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This is a very very spammy post, as I have a lot of information to back it up.
I am presenting proof of the theory that: John Sears aka OmegaTH/ΩTH = FalcomGameFan/MegaLink.
How do I get this? Please click on the link to read more and find all my evidence, as well as more information on what he’s done regarding the terrible translation of Sora by Orange Juice Games.
To my experience, Sears has been causing problems in the community for a long time, but under a variety of names, as seen above. It’s very likely that he even did much of his trolling as MegaLink before Deuce picked up the translation of Trails in the Sky from XSEED in 2010. (Source.) This means that it’s likely he may have even violated an NDA he signed with them at some point.
(Though after the date mentioned, some of his last posts before he was banned can be seen here – warning. There are Trails in the Sky spoilers here)
As you all know, I’ve got my fingers in a lot of ‘webpage’ pies. I have this poor, neglected little blog. I have Endless History (which eats all my web editing time), and I work on Eidenyaku. Well, I’ve not worked on it in a very long time. Primarily because I don’t have time to on top of everything else I have. What I also have behind me is years of IT experience and website security experience. I log IP’s religiously. This has come into my favor with some information recently. I actually didn’t want to reveal it publicly, but since other things have come up, I really feel that it’s in my right to tell people about what I know of this particular translation group. …but this actually falls back to something a couple of years ago.
(Yes. All of my sites track visitor IP’s. This is standard practice. I not only do this to watch where my readers are coming from, but to track anyone who attempts to hack my website. Endless History actually has relatively frequent hacking attempts. Wow.)
Part 1: My Encounter With Aerial Translation Group
But one of the last things Alerith and I were working on before everything went down was that Alerith was trying to translate the original game for Frane, which can be found as freeware on Vector. During our work on this, we got a ‘cease and desist’ letter from a group called ‘Aerial Translation Group.’
I found this post to be somewhat disconcerting at the time. I have never attributed my real name to Eidenyaku. The only site I ever attributed my real name to has been Endless History. Digging around on my old domain, swordbreaker.com, will net you my real name as well. Seeing as the email was also sent to my swordbreaker email. I even have privacy blocking through sandwich.net to ensure that only my host’s information is seen, and to get my information, you have to reach out to him. This reeked of ‘stalkerish’ antics to get that information.
I was also a little taken aback at being accused for ‘illegally providing’ a game that was already available as freeware on Vector.co.jp. There’s no way we could have been illegally providing it, as we simply linked back to the site- a legit site at that- that was providing the game for free.
I responded, asking about that, and other things, and I got the following email as an answer:
Hindsight is 20/20, they say. I doubt he ever ‘contacted the client’ concerning Vector’s availability. Especially as it is still available on there.
I had asked quite a few questions in my email. I checked with a lawyer friend and found out that I was obligated to do so, as until they actually sent me a physical cease and desist, it was not a true legal request. As everyone saw with Trails in the Sky, I do not mind another group taking on a translation, and will happily hand it off. This was just suspicious in all areas and I found it unsettling from the start.
I was also confused that I could not find any information on ‘Aerial Translation Group.’ I have contacts in multiple areas of the localization industry, and reached out to them to see if they had heard of the company. I also know people in the games journalism industry and there was nothing heard of from them, either. I went so far as to post on Ancient Land of Ys to find out if anyone had heard of anything. Not a person could answer my requests. I also posted on Eidenyaku about them, but never received any more information.
The communication at this point stopped, as well. Not a single response to my email back after the second one. I was a little surprised, and talked to Alerith on it. Several months later, with no word of Frane on the horizon, and no response back, we both decided to turn the project back on. Why? Because we have heard of translation groups being trolled and harassed into dropping projects. We figured, by this point, this was one of those cases.
Then we got an email from EXE-create themselves. (Or so the email claims.)
I responded to the email with the same questions as before. To this day, I never received a response to the original message. However, Alerith and I finally removed the posts for good and chose to back down on this project. (Though looking at it now, the company itself never uses a kana spelling of its own name. I’m holding this email as suspect at the same time- but it was, according to Alerith and me, much more legit than the previous.)
We haven’t looked back at it, until we saw Silicon Era’s posts on Frane’s release on Steam.
