FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: John Pickett, Head Translator/Marketing Manager, john@mangagamer.com
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June 28, 2010 – MangaGamer is pleased to announce their first foray into physical production at Anime Expo!
This year we’ll be bringing a limited supply of DVD-ROM copies of Kira Kira (All Ages) and Higurashi (Chapters 1-4 aka Question Arcs)! Both titles will be available at an extra-special AX sale price, so if first timers to visual novels or fans who’ve passed before have extra reason to give these games a try.

Companies looking to distribute our titles in the future can arrange meetings with us at AX or e-mail us at info@manga-corp.com.

AnimeExpo 2010
July 1-4, 2010
Los Angeles Convention Center

http://www.anime-expo.org

Booth # 811/813/815/910-915/1010/1012/1014

ABOUT MANGAGAMER.COM
MangaGamer.com is the world’s first legal download site for English translated bishojo games. Since its launch in July 2008, it has offered services where fans can download and enjoy popular bishojo games such as CIRCUS’s Da Capo and OVERDRIVE’s Kira Kira right from their home.
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EDELWEISS BUNDLE PACK & SPRING SALE AT MANGAGAMER.COM
Limited Time Sale starting from April 1st

March 12, 2010 MangaGamer.com would like to announce the bundle pack of “Edelweiss” which includes both the original “Edelweiss” and its spin off releasing on March 20, “Edelweiss Eiden Fantasia”. While individually costing 24.95 Euros for “Edelweiss” and 19.95 Euros for “Edelweiss Eiden Fantasia”, totaling 44.90 Euros, this value set will be available for a special price of 34.95 Euros!

“Edelweiss” & “Edelweiss Eiden Fantasia” Bundle Pack
Manufacturer: OVERDRIVE
Genre: Adventure
Price: 34.95 Euros
OS: Windows XP(32bit), Windows Vista(32bit)
Text Language: English
Voice Language: Japanese
Age Rating: 18 and over

Additionally, MangaGamer.com will conduct a Spring Sale celebrating the Japanese school entry season!!
The following school related titles would be marked off accordingly from April 1st to April 7th.

Spring Sale Date & Time　
4/1　10:00（CET）～4/7　10:00（CET）

“Da Capo”
49.95 Euros -> 24.95 Euros

“SHUFFLE!”
36.95 Euros -> 24.95 Euros

“KIRAKIRA”
36.95 Euros -> 24.95 Euros

“KIRAKIRA All-Ages Version”
29.95 Euros -> 14.95 Euros

ABOUT MANGAGAMER.COM
MangaGamer.com is the world’s first online download site of English translated bishojo games that opened in July 2008. Since its launch, it has offered services where fans can download and enjoy popular bishojo games such as CIRCUS’s “Da Capo” and OVERDRIVE’s “Kira Kira” right from their home.

Although this is the first time that both an adult and all-age version of a game are available for the PC in English, a translated all-age version of KIRAKIRA was already released for the iPhone a few months ago. This also was simply a censored version of the adult game, rather than a port of the all-ages PS2 remake.

It is interesting to note that at 29.95 Euro, MangaGamer’s all ages version of KIRAKIRA is sold slightly cheaper than the original (EUR 36.95).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD OF KIRAKIRA ALL AGES VERSION TO BE AVAILABLE AT MANGAGAMER.COM
All ages version of the signature title from game developer OVERDRIVE to be available starting January 31, 2010

January 31, 2010 MangaGamer.com is pleased to announce the all ages version of “Kira Kira”, a bishoujo game released by game developer OVERDRIVE. Using band and Rock’n'Roll as its theme, it depicts the story of young people overcoming hardships and growing up to be adults. The original Japanese version of this game was released in 2007 and it is one of the signature titles of OVERDRIVE.

*This is a port of the original adult version of Kira Kira.
Other than slight modification of text and removal of erotic images, there is no difference from the previous release.

STORY
“Love, Journey, and Rock’n'roll!!”

Shikanosuke Meajima is a student at the Missionary school, Oubi Academy. He doesn’t attend his club, he doesn’t put much effort in his studies, all he does is show up at his part time job; in short, his life could be better.

All this changes when he meets Kirari Shiino at work. Kirari is a strange girl, and soon Shikanosuke finds himself joining a punk band. This is where the story begins.

