He will be streaming at least 12h a day during these 4 days. That or untill he drops. When he has dropped other people will take over to continue the stream. So it´s going to be good fun.

Sunday is a pre-starter with some nice stuff like showing how everything is set up.

There will be bidding wars when they are playing the current game there will be a bidding war between two games as to which game the viewers want to be played next. So it´s going to be a lot of viewer generated content since we decide what they play.

The one big problem is that I do not have any exact time for when all of this starts on Sunday or Monday. So for the best and freshest information you can follow trihex on twitter:
@trihexx

So we are in for a big treat next week. I´m looking forward to it. I hope you are as well.

The stream will be done on http://www.twitch.tv/trihex

Thank you Peter for answering.

The bold words are our questions and the rest are Peter´s answers.

When did you decide that starting the company JastUSA was a good idea? How did you come up with the name JastUSA?

Back in 1998 we were working with JAST, the now-defunct eroge company that created our first three games (DOS era, woo!). That’s where we got the name for our company. Unlike Japan, there aren’t distribution companies carrying these titles in the U.S., so part of our plan was to also fulfill that role, which is why we carry games by other companies (like the new package versions of MangaGamer’s titles we’ve got on the site, http://www.jlist.com/category/185)

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Why did you choose visual novels/eroge/dating sim games as your product?

Back when the Internet started to get big I was casting around with a friend of mine to see what interesting things we could do with this new thing. Visual novels were something that fans had latched onto through the early web, and it seemed like an appealing idea. Looking back, I’m happy we did something wonky but sustainable unlike so many companies that broke themselves licensing mainstream anime.

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Could you tell us a bit on how you decide what game you try to localize?

We try to make good decisions about what games to tackle based on user feedback, and we also try to do games that there’s demand for that’s not being met (hence our big yuri game last year, http://www.jlist.com/p/p020). That being said, there’s a lot that has to happen for a given company to give us games to translate. They have to be the kind of company that wants to see foreigners playing their titles, they have to be open about doing business with the world, and so on.

It often comes down to the personality of the president of that company — if he likes foreigners and wants to know that his games are being played all over the world, cool. Often the reverse is true — they fear any possible downside. Other factors also come into play, like which companies are in financial trouble (sometimes we are asked to license a game so the company can complete it, as we did with Raidy II).

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Visual Novels, Eroge, Dating simulators. There are a load of different names for this type of game. Why do you think this is?

Back in the day, 1996 or so, we had to decide what to call these games. Visual novel hadn’t come along as a term yet, and a few other names (bishoujo game, gal game, galge) were too confusing for potential new customers, who naturally don’t know the terms of fandom. We locked onto “dating-sim game” because it communicates the core idea almost immediately, even though it’s not totally accurate as dating isn’t always a specific part of the story. We also like to make sure the “game” aspect of these products is emphasized, since that’s easier for customers to become fans of. One term we avoid vehemently is anything resembling “choose your own adventure” since that seems like a book you buy for 99 cents rather than a serious genre of artistic entertainment from Japan that deserves the support of fans.

Currently we use terms like “eroge” and “visual novel” interchangeably for the most part.

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Have your point of interest for visual novel games changed?
In the beginning you seemd to choose only games that had a lot of erotic content. Now you seem to bring in more text focused games that while they still have erotic content this is less than before and overall the games themselves are much longer. Is this because there is a bigger demand for more text and less sex type of visual novels or is it because you want to show that there are more than one type of visual novel?

We’ve always wanted to get a better grade of game, moving from what we can get because that’s all that was available to us, like Gibo or Little My Maid, to more famous titles like the Nitroplus ones. Us having been around for so long, and bringing these games out in a profitable way, has helped more companies come around to working with us.

We’re actually looking for some more “nukige” titles to bring out in the future, titles that are light and fun and not so serious (or hard to translate). Basically if we can mirror all that Japan’s eroge industry has to offer we’ll be happy.

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Are more companies becoming interested in releasing their titles outside of Japan?

A little, mainly because they see that MangaGamer and JAST USA are selling products normally with nothing happening other than happy fans buying games. There’s also increased interest in the market outside Japan because the Japanese industry isn’t very healthy these days, with fewer and fewer package games being made each month and a lot of companies fading away.

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Do you as a company find that the interest in visual novels have grown during these last years? Have the westeners view on the genre changed during these last years?

Definitely, there’s a lot more interest in what the games are, and a lot fewer fans who need us to explain what a “visual novel” is. A lot of that comes from anime series that put visual novel elements in for fun, like Genshiken or Excel Saga or I Have Few Friends.