However, there are a few other things of note that need to be added into all of this, I believe… As you can see from the images, this happened in 2010. However, according to GamersGate, OmegaTH has existed since 2009. This leads me to believe that he can’t sit still on a particular name, or that he’s using other names to mislead people.
Part 2: Frane’s Release on Steam + Comments on SiliconEra
Of course, about 8-9 months later, I forgot about all the excitement from Frane and everything. Then both RPGamer and SiliconEra make posts about Frane being released to the US on Steam. It was a ‘well, I’ll be’ moment, about it. I was still a little ‘eh’ because of the bad taste that was left in my mouth, but I’ll continue on being amused over it.
Then on the SiliconEra post, ‘Exe-Create’ started posting on there, responding to people’s comments. I didn’t think anything of it, until I saw a few unsettling and fairly unprofessional posts. The first part was when Andrew Dice of Carpe Fulgur had commented, asking if they have English speakers on-staff. This commenter responded with:
Luckily, we have native English speakers on hand in Japan with excellent Japanese ability. This makes it convenient to accomplish certain tasks during normal Japanese business hours.
I later heard from Andrew that it was strange that a company as small as EXE-Create would have an on-site translation team. He even said it in the comment that triggered the above quote:
Interesting, so do you guys have English speakers on-staff in Japan? That’d be a pretty rare setup, especially for a smaller company.
There was another comment which has since been edited, but the Exe-Create commenter outright said, “Unlike Nintendo and Namco-Bandai, we listen to our fans.†(This also means that he’s paying attention to the North American and European game markets to know this.)
I responded, using my EndlessHistory account from twitter on SE:
I don’t know. I find myself bothered to see another company make such a statement. I find that it reeks of unprofessionalism.
I do agree that I dislike what Nintendo and Namco Bandai have done… but I still don’t like this either.
Their response:
In answer to your post, Exe-Create has been requested to localize certain titles numerous times by gamers, so we felt that we would try and oblige those who were seriously interested in them. It seemed like the right thing to do instead of leave those who really wanted to play them hanging.
I believe it was around that post when they edited the original comment that contained the statement.
Part 3: Who are Dave Harding and Eric Weiss? (And Why Should I Care?)
This seems wildly unrelated, but while we were working on Trails in the Sky, the rumors of XSEED releasing the game in the US started to surface, and the hints from SiliconEra started to pop up, I actually dialed back a lot of my work on the game. I couldn’t do anything to show anything of the sort on my site (it wasn’t confirmed yet), and if I go by rumors, I try to clearly label it as a rumor. (Spoiler: I have a secret (and almost obsessive) love of tracking the source of rumors. This has never changed.)
The above were the beginning comments from these two names- ‘Dave and Eric.’
Eric’s IP Address: 123.254.46.24
Dave’s IP Address: 118.11.180.97
(There is more on these IP addresses further down.)
Eventually, ‘Dave Harding’ got a little pushy with some of the other commenters, and I had to email him to calm him down. THIS IS IMPORTANT. …because the email address was falcomgamefan@gmail.com.
Does that sound familiar?
FalcomGameFan is the name of a rather infamous alias of a particular troll on SiliconEra. He was behind such gems as:
1.5 million characters isn’t really that big at all. Xseed is trying to make it seem like these games are the biggest games ever…which they are NOT. There are several other Japanese RPGs out there that dwarf the size of these games as well as games here in the west.
For example, the text in Deus Ex: Human Revolution (a western game) is about 7 times the size of the first Trails in the Sky game and about 4 times the size of the second Trails in the Sky game.
In fact, any of you anime gamers who are familiar with “adventure games” like Kanon, Clannad, and Little Busters. All of these games have more text than any of the Trails in the Sky games. Key’s newest game, Rewrite, boasts over 6 million characters, which is more than all three Trails in the Sky games combined.
The other little “dirty secret” that Xseed didn’t tell gamers, is that probably 25% of the text in Trails in the Sky is just “repeated” text, which means that when you talk to an NPC in several different situations, they say the same thing. Little do gamers know, that same text isn’t written once, but several times throughout the entire game script, so it’s nothing more than a copy and paste job and not “real” translation work. Pretty much every JRPG does this where you have multiple paths and you need to cover plot holes just in case you haven’t run into a certain character, NPC, or triggered an event prior to that when the possibility exists that you could have.
