UPDATE: One of MangaGamer’s translators has posted images and more information on the staff blog.

Note: The first version of the first press release incorrectly labeled the game as being from PSYCHO. This has now been corrected in the second version of the press release, included below.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD OF COSPLAY ALIEN IN ENGLISH TO BE AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE EXCLUSIVELY AT MANGAGAMER.COM
Adult PC title by game developer SCORE to be available in English on February 20, 2010

January 20, 2010 MangaGamer.com is pleased to announce the upcoming digital release of “Cosplay Alien”, an Adult PC title released by game developer SCORE. The slated release date of “Cosplay Alien” is February 20, 2010. The original Japanese version of this game was titled, “Cosu-tte Alien -Yuuwaku no Cosplay H-” and was released in 2005.

STORY
The main character and his friends are attending their class in a quiet academy like normal students when a UFO suddenly passes overhead. The whole academy begins to panic and a beautiful, female alien appears from the UFO. She claims she traversed vast reaches of space in order to tie the knot with Yuusaku. Meanwhile, Yuusaku is utterly confused. As she tries to press him into marriage, she uncovers his secret stash of porn and begins using knowledge of cosplay from that in order to seduce him.

The other heroine, his childhood friend, joins in the fuss over Yuusaku caused by the alien’s mother, friend, rival, and even space pirates. On top of all this, secret agents from another country begin targeting the Aliens’ advanced technology…

Cosplay Alien
Manufacturer: SCORE
Genre: Adventure
Price: 19.95 Euros
OS: Windows XP(32bit), Windows Vista(32bit)
Text Language: English
Voice Language: Japanese
Age Rating: 18 and over

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.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MANGAGAMER.COM ACQUIRES THE RIGHTS TO KOIHIME MUSOU
Bishojo Game take of Romance of the Three Kingdoms to be ported to English

January 20, 2010 MangaGamer.com is pleased to announce that they have acquired the rights to the digital world wide release of “Koihime Musou”, an adventure game based on the Chinese novel, “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.” “Koihime Musou” is an award winning title from game developer BaseSon released in Japan on January 26th, 2007 that has spawn out a Playstation 2 port, anime series, and manga.

“Koihime Musou” is separated into two sections, the traditional adventure part where you enjoy the story along with the female characters derived from the characters of the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, and the interactive simulation battle part where you are in control of their army.

“Koihime Musou” is slated to release in April 2010 from MangaGamer.com.

Koihime Musou
Manufacturer: BaseSon
Genre: Adventure + Simulation
Price: Undecided
OS: Windows XP(32bit), Windows Vista(32bit)
Text Language: English
Voice Language: Japanese
Age Rating: 18 and over

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.

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For further information contact:
MangaGamer
info@manga-corp.com

UPDATE: According to some users, purchasing and trying to download The Queen and Princess as your rewards results in errors returned by the server, but the other game downloads fine. Currently, both games have been removed from their titles list, but seem to still be listed as a purchased game on users’ accounts.

UPDATE 2: MangaGamer has now issued an official statement regarding the games:

A crucial problem was found for the titles below that were released on June 15, and they were removed from the site.
- The Queen and Princess as your rewards
- Sandwiched by my wife and her sister
We sincerely apologize for the problem this may have caused.

There is a post by one of MangaGamer’s staff on the official MangaGamer forums suggesting the possibility that the titles will be pulled indefinitely and that refunds will be issued.

UPDATE 3: MangaGamer will be offering refunds for those who purchased these two games:

Thank you for using mangagamer.com.

The following titles that were released on 6/15 were released in an incomplete shape due to unexpected circumstaces.

- The Queen and Princess as your rewards
- Sandwiched by my wife and her sister

Because we are unable to provide a complete version right away, we will cancel all orders and send a refund.
If you’re one of the customers who purchased these games, please await for an email regarding this issue.
We will make an annoucement on our website when these games are ready to be officially released.

This game requires activation, as usual, but it appears they are using a different activation system — Alpha Activation, from SETTEC. Amongst the game files is a PDF file that contains translation notes, which includes various terms and how various puns were handled, as well as cultural notes on things like Valentine’s Day. Another small change is that the executable now has a proper icon, one of Archimedes. It also appears that MangaGamer is still using the Buriko General Interpreter engine for the game and thus must have ported it from the original Japanese release.

The opening movie is just the Japanese opening, with no translations. The actual script translation reads fairly well, with no glaring mistakes upon a cursory glance and only a few places where the text felt funny, such as “Said that” as a sentence right after some spoken words. All in all, the quality of the text seems to be somewhat higher compared to MangaGamer’s release of Da Capo.

The menu system is fully translated, although there is an oddity. When one clicks Intermission in the main title menu, one is led to several choices. In the Japanese game, this submenu allowed the player to either browse CG, listen to the music or replay certain scenes, as well as play several extra scenarios. In the English menu, one can see the options for “Supplement”, “Summer Vacation” and “Draw the Curtain” in addition to the CG, Music and Replay options. These three options roughly correspond to translations of the extra scenario titles. What was odd was that “Summer Vacation” was enabled when first playing the game, and simply played the opening movie.

Suika was originally released by CIRCUS in 2001 and featured a four-part story, each taking place in roughly the same rustic setting, but with different protagonists and characters. The game received an all-ages adaptation with added scenarios in the form of a Dreamcast and PlayStation release (2002), which was backported to the PC in both all-ages (2003) and adult (2004) versions. The 2004 version, Suika A.S+, had added content and was also ported to the PlayStation2 as an all-ages release. MangaGamer is releasing a translation of the 2004 PC version.

The Suika franchise also received numerous spinoffs and adaptations. CIRCUS’s amusement disc, What Archimedes Forgot(アルキメデスのわすれもの), was named after a certain character in Suika and featured a prologue scenario for Suika as well as a scenario previewing Da Capo. Furthermore, CIRCUS also released a full-length prequel to Suika, titled AR ~The Forgotten Summer~(AR 〜忘れられた夏〜). Lastly, Suika also received a radio drama CD series, novelisations, vocal albums as well as an animated adult OVA adaptation, which was released in North America by Kitty Media as Wet Summer Days.

MangaGamer cites the reason for the release delay as being “an important security risk” that they have found in the three games. Assuming that this is true, then there’s a high possibility that all three games share the same engine. Since their previous game, Da Capo, was ported to the Ethornell game engine, then perhaps these three games were also ported to Ethornell. There is no indication whether this “security risk” applies to currently released games.

In day-to-day computer software, security risks typically refer to some bug in the code that causes a program to interact maliciously with some external source, such as a website or a downloaded file. The only interaction with external sources we’ve seen so far in MangaGamer’s games has been the activation procedure, which sounds kind of odd as a possible exploit vector. Therefore, perhaps this “security risk” isn’t one in the standard sense of the term, but rather a hole in their DRM scheme, or maybe even just a normal crash bug.

Lastly, the MangaGamer update cites “unexpected circumstances” as the reason for the indefinite postponement. There are two possible reasons we can think of. Either the website programming staff had some sort of emergency and came across a technical problem that had no clear solution, or perhaps MangaGamer was aiming to announce some new titles and negotiations had stalled. In either case, we won’t know for sure unless the company decides to make a more detailed announcement regarding it.