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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

It's not easy having to support a family of five while barely earning enough for two. The Ninth Hour is accepting commissions for translations. We've done books, magazine interviews, and even some subtitle work. ko-fi.com/theninthhour

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The Ninth Hour has translated a 2021 interview with SEGA veteran Takenobu Mitsuyoshi (Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter, Shenmue), originally published in the book "SEGA hard historia", where he discusses working with SEGA's sound hardware in the 1990s. theninthhour.neocities.org/features/mit...

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The Ninth Hour - Translations and stuff

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Three years ago, The Ninth Hour finished translating the BlazBlue spin-off novel Phase Shift 3. One of its co-stars, Trinity Glassfille, is coming to BlazBlue: Central Fiction as the next DLC character!

The cover art of BlazBlue: Phase Shift 3, with English text.

Clockwise from top right: Valkenhayn R. Hellsing, Trinity Glassfille, Nine the Phantom, and Ragna the Bloodedge.

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

The Ninth Hour is translating a 2021 retrospective of the late Tomonobu Itagaki's career, including the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden (3D) series. Part 1 covers DoA1, Itagaki's early Tecmo projects, and the origin of his infamous anti-Tekken rants. www.freestepdodge.com/threads/part...

While interviewing Itagaki, Tecmo's founder and then-president Akito Kakihara asked: “Why did you spend seven years in university?” Itagaki admitted that he had “played too much mahjong.” Kakihara then offered some profound advice: “What's the point of mahjong? The workplace is the biggest gamble of them all. If you want to take a gamble, you're welcome to join.” These words resonated deeply with Itagaki, and “life is a gamble” is now a professional motto of his.

Having passed the president's test, Itagaki's next hurdle was development manager Junji Nakamura, and their exchange was full of surprises. Itagaki expressed his love for simulation games, so Nakamura assigned him to the staff of the sports game Captain Tsubasa 4: Rival Pros. Itagaki meant to to express his preference for “wargame simulators”, but Nakamura had already made his decision, leaving Itagaki with no choice but to follow through.

One of the major selling points of Nintendo's Super Famicom was its faux-3D sprite rotating and zooming functions. Captain Tsubasa 3 released for the Super Famicom in 1993, but didn't use those features; the sequel, Captain Tsubasa 4, was initially planned the same way. Itagaki, believing Captain Tsubasa 4 needed to catch up with the times, proposed adding the rotation and scaling feature. While the marketing department supported his decision, the game's producer was against it, which caused a stalemate. Though a novice, Itagaki didn't budge. He presented some materials he'd prepared in his free time and convinced the head of marketing, while the producer remarked: “Since Itagaki proposed this feature, let him handle it himself.” Consequently, Itagaki spent a full month clocking in two and a half hours early every day to personally program the sprite-scaling functions. After a month persevering, the other programmers were finally moved by Itagaki's dedication and offered their assistance.

Captain Tsubasa 4 was released in 1993, but the outcome disappointed Itagaki. Players felt the rotating and zooming visuals were too sluggish and disrupted the game’s pace. In hindsight, Itagaki acknowledged that technology alone can't carry a game; it has to be innovative and responsive at the same time. However, he does not regret his persistence. Everyone fails at some point, and it's better to lose and persist to the end than to win and stagnate.

Many people attribute the success of Dead or Alive's to “bouncing breasts”, but Fatal Fury 2 (1992) had already done that, and Soulcalibur (1998) was the first 3D fighting game to have true bouncing physics on women's breasts. The original Dead or Alive did not invent jiggle physics, and its effects were hardly impressive, amounting to two blocks bouncing around the screen. They weren't even Itagaki's favorite visual element in the original Dead or Alive: that was the characters’ faces. Due to hardware limitations, character models had only about 500 polygons and were composed of four-sided shapes, giving them a distinctly angular appearance. Itagaki tried various methods to refine the characters’ faces, including adjusting the number of polygons, but even as the facial models became smoother, the characters’ faces still bore sharply defined shadows. This problem was solved by using textures to represent shading. Dead or Alive was the only 3D fighting game at the time to achieve this: although Virtua Fighter 3 had more detailed character models, they still had angular shadows. This didn't mean that Sega was incapable of solving the problem, only that Sega didn't put much importance into the characters' faces.

Itagaki then went to a meeting, accompanied by a younger Tecmo sales employee. The young man greeted Namco's sales manager out of courtesy: “Dead or Alive is finally out on PlayStation. We look forward to your support.” Namco's sales manager responded: “You know, a console doesn't need more than one 3D fighting game.” That response confirmed to Itagaki that Namco's advertisement was referring to Dead or Alive. The young Tecmo employee also pleaded with Itagaki: “We've been humiliated. You have to fight back!” However, the PlayStation version of Dead or Alive was selling less than the Sega Saturn version — at the same time, Tekken 3 had passed one million copies sold on the PlayStation alone, which enraged Itagaki even more.

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

In Game Hihyō Vol. 8 (April 1996), Dragon Quest designer Yuji Horii was interviewed on what he considered to be a "game"; specifically, a role-playing game. In his words, if you're in direct control of the player character, it's a game, and it wouldn't be the same as a movie.