Xseed is full of it when they say they translated 1.5 million characters and they just need to quit their whining and get to work.
…and….
Look man, what really bothers me (in fact pisses me off) about Xseed, is how they constantly pretend like they’re the only ones who have it hard in the gaming industry. Frankly, that’s a load of crap. Anyone who works in this industry knows about numbers of characters in games and I don’t hear anyone else (not Atlus, Konami, Namco-Bandai, NISA, Square-Enix, or anyone in the industry) griping and moaning about the number of characters in a game, and blah, blah, blah… There are plenty of games with more characters than Trails in the Sky and if Xseed would just get their asses to work, and lay off screwing around on Twitter and stuff, they’d get more games out faster. In fact, how can they complain about numbers of characters when they’ve been hoarding and buying up fan translations so they don’t even have to do the damn work themselves?
Working Designs never complained, they did all the work themselves, and they treated their fans especially well. Even western developers like Ubisoft have treated their fans to some spectacular limited editions, and sorry, but Xseed’s stuff is like little trinkets I could buy at a pawn shop. And not even a full soundtrack? Total cop-out. Falcom has so many times given out the full soundtrack, an arranged soundtrack, and plenty of other nice bonuses with their games. Where’s the equal love with Xseed’s limited editions? Non-existent, that’s where.
Falcom has had some really gorgeous limited editions in the past and their boxing is impressive to say the least, but that’s not the type of fan serviced items we are getting from Xseed. Falcom has about $1.6 million in capital, they create the games themselves, and they still manage to dish out one nice limited edition after another. Xseed has about $1.5 million in capital, they do not make the actual games themselves (which means they don’t have to use as many resources), and they are content with giving fans limited editions of less than stellar quality. If Xseed wants to prove they can do better, then I welcome change, but at this point, they sound to me like a bunch of whiny babies who want everyone to feel sorry for them, and buy their crap. And I for one, don’t and won’t. Especially when they don’t even know about the games they are translating and have to get so much outside help because they are too lazy to figure it out for themselves. That sounds to me like a company superficially dedicated to the titles they release.
And for the record, the reason these games were not released before now is because they are really not that good. If they were spectacular, numbers of characters would have never been an issue to begin with because the games would have sold on their own merit.
I love it how you call people a troll when the people from your own fansite seem to troll the entire web and don’t want to let anyone have an opinion that differs from your own.
Oh, and get this. A guy at work just showed me on your fansite that it was apparently the Ancient Land of Ys members who were the ones rigging the scores on metacritic because this wyrdwad fellow who is actually Tom Lipschultz from Xseed (Wow! This company is ever dirtier than I thought doing this!), asked everybody on your fansite to write super high reviews so as to rig the aggregate score. In fact, he even asked your group to ask metacritic to remove all the negative reviews! And then he apparently thinks I’m some dude named megalink who for whatever reason, doesn’t agree with his crap. And then you guys accuse me of making dummy accounts? I love the conspiracy theories, but you guys are so exposed!
[ http://seldane.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=ysf&action=display&thread=5405 – link updated ]
Everyone reading this thread needs to see this! I wouldn’t trust anything Xseed says ever again after reading this. I think this is the first time I have ever seen a company try to rig the review scores for a game. It’s downright disreputable of Xseed to be doing this. Shame on them!
More posts that refer to Falcomgamefan:
Tom speaks of Falcomgamefan
Without saying too much: He definitely has never worked for Falcom. And assuming he and Megalink101 *are* the same person (and despite Falcomgamefan’s claims that they’re not, I still believe that they are — if only because I can’t imagine anyone ELSE comparing Ys: The Oath in Felghana to Mass Effect 2 in a non-facetious manner, but both Falcomgamefan and Megalink101 have done just that!), then yes, he’s gotten himself banned from the Falcom-centric “Ancient Land of Ys” message board, as well as RPGamer.
