Zillameth on 17/1/2008 at 22:00
Rebranding might not have been possible, due to contract obligations. Besides, if an edition of an old game looks like a first print, it tends to sell better.
I think it unlikely that Eidos was directly involved. It could be an edition licensed by a local retailer from Sold Out. I'm almost sure that's how it worked, when my former employer published TDP with an issue of their games magazine back in 2002.
They also did an in-house translation. They even added subtitles for all the cutscenes, and replaced all captions on all maps (a major feat, given how these captions are stored). The poor guy who did the translation had to write down all cutscene speeches by listening to the videos over and over again. He had higher education in English literature, but his hearing wasn't so good, apparently. A major disaster was narrowly avoided, because another person was given all texts for proofreading shortly before the release.
After spending some time in the industry, and hearing all kinds of horror stories similar to the above, I can believe in anything. I can even believe that a Dutch retailer would take a German translation of a blurb, and hire somone from outside the industry to translate it into Dutch (for local market) and back into English (for everywhere else). I can also believe, that instead of hiring a real translator, they would give the task to a PR dept. employee. Or their CEO's underage daugther. I could even believe they put the whole game through Babelfish, 25 times in a row, because they just love Engrish.
As for customs regarding translation, they vary from country to country. For example, in Poland gamers usually wish that all text and subtitles be translated, because their grasp of English is limited (it's a compulsory subject in almost all schools, but we all know well this trick never works on children). On the other hand, they don't want original sounds and voiceovers replaced, because Polish voiceovers have a very poor reputation that is somewhat fairly earned. On yet another hand, Polish law makes localised manual compulsory. For first editions it's usually a translation of the original, but budget editions usually come with a rewritten, shortened version. When my employer did that magazine edition, they simply told the translator: "here is the manual, translate it and make it fit into 16 pages, CD case format". :)
ataricom on 18/1/2008 at 00:03
I've heard horror stories about Polish version games. I've always had this sick desire to pick up a copy of a reading- or speech-intensive game, like Thief or any of the Elder Scrolls.
*gets sick idea of Engrish mission contest*
smithpd on 21/1/2008 at 00:23
Quote Posted by The Magpie
BTW, I dropped in an innocent line at the Eidos forums. We'll see if anything comes of that.
Your inquiry was a little too innocent. It did not include any discussion of this language / possible piracy issue. So nothing came of it, of course. The people who responded were not Eidos employees. The forums are manned by players.
WWWWolf on 23/1/2008 at 00:23
I'm a bit of a guilty party because I added the Thief Collection entry to MobyGames. :) I plan on adding scans there when I get around to it. I actually meant to come ask more information about this collection here, but seems people are just as puzzled as I am. Oh well :)
Anyway, I tried to add as complete information as I could find about this collection to MobyGames and I was very much aggravated by the fact that there's little information about it around. The collection has been a little bit of a puzzle for me. I couldn't find its release information from Eidos. Local importer (Plan 1 Oy, it
seems) had it in the database but didn't have a release date. I don't think the collection was made in Finland; if it was, the cover probably would have been in Finnish, and we certainly don't make collections for exporting. As far as I know, none of our importers have the habit of putting these together.
Anyway, failing to find the release date from the importer's site, I just picked one from another web store that seemed to have the Finnish release date. I also have hazy recollections that while I researched this release history issue I saw one page that said the same collection had been published (almost a year earlier? my memory isn't really that good...) in Belgium.
The package itself has copyright info stuff that seems to come from Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004 copyright date and all). The
package has a PEGI rating but it seems that the collection
itself has no PEGI rating (at least it's not in PEGI database); they probably just took the DS PEGI rating and slapped it in the cover. (Wonder what PEGI has to say about this sort of behaviour?)
The fact that there was no Moby entry before I got around to adding it wasn't exactly a red flag for me; a lot of games, especially collections, are missing from MobyGames. I personally have a stack full of shoddy Commodore 64 compilations that I haven't yet gotten around to submit... Heck, I had to add an entry for Star Fox Assault to MobyGames after the bloody European release. If a publisher as big as Nintendo can't get people adding their games to MobyGames, things aren't looking good... :)
Yes, the package screams "shovelware", but I've seen vastly more horrible
legitimate collection releases so absolutely nothing surprises me any more. (Encore's "Ultimate Game Collection". Yech. You really should see
their interpretation of the Ultima 1-6 Series.)
Edit: And my apologies if this sounds confused and if it sounds that I Clearly Didn't Read The Previous Posts All That Well - it's past midnight here. :) I'm just saying that I'd be grateful for all reliable information that can be found about this particular collection. I'm confused, but my gut feeling is that this is a legit product.
Body500 on 29/4/2008 at 14:53
Well I might be a damn taffer, but the dollar is rather cheap right now so I bought it. I'll post back here when I get it about quality/content etc...
Oh and actually it isn't shipped yet so if anyone has proof of it being a scam then please say so fast so I can cancel, or forever hold your peace.
Body500 on 6/5/2008 at 14:07
Okay, I received the Thief collection today, and my impressions are mixed. First of all it's not a one disc collection, which is stated in some places, but there are actually 4 discs in the box. One CD for TDP (it's not TG), two CDs for TMA and one DVD for TDS. This isn't that surprising given the size of the games.
The discs seem to contain the standard installation, plus the official patches. The TMA disc contains dromed as well. I can't see the editor for TDS anywhere, but I haven't actually tried to install anything yet, so maybe it's an installation option, but I doubt it.
The box art is as pointed out before a bit engrish, but other than that sufficiently stylish to pass as legit.
So without having actually installed any of the games, todays verdict is as follows; If you have only one of the three games I think this collection is worth the money, especially if it's difficult to get a hold of TDP where you live. If you have two of the games already then don't bother. The neat four disc box is hardly forth it. Also if you want TG and not TDP (which I actually don't) then of course this collection is shit.
I recommend pairing this with a homemade collection of all unofficial patches, upgrades, darkloader, t2x etc. I will work on such a compilation and when finished I shall see if I can spread it to the rest of you people.
