[Comic] Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow official 4koma, unofficial scanlation, Part 2
Rounding out my translations of the 4koma posted on Dawn of Sorrow’s Japanese website, here’s Shizumon’s comics. Don’t miss Part 1. Again, knowledge of the game is required for some but sometimes it’s that Julius is just weird, or kind of a perv. (EDIT: As Greenhat97 points out in their tags, he’s not a perv, he just enjoyed having his back stomped, as established in “Julius Mode 2”. My bad.) Once again thanks to Castlevania Realm for archiving the raw comics.
[Comic] Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow official 4koma, unofficial scanlation, Part 1
Here we have the non-Shizumon 4koma that were released on the official Japanese site for Dawn of Sorrow. I’ve translated the four (plus two bonus single panels) that were not done by the regular artist; unfortunately the artist of these is unknown. Some of these were tricky to puzzle out but in the end turned into some good gags! Although knowledge of the game is definitely required.
[Comic] Castlevania: Lament of Innocence official 4koma, unofficial scanlation
Once again we have some quick gag comics from the Japanese official game website, that I’ve translated into English. This time in addition to Shizumon, there’s some comics from another artist (that I don’t think are quite as funny). And again Castlevania Realm made it easier for me by collecting these and other comics.
[Comic] Castlevania Judgment official 4koma, unofficial scanlation
This set of comics was trickier than most to get raws for; the official website is entirely in Flash and the images can’t just be saved. So I got screenshots (which turned out a little better than the screenshots saved here, my usual source). Regardless, they’re still the familiar Shizumon 4koma, and they’ve so far only been available in Japanese. Until now! I’ve translated the text and sound effects to make them accessible to English speakers. Lots of fun gags in these ones!
[Comic] Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate official 4koma, unofficial scanlation
Like many of the Castlevania games before it, Mirror of Fate had some 4koma by Shizumon on its official website. This time there are only two, and neither has previously been translated to English. So I did it!
The strips have been archived here, along with some standalone Shizumon artwork of the characters, as well as other comics for many other Castlevania games.
[Comic] Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia official 4koma, unofficial scanlation
The Order of Ecclesia official site in Japan had 19 4koma at a low resolution. The US site had 12 of them translated to English, in much higher quality. I’ve now translated the remaining 7 that were not officially localised. Unfortunately, the source was quite low-res but they’re simple enough that they’re still fine.
I’m quite proud of them, especially all the sound effects that I translated. Thanks to the artist, Shizumon, for doing such simple backgrounds and layouts that were easy to work with! The originals (including the official English ones), along with many others, are archived on this page (I checked, they are stored here in the native form they had on release at the official websites).
Video game comic news! Tanjou Scanlations, translators of many interesting Megaman comics, have just finished their last release (they’ve run out of translations and translators). They’ve had a good run, so check out their past releases linked on their blog. The final one is one I’ve been anticipating: Volume 3 of the Rockman Zero manga. It’s much more silly and dumb than the games, but it’s still great to see it in English. Check out Tanjou here.
If you’ve seen translations of these mangas and want me to retweet them here, signal me with messages, or catch my Twitter, @satsy. I’m on there more often than most things.
Check this out! The guy who did the Star Fox and Super Metroid comics for Nintendo Power (and Pokemon Snap official art), Benimaru Itoh, also did an Earthbound/Mother 2 full-length manga. It’s been localised and scanlated to an absurdly high standard by Kenisu. I’ve been waiting for this for a while, and it’s worth the wait! Also check out Satsy’s blog (the source of this post) for even more Mother manga scans (mostly doujin), some of it’s been translated too.
In 1991, Nintendo Power ran a Battletoads comic in 2 issues. In 1992, there was a pilot for an animated series that recast the Toads’ human forms as teenagers. In 1993, GamePro magazine printed another comic in 2 issues that was a direct adaptation of the animated pilot. I haven’t seen the latter mentioned much before, so here it is, thanks to scans from Retromags and Aka Games.
Note that the story (carried over from the pilot) is credited to David Wise. This is an entirely different David Wise to the legendary Rareware composer who did the music for all the games. Same name, strange connection.
This really is a special one. In 1998, Germany official Nintendo magazine Club Nintendo put out a special promotional issue for the Game Boy Camera. Now there was already a GB Camera-centric comic in Issue 3/1998, which I translated here, but this was a whole separate publication with articles and whatnot. It hasn’t been archived in the usual places like nintendo-power.de or Opentrain; I had to go to a German pirating forum to get these scans (check out the whole thread with every regular issue scanned here).
The main feature is the comic “The Legacy of Dr. Lightningbolt” or Dr. Light (he appears in two CN comics as Dr. Light but for Yoshi’s Bang Cookies and this one they changed it for some reason). What’s cool about this comic is that it both follows up on the “wacky Mario stories” from the regular magazine but also serves as a final part in a loose trilogy of “Kirby detective stories” which are one of the magazine’s overall more infamous comic features. You can read the first here (note the door sign, which is consistent with this comic despite a change in art style), and the second here (I fixed the one page that was broken). A fun little story that fits right in with the normal stuff they were doing, but this time in a separate special issue that meant it was very hard to find.
I feel very good having completed it because that means that now all the comics in that particular style have been brought over to English. Hooray! There’s a few CN comics still left untranslated like a Terranigma special, the later N-Gang run, and some other small bits, but the main body of work is done! You can find out more about what comics exist and where to find them at my handy Club Nintendo comics database.
