[Comic] Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin official 4koma, unofficial scanlation, Part 2
Following Part 1, here all the comics from Portrait of Ruin’s official Japanese site by our old favourite Shizumon. These comics were only available in Japanese, so I’ve translated them into English. Jonathan and Wind are amazing. Thanks to Castlevania Realm for archiving the original strips.
[Comic] Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin official 4koma, unofficial scanlation, Part 1
Like Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin had on its official Japanese website a selection of gag comics; some by the regular artist Shizumon but also others (along with some other illustrations that are worth checking out). The strips have been archived here, but none of them were available in English, so I’ve translated them. These are the non-Shizumon comics, as well as two bonus mini-comics. The artist for the first comic, and the artist of the middle four and the bonuses are unknown, but “Charlotte” was labelled with “Poncho”, for what it’s worth.
The Medusa comic relied on a Japanese pun; the word “ishi” can be interpreted as “stone” or “doctor”. Thanks to my wife for coming up with an equivalent joke in English. Hopefully the rest of the jokes are clear!
[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.
Remember this?
IT’S BEEN TRANSLATED! 8D The ever-working Kenisu has just provided Mediadire links to his hard work! Go Kenisu! I’m downloading it now. B)
.rar zip file: http://t.co/GQpgHdKhSy
.cbr file: http://t.co/hMhPzXQtvQ for those who use Comical.
Go check it out~~! And thank you, Kenisu! :D
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.
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 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!)
Ooh, golly. For a nice Christmas treat, our good friends over at Opentrain have released their fourth translation of German Club Nintendo comics. Now if you’ve been keeping up with my blog and checking my spreadsheet, you’ll know that 1995’s three comics had previously been translated. Twilight Vestige’s DKC and Legato’s Wario Christmas are efforts not to be disparaged, but Cryomancer’s done a really good job on these old classics. A pity I did Picross myself so recently… Anyway, check them out here.
Inspired by the recent release of Picross e5 to the 3DS eShop, I wanted to translate this Mario’s Picross-themed comic from the official German Nintendo Magazine, Club Nintendo. I say Picross-themed, but it just borrows the vague setting of the game without any reference to picrossing.
So Mario’s taking a turn as a pop archeologist: robbing tombs, desecrating important cultural sites, offending the locals. As someone in the comic points out, he fancies himself the Indiana Jones type but he’s really just in it for personal gain. It’s kinda reprehensible but I’m pleased to once again see Mario not as the good guy.
Anyway this comic happens to be the next on Opentrain’s speculative list, if their past releases are any indication. But they’re doing Spanish and French comics now so I felt able to take this. Besides, it’s actually the last regular non-reprint non-special non-N-gang Club Nintendo comic to come to the English language. Woohoo! That actually is quite a milestone, despite my qualifications. For more information, please see my helpful resource, the Club Nintendo comics database.
Of course, there’s still more to be done. A scant few special editions, a few comics to redo with better cleaning and translation, and N-gang if I ever get around to it, but having most of the run available for English readers is something to celebrate.
Oh and by the way, I realised my Dropbox links may not have been working in the past. This one’s actually in my public folder so should be downloadable, and I’ll update any older links for other comics. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon with more comics!
After a bit of an absence from comics, I’ve translated this one because it’s nearly Halloween and it was the magazine’s Halloween special. It ran in two parts, in the nominal Halloween issue (September/October) in 1996 and 1997. Both parts are here for your convenience.
This comic seems like the turning point for the magazine, where things start getting really crazy. It introduces a few running jokes that are used in subsequent comics, including the made-up greeting “Holerö” which gained enough prominence to be a central plot point in a later issue. Now I post these out of order so it may not be obvious, but I invite you to check out my handy spreadsheet to see where each comic fits in.
The idea of this comic is that a bunch of Nintendo characters live together in a Brooklyn apartment building (although we only see 7 of them in the comic). Their night is ruined when Wario conspires with a demon to infest the place with monsters straight out of horror movies (see if you can spot all the references). Mario, Link, and Kirby team up with the aid of Van Helsing’s vampire hunting gear, and later the Necronomicon itself to fight them off. It’s spoooooky! Well, it’s whacky and weird, which is exactly what we love about Club Nintendo’s comics.
I hope it gets you in the mood for Halloween or whatever, and please spread it around. Like a vampire!
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