This is my first post here. I work with Erik Ko at Udon, helping him manage projects for the company and generally try and keep him from going insane (it’s not working ).
Last night at Udon’s after-Christmas Christmas Party we finally got a hold of printed versions of Street Fighter: Eternal Challenge that will be in stores early January. After working on the english adaption for several months, it was a real thrill to finally have the real book in my hands.
I was one of the people in charge of adapting the translated material for the book and I have to tell you, this was one of the craziest projects I have ever been involved with. I now know more about Street Fighter stuff then I would have ever thought possible. It was a real labor of love for all the Udon people who worked on the book.
For those of you who don’t have the Japanese version, here’s a quick run through of the book’s 300 pages:
Over 600 Capcom Illustrations used for magazines, box covers, booklets, calendars and more.
Extensive galleries of design sketches and the evolving designs of the entire Street Fighter cast of characters.
Interviews with the Capcom Design Team, including an all new interview conducted by Udon at San Diego Comic Con 2004.
Extensive History section that takes the reader through the evolution of every Street Fighter game year by year and their impact on the video game industry.
Profiles of each Street Fighter character, with fighting strategies and history as well as a character relationship flow chart showing how character histories tie together.
Every ending detailed for each character in every Street Fighter game.
Galleries of US Street Fighter merchandise, box covers and publications.
If you have any other questions about it, I’ll do my best to answer them here.
It sounds great, its also great how Udon keep the fans posted about their products/projects :tup:
I have one question, I have the Japanese version and well… I can’t read it lol, I was wondering how close the text was going to be in comparison with the Jap version? I mean will it be almost word to word or will it have some tweaks and changes along the way?
Good question. I assumed this was going to be one of the first things people asked.
The text in the book was translated and rewritten so that the english wouldn’t sound too stilted. When you read it however, you can tell that it’s a translation rather than an originally english-written book and that was a concious decision we made early on. We preferred keeping the translation intact rather than just bulldozing the text and losing the original intent behind it. It was way tougher than I thought it would be and I hope fans appreciate that when they check out the book.
What that all means is that the Character Profiles, Interviews and History sections are all translated in full, so you’ll finally know what was written in your Japanese version. It’s pretty much a sentence for sentence adaption approved by Capcom Japan.
The Endings section of the book contains the text from the US versions of the games not the Japanese ones, so that’s different. The merchandise and box art sections also contain US versions rather than the Japanese ones.
There’s a new interview with new photos, some new pieces of art and a Special Attack name translation section that we added in as well, boosting the final page count from the original version.
So the text is pretty much identical to the Japanese version but presumably with some changes to the grammar (Since a straight translation would presumably not have well structured sentences for an English audience?), I assume that’s what you meant?
The game details have been changed to the American version with American screenshots, etc (Pretty logical really).
And also there’s been some extra artwork put in and the photographs for interviews have been updated, an extra interview and special move translations?
Puts away notebook
Sounds great to me :tup:
Thanks for the speedy response:cool:
Now Udon just has to work on a PAL version with PAL game covers :razzy: lol jk.
Comic book stores will be getting their copies first and regular bookstores will be carrying it in the coming months. It’s available in the Diamond Previews catalogue, so your local comic shop should have no problem ordering/re-ordering it.
Heroes World lucked out in getting their copies early. I’m almost positive that other comic book stores won’t have their copies until next week or possibly the 2nd week of January.
I ordered my copy at Heroes for Sale in Auckland, they courier stuff all over New Zealand too. I’m sure Stu will get a couple of copies. http://www.heroes4sale.co.nz/
what games are described in this book? just street fighter 1 + alpah + 2 + EX + 3. what game is the last one what year is the deadline? are the versus games inside?
i liked “all about capcom fighting games vol. 1” it is hillarious!!!
is there a big difference betwene the books?
are in Eternal Challenge some endings that are not in the “all about capcom fighting games vol. 1”?
Described in detail are SF 1, SF2 (all versions), All the Alpha Games, SF3 (All versions).
The same games listed above have their endings in Eternal Challenge.
The 3D SF games get some short descriptions, but very little information. The Versus games are mentioned, but not detailed.
I believe that Eternal Challenge has a lot more SF artwork than the All About Capcom book. The merchandise section is all new and there’s also Udon’s new interview as well. While All About is more general, Eternal Challenge is completely SF-oriented and focused.
Time_Stop:
The character profiles weren’t so detailed that massive inconsistencies cropped up actually. Where differences existed, we noted them, including the Japanese-US character name changes.
After talking about the whole Dark Hadou/Evil Ryu thing in detail, we settled on 'Dark Ryu" for his name and Capcom Japan approved it.
The lay-outs/design are kinda dull, but the sheer ammount of info and overall content will make up for it, im certain. Im glad i held out on buying the japanese version.
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