Xenogears 1997-1998 Fan Petition(s) for an English Translation

Luxqaer

Luxqaer

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Hello everyone! I am currently making a video about the Xenogears fanbase and how it evolved over time in the past 26 years. Upon doing research, I have came across some things that I couldn't find sources from. One is a petition from fans to bring Xenogears over to the west after Square did not want to translate/localize because of its religious content.
www.rpgfan.com

Xenogears Review | RPGFan

The history of Xenogears is an interesting one. The game was originally announced, then it was decided that it would not be translated due to religious
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www.ign.com

Xenogears Coming? - IGN

According to IGN affiliate Square.net, Square may now be bringing its…
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Which made me wonder... I want to know if anyone has ever remembered this petition all the way back in 1997 or 1998. I know many people here came here from Xenosaga, but I don't know if anyone knew a person who is still around now that recalls a petition relating to getting an English localization for Xenogears? Or if possible, recalled what the contents of the petitions looked like? Let me know if anyone knows anything!
 
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This would be pretty cool if true and really mirrors Project Rainfall that would happen many years later. Unfortunately, that was before I was active in the fandom. I would be interested to know if anyone knew about this though.
 
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Sorry for getting to this late, but the story I heard was that the main translator, Richard Honeywood, was part of a larger localization team before the others dropped off. There might be some interviews around of him talking about it,
 
jessiray said:
This would be pretty cool if true and really mirrors Project Rainfall that would happen many years later. Unfortunately, that was before I was active in the fandom. I would be interested to know if anyone knew about this though.
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Yeah. It would be incredibly helpful in general. Any help would greatly be appreciated! 👍
 
Aidan Uzuki said:
Sorry for getting to this late, but the story I heard was that the main translator, Richard Honeywood, was part of a larger localization team before the others dropped off. There might be some interviews around of him talking about it,
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I actually checked the 8-4 interview a few weeks ago and glanced over a few more interviews after that, but I couldn't really find Honeywood talking about a petition specifically. It could be from an interview that isn't available on the internet. If someone has an archive of all the Richard Honeywood interviews conducted, that would be great!
 
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Luxqaer said:
I actually checked the 8-4 interview a few weeks ago and glanced over a few more interviews after that, but I couldn't really find Honeywood talking about a petition specifically. It could be from an interview that isn't available on the internet. If someone has an archive of all the Richard Honeywood interviews conducted, that would be great!
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Unfortunately being from early internet days most evidence of any petition seems to have been lost, unless there was someone around who participated in this themselves. I was too young to have known about the game coming out at the time, but I will ask around.
 
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We were talking about this the other day trying to see what we could find. Someone remembered it might have been brought up in this episode of Xenochat where Pure talks about a bunch of old xenogears fandom stuff
View: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6pQ1CEismGMpmdlmgzGw9Y?si=KgXDlgJ_Qf60UEOGqOfkNQ


I haven't clicked back and listened to jog my memory yet though. Maybe I will after work and update with a timestamp if it's there.

I've also been searching things via https://wiby.me/ like "xenogears translation" "xenogears petition" but I haven't found any bites.

I DID find this on usenet though https://www.usenetarchives.com/view...y&mid=PDg3MzY4MjkxMi4yNDk2QGRlamFuZXdzLmNvbT4 this supports there was a rumor the game wasnt coming out at least. Gonna look here more after work. Usenet was on the way out in the 90s but still had users and is better archived than most forums from the time....
 
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Clicking around Usenet, It seems to have been a common rumor that a square exec said they couldn't bring Xenogears over due to the religious symbolism. Sometimes this happened at TGS. I have no idea if that's true or if that's a "George Bush saw Ah My Goddess and now he is banning anime" rumor but that thread mentions a petition.
 
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jessiray said:
OH SNAP here we go https://www.usenetarchives.com/view...Dg4MjE0NDM4My4yMjE3MDgyOTZAZGVqYW5ld3MuY29tPg
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Holy mother of Deus, that's a fantastic find!

