Natsume On Rune Factory 3’s Localization And Pre-Order Bonus

Can you tell us a little more about Rune Factory 3 and how you guys are localizing, because those games are always a huge amount of text, and you bring them over relatively quickly.

Natsume VP of Operations, Graham Markay: We’ve been working on it for a little bit. We’ve been putting a lot of work into the script. We see people sometimes say that maybe the VO in Lufia 2 wasn’t to satisfaction. So we went out and hired a new company, and this company does a lot of anime dubbing and things of that nature. So we have some new actors…

For Lufia?

For Rune Factory. And for Lufia. Actually, it’s the same company that did the VO for Lufia as well.

It is a lot to digest. It’s a huge script. Lots of little text here and there. We know fans want it as soon as possible, and we want to get it to them as soon as possible. We want to put out the best possible product that we can.

Are you going to have a plushie for Rune?

You know, I’ve seen the message boards, and people definitely want it. You have the Golden Woolie leading the wave. Is it possible? I’ll have to look into it. We’ve done a lot of these plushies. We have that horse plushie coming out for Harvest Moon [Grand Bazaar].

People do like it. I think if a Golden Woolie is done right, it could look pretty cute. I always want to make sure whatever character we’re doing looks cute or has some sort of value to the consumer. It’s something we’re looking into.

Something else is that it helps lock in fans to buy it at launch at full price.

Yeah, it’s nice. Also, going back to the thing Hiro says about making everyone happy…we like to make the retailer happy, too. So, whatever we can do to help the retailer…offer a pre-sale bonus. It makes them feel better about whatever particular order they’re going to do for the game.