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As myself is a Xuse fan and I ́ve been waiting for news about Seinarukana, is there anything you can provide us with so we can make the fellow followers of the series happy? Like a possible release date in 2012 or anything?

We’re hard at work on the game. Unfortunately RPGs take like 3x as much work or more, since there are graphic elements to translate in addition to the huge game text. Unfortunately it will probably not come out this year, though Yumina (not made by Xuse but done by the same team) should. We just posted the official Yumina site, at http://www.jastusa.com/yumina by the way.

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Will we be seeing more products from Xuse? Other than Seinarukana I mean.

Quite possibly, it depends on sales frankly. The more famous the company we work with, the more they are likely to want to know how many units we can sell, and they compare these numbers to the Japan side. Some companies say, “Well, we sold 40,000 copies at $90 per copy in Japan, and the U.S. population is three times the size of Japan, so we can sell triple this amount!”

I jest, but as we get better games, being able to break, say, 5000 copies the first year and 15,000 copies within 3-4 years becomes the target we need to aim for, or else we likely won’t be able to continue with these companies.

This basically means that fans who have played awesome games like Demonbane need to make sure they’re purchasing them so the company knows that future releases are important to you too. Obviously we know piracy is a problem, and an even larger issue for a company that has to make a profit from only a few thousand games sold. Bottom line, all fans of these games really need to make sure they’re supporting the industry, as it’s tiny and fragile. Thanks ^_^;;

(We always offer preorders of our games with free shipping/half price shipping for international customers, so fans who want to show their support can preorder at http://www.jlist.com/category/808 )

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When did the idea grow that grabbing Demonbane and more of Nitro+´s games would be a good idea? Looking at the original release date for Demonbane it took it ́s sweet time to get localized.

We’ve had our eye on Nitroplus a while, and were happy to reach an agreement with them three years ago. A lot of the time it depends on where that company is currently, whether they’re in a position to consider localized sales or if they just want to focus on Japan. Happily Nitroplus has been thinking more and more about the wider anime-related industry.

All games are hellish to translate, as there’s 1+ megabytes of text to translate. Demonbane was a special case because it was a Cthulhu mythos game, which means that every bit of text had to cross-referenced with the original Lovecraft books. Nitroplus had the original writer Haganeya Jin (who speaks English very well) check the translation and he gave it a glowing review.

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Could you tell us some spicy new info on what games you are planning to bring in next? As Majikoi have gotten quite the reception with the anime it might be a good title to bring over next? Or do you have something else in mind?

We announced a ton of titles at AX last year, pretty much our whole 2012 lineup, and we’re chipping away at that. School Days, Saya no Uta, Hanachirasu, and more, are moving along nicely. We hope to have some additional titles to announce around AX, but there’s nothing we’ve got firm news on just yet.

I have decided to keep all the old posts here so you can see and laugh at them. I´ve also decided that since this is now a multi-author blog I will not keep my personal stories here any longer. They will be removed in the nick of time when I find it. I will post more info about that later.

As the images will be basically the same width I can start posting again and still work on the new look as things will be very much the same in that regard

After April I will have a nice interview for you to read. It´s a secret with it´s contents and alas, the reason for not posting it before May is confidential. But look forward to a nice interview. If things go well I might have more of that planned for the future.

Just wanted to let you guys know about this so that you are not stunned by the thought of us starting to post again unannounced

Untill next time, try searching for “zerg rush” on google. Quite the coding done there.

This is to make The Fool better in the number of posts every week and hopefully to gain some momentum and have more people start commenting and visiting us. We do not want to be a one-hit wonder with a certain image. We want to be visited because of what we write and what we do. Therefore more people should increase site views and make everything better.

So let´s start by mentioning what people we would like to add.

Episodic writers

We write about anime. We like anime. So why not try to find people with more time than myself that can write about a series once a week? It is fun times to read and comment about the current episodes as you watch them yourself.

Reviewer

Got a good game in your collection that you want to review and let the world read and comment on? Then by all means give me a shout of interest. It doesn´t have to be mainstream, the fewer people that know of the title the better basically. It can be any format and even eroge, as long as the images choosen are nice and not to gory/sexual.

The same applies to anything related to anime, manga, video games or visual novels.

Multi-people

People that can handle multiple types of writing. Be it a review, a short post about a episode or just any type of post. That can be mixed in together with the others.

