It seems like every few months we hear how a moe game is being localized from Japan but must go through a few changes before reaching Western gamers. This could possibly be because the localization company hopes to reach a wider audience or has troubles getting the ESRB/PEGI rating they were shooting for. Inti Creates announced that they will be localizing their PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita title Gal*Gun Double Peace. We got to sit down with President CEO Takuya Aizu and Associate Producer and International Affairs Coordinator Matt Papa to discuss their game to give players some more information about this unique title. We also discussed how the company will be handling the localization process for their moe rail shooter.
Disclaimer: Aizu-San’s answers were translated by Matt Papa.
Can you explain Gal*Gun Double Peace in your own words?
Matt – Gal Gun is a dating sim meets rail shooter. I’m not sure if there is any other game that combines those two elements into one quite like Gal*Gun does. Gal*Gun is a story of a guy who more-or-less gets shot by cupid, but instead of cupid shooting an arrow, cupid has like a Gatling gun on your ass. You can imagine how well that would work out. The premise behind Gal*Gun is that you have to find your true love in one day, if you don’t you’re screwed. People wonder, like oh my god why are you shooting at these girls that are trying to confess their love to you? Well, if you just get hooked up with any ol’ random chick, that is not your true love, you’re going to have a bad time. You have to try and keep these girls away from you while you are on the path to meet your true love.
And if that’s not something that you don’t want to try out than I don’t understand your way of thinking.
Who pitched Gal*Gun and how did this all start?
Matt – So there’s a guy that works for us, Masokito Ito [SP], he does the main illustrations in Gal*Gun but he also works as director. Before the first game started, he said I wanted to make this type of game. Every one in the studio was like “Huh?”, but our vice president was just like, “We’re doing it”.
Ito-San loves House of the Dead so he pitched it as, ‘what if the zombies were girls?’
After all the shooting, Gal*Gun Double Peace also has dating sim elements. How do those work?
Matt – Well when you start the game there are many different routes you can choose. You can say “I love Maya,’ “I love Shinobu,” “I don’t know.” You’ll reach points where you can interact and talk with her and she’ll ask you a question. Now, depending on how you answer, which could be up to five different choices, and if you choose the right answer her affection for you will go up. Whether she chooses to love you back or not is decided by how well you do in this dating sim part. If you choose a lot of stupid answers, she’s not going to love you at the end of the day and you’re going to have a bad time. [laughs]
There are good and bad endings, so if you want the good ending you gotta answer the right questions, but it’s not just questions there are certain parts that are called “Action Scenes” where they are a bit more hands on, literally and figuratively.
Were there any features that you weren’t able to include in the game due to time constraints?
Matt – No, basically the international version of Gal*Gun is exactly the same as the Japanese version. The only things that we were not able to include were special promotion things in Japan that we couldn’t carry over. Other than that, the game is exactly the same as the Japanese version, except in English.
Matt admits that he wanted to take on this project since he first started working at Inti Creates: he seems to know the target audience and the fans because he himself is a fan. He has infected the staff at oprainfall with excitement and has assured us exactly how the game will release in the West; not only to his personal standards, but to the standards of the gamers that will be buying and playing.
For localization purposes, was it difficult to translate the game from Japanese to English?
Matt – You know, basically the approach that we’re taking is if there’s something that’s really hard to understand for a Western audience the best way that I can describe it is to take the same idea, the same feeling, and describe it in a way that the Western audience can understand it. So if it’s a very specific Japanese reference that practically no body would get, we channel the feeling of that reference into something that Westerners will understand.
So I guess that leads into my next question, how involved is Inti Creates in the localization process of Gal*Gun?
Aizu – It’s basically Matt and some of the staff for our publisher PQubed who are working together to get all the localization done.
There was DLC released in Japan for a pheromone Z item that cost 10,000 yen. Would that DLC item come West and if so would it still hold it’s value in USD?
Aizu – [laughs] It will definitely be available, that I can assure, but for the cost we are still working out those details. But it will definitely be available.
Since the announcement of Gal*Gun Double Peace have you received any negative criticism from gamers?
Matt – As for Western fans that have directly come to us, it’s been universally positive. I think a lot of people never expected Gal*Gun to be localized. Especially in the beginning we received a lot of comments like “Holy crap, Inti Creates is localizing Gal*Gun thank you so much!” and “Based Inti you are the best!” But at least in the West we haven’t received negative criticism yet, emphasis on yet. We haven’t gotten any hate at all.
PlayStation Move features were supported on the first Gal*Gun, but not on the second, was there a reason for this?
Aizu – The reason Double Peace doesn’t have the move feature is that unlike the first one, Double Peace has a handheld version. So in order to keep things fair if the PlayStation 4 version has something that the Vita doesn’t, it’s a fundamentally different experience.
[Author’s Note: I believe this is referring to experience of pointing the motion controller at the screen as it would create a “different experience” between the two versions.]
Do you notice any difference between the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita versions?
Aizu – I guess the biggest difference is that the Vita version has a touch screen, so in certain parts of the game instead of pressing a button, you get to touch a certain part of the screen. And of course the PlayStation 4 has more memory so the load times are faster.
If Gal*Gun Double Peace sells well, would you considered localizing the first game?
Aizu – It’s hard to go back to old hardware, but if Gal*Gun Double Peace sells outstanding numbers, it wouldn’t be out of the question.
So where does the Gal*Gun series go from here? Will the story continue?
Aizu – Of course we want to make more; Gal*Gun is not over.
In the future, what do you think about ‘Guy*Gun’?
Aizu – So all the female staff at Inti Creates have wanted to make Guy*Gun since the beginning. There are no plans for at this time, but the female staff that work at Inti would love to make such a game.
What about Gal*Gun for PlayStation VR?
Aizu – If Sony wants to send us a kit, we’d be more that happy to do a VR version.
Are there any games other than Inti Creates titles that you are playing right now?
Aizu – I’m very busy, but when I have time, I play Splatoon and Final Fantasy IX
Matt – Splatoon and Undertale, at the request of my friends.
Are you excited for Gal*Gun: Double Peace? Let us know know in the comments below.
Gal*Gun: Double Peace is coming PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in 2016 for EU and NA. You can also pre-order the game from Rice Digital.
Disclaimer: The Rice Digital images on the sides of our site featuring Gal*Gun: Double Peace have do you not generate any revenue for oprainfall and do not have any connections to Inti Creates. It’s a part of a online partnership between oprainfall and Rice Digital to share each others stories and products on various social media platforms.