Here he is talking about Oath in Felghana:
Ys: The Oath in Felghana blows. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Falcom has decided to resurrect one of its worst Ys games. Even the new PSP version didn’t sell well in Japan and I’m not surprised either. I’d rather spend money on something newer than take a rehash of one of my most hated Ys games on the PC and one that is basically five years old. Even the new English voices just irked me the wrong way. How about an Ys 8 instead of going backwards to this stupid Ys game and then the soon to be Ys I&II which is like 10 years old? Sorry, my money will be spent on far better things than this. And what’s up with all these cheap items like a tacky calendar and a half a soundtrack? Nobody’s gouging me ten bucks for crap like that. It’s like being sold a half-eaten bagel from Einstein’s with the soundtrack. Those items CAN’T cost more than a buck to make because I could print out the calendar on super-nice photo paper and burn something like that for about 25 cents tops.
Or Falcomgamefan directly contradicting his email to me:
Yeah, I love Falcom games, but NOT all of them. I agree about The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion and Cagesong of the Ocean being awesome games (I actually didn’t like The White Witch believe it or not), but the Sora no Kiseki games or Trails in the Sky games as they’re called in English are not good like the Garghav Trilogy games. The Sora no Kiseki games have way too much text for the normal scenes (which can take upwards of 30 minutes of reading for way too many scenes that are just not important at all…Metal Gear Solid 4 flashback *shudders*) and then the gameplay just isn’t good at all. There’s no real awesome battle system in the Sora no Kiseki games, either. I just expected so much more when I played through them because Falcom touted them so highly, but I was disappointed with how they turned out.
And from the same post:
And now we’ve got Xseed, who is just a bunch of cry babies about having to do a little translation work (which pisses me off) when we could have had Carpe Fulgur do the translation for Sora no Kiseki and they would have been ecstatic to do the work. Carpe Fulgur had been very vocal about wanting to do these games for a long time and honestly, I would have rather seen them do the translation for these games.
He’s also shown himself on Metacritic:
Ys Seven was a huge graphical downgrade from its predecessors, the story was long-winded, and the sound effects were very annoying in comparison to past entries in the series. Adol also traded his jumping ability for a roll, which, while it worked, not being able to jump made the animations go all funky when he would go down a slope, etc. The gameplay was no longer as action packed as it had been before, either. And last but not least, the translation was horrendous and throwing gamers names into the game because of some stupid contest Xseed ran really pissed me off because it made the world of Ys look so ridiculous as the names were completely out of place. I can’t recommend this game to those who have played the other games in the series.
Simply put, this is one of the worst games ever on the Playstation Portable System. Ys: The Oath in Felghana has absolutely nothing to offer and does a number of things wrong. Platforming is bad. Voice-acting is bad. Story is bad.
As a result, I can say with certainty that Dave Harding = falcomgamefan, by this look at things. However, he’s said completely different things than what was listed above:
Part 4: Wait… MegaLink??
Yep! Falcomgamefan is Megalink. Many people on SiliconEra believed it to be the case, and instead of really telling who Megalink is, I’ll just let a comment from this post tell the story for me:
So sad to see you trolling every single Falcom related news.
For those in the dark: falcomgamefan is MegaLink from the Ancient Land of Ys board, he was banned for trolling there and on RPGamer and since then has been stalking the news about XSeed Falcom releases with a passion for his personal grudges, to the point of writing Metacritic user reviews with 2 for Ys Seven and 1 for Ys Oath in Felghana just to lower their ranking (for Felghana he created multiple fakes, to the point that the most obvious one in which he practically admitted his identity was removed by the local staff, links at: http://www.metacritic.com/game… and http://www.metacritic.com/game… ).
He has a personal grudge against the Falcom western fanbase and uses every opportunity to bash Wyrdwad, Falcom fans, XSeed and Falcom games released by XSeed (to the point of praising the Gagharv PSP games while hating on the Sora no Kiseki ones, or, ludicrously, flamming XSeed because they didn’t localize Zero no Kiseki instead of the Trails games, when even people who haven’t played the series know that Zero is a sequel-> http://www.siliconera.com/2010… … even Zero would have been labeled as crap if it was announced, obviously, and that’s only a small part of his antics).
