Ubisoft bringing Senko no Ronde to America?

hermosaguy · Post by **hermosaguy** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 11:19 am

That Pal cover art is horrid...

hirounder · Post by **hirounder** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 11:37 am

What an awful cover art, what is UbiSoft thinking.

Alec · Post by **Alec** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 11:39 am

cool, a few more titles and i'll start to consider an xbox. that cover art is downright ugly though.

Nuke · Post by **Nuke** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:03 pm

Photoshop Watercolor filtering?
This must be a mock up :/

hirounder · Post by **hirounder** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:28 pm

Yeah here's real cover, still poor looking.

Kron · Post by **Kron** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:15 pm

Wow the US cover is even worse than the PAL one

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:18 pm

Crappy westernized artwork with a Japanese character in the title. What are these guys thinking?

nem · Post by **nem** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:18 pm

Haha, awesome. Bargain bin-tastic.

theevilfunkster · Post by **theevilfunkster** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:48 pm

Wow! That is Crap-tastic

I think it deserves the first official Pharmer Bob seal of approval for shit box art...

Here's the Japanese box...

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:55 pm

The Japanese LE cover is even better:

Wang_MacTavish wrote:I read your review icy, very well - done! One thing I'm wondering though: you went over how the Virtual On and SHMUP crowds react to the game, but what about the fighting gamers? Have you seen enough of their responses to get a general feeling of how someone who players fighters more than VO or shooters will feel about the game?

Those who are into fighting games are a totally different crowd. I doubt many of them would take Senko seriously enough to try and master it. Besides, Senko feels absolutely nothing like a fighting game -- whether we are talking about the 2D or the 3D variety.

I guess it depends on their taste in games. If they only play fighters -- as many seem to do -- or if they have a wider taste in general.

Man, I am just waiting for Senko no Ronde II. On Lindbergh or something. How cool would that be, eh?

Fighter17 · Post by **Fighter17** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:57 pm

What the fuck?

That US art is terrible.

jiji · Post by **jiji** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 5:41 pm

lol ubisoft. The US and PAL covers are legendary. Mobile Light Force 3, anybody? This is straight from the same school of "make it have absolutely nothing to do with the actual game."

Anybody want to get to work on a replacement? :D

Wang_MacTavish · Post by **Wang_MacTavish** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:07 pm

jiji wrote:lol ubisoft. The US and PAL covers are legendary. Mobile Light Force 3, anybody? This is straight from the same school of "make it have absolutely nothing to do with the actual game."

Anybody want to get to work on a replacement?

Alright, I was ready to accept the opinions of the covers here as people's preferences towards an anime art style, but this is ridiculous. You don't think that for a game where two robots face off in a serious of rounds shooting at each other, having the cover art display TWO ROBOTS FIGHTING EACH OTHER expresses what the actual game is about? I'm not sure what to chalk it up to, but some of the opinions expressed here have been very unreasonable.

Now, I like anime - style art myself, but in this case I would argue that to someone who doesn't know anything about the game (i.e., the people who would be most affected by how the cover looks), retaining the Japanese cover(s) would have had a negative affect. As one of my friends said after seeing the Japanese covers, it "looks like generic anime adventure dating sim game". This is coming from someone heavily into Japanese games, Japanese culture and anime, so you know where he's coming from. And I would tend to agree with him, and say that the Japanese cover, NOT the North American cover actually has less to do with what the game is about. PLUS, let's consider the average 360 owner here, who plays Dead Rising, Gears of War, and maybe some sports stuff. Generic anime characters are NOT going to entice them to take a second look at the box on the shelf.

All in all I think this was a good business decision from UbiSoft's part, and I can understand why they did it. They now have a cover where the art isn't horrible, IMHO (I actually prefer the PAL art, but whatever) and still reflects the gameplay, while making it more appealing to a broader audience. I seriously think that Senko has a chance to be a monster sleeper hit, it has the ingredients already, and with enough favourable press it could catch on quickly. And yeah, this cover is nowhere near as bad as everyone here is making it out to be.

mrw209 · Post by **mrw209** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:19 pm

How does it make good business sense to piss off the core consumer base that wants the game?

This is about as Niche a game as you can get. This will never sell to mainstream gamers no matter how you package it. All this does is piss off the people who actually wanted this game.

Personally I'll be ashamed now to have this in my collection, and I'm not alone. Thanks Ubisoft.

jiji · Post by **jiji** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:22 pm

'kay, I'll acknowledge my prior ignorance of the fact that both robots on the cover are actually in the game (see here). The reason I got such a negative impression of the US cover (not so much the PAL cover) is that it's just so flat and bland-looking. It could be anything. It's anonymous, especially with the title Ubi chose. It gives me the impression that Ubi wanted to avoid having cutesy anime characters on the cover, which recalls my irritation with every other company that's aimed for that.

I knew that SnR would be a tough job when it came to a US retitle (how exactly DO you make a workable title out of something that translates to "polarimetric ronde?"), but I shouldn't be surprised that Ubi decided to go for the safest possible localization.

