Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari

[Discoalucard]

hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/nanatsukaze/nanatsukaze.htm

The title translates roughly to "Seven Winds Island Story", and it's adventure title for the Saturn with absolutely gorgeous graphics and animation. I first heard about it here, and someone posted some Youtube links, it really looks fantastic. Now Diebussy has written an article about it and supplied tons of screenshots too!

[Deleted]

The game does indeed look fantastic graphically. If only there would be a way to play it in English...

[kimimi]

I've always liked the graphics, but the gameplay doesn't do much for me.

[dieubussy]

Not the sort of game you can learn to like in 2 minutes. I wish someone could translate it so most could play and understand the real beauty of the game.

The graphics are terrific, no doubt. But I think the gameplay is so simple and unique as well. It's not just the looks, this game has the contents as well...

[dieubussy]

To all of those who liked the looks of the game, here's an image gallery I'm putting together:

pixelsatanexhibition.web.simplesnet.pt/gallery1.html

I hope you enjoy it. I'll be updating this post as soon as I post more images.

[Ryusui]

I'm just glad somebody got the name translated right. "The Seven Blasts of Wind Island Story"? Puh-leeze.

"Nanatsu" = 7.
"Kaze" = wind.
"no" = possessive.
"Shima" = island.
"Monogatari" = story, tale. Chronicle, as per a certain upcoming PS3 title.

"The Story of the Island of Seven Winds" is a bit unwieldy, I must admit, but it's probably the most euphonious translation I can come up with.

Shame I don't know jack about working with Saturn games. There's a title in need of a fan translation.

[dieubussy]

I don't agree to the translation used in the text, and I did mention it was "roughly translated".

But this is the official English title for the game. If you browse the original game CD in the computer you'll actually come across a txt file that says "The Seven Blasts of Wind in Island Story" - hence my mention to this specific title.

I'd translate it as the 'The Story of the Seven Wind Island' but it's not up to me to say so if Enix has already selected a title for the game - no matter how wrong it sounds.

[Ryusui]

Yikes. My profuse apologies, then.

[dieubussy]

Hey, no problem!

Thanks for reading the article and for the comment!

[Scylla]

Man, I haven't checked this site or board in months, but when I saw this game was covered, I had to post. :) This is the one and only Saturn game I've ever bought even though I don't even own a Saturn (borrowed one to play it), and it definitely deserves more attention. I think it stands as a really interesting piece of game history as one of, what, only 3 or 4 games that Enix ever released on non-Nintendo/Sony hardware (and none of the others are really worth giving a damn about), and as one of only a small handful of titles created by Givro/Almanic. As a huge fan of the Wonder Project J series, I had to track this one down since it's the only other game from the company that even resembles the play style. Unfortunately, I could never really make heads or tails out of it. I could only get as far as the guide on GameFAQs does, and even getting that far, I never really felt like I was making any progress nor understanding what the heck was going on in that weird world. And I don't blame the game for that, but myself.

See, usually I'm very good at getting through Japanese games. I can read katakana, hiragana, and a handful of kanji, but I'm only able to understand what katakana is representing English or pick out a few Japanese words in hiragana or kanji here and there that I happen to know. I'm VERY far from fluent, and this seems like one of the rare games where you REALLY need to be fluent. Most Japanese games, including RPGs, I can work my way through on my own just by trial and error. In comparison, I chose to play Wonder Project J2 with a guide, but I can play it entirely on my own now and I barely touched a guide when I played Wonder Project J (which I played after J2, so I had experience to rely upon). I remember practically begging the GameFAQs FAQ writer to finish up his guide, haha. Unfortunately, I never got a response and he's probably long gone. I can only hope that one day I'll be able to complete the game.

I wholeheartedly agree with the article that it's got this beautiful yet repulsive nature about it at the same time, and it's definitely otherworldly. When I played it, it almost creeped me out a little. Granted, it doesn't help that the game is practically silent half the time. I've never been big on games that barely use music. Plus some of the sound effects are pretty loud, and the footstep sound effects really drove me nuts sometimes.

[toei]

So according to Japanese wikipedia, the writer, game designer, and character designer of this game is tokusatsu legend Keita Amemiya. He's got a bunch of character design credits for video games, but this is the only one he wrote & designed.

I'd never come across it before, but it sure is gorgeous.