The other small thing in this release is a photocomic that the magazine staff compiled taking pictures around (presumably) their workplace, about a mysterious man breaking into Nintendo to steal the Game Boy Camera. A fun bit of fluff.
I hope you enjoy, and if you haven’t already take the time to browse the comic or scanlation tags on this blog, and especially check out the comics database to see the range of comics that we’ve brought to English-reading eyes.
My recent playthrough of Lufia DS inspired me to tackle this big project: I scanlated into English a 32-page comic special from 1996, given away (presumably to subscribers) courtesy of Nintendo of Germany’s official magazine, Club Nintendo. (Since NOE’s…
Oh, interesting that even this stuff was mirrored in the Netherlands too. I wouldn’t impose to ask you to scan the whole thing in (it’s too late anyway) but could you scan the introductory page you mentioned? The German one I mean, since I have more experience with that language. And by the off chance do you also have the special edition for Banjo-Kazooie, Lylat Wars, or Terranigma?
No I only own the Lufia one.
The next two are the last two pages. Also, though it seems like in Germany the comic was a special edition for the Club Nintendo magazine, in the Netherlands you were able to pick up the comic for free in some stores. So the Dutch version of the comic just has another ad for Lufia instead of a page where you can subscribe to the Club Nintendo magazine.
(I’ve bigger versions of the scans, seems like Tumblr shrinks them)
Thanks to sinrevi, here’s the extra pages from the Lufia comic that weren’t in my scan. I don’t think I’ll translate the intro text; there’s a lot of it over a textured background, and I think the comic contextualises itself pretty well. But there’s some nice Doom Island art, and confirmation in the credits that other artists than CN’s usual contractors Work House Tokyo worked on it, which may explain why the style is quite different to other comics they’ve published. Plus some interesting native info about the distribution from sinrevi. Thank you!
My recent playthrough of Lufia DS inspired me to tackle this big project: I scanlated into English a 32-page comic special from 1996, given away (presumably to subscribers) courtesy of Nintendo of Germany’s official magazine, Club Nintendo. (Since NOE’s headquarters is in Germany, they get all the best stuff.)
Since Europe was pretty starved of JRPGs, when one came out I guess they wanted to market it. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals was released in Europe as simply Lufia, since PAL never got the first game. This comic is mainly serious/action with a few amusing moments, retelling the plot of the game up to the first encounter with Gades in West Gordovan Tower (although some bits are skipped and Guy gets a Dekar scene transferred to him). Tia is great when they let her have some lines, and Foomy gets a whole page to himself.
I like the look of the characters although the faces can look wonky at times. It’s interesting that Guy, whose look has been changed compared to his official artwork, actually looks a lot like his appearance in the reboot, Curse of the Sinistrals. Maxim is blond; go figure. Idura was also combined with Camu in terms of their plots and appearance, to speed up the plot I guess.
While translating this I discovered that the German script has unique names for many of the towns and a few other things. More details are on the credits page, but I changed them to the established English names. Of particular note though are the Sinistrals, who in German are called Höllenfürsten, meaning Princes of Darkness or Lords of Hell. There’s a few Hell references, although the theology is a bit confused with characters exclaiming “My God” but a villager referring to “the gods”. Also on localisation issues, because the art for these comics was done in Japan and sent back to Germany, some signs are labelled in Japanese and were left that way in the original comic.
Anyway overall the comic is very faithful to the game, and a treat for Lufia fans. The dialogue and character interactions are a highlight of the game and hopefully I’ve done that justice. The art is also quite unique. I’d love for some creaky old Lufia fansites to cough out a rare update just for me and my project, hehe! Enjoy! (And check out the comic tag on this blog for more scanlations and video game comics, or the Club Nintendo comics tracking spreadsheet I made!)
I’m always on the hunt for rare video game comics. When #20 of the Reploid Research Lavatory asked for help with distributing a manhua (Chinese manga) based on Rockman DASH aka Megaman Legends, I had to volunteer. #20 has highlighted some memorable scenes in their post, but wanted to make the full thing available. I’ve therefore uploaded it to Mediafire so all can see it and perhaps even read it, if you understand Chinese.
I won’t be translating this myself, but I would love for anyone willing to step up and take it on. There is some editing required (unless #20′s other volunteer has done so), as the scans are raw and uncropped. I have run them through imageOptim though, a lossless process to reduce the size by eliminating unnecessary image data.
EDIT: This is now being translated by BluesDriveBuster. Find the ongoing project here.
Here’s the only official Rayman comic (as far as I know). It was done for a special issue of the Disney Adventures magazine in “Winter 2000”, although it was also printed in the UK’s equivalent Disney’s Big Time in 2001 (the print presented here is the UK one, which has a blue background as opposed to white). It was a gaming-themed issue and also included comics for Donkey Kong 64, Ape Escape, and Crash Team Racing.
The comic itself is obviously based on Rayman 2, with Ray going against Razorbeard and his Robo-Pirates with the help of Globox and Ly. The art is fun if a little wonky here and there, but the script is pretty uninspired, simplistic and exclusively reliant on puns for humour. It doesn’t really add anything to the universe either, but at least Globox doesn’t talk like a big dumb-dumb.
After the Rayman series was undermined by Rabbids, there were a number of Rabbids comics, but by that point they’d mostly divorced themselves from their Rayman origins (so to speak). The only other adaptation for Rayman was the animated series, which is pretty much an alternate continuity for the second game, it seems. More on that later.
Opentrain asked for it, so I made an edit from their template. It’s taken from the comic Wario’s Christmas Story from their latest release. I’ve adjusted it to basically advertise for them, using their site banner images as inserts.