Lawfer · Post by **Lawfer** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:25 pm

Is the PAL version going to be region free?

Wang_MacTavish · Post by **Wang_MacTavish** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:35 pm

mrw209 wrote:How does it make good business sense to piss off the core consumer base that wants the game?

This is about as Niche a game as you can get. This will never sell to mainstream gamers no matter how you package it. All this does is piss off the people who actually wanted this game.

Personally I'll be ashamed now to have this in my collection, and I'm not alone. Thanks Ubisoft.

From another forum:

If *zero* mainstream gamers would buy it, your issue shouldn't be with the cover art, you should be complaining about them making a console game to begin with. If what you say is true then they are just wasting their money, and they should stick to japan arcades. You can't have it both ways, if your going to release it in different markets, then you have to allow for it to actually be marketed, not cherry pick what you want and don't want.

As I said in my previous post, I think this game could easily on and become a modest success, with enough positive press and word of mouth. I've shown vids of this to friends who don't normally play shooters (or fighters), and the response has generally been very positive. Personally I hope this game does incredibly well, so UbiSoft has incentive to bring any future sequel(s) to North America. Saying that you're ashamed of what UbiSoft has done when the only thing that's different so far is the cover art is an extreme overreaction, considering the risk they're taking by localizing it for North America.

Kron · Post by **Kron** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:46 pm

Its a shame Ubisoft can't be more like Atlus as it would be easy to alter the original boxart like I've done above but Ubisoft know the core audience who want the game will buy it regardless of the western boxart and it leaves them with the ability to make it more mainstream in its immediate appeal at the stores.

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:03 pm

The myth of the mainstream gamer...

Mainstream gamers only buy a couple of games a year, if that, and none of them will ever become aware of this game.

WE are the target audience, and we are getting screwed over once again by the localization monkeys. So what else is new?

I don't even want to contemplate what Ubisoft or whoever will do to screw with Treasure's new shooter. I think whoever can get a Japanese Xbox 360 should do so.

Lawfer · Post by **Lawfer** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:06 pm

icycalm wrote:The myth of the mainstream gamer...

Mainstream gamers only buy a couple of games a year, if that, and none of them will ever become aware of this game.

WE are the target audience, and we are getting screwed over once again by the localization monkeys. So what else is new?

Well we are getting the game localised, isn't that more important?

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:06 pm

Of course it is.

Lawfer · Post by **Lawfer** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:09 pm

icycalm wrote:Of course it is.

But they could have done it a budget game though, 59.99 is a little bit too expensive lol

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:11 pm

See? We can always find something to bitch about.

Wang_MacTavish · Post by **Wang_MacTavish** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:12 pm

icycalm wrote:See? We can always find something to bitch about.

We don't even know what changes were made to the actual game yet, either. I know a bad cover localization can be interpreted as an indication of a bad overall localization, but I'll give UbiSoft the benefit of the doubt for now.

icepick · Post by **icepick** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 9:43 pm

I hope that the game arrives mostly intact as well. Presentation goes a long way, though, so hopefully they've put a bit of care into it.

As for the cover, I kind of agree with everything everyone's said thus far (which is actually possible, even given the contrary arguments). Isn't the cover for Halo quite sparse, though? It would have been just as appealing to the mainstream if it had a minimalist presentation with, say, a stylized logo in front of a plain backdrop (black color or otherwise). Maybe that would have been worse, though, I'm not sure.

Anyway, the US cover looks fine. The colored characters do look cheesy, but I suppose it's colorful. I like the backdrop, which does a decent job of giving an impression of the actual visuals of the game, and I can almost look past the "WarTech" super-title. with that fairly nice "Senko no Ronde" subtitle.

My custom cover is definitely having Lili or Changpo on it, though. ... It's really probably not going to be that fun to have to play on someone else's X360, though. I've been wanting to play this for so long, though! Can I actually wait a few years?

Lawfer · Post by **Lawfer** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 10:48 pm

Wang_MacTavish wrote:We don't even know what changes were made to the actual game yet, either. I know a bad cover localization can be interpreted as an indication of a bad overall localization, but I'll give UbiSoft the benefit of the doubt for now.

It's rated T...

PsikyoPshumpPshooterP · Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:49 pm

SnR is indeed a borderliner but fun for a limited time. hope it gets 40 dollar tag purchase..

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:21 pm

PsikyoPshumpPshooterP wrote:SnR is fun for a limited time.

If you are playing it at home by yourself, yes.

If you are playing it in the arcades against a lot of different opponents, no.

Post by **system11** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:44 pm

The hostile reactions to localised cover art never cease to amuse me.

No really. A game we had little to no chance of getting ported, is being brought over, presumably with translations, and possibly even region free, so what do we do? Complain because the utterly meaningless yet pretty JP artwork has been changed into a reasonably bland but representative image of two robots.

Are we getting lucky with a release?

No, Ubisoft are screwing us over with their evil, evil artwork.