Luckily there’s plenty of people who have played the Trails trilogy and can attest its great quality (practically everyone who played it, in fact), not to mention the fact that it sold more than a million copies and recently received an award by PSP users (the only low budget titles among AAA games).
Feel free to search his Siliconera posts on Disqus, you will have a nice collection of hate posts not only related to Falcom, but to XSeed itself, not to mention his account is used only to bash Ys and Trails.
Some of his retaliations for being called MegaLink are here and here, and here.
I love how you guys keep harassing anyone and everyone who has an opinion that doesn’t match yours. And seriously what is up with this megalink person to keep referring to? As far as I can see, your group doesn’t want to allow people to have and opinion and are trying to gag anyone who says anything different from you. America is founded on free speech and if you don’t like it, maybe you should try living in some place like North Korea or Iran or for that matter form your own country where you can control the media. And who in the world is this wyrdwad dude??? The conspiracy theories are what gets me the most. Obviously there are other people who don’t like Falcom games either as can be seen by clicking on the links so what are you doing to them for not being assimilated into the Borg? Singling them out one at a time and attacking them too? Geez, that’s so lame.
Sorry, but I stand by my opinion that Trails in the Sky sucks and if you don’t like it, oh, well. I will state it for the record here that nobody has a grudge against Xseed. I just call it like it is. Gamers have a grudge against cheap boxed limited editions and games with sucky gameplay. I’m just sick and tired of the lies that Xseed is somehow poor and they can’t do more for their fans when their financial data doesn’t support that claim at all. If you are real Falcom fans like you purport to be, then you would demand more from your games, because the Falcom bonuses in Japan are way better then anything we have ever received from Xseed. EVER! I demand good bonuses from Falcom games I import and they have delivered for me in the past, many times. Xseed has never once pleased me with anything in their limited edition sets.
And Xseed is no Working Designs either. Not even close. I bought WDs limited editions and they are premium quality while Xseed’s so-called “limited editions” are a far cry from the deluxe games, boxing, hardcover manuals, soundtracks, making-of discs, pendants, watches, high-quality paper, posters, Ghaleon punching dolls, and the works that Victor Ireland was willing to go all out for to please fans.
Xseed also doesn’t release their numbers to the public because then you would stop feeling sorry for them when you realized how much money they are raking in off you. As far as I’m concerned, any game company who doesn’t release their numbers is being dishonest with their supporters. Even Falcom releases their numbers, if you didn’t notice. Gamers should be banging on Xseed’s front door and demanding that they do the same. Screw American corporate secrecy. That’s how you get companies like The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Note: If MegaLink/FalcomGameFan = John Sears, then wouldn’t even talking about numbers constitute a breach of an NDA?
Um, you mind telling me why you and your posse keep calling me megalink? I’ve been called that name quite a few times now by I’m guessing all dudes from your group. Some kind of insider secret with the boyz in your hood, G? Care to share with the rest of everyone? And revenge for what, man? Take a chill pill. I’m free to express my ideas and if you don’t agree, OK. Out of curiosity, I googled your Ancient Land of Ys website just to see who you guys are and found your junky message board. Huh, so that’s where all the haters hang out, is it? I see… Well, haters will hate, but it doesn’t make Trails in the Sky a better series because it’s not and that’s just the way it is. I played all three games more than once to give them a fair chance and suffice it to say, they suck. Plain and simple. It’s fair game to tell people ahead of time what their buying into so they don’t get suckered.
Excuse me? Is there something that I don’t know that I should be aware of? Any reason you keep referring to me as “megalink”? This the second time you’ve stalked my posts and its getting kinda creepy… I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a compliment or a personal attack, but it sounds more like the latter.
By the way. Megalink evaded bans multiple times. I can, off the top of my head, think of at least 4 or 5 variations of his nick on Ancient Land of Ys. He also seemed to make new nicks to evade ‘downvotes’ on RPGamer’s forums, as well.
Part 5: Why the IP Addresses are Important?
Now, we have two IP addresses, and one of which would be that Dave Harding = falcomgamefan.
IP address 123.254.46.24 (Eric’s) is located in Kasuga, Takamatsu, Kagawa.
IP address 118.11.180.97 (Dave’s) does not have a locate-able address. It only shows Chiyoda-ku, which is the location of the ISP itself.
