editing

Comp copies — what a revelation

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Hey, a couple of the games I’ve worked on are out now.

Lost Empire is a grandiose space strategy thing. I rewrote most of the game text and the manual on a short timescale.
Penumbra is a… I’m not sure. I haven’t played it. Some kind of first-person Lovecraftian survival horror thing. I rewrote the manual, and I think some of the game text. Hard to remember everything I do; this was months ago.

Though I have no comment on the games themselves, I rather like their packaging. Nice, big no-nonsense logos. Understated cover art.

To note, there’s a silly typo on the back of the Lost Empires box. That’s not my fault; they didn’t run that text past me.

EDIT: Speaking of typos… I feel I must have rewritten the text in that Lost Empire trailer, yet those punctuation errors can’t be my own. So I’m not sure what’s going on there. Maybe they used an earlier draft? Maybe I never touched that after all?

Museum of Terror

  • Reading time:2 mins read

So after rattling around the city for a while, I eventually turned up a copy of this — the first localization I’ve been really proud of. Actually, a few poorly chosen words aside, I really like it. It’s been long enough that I barely recall writing any of it, so I guess I’m in a fair position to be impressed.

Aside from the localization — which really does flow well, I must say — the overall package is just handsome. Appropriately schlockish typeface and blurb on the back cover. Nice quality paper and printing. Complete, in order, and well-documented. And hey, they even superimpose the sound effects over the panels themselves, instead of simply noting them in the margins — a novel approach for Dark Horse. A nice package, overall.

Here are a few carefully-chosen samples, captured about as well as possible on the weird scanner in the other room:


So. I recommend it! And there are at least two more of on the way, both of which I recall as superior in at least one respect. The only problem you might have is in actually finding a copy. Although it’s part of the same push that Dark Horse has been giving to Kasuo Umezu’s Scary Book series, you can find the latter anywhere and — I swear — nobody’s ever heard of Museum of Terror, much less put out an order on it. The only place I managed to track down a copy was in Japantown. If your local Borders doesn’t carry it, I just suggest ordering it online. Amazon’s got a good price, especially for how damned thick this thing is.