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retrowarriors · 7 years

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Remembering Working Designs

A tribute to non-literal translations and over-the-top packaging

By: Chris Saturn

I’ll always remember my 23rd birthday. It was the first year that I lived alone. No roommates, no girlfriends, no family. Just me and a small rabbit with apparent anxiety disorders named Ephraim. I couldn’t talk my way into getting the day off of work, but I did have the following three days off and a plan on how to spend them. Square-Enix had given me the gift of re-releasing one of my all-time favorite games right on my birthday. I’d stopped by the Electronics Boutique on my way home from work and picked up my copy of Final Fantasy IV Advance and went home to enjoy a long mid-week weekend. Before starting the game, though, I powered up the ol’ internet-machine to catch up on my message boards and the day’s news. That’s when I saw the headline: “Working Designs Officially Dead.”

The news hit hard. A week that was meant to be filled with happy nostalgia was instead clouded over with the knowledge that a big chapter just closed in the history of video gaming, and that several people in one of the most open and transparent video game companies were now unemployed. Even now, nearly twelve years later, I look bad with sadness when I remember that day. Fortunately, thanks in a large part to the transparency provided by Working Designs and its president, Victor Ireland, we don’t have to ask how it happened.

First, let’s rewind a bit; many people may not remember Working Designs. Gamers outside of North America may have never even heard of them. So let’s pause and reflect on what it was that made Working Designs such an important component of the history of video game localization.

Though I played some of Working Designs’ early releases on the TurboGrafx, they first caught my attention with the first release of what is arguably their signature franchise: the Sega CD game Lunar: The Silver Star. As a fan of JRPGs like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, I was always looking for something new. The US market wasn’t oversaturated with the genre like Japan was, so western fans had to hunt for their next fix. The Sega CD market wasn’t exactly a crowded space, so Lunar definitely stood out. Anime cutscenes, voice acting, and 80’s style hair metal? Sign me up. Pushing past those first impressions, the part of the game that truly stood out was something I’d not really focused on in past JRPGs: the script.

Out were the thees, thys, and thous of Dragon Warrior. In were references to MTV and The Simpsons. This wasn’t some stuffy tale of knights and dragons, this was something relatable. Something like I’d seen on TV and in movies. As the years went on, I greedily snatched up anything I could find with that pink gradient logo. Though the games varied wildly by genre, they all had at least the one thing in common. No matter the tone, the setting, or the gameplay, they all had Working Designs’ trademark tongue-piercing-fully-through-the-cheek translations.

In the early days of gaming, few considered localization to be important at all. If the players could figure the game out, that was good enough. Although looking at Castlevania II, I don’t think they were even up to that standard. Many younger gamers didn’t even realize games were originally from other countries, and just accepted the broken, machine-language as a staple of video games. Then came this company out of Redding, California who not only put a ton of effort into translating their games, but into making the script fun to read.

As the sun was setting on the Sega era and Sony was rising to prominence, Working Designs followed the money over to the PlayStation. Big name games like Final Fantasy VII turned the JRPG from a niche genre to a behemoth international industry. Despite their high quality translations, Victor Ireland and his team needed a way to stand out. In a move that seemed bizarre at the time, Working Designs became one of the first companies to offer special Collector’s Edition packages. Several of their Sega games came with foil-embossed covers, but they truly went above and beyond on their PlayStation games. The 32-bit reimagining of the first Lunar game came in an oversized box that included the game (with limited, randomly selected art on the discs), a soundtrack, a behind-the-scenes documentary, a leatherette hardbound artbook/instruction manual, and a full cloth map! The second PlayStation Lunar game even included a full replica gold pendant, as seen in the game! It was probably imitation gold, but with Working Designs… it’s hard to say for sure.

As the PS1 era drew to a close, Working Designs seemed to predict the downturn in popularity of the JRPG and started to diversify their portfolio, mostly with shmups and games about mechs. While these never sold at quite the level of their JRPG offerings, the commitment to quality was as present as ever. Games like RayStorm, Gungriffon Blaze, and Silpheed: The Lost Planet all featured signature Working Designs quality localizations and even had foil-embossed covers.

Despite my heavy praise, the company certainly wasn’t without its critics. Many in the budding online JRPG community were concerned about the loose quality of Working Designs localizations. What original flavor text was omitted so that they could squeeze in a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire reference? Would it have added more to the flavor of the world if Ruby hadn’t referenced Beavis and Butthead? As many fans as there were of Working Designs topical references and not-so-sly humor, there were plenty who pointed out how quickly the games would appear dated, an argument that certainly appears to hold true today.

Another attack frequently lobbed at the company was their, shall we say, lack of commitment to punctuality. It wasn’t uncommon for Working Designs games to be delayed by months or even years from their originally planned ship date. These delays were often unrelated to the games themselves, and often were caused by an inability to find a partner to produce their increasingly extravagant bonus items at the quality that would satisfy Victor Ireland. Delays in making the cloth maps for Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete grew so excessive that Working Designs shipped playable demo discs of the first several hours of the game to retailers to hold-over fans who’d pre-ordered. Alongside those demos came a now infamous punching puppet doll of an in-game character, an item that surely couldn’t have led to further delays or costs.

This over-commitment to quality and value, alongside their malleable relationship with release dates, ultimately led to Working Designs’ demise. The western JRPG market became flooded in the late 90s and early 2000s, and Working Designs’ attempts to stand out ended up costing far more than they could earn. Their releases were too few and too far between to compete in an increasingly aggressive market. Their final product was to be a translation of Konami’s PS2 Goemon title under the localized name Mystical Ninja Goemon. Despite getting approval from Konami, Sony’s US division placed increasingly impossible standards on the game, critiquing the graphics and interface. Having already poured so many of their few remaining resources into the game, they desperately tried to meet Sony’s standards to no avail. Over a year after their final release, the days of Working Designs ended with a fizzle.

It’s easy to see the influence Working Designs has had on the video game industry. Special collector’s edition items have become commonplace, and colorful localizations are found everywhere from The Legend of Zelda referencing doge memes to Final Fantasy XIV referencing the music of Wham. The people of Working Designs spread across the industry, as well as to other industries. Victor Ireland has formed a new company, Gaijinworks, that is equally devoted to bringing over Japanese games with high quality translations, and equally devoted to ignoring whole pages of calendars. Ashley Angel, the voice of Lunar’s Alex, went on to a briefly successful career as a winner of ABC’s Making the Band and became the frontman of the MTV-backed boy band, O-Town.

Looking back at that day in 2005, I still feel somber. The loss of a smaller, but still influential name in video gaming has left wounds that haven’t yet healed. Companies like XSEED and NIS America (as well as Ireland’s own Gaijinworks) have taken up the mantle of localizing and publishing lesser known Japanese titles, but none have quite had the charm and spirit that Working Designs showcased in its prime. The industry may have grown and matured, but I’ll always hold a warm spot in my heart for that time when a small group of people in California could introduce me to the lesser known games that might otherwise have gotten lost in translation.

#Working Designs #Video Games #Translations

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