There are more IP addresses, all located in Kasuga:
- 123.254.15.211
- 125.215.110.250
- 123.254.5.126
- 115.30.199.247
I spoke with one of the admins on Ancient Land of Ys and was provided the four banned IP addresses for MegaLink on there:
- 115.30.232.167 (Kasuga)
- 115.30.232.34 (Kasuga)
- 202.67.21.157 (Kasuga)
- 24.190.98.59 (this one is an oddball, as it’s a New York located IP address.)
The primary issue with this, is that these are located in Kasuga. Unfortunately, through the time that there’s been, I’ve not been able to find the IP address again that was located in Kochi. However, Kasuga is roughly 50mi northeast of Kochi. I have been able to dig up the information that OmegaTH is located in Kochi, Japan.
I have also contacted another source (who wishes to remain anonymous) who has told me that he has verified similar IP addresses between what I’ve found, an ID confirmed to be belonging to John Sears, and an IP address that matches the pattern that I have. Last, but not least, I have also spoken with people who have received the press release from Exe-Create, showing that it was, in fact, John Sears who sent it.
Like with Aerial Translation Group, Omega Translation House does not have a web presence at all. This is because somehow, Sears has it in mind that having a web presence is detrimental to his work. (I wish I could tell him that companies may not always take someone seriously if they’re using a gmail.com email address. I know someone who has attempted to localize a PC game of Falcom’s, and was outright told that they wouldn’t consider her without a website with information on her company.)
A domain address is SUPER cheap, and you don’t need to interact with your fans to have to run a website. It doesn’t require CONSTANT maintenance, but the interaction may help to a degree. I imagine Sears just relies on gmail accounts since they’re so easy to sockpuppet.
Part 6: Sora
There is a cosmic irony in all of this, that the terrible translation and self-destructive PR around Orange Juice’s Sora is what would cause all of this to come up to the open again, after my first encounter with him was through Falcom’s Sora no Kiseki.
Frane came and went without much of a blip on the radar. I didn’t even realize that it had been released in the first place, which surprises me as I tend to keep my ear to the ground on news. It’s only when I found out about this fiasco with a translation on a game called Sora that I finally started to pay attention again.
I would link the video here, but I can’t, primarily because it’s been taken down at the request of OmegaTH as ‘copyrighted material.’ (Though the owner made a comment regarding the videos being removed. You can see it here.)
In reality, John Sears is just trying to hide the evidence, like he has elsewhere. A review on Slipgate Central has had its images taken down for ‘copyright violations,’ and Jeff Doogan’s imageshack account has been terminated as a result.
In fact, it wasn’t until after I had heard about this issue with Sora that I started to dig into what he did with Frane. Screenshots from OmegaTH’s translation of Frane are below:
Also, have some screenshots from Sora, including one of the infamous text glitch that pops up in the game:
Since this point, I’ve heard that Jeff Doogan has had hatemail in Japanese and broken English (talking about Western stereotypes, no less!) demanding he take the review down, that it’s a ‘good translation.’ …seriously, if they can’t speak English that well at all, should you trust their ability to determine if an English translation is a good one?
But Doogan isn’t the only person to have believed that this translation is bad. Fans have put together a petition against OmegaTH for the translation work on the game. (Note: I have not signed the petition, and I’m not involved. In fact, it was formed before I was made aware of this whole Sora fiasco.)
He has followed through with his usual ‘sockpuppet’ tactics, by creating multiple accounts and so forth. On the official trailer for Sora, he’s since removed commenting and voting. Thankfully, I’ve got screenshots of the youtube conversation from before it got yanked and comments shut off:
And images of the two profiles, as he’s probably changed one or the other:
This issue keeps escalating. I finally chose to step in on the youtube conversation, as evidenced above. It got to where I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. I’ve seen received comments that were shortly deleted, such as:
My question to you is why do you play along with these harrassment games, Kirsten Miller? Why don’t you use your mad computer skills for something productive? Quit allowing yourself to be a rabid cyberbully like this Matt guy here and be a happy person. One miserable guy like this plugging away at his computer to put down others is more than this world needs. I know you don’t feel good inside about being rude to others, do you? Been a big fan of your Esterior website for ages though. Cheers!
