FAQ, or in this case, a bunch of questions that we thought would provide informative answers. WIND TRANSLATION AFTERMATH Let's start off on an amusing note, shall we? It is NOT Wind a breath of heart Amazingly enough, there was an actual debate about this. What is Wind -a breath of heart-? Wind -a breath of heart- (referred to as Wind from now on) is a visual novel by minori. It is their second feature-length visual novel, released on April 19th, 2002. The game's main claim to fame was that its two short cinematic sequences were created by Makoto Shinkai, director of the critically acclaimed Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days. The game itself was successful enough to spawn multiple vocal compilations, a three-part anime OVA (lit: original video animation AKA miniseries), and a sixteen-episode television anime series. Wind was also ported to the Sega Dreamcast and the Sony PlayStation2. This site provides an unofficial English localization for the PC version of Wind. For those of you who are new to the genre, the bishoujo (be-show-joe, lit: beautiful girl) game is a Japanese phenomenon. Each year, there are more bishoujo games released in Japan than the number of games released for all of the major English gaming consoles combined. Visual novels are a subsection of bishoujo games. In each visual novel, the user enjoys an interactive story. This story is accompanied by graphics of the setting and characters, and is also usually enhanced with voices or animation. During the story, the user makes several multiple-choice decisions which determine how the rest of the story will play out. Each ending focuses on a single girl, which is why people sometimes refer to these as dating sims. However, this term is a bit inaccurate; most visual novels do not involve any dating at all. A majority of these visual novels have explicit sexual content. These visual novels are categorized as eroge (eh-row-geh). While the growth of anime in the western world has exploded in the past couple of years, eroge remains in the dark due to negative stereotypes, embarrassment, and general lack of commercialization. One of the original reasons why this project came to be was because some people thought that a complete, free localization of a feature-length visual novel (which had never been done before) would give more exposure to the genre. The original Japanese PC release included sexual situations which could not be avoided. However, when you install our patch, you will have the option to disable these scenes and their corresponding graphics. We have added this feature ourselves in hopes that players who are turned off by the stigma of eroge will be able to enjoy this localization. There are quite a number of popular visual novel eroge such as Wind which have stories containing non-essential sexual content. Some of these games are popular enough to be ported as all-age versions to gaming consoles. Wind is one of them. If you are still unsure whether or not you want to shell out the cash, you can download a demo covering the first 5% of the game. If you want to form your own opinion about the genre in general, NNL recommends that you sample some of the short doujin (non-commercial) visual novels translated for project al|together. They're free, and some of them were even encouraged by the original designers! If you enjoy the genre and want to support the industry, you may want to check out the all-age visual novels localized by Hirameki International. The director's personal recommendation from that company is Ever17. Two other companies, Peach Princess and G-Collections, have localized visual novels for the adult market. A large number of their games focus on sexploitation; however, two gems that stand out are Kana and Crescendo. The system requirements for the patched game are significantly higher than the Japanese version due to the use of compressed video, but any new computer purchased within the last seven years should be able to handle the load. Here are the new minimum system requirements: Processor: 800 MHz The patched game is not compatible with all versions of Windows 98 and Windows ME, including 98j and MEj. This should not affect too many people. Also, the patch will not work on Windows emulators such as WINE. UPDATE (2007.02.06) - Windows Vista requires at least 512 MB of memory. Therefore, that is the minimum memory requirement if you wish to run Wind on that operating system. We recommend the online store himeyashop. Wind will cost about $110 CAD after shipping and customs. If you believe that is too much money for a game, keep in mind that the Japanese pay much higher prices than us lucky English gamers. If you are under 18 and would like to play this game, simply ask your parent or guardian to read this FAQ and hope that he or she will order the game for you. The game itself is listed under the adult section (m for minori). The DVD version is called Wind -a breath of heart- Re:gratitude. A direct link to purchase the game is here. UPDATE (2007.02.06) - The link is broken, as himeyashop no longer has the game available for the time being. We are working to resolve this issue; please see here. Will the patch work on the CD version? No. At first the patch was designed for the original 2002 CD release. However, there were blank screen glitches, repeated lines, and crashes during certain scenes after script re-insertion. The game could still be completed, but we switched our efforts towards the DVD localization instead of wasting valuable time fixing the patch for a discontinued product. We apologize if you are one of the few who own a legitimate CD copy. You will need to purchase the DVD version. Are the console-specific endgames and event CG