A few things that I was looking around for is that there is actually a name attached to the petition: Andrew Vestal. Although the people in the forum hasn't said he was responsible for the petition entirely. Though I find it very strange that a few forum users were thinking that Andrew has a power imbalance and was basically told by Square to hold a petition. All because of them believing in some phony website back then. I really do want to see if I can get an interview with him. Andrew doesn't have a social media presence, but he is a friend of Kat Bailey from IGN, so maybe I can reach out to her perhaps?

Also, 3000+ signatures on this petition in less than a week is really nothing to sneeze at. It seems there are just so many dedicated Square fans who really wanted games to be localized. Especially under Andrew's wing.
 
Luxqaer said:
Holy mother of Deus, that's a fantastic find!

A few things that I was looking around for is that there is actually a name attached to the petition: Andrew Vestal. Although the people in the forum hasn't said he was responsible for the petition entirely. Though I find it very strange that a few forum users were thinking that Andrew has a power imbalance and was basically told by Square to hold a petition. All because of them believing in some phony website back then. I really do want to see if I can get an interview with him. Andrew doesn't have a social media presence, but he is a friend of Kat Bailey from IGN, so maybe I can reach out to her perhaps?

Also, 3000+ signatures on this petition in less than a week is really nothing to sneeze at. It seems there are just so many dedicated Square fans who really wanted games to be localized. Especially under Andrew's wing.
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If Im getting the right "localization professional with 20+ years of experience in the video game industry" then Andrew Vestal seems to be active on LinkedIn. I don't have a LinkedIn to see his profile, but from google I found a link to a post he made 2 months ago.
 
linnaealyn said:
If Im getting the right "localization professional with 20+ years of experience in the video game industry" then Andrew Vestal seems to be active on LinkedIn. I don't have a LinkedIn to see his profile, but from google I found a link to a post he made 2 months ago.
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Oh yeahhhh. I can reach out to him on LinkedIn, but idk. I feel kind of weird messaging him on there, but maybe he has an email on the LinkedIn that I can use.
 
jessiray said:
Clicking around Usenet, It seems to have been a common rumor that a square exec said they couldn't bring Xenogears over due to the religious symbolism. Sometimes this happened at TGS. I have no idea if that's true or if that's a "George Bush saw Ah My Goddess and now he is banning anime" rumor but that thread mentions a petition.
Click to expand...

www.ign.com

TGS: No Xenogears for US - IGN

Xenogears will not be coming to the US or Europe due to possibly…
www.ign.com www.ign.com
Yep
"Xenogears will not be coming to the US or Europe due to possibly sensitive religious issues, a Square spokesperson told PSXPower today at the Tokyo Game Show."
 
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Found another mention of the petition

"Okay what happened is that Bob Rork sent an email to Tanaka Hiromichi asking why the game wouldn't be coming to the US, and Mr. Tanaka replied saying that they were planning to release it in the US and the news sites that said they wouldn't, had been printing false rumors. Mr. Rork got excited at this and replied with a post that used around a dozen exclamation marks, whereupon Mr. Tanaka told him to calm down, no final decision had been made.
Then Andrew Vestal tried to pass the whole thing off as a result of his petition (or at least it sure seemed like that was what he was doing)

So basically, they weren't 100% sure but their current plan was to release it in the US. That plan could have changed, I guess."

Further down:
"Xenogears IS planned for a US release (and has /always/ been planned for a US release)"
---

Another mention of it, this time in a magazine. https://xenoworks.neocities.org/
Under Magazines>Xenogears> Next Generation Issue 49
 
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another mention. Scan here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NBTGMUtOrulmiFbG-iWpZoIY9AD06Xuh
Definitely seems it wasn't localized due to any fan petition, but due to Square's "joint venture" with EA. The fan petition just happened because people were mad about the thought of it possibly not being localized and made their voices heard.
 
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