Do you really think you can scare me by using my real name, despite it being plastered all over Endless History? I’m trying to be able to be recognized as press. As such, I decided to step out from behind an anonymous username. …besides, if I’m apparently the ringleader, it shouldn’t read like this. Sears needs to get his story straight.
Feel free to visit the video here, as reposted by Jeff Doogan. This way, there will be no way John Sears can delete your comments, and hide what you think about him and his work.
He’s even posted the following comments to Jeff Doogan on youtube, as well:
A real gaming journalist would never write a review the way you do. They would be objective and you’re not. Bar none. Your only intention is to slander people, or at least one person from what it appears, and a company who have done nothing to you all for the sake of perceived falsehoods, which you have been told by your so-called “online friends.”
…and…
I feel sorry for you and hope that one day you can grow up. You should try using your effort to serve other people instead of putting people down for once. That’s the whole reason why you are miserable in life. A happy person whouldn’t do the things you do and break the law uploading someone else’s copyrighted work like you are doing here.
And he’s posted the following comment on the Slipgate review:
Dude, don’t lie. The translation for this game is good. I don’t know everyone who worked on this game personally, but I know at least two. Like so many people on the net already know, you are buddies with that group of illegal hackers over at that Ys website who has been infringing on tons of Japanese companies’ copyrights and translating games without a proper license to do so. This review is none other than to act as a revenge scheme because someone is actually making a difference and doing things the right way–LEGALLY. In reality, you are only hurting the Japanese companies and game studios you profess to support. I pity your end when you are thrown into a burning hell and made to suffer the angry wrath of a just God for your lies all for the sake of putting someone down. I am not going to mix words here so you know that when you look in the mirror each morning, your can see your life is as pathetic as a gamer’s gets. It is evident in your writing here that you do not live a life of integrity. May your equally dishonest friends join you for the roasting with your master, Lucifer. Fear not, they will be sure to be with you there. I am sure it won’t be a blast and I have little doubt your parents are going to be abhorred when they see what type of person their son was when everything comes to light at the judgment bar and he is wishing a mountain could fall on him.
…there’s easily more I can go into, but this is clearly the same writing style, and the same type of antics that I’ve seen before. And hilariously, he believes that I’m an illegal hacker, despite the fact that I’ve outright told ‘Dave Harding’ that my team was quitting working on Trails in the Sky willingly, to support XSEED’s efforts with it. …though I’m sure that makes it a surprise that he’s defending XSEED, considering the hate he was spewing about them on Silicon Era, as I posted above.
I know it’s too late, but I need to get to my next section so that this doesn’t get any more wordy. :(
Part 7: One More Piece of Evidence to Link this Together
This is the shortest section. I promise.
While the press releases and stuff have been through heresay, I’ve found one other place to identify all of this where you can see it with your own eyes. You can find his tie to all of this from this profile on Jordan Steven, who apparently reworked the music in Frane.
I expect some editing to happen here. So here’s a screenshot, too.
Part 8: In Conclusion
I hope this is enough information to provide ample evidence to my claims up above. John Sears, the man behind OmegaTH/ΩTH is a grade-A troll, possibly an NDA breaker, a terrible translator, and an awful liar.
I find all of this is so complicated. It makes me long for the olden days, when the Falcom fandom trolls were more like Nightwolve.
Yes, Mr. Sears- you have wasted your efforts in the gaming community. While Nightwolve turned his translation/hacking work into a platform for tea party political rants, he has been useful and provided something of note to this fandom. He has always been straight-forward, never used sockpuppet accounts, and we knew who he was from the start. Unlike YOU, despite my misgivings with him, Nightwolve has pride in who he is and what he does. You are just chicken and like to use subversive tactics to try to paint yourself as a person who can never do wrong, when you don’t read, don’t listen, and certainly don’t understand anything but your own twisted, delusional logic. If you ever tried to be truthful from day 1, we might have been more open to your arguments, but not once did you ever treat your potential customer base as intelligent people.
As I found someone saying to MegaLink once upon a time on RPGamer’s forums:
We’ll just stay here, and actually know the truth of your games for once.