Kira Kira All Ages Version
Manufacturer: OVERDRIVE
Genre: Adventure
Price: 29.95 Euros
OS: Windows XP(32bit), Windows Vista(32bit)
Text Language: English
Voice Language: Japanese
Age Rating: All Ages

ABOUT MANGAGAMER.COM
MangaGamer.com is the world’s first online download site of English translated bishojo games that opened in July 2008. Since its launch, it has offered services where fans can download and enjoy popular bishojo games such as CIRCUS’s “Da Capo” and OVERDRIVE’s “Kira Kira” right from their home.

Gift is MOONSTONE’s fourth release and their first release featuring positive themes. Some of the staff who worked on Gift were actually also members of CIRCUS — the main scenario writer for Gift also wrote part of Suika, and one of the artists, Yuka Kayura, also worked on many other CIRCUS titles as well. MOONSTONE was actually one of the game makers who blocked overseas access to their website for a period of time this summer, but now their website is open to all visitors.

Gift is a romance game, set in a seaside town with two distinct characteristics — a rainbow that persists year round, and a magical ability known as “Gift,” which lets people who grew up in this town to grant a single wish to someone. The events in the story start with the main character meeting his step-sister for the first time in years. The game spawned an animated series, as well as comics and drama CDs. It was also touted as the first galge to hit the iPhone. The Japanese version and a trial version of the Japanese version have been available on the iPhone App Store for roughly a year now. The English version is currently available for $9.99 and comes in at a little bit over a gigabyte in size. The translation has typos and is not very smooth, although it is not terribly difficult to understand for the most part. For example:

“You feel most shameful in your life that you have never put on bra till you were in the second year class of senior middle school.” Don’t you?”

There are also parts where the narrative switches from third person to first person, which can be quite confusing. Lastly, there are many times when the wording is very clumsy.

Although it was known for some time that KIRAKIRA was receiving an iPhone port, it wasn’t apparent that this was a dual release — one version in Japanese and one version in English. Judging from the pictures on the developer’s site, they will be using MangaGamer’s translation of KIRAKIRA for this port. The current projected release date is November 20, although release dates have been pushed back two times already.

Thanks to izmos for the heads-up.

UPDATE: KIRAKIRA is now available in English for $9.99. There are also trial versions of KIRAKIRA and Gift in English available on the iPhone App Store as free downloads. The Japanese version of KIRAKIRA on the App Store is apparently $15.99.

KIRAKIRA is the second game released in Japan by OVERDRIVE, the first of which being Edelweiss, released in English by MangaGamer as well. The game follows four protagonists who formed a punk band in order to celebrate the end of their club at school with a bang. The game is a fairly light game with comedic elements.

MangaGamer has added a free downloads section where visitors can download wallpapers, songs and opening movies for the games from OVERDRIVE. The layout has been improved, with the official BBS prominently linked in the top menu. Currently, there are plans to establish a staff blog as well as a section for articles. Another new feature is a tagging system. The tags specify whether the game has uncensored graphics and what characters are voiced. Furthermore, the category tags describe various aspects of the game, such as whether the game features “hardcore” sex or whether it has “fantasy” or “comedy” elements. There is also a search function on the site, allowing the user to look for specific game brands or tags. Lastly, there appears to be a “weekly ranking” section of the website for the top five games. It is not clear whether the ranking refers to hits or sales.

According to their website, MangaGamer will be present at Anime Expo in the exhibitor’s hall at booth 212, where they’ll be “selling hot bishojo game merchandise and giving away free goods.” Furthermore, they’ll be having a live concert at their booth with “popular artists from Japan.” Lastly, they’ll be holding an 18+ panel titled “The Future Trend of Bishojo Games” in room LACC 502 from 10:00-10:50pm on Saturday, July 4th.

UPDATE: KIRAKIRA is an 1.29GiB zip file download from the MangaGamer site and unpacks into a folder called 090624kirakira_master_hash_checked_drm. Running the BGI.exe unpacked from the archive will activate the game over the Internet using Alpha Activation if it has not been activated yet. The English translation uses honorifics and reads fairly well for the most part. While much better than the translation in Edelweiss, this translation does have its problems and isn’t as polished compared to the script from Suika A.S+. Notable things include the frequent lack of periods at the end of sentences and some scattered typos. At times, the text explains ideas in an unnatural way or uses a strange choice of words. For example, MangaGamer uses “bandsman” as opposed to “band member” for バンドマン and “music cafe” as opposed to “club” for ライブハウス.