Editor: What do you think about the trend of story-driven, dialogue-heavy RPGs? Of course there are lots of great works among them, but when you consider the definition of an RPG, the direction seems different.
Horii: At this point, it's not really a matter of quality, but of preference. Some people like more linear RPGs as long as the story is great, and others don't like being told what to do; they like to play the way they want. It's a matter of personal preference. At that point, it's up to the player to make choices.
Ed.: Last time we did a feature on RPGs — I thought about the concept of RPGs, and I asked myself, if the beauty of RPGs is that you can experience them yourself, do you really have to play a game to enjoy a cinematic story? I started wondering if there was a meaning to those games.
Horii: Story-driven or not, the story is still being told through the medium of a game. I feel like that's why there's more emotional involvement than a movie. To a certain extent, you're controlling the story directly. You can tell a story in a movie or a book, but those are different experiences. So yes, I think there is a meaning to those games.

Ed.: So the difference is just in the form of expression. Moving on: right now, what does the term "RPG" mean, now that it's become so fragmented into sub-genres?
Horii: The term "RPG" doesn't mean much anymore, does it? For example, if we're talking role-playing: in Donkey Kong Country, you play the role of Donkey Kong, so that should make it a role-playing game. But that's an action game, not a role-playing game — and an RPG is an adventure, in the sense of an adventure game. So instead of getting hung up on semantics, I feel everyone should see how much can truly be expressed through computer media. The current fragmentation of "RPG" into sub-genres is a matter of convenience. Don't forget that games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are RPGs — whatever the original meaning of the term is, it's not important. Whether you're playing a role or not, they are RPGs. That's the best way I can express it. (laughs) You just have to have fun while you're playing.

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

All localization discourse would instantly be solved if, instead of trying to cull "infidels", anti-loc guys paid me instead. I've translated a lot of Dragon Quest-related interviews, including Torishima's DQ III rant. You're in good hands.

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Game designer Tomonobu Itagaki (Dead or Alive, Ninja Gaiden (2004), Devil's Third) unfortunately passed away last year. In celebration of his life, earlier this month 4Gamer interviewed some former Itagaki collaborators—and we've translated everything for you. rentry.co/srfwv96x

Tomonobu Itagaki stands in front of a cherry blossom tree. He is wearing one of his characteristic outfits, an all-black look with a leather jacket over a black shirt and dark sunglasses.

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

After 50 years, Super Sentai, the origin of Power Rangers, is coming to an end. Longtime Sentai producer Shinichiro Shirakura spoke to the Asahi Shimbun about it in a 3-part interview that The Ninth Hour is translating. READ PART 1 HERE: rentry.co/a4erzvev

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Toei executive reveals why Super Sentai is ending; his next challenge

Original article The Super Sentai Series will end with the currently-ongoing No.1 Sentai Gozyuger. In this interview, we spoke to Shinichiro Shirakura (age 60), senior executive officer at series prod...

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tiredsleepy⭐️🍒 @tiredsleepyzzz.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

every time i’m about to respond to someone online with a terrible opinion i have to remind myself that Europol just exposed a SIM farm platform that powered 49 million fake social media accounts. engagement farming is real. don’t raise your cortisol over bots, oomfies

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

6:30 PM, June 22, 2002. Japanese children sat tight, ready to watch the smash hit series Ultraman Cosmos, when they were greeted by this message from the titular superhero himself. They would see Ultraman, but not his host, Musashi Haruno. 🧵

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dot_lvl @dot-lvl.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

i've been described as a "sicko" before for being into shiren and shmups and, to be clear, i understand it's meant as a compliment, but i think i am thoroughly over this sort of "taste in video games as sport" framing

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

The Ninth Hour has fully translated CHAOS LEGION: LEGION MASTER'S GUIDE, an officially published strategy guide for Capcom's long-overlooked action game. files.catbox.moe/ieoa8d.pdf

Cover art of Chaos Legion: Legion Master's Guide, a strategy guide for a 2003 Capcom action game from most of the same devs as Devil May Cry.

The cover shows player character Sieg Wahrheit, main antagonist Victor Delacroix, and background character Siela Riviere.

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Another old-timey #DragonQuest interview, this time on the announcement of Dragon Quest V. Why make it for the Super Famicom? Will IV and V be part of a new trilogy? What about AI-controlled companions? Who's *that* in the key art?! All of that is answered here!

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

A Dragon Quest featurette from Famitsu #150 (1991), diving into some rumors about an alleged secret Chapter 6 in Dragon Quest IV! Such a shame it wasn't true! Hopefully in the future, Enix can put out a cool updated version with the new chapter! We can dream, right?

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Meanwhile on the Everything App: Yuji Asano, a developer on such games as Einhänder, Xexex, and All-Star Pro-Wrestling, reminisced on his work on the X-Men arcade game under Konami — the one where Magneto, Master of Magnet, yells: "X-Men, welcome to die!" [ Thread. ]

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Here's a pair of old interviews from the Dragon Quest III Master's Club book! First up here's series designer Yuji Horii, speaking about the development of DQ III, his influences, and the future of the series as of 1988 — time sure flies...

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

⚠️ ENDING AND POST-GAME SPOILERS! ⚠️ We translated an interview from the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake official guidebook, with Yuji Horii and producer Masaaki Hayasaka. Here, they talk the HD-2D art style, the remake's new content, and the real reason behind adding the Monster Wrangler!

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

An interview with designer Yuji Horii and producer Masaaki Hayasaka, from the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Legendary Guidebook! The pair discuss bringing an RPG classic to high-definition graphics. Horii was very peculiar about the voice acting — even the spell intonations!

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

In honor of the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake releasing tomorrow, we've translated this DQ III pre-release interview with DQ designer Yuji Horii!

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The Ninth Hour - Scanlations & Translations @theninthhour.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

In honor of the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake releasing tomorrow, we've translated this DQ III pre-release interview with DQ designer Yuji Horii!

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