That is all for the moment for people we are looking for.

What we want from you

I am quite easy to please.

I just want you to write decently in English.
Post regularly in your set theme of choice.
Answer comments when you get one unless it´s from a troll.

That is basically all.

What we can give you

We are not able to give you much more than experience and readership. We are not the biggest blog but we have about 30-80 visitors a day so we are still growing.

If you have a idea we can all come together and brain storm about it. If you have a hard time getting a nice post title or image we can help you with that. You are not alone and that is biggest gift we can give you. Experience and a bit of help when needed.

That is just about it.

How to apply

It´s simple, write down some stuff about yourself, your interests and what you would like to write about. I´d also like to receive a short like 250 word long essay showing of how you write. This essay I want in any readable format.

By essay I simply mean a review, a episodic review or just whatever the type of post you want to continue making on the Fool. Make it in about 250 words and when you are done, use the contact form on the Contact Page and you´re done.

Easy right?

Food, presents, different dates for celebrating this special day. I will be thinking and wondering about how to redesign the Fool for V2. I have loads of idea and I have decided on what theme to use as the “backbone” to this new design. Now I just have to wait for it to be released.

Since we have been a tiny bit updated I also want to ask a question. Do you wish to see a reboot of the Fool and only fresh posts alternative a reboot of the content which means I will sit and select what posts/pages to keep and then not keep the older posts at all.

As I do not drive this blog myself anymore it feels weird to have reviews and stories at pages. Reviews are to be moved into ordinary posts and the stories will be moved to my personal blog which I might link to. I just haven´t decided yet.

So let´s celebrate this day of joy by drinking, eating and just enjoying ourselves like it´s some nice year

As I said in the previous post I was at a loss over what to do. Should I get a new theme by buying one or should I create one myself?

That is what I´ve been thinking about these last two months. As well as studying full time and even above that in terms of points. So even without having to think about The Fool I´ve been busy as hell. Which my co-writters have been as well.

I´m starting to get the hang of the studies so I can start making my time more well spent than before. Which is a good thing since then I can start writing stuff again.

New theme thoughts

There is really just one thing I´ve decided about the new theme. The images will grow in width to 640. Height will not be fixed but will be what fits each image.

This theme I´m using now(SimpleReader) is not to be seen as the final product or the new theme that we are going to use. There will be a new theme. But just for making it more easy on our visitors this theme was choosen. I liked the basic design and the frontpage so I had to get it.

IF you like this theme to much then I´ll simply change this into something I´m 100% satisfied with. But unless you do just that I will change it sometime in the future.

A new logo

The future will hold a new logo as well. If everything goes as I want it the new logo might look something like this

Flames? Love? Just hit me with your thoughts. The image will be replaced in the future. With what is a secret XD

Theme Features?

As I said I´m looking to change the theme into something fresh and new. To give a good experience to most of our visitors I want to ask those of you that comment: What features/styles would you like to see here?

I personally am not fond of sliders, but I know some people are. So let me know what you think should be incorporated into the new Fool and I will try my best to make it happen if I like the idea.

Wanna help?

Since things are as they are with The Fool I´m going to place a question to our readers: Do you want to help keep the Fool more lively with your own texts?

As most of my co-bloggers are to busy with their lives to blog I´m back to being alone. So if you want to write for us then by all means send me a mail with a review or something that you might want to be published on here and we will work the details out.

Maybe not a full co-blogger but maybe some interesting texts then and now? Everything is possible. Just try to keep it in the area this blog is about.

That´s all

Well, there is not much more to say. Everything I wanted to say has been said and done. So let me know what you think and what your hopes are for the new Fool.

Best of luck to us all!

It´s been a long time since I last posted. I´m lost in thought to how to continue.

I´m starting to get a bit tired of Arthemia Premium. We´ve had the same design for 3 years now and it looks and works great. But still I want something new and fresh for it.

And I´m not sure if I should buy another theme, try to find a free theme and change it to my liking or code a completely new theme on my own. Since I can´t decide at the moment I don´t want to write to many posts since it will probably mean that most images will have to few pixels in width for the new theme and I don´t want to sit and reupload every single image again. So therefore until I´ve decided on what to do there will be very few posts on here.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

There are a few themes I could decide on and get everything going pretty fast. But I´m not 100% sure yet. The other option is that I spend time with Arthemia Premium and make a child theme to it which changes how it looks but not how it works.

So let me know what you think and want. A complete new theme? Bought or own coded or simply rearrange the current theme?