Why was "Working Designs" so hated?

[solnK!]

I´ve been a long way retro fan but recently I got curious about how many un-Working Designs romhacks were at the repo, then I investigated and knew about them but didn´t find that much. Altough I think their efforts were very important, somehow they were the first fan translators ever.

 

[Graw]

I could be wrong but, as far as I know they would make changes to the games for the worse. Increasing difficulty and making things tedious to increase play time to try and combat rentals. I think they would also fill their translations with pop culture references and just translate things poorly or just wholesale make stuff up and things like that.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Apparently their translations and localizations made every game they touched into a Murican 90s Pop Culture Reference Fest, which dated them.

I personally had no issue with that.

 

[Samatonic]

Nice to meet you again, @Waffles

 

[solnK!]

I could be wrong but, as far as I know they would make changes to the games for the worse. Increasing difficulty and making things tedious to increase play time to try and combat rentals. I think they would also fill their translations with pop culture references and just translate things poorly or just wholesale make stuff up and things like that.

I did know about the increased difficulty on Magic Knight for the Saturn

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Nice to meet you again, @Waffles

Hey, dude ?

 

[Samatonic]

I never knew that, here I thought I was one bad at Lunar, Arc the Lad, Glowlancer.

 

[Mopeybloke]

I think it's because of the pop culture references in their translations.

The reason they should be hated is for their delicate as a hammer approach to scaling difficulty. They wanted to prevent people from finishing their games in a rental period, so they would make them harder/grindier by raising attack/HP values at flat rates for all enemies. Totally not balanced for an enjoyable experience.

I recommend people use the un-working design patches for all their games.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

There are specific games like Magic Knight Rayearth and Elemental Gearbolt that were ruined by difficulty and gameplay alterations by Working Designs and those needed the fixes.

Their localization was fine aside from the many pop culture references and those who complained about that were offbase IMO.

 

[medisinn]

Indeed, I've heard they toggled the difficulty in a way that generally just made things more tedious, like making enemies take more hits to kill. I hadn't heard of it being intended to increase rentals, but that would make sense, that's one reason many platformers in the 80s and early 90s were so difficult. I had no problem with it, but it was all I knew playing the games in America. I couldn't have known that my version of Alundra had the health of many enemies increased, to me it was just how the game was. I mostly only have experience with Alundra, and have good memories of it, so I suppose I made it through their nonsense relatively unscathed compared to others. I don't know the translation differences well enough to know how severe they were. Changes happen, I think people generally have a bias based on if they liked the translated version or not. Working Designs seems to be universally reviled, whereas Final Fantasy 6 and Earthbound seem to have positively reviewed translations from what I've noticed. "Son of a submariner!" and whatnot.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's iconRanmyakuIchi]

They were pretty big on the whole "Jack up the difficulty so people can't beat the game as a rental" trend of localizations at the time.

 

[Bakuma1997]

All i can gather of the Most common complaints also is the one most told in this thread:

4kidsification of the script and cheap difficulty, i had Alundra as a kid, however i wasn't never able to beat The Watcher in the water due to the cheapness, also some of the translations made the game more obtuse that it needed, is now that i played it Unworked that i can finally enjoy this masterpiece

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

Indeed, I've heard they toggled the difficulty in a way that generally just made things more tedious, like making enemies take more hits to kill. I hadn't heard of it being intended to increase rentals, but that would make sense, that's one reason many platformers in the 80s and early 90s were so difficult. I had no problem with it, but it was all I knew playing the games in America. I couldn't have known that my version of Alundra had the health of many enemies increased, to me it was just how the game was. I mostly only have experience with Alundra, and have good memories of it, so I suppose I made it through their nonsense relatively unscathed compared to others. I don't know the translation differences well enough to know how severe they were. Changes happen, I think people generally have a bias based on if they liked the translated version or not. Working Designs seems to be universally reviled, whereas Final Fantasy 6 and Earthbound seem to have positively reviewed translations from what I've noticed. "Son of a submariner!" and whatnot.

I think it is because Woosley tried to stay within the framework of the script, mostly punching up the humor of scenes, whereas Working Designs would often throw out dialogue outright and add their American pop culture jokes. And sometimes the jokes were in poor taste.

 

[RageBurner]

Others have already laid out the reasons, but to reiterate as simply as possible, they commited two of the gravest sins when it comes to translation and localization, as far I'm concerned:

- Altered the difficulty of games in assinine ways and without any logical justification (if they wanted to do that, it should have been tied to an extra mode of some sort).

- Marred the original text with dated pop culture references that would pretty much only make sense to people living in the U.S, changed the meaning of several sentences, sometimes leading to tonal backlash or did other miscellaneous changes that are nothing more than liberties and should never been allowed.

Again, if they wanted to pull this kind of stupid stunt, they should have inserted a secret dev room or something in the games for this purpose.

They were celebrated in the past (and some still remember then fondly, as strange as that is), because it is often reasoned that without their involvement some games might never have been localized otherwise. While there is an ounce of truth to this way of thinking, it's no excuse for how they did things, not then, not now. We just didn't know better.