included? No. The Toronto portion of NNL does not even own a Dreamcast or modded PlayStation2, let alone a copy of either console version. What is the recommended endgame order? A visual novel has multiple paths depending on the decisions you make. In most cases, a visual novel consists of a trunk, a central story where you make decisions from time to time, and multiple branches, paths that eventually lead back to the trunk. Your decisions made in the trunk determine which endgame you will get. Some of the endgames in Wind make more sense after you have experienced others. Our recommendation is that you should complete the endgames in this order: Hinata, Minamo, Nozomi, Wakaba, Hikari. A complete walkthrough using this order is included in the in-game help file for your convenience. I have a technical problem. Help! The in-game help file has a troubleshooting FAQ. I have completed all five of Wind's endgames. Is there anything else? You will be able to access Soyokaze no Okurimono (A Gift from the Gentle Wind), the supplementary fandisc. However, its scenario has not been localized. You may also download and enjoy the omake OVA, a short animation which takes place just before the conclusion of Hikari's endgame. If you watched the omake OVA before but did not get what was going on, now is the time to revisit it. After the omake OVA, you can watch the KSS OVA, a 3-part miniseries. The KSS OVA features an alternate, condensed storyline. Once you are done with that, the only thing left is the television anime series, a short but faithful adaptation of the game using a hybrid of the endgames of Minamo and Hikari. NNL fansubbed four out of the sixteen television anime episodes, and one out of three KSS OVA episodes. What are the differences between the all-age version and the 18+ version? The original PC version of the game has non-skippable scenes where the protagonist (Makoto) deflowers the winning girl. All of them are not essential. We understand that some people are squeamish about adult content and would rather not experience these scenes. During patch installation, you will have the option to remove all explicit content from the game. You may switch back to the 18+ version at any time by re-running the installer; doing so will not invalidate your saved games. Since we do not own a console version of Wind, our all-age version be different than those offerings. Keep in mind that the term all-age is a bit of a misnomer. All violent scenes, suggestive themes, and their corresponding event CG have remained. The ESRB would probably give a rating of T to the all-age version, so it is still not recommended for children under 14. In addition to erotic scene removal, the all-age version will also delete lines and scenes which are considered to be too suggestive for tasteful purposes. One example is the hot springs dialogue with Mayumi. The all-age version will not physically remove the HCG from your hard drive (although all files are encrypted), nor will it provide protection from Soyokaze no Okurimono's HCG if one actually plays its scenario. For a complete list of changes, please consult the chronicle. Hey! I know Japanese, and this line seems to have been incorrectly translated! Where can I report it? Don't bother. We do not have the time to patch our patch. Besides, we probably already looked at the literal translated line and decided that our line adequately captured the spirit of the original. Please take a look the chronicle for our stance on the editing. Is the HCG still censored with mosaics? Yes. However, for the curious, Wind's mosaics are small and have minimal intrusion compared to other eroge. minori must have realized something, because each individual mosaic block in their newer releases (Soyokaze no Okurimono and Haru no Ashioto) have increased in size. Are Japanese saves still compatible? Japanese saves are not compatible due to the drastic amount of text block removal in our localization. When you first patch Wind, you will have the option to backup any Japanese saves in case you ever want to revert to the original. Did you localize Soyokaze no Okurimono? No. The primary translator was not interested in working on a script which primarily focused on gratuitous sexual activity. UPDATE (2007.02.06) - NNL is working on localizing Soyokaze no Okurimono. This project is independent of the collaboration with insani and will be completed in due time. I just finished Nozomi/Wakaba's endgame. Surely you've got to be joking as to what happened... You have just been nbkz'd. The endgame of the Fujimiya sisters is indeed awful, and no amount of editing could have cleaned up the mess. Thankfully, both endgames combined clock in at only 1741 text blocks. The unabridged Japanese version was much worse, trust us. Check the chronicle for details if you dare! If you completed Nozomi's endgame first, you will notice that there is a lot of overlapping in Wakaba's endgame. This was nbkz's way of saying, "Hey! I was too lazy to come up with anything else!" To put it bluntly, yes. In fact, all of NNL's fansubs are illegal. Rather than waxing poetry about the matter, we will quote a section from Wikipedia (edited for brevity):