By the way. This has also been sent to all appropriate parties.
Also, since I know you plan to flame me for this, I have made it easy for you. This page will take you to something I setup just to make sure you could tell me how you really feel. That way, you don’t even have to open up one of your multitudes of gmail accounts to send anything to me. It’s right there, ready to go. :) Or, if you want to just dive in- leave a comment.
This is IMO quite an enlightening and amazing read. Not to mention an absolutely entertaining look into the mind of a so-called “industry professional”. I am quite thankful that there are people out there willing to stand up for decent translations, and willing to take a stand against money-grubbing douchebags like John Sears who is cowardly enough to abuse the system to deny people their right to free speech about how they truly feel about his cavalcade of debauchery and deciet. My hat goes off to thee, omgfloofy!
I whole heartedly agree.
I’ve only vaguely heard about this through Twitter. Glad to see that the guy was outed, he seems like a dick.
*claps and cheers* It’s good to see the truth come out. This guy makes a profession out of trolling. It’s been how many years, and he’s still at it?! Most SANE people would have… you know… moved on to something else, something (hopefully) more constructive. Just unreal. Good job, and good read!
Oh, hey, does anyone know if this weirdo was also responsible for the iOS version of Frane as well? It says that it’s published by EXE-Create but I kind of get the feeling that Sears may have some involvement.
It’s not clear whether he was involved in the publishing, but it WAS his version of the game. Considering it’s even proven here that he has masqueraded as Exe-Create in public before, it’s not out of the question to think he may have published it himself ‘as Exe-Create’ somehow…
Here:
(EDIT: Man. I’m full of fail tonight. Third time’s a charm, it seems, on getting an image right.)
(EDIT #2: I think it’s more unnerving that he actually replied to my email- the one he never replied to again afterwards when I asked for more questions- to give me the press release.)
This is truly the most hardcore and “grade A” trolling (like you had said) I have ever encounter. Why will he go through this great deal of effort just to troll you is what I really want to know.
It’s not really trolling me, specifically. It’s just anyone that dislikes the work he does. Like he said in his comment on slipgate- he firmly believes in his translation. That this rage towards his work is unwarranted.
As a result, he trolls and causes problems in the community because he’s so deluded in this work.
Oh, I must be confused as I through he keep making multi-account just to flame you. Also did he stop and move on already or he still…….
The stuff from Sora in this article was within the past couple of weeks, unfortunately.
Over the years I’ve become a Exe-Create Fan and started collecting their games starting with Frane. I was very excited to learn that OMGFloofy’s translation team was going to be translating them, because it meant that I’d be able to apply a patch to the PC versions and play them with full resolution on my PC.
I noticed that with Exe-Create’s Across Age release, that it definitely seemed like they were going the mobile route with their games, and I guess Frane fits this same model. I’ve skimmed through the posts and articles above, but I’m still very confused I think. I see that Frane was released via the AppStore as RPG Dragon’s Oddysey – Frane and that there seems to be some kind of battle between the folks that released this version and the original translation project. I’m sorry to learn that there seem to be a good amount of conflict with this, but to set my confusion aside, doe the fact that this was released on the AppStore mean that the translation for the PC versions are prohibited from being released as a translation patch?
I sure hope that wouldn’t be the case since I’ve collected the entire series… well minus the Gaiden of Frane 3…
Frane Set – Frane 1 – 3 – No Frane 3 Gaiden Yet…
There’s another couple of great gems that I thought I’d mention that are definitely translation project worthy, that is another Exe-Create title called Vampire Hurt or Vampire Hearts if you ignore the English spelling and go with Romaji. It’s pretty neat and chalk full of nice artwork. Kind of reminds me of kooky-Castlevania world, and the world of Vampire Hunter D too. : ) And the other is Wander Wonder by Compile, one of their last PC games released back in 2000. It’s a fantastic game and I’ve been hoping it will get enough attention one of these days to warrant a translation project for it as well.
Wander Wonder & Vampire Hurt (Hearts)
Thanks for your time and I apologize for not understanding everything that was said above…
-Thomas
Sigh, thanks for this….
I wasted my time it seems remaking the soundtrack for Frane but at least I have some music under my belt for future projects.