 

[Leifang]

Apparently their translations and localizations made every game they touched into a Murican 90s Pop Culture Reference Fest, which dated them.

I personally had no issue with that.

It's dub vs sub again and a section of diehard fans who tend to overreact on every single change, ignoring that direct, literal translations of Japanese sound extremely bland.

I remember some people being up in arms when they learned the Recette's catchphrases "Yayifications!" and "Capitalism, Ho!" from Recettear weren't in original... So?

 

[Graw]

being intended to increase rentals

Not to increase rentals to curtail them by making the games too hard to beat during the rental period so it urges pwople to buy the games.

 

[Stookymalarkey]

Not to increase rentals to curtail them by making the games too hard to beat during the rental period so it urges pwople to buy the games.

I heard it was actually to combat return policies on games at the time. There was worries that people would be able to beat a game quickly and return it to the store before the return period was up, ruining whatever profile could be made from the games. Making the games harder was to pad the gameplay time so nobody could return the game too soon.

 

[Ícaro Oliveira Santos]

Indeed, I've heard they toggled the difficulty in a way that generally just made things more tedious, like making enemies take more hits to kill. I hadn't heard of it being intended to increase rentals, but that would make sense, that's one reason many platformers in the 80s and early 90s were so difficult. I had no problem with it, but it was all I knew playing the games in America. I couldn't have known that my version of Alundra had the health of many enemies increased, to me it was just how the game was. I mostly only have experience with Alundra, and have good memories of it, so I suppose I made it through their nonsense relatively unscathed compared to others. I don't know the translation differences well enough to know how severe they were. Changes happen, I think people generally have a bias based on if they liked the translated version or not. Working Designs seems to be universally reviled, whereas Final Fantasy 6 and Earthbound seem to have positively reviewed translations from what I've noticed. "Son of a submariner!" and whatnot.

Earthbound English Translation/Localization was leagues ahead when compared to other 4th generation JRPGs localizations/translations, Marcus Lindblom did a great job at adapting Shigesato Itoi's original script and was overall very faithful.

 

[RageBurner]

I heard it was actually to combat return policies on games at the time. There was worries that people would be able to beat a game quickly and return it to the store before the return period was up, ruining whatever profile could be made from the games. Making the games harder was to pad the gameplay time so nobody could return the game too soon.

Exactly. I believe rentals were always forbidden in Japan (it's probably a gray area worldwide at best), so they had no reason to change difficulty in Japan.

 

[LiberoVulpes]

In their infinite wisdom they decided to make baffling gameplay changes to games, the why has already been said, if you wanna know how bad it is, go play the Working Design's version of Alundra, by the first boss you will understand.

 

[Graw]

I heard it was actually to combat return policies on games at the time. There was worries that people would be able to beat a game quickly and return it to the store before the return period was up, ruining whatever profile could be made from the games. Making the games harder was to pad the gameplay time so nobody could return the game too soon.

I've never actually heard that one before. Was that really a big problem though? I can't remember ever hearing about that being any kind of issue. That doesn't sound like something a lot of people would do. Sounds like it would be a lot of effort to rip through a game as fast as possible just so you can return it to the store.

Return policies also tended to be less lenient back then than they are these days. A lot of stores just wouldn't take things back if they'd been opened or used. Also, a lot of video stores would buy back used games or would trade them in for credit

That sounds more like someone trying to apply current year things to the past than something that actually happened.

 

[prnzo x BOOZE-o ka-BEER-o]

Working Designs should've just put Dragon Quest's/Warrior's grey slime palette-swaps or with minor-alterations such as wearin a cute lil hat or holding a pink briefcase on its way to its random-encounter job or eatin a blizzard from Dairy Queen for a double DQ tie-in. the grey slime would keep takin the protagonist's attacks whilst yawning n lookin at its lil phone in boredom - then run away when the return-duration has elapsed with a Nelson from The Simpson's "Hah - Ha!" n another scummy-sale is secured. no experience points - just a bad point of experience. JRPGs would be lovingly re-acronym'd as 'Jerkoff Rentals Punk'd cashGrabz" n in its place, the Text Adventure n Point-and-Clicks would step up to bask in their ultimate renaissance n even get their own official holiday - captivating every life form in a stroke of brilliant YEEAAAA thiswouldobviousLyneverhappen o _ O

 

[Egg (McMuffin) Man]

Basically if you want to play the game that the original devs made that you don't want Working Designs to publish it.

 

[Tengu Plant]

The extant to which people have wrapped around to defending "localization" is just embarrassing.
No, I do not want Bill Clinton jokes or "awesome sauce" style quips in my Japanese fantasy game. If you find the original script bland then play a different game. If you can't bring yourself to deliver a translation that's in the spirit of the dev's intention then don't translate games.

 

[RageBurner]

The extant to which people have wrapped around to defending "localization" is just embarrassing.
No, I do not want Bill Clinton jokes or "awesome sauce" style quips in my Japanese fantasy game. If you find the original script bland then play a different game. If you can't bring yourself to deliver a translation that's in the spirit of the dev's intention then don't translate games.

Thank you for summing up my thoughts exactly.