It is up to you whether to decide if your stance on legalities outweighs your ethics. Remember, if you purchase the game, minori will gain revenue from an unintended psychographic. That's not so bad, is it? Was this project endorsed by minori? No. To our knowledge, minori has no idea that we've done this. If they do know, then they are not acknowledging it for their own reasons. Every single bit of this project was voluntary work, and no one from insani or NNL was monetarily compensated in any way by minori. It's about time this project was completed. How long did it take, and why were there so many delays? Raw manuscript translation did not take as long as you might have thought. There were three translation phases: The first script (approximately 5% of the game) was translated in September 2003 for the V1.0 demo. The trunk and branch portion of the game (~55%) was translated from May to August of 2004. The endgames (~40%) were mostly translated in October 2004. insani's portion of the project was completed way ahead of schedule, and the project was turned over to NNL. Editing started the next month, although it went on a hiatus from January to April after reaching 25%. This phase was completed at the end of July 2005. After receiving a complete alpha report, it was determined that the CD localization would be too bug-ridden for public consumption. We switched over to the DVD version (much to the chagrin of fanboys everywhere) and had to wait until September for compile tools to be finalized. We were not in a position to release a patch before this time. Wrap-up and technical optimization was done in seven months, with most of the grunt work completed in December and June. Overall, the project in its various forms spanned a jaw-dropping total of 37 months (June 2003 to June 2006). For an in-depth timeline, please take a look at the chronicle. Why is the project page so simple? The person making this web page was also the director and had to deal with multiple jobs including revisions, creating the help file, co-ordinating the team, and subtitling. He does not have the time or skill to make a good web site. We'll let our work speak for itself. It doesn't need a pretty cover. Now that this project is complete, will you be localizing Haru no Ashioto? Haru no Ashioto (The Footsteps of Spring) is the third feature-length visual novel by minori. It features a longer script (about 25% larger than Wind), music that doesn't sound like it came from a MIDI rip, and visual eyecandy such as mouth movements, background animation, and weather effects. There are four endgames as opposed to Wind's five, but due to its very short trunk, the endgames for each girl have a lot more substance. Haru no Ashioto was considered to be superior to Wind and was ranked one of the top games of 2004 according to EroGameScape. insani and NNL teamed up in September 2004 to bring you a localization of the demo. At the conclusion of the demo, we stated that we couldn't continue it because we needed to work on Wind. However, NNL no longer has the interest or time to localize Haru no Ashioto. We apologize, but the dream won't happen again (at least, not with us). Will you be localizing any other visual novels? Please! I want more translated eroge! In NNL's case, no. This project took a lot of time to complete for virtually nothing in return except the euphoria that one gets after completing a monstrous project. In addition, it mentally drained some of the members, especially the director. As for insani, they moved on over a year ago, localizing a few more demos. They later focused on short but complete doujinshi (fan-made) visual novels, so give them a try if you haven't already. I am from a fansub group and want to translate Wind into my own language. Will you provide any material? It is highly unlikely that we will publicly release the original, unedited, and unabridged manuscript. Converting our localization into another language would not be worthwhile because the English version already reaches the largest foreign audience. As for the tools, the PAZ tool is currently unavailable. Edward Keyes has made the PAK tool for Bittersweet Fools/Wind CD available here. The patch was supposedly released on June 21st, 2006. What happened to it? At the beginning of the alpha-testing phase in November 2004, there was an open call for anyone who wanted to aid in the development of the project. Four people signed up, but only one ever managed to complete the alpha-testing phase. When the patch was finally finished, the director realized that aside from this one alpha-test, the patch had no other forms of applied quality control. He decided that the initial final build, Build A, would undergo a stealth closed beta, without any mention that it was a beta in order to attract more people. In addition, the patch would be made available to only those who had actual copies of the game and were willing to undergo a strict time-controlled test in order to prove their authenticity. The response was overwhelmingly negative. Most of the examinees who showed up in NNL's IRC channel had no idea that they were to be quizzed on the game packaging, which led to wild guesses to even the simplest of questions. The localization team was offended by the turnout, and the director cancelled all plans for an end-of-month public release. During this time, a notice was posted informing further examinees to destroy specific portions of their game packaging. This notice was recalled after two hours, but it did spark some hysteria among the traditional anime discussion outlets. The localization team then met and voted to go ahead with the original plan to publically release the patch. Even though the ownership testing itself was a failure, two of the three people who were authenticated submitted detailed reports. Also, one of the original alpha-testers who did not complete the alpha came back and completed Build A. With three times the input of the alpha, Build A was considered a success. The new version of the patch would be called Build C (as Build B was an emergency fix of the demo). Build C was released to the public on February 6th, 2007. Do I still have to destroy any of my game material in order to obtain the patch? No.
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