myself looking up words I don't know all the time.

I am a big fan of Lunar, have been since I was a kid, and now I'm an adult. I'm glad this e-book didn't sound like it was written for 11 year-olds, because it's been a long time since I was that age, and I wish more games and novels would grow up with their audience as well.
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kameoosama



Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 48
PostPosted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 2:24 pm Reply with quote
If you do a kindle book, it might be nice to have a link to the store page for it in the review somewhere. I can look it up, but it'll help readers who are incredibly lazy.
Nice review though, although I think the colloquial bits of the translation are some sort of homage to the way Working Designs did the PS1 version, which was full of those kinds of references (Only version I played, don't know if the Sega CD version was the same.)
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OtakuExile



Joined: 16 Jun 2010
Posts: 202
Location: Neo Vegas
PostPosted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 11:34 pm Reply with quote
enurtsol wrote:
Heh, still have the games.... Laughing
Same here, Lunar 1 and 2 for Sega CD (2 copies of each), The remakes of 1 and 2 on PSX and a coverless copy of Magic School on Saturn. I hear ya. Part one was so easy, Eternal blue was so hard. I definitely want to see this comic, err...novel.
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