I think it if you are going to shorten the name from "Select Game", it should definitely be shortened to "Games" instead of "Game", because it takes you to a menu of games.
After that, I think that is pretty much most of the basic game done. The magazines and manuals are all done, the challenges are all done, the game descriptions are done. All the Arino, phone, and discussion (in-room/shop) dialog is all done. A lot of this will probably need some tweaking after but it's shaping up nicely. I seem to remember my earliest translations needed some patching (should I use Tasogare Town as a phonetic label or the translated Twilight Town? The latter?) but during testing I hope we can all help to iron out the translation.
HumbertHumbert> That helps a lot, thanks. Now that I thought about it, the shorter the better. In other parts of the game, I refer to these sections as simply "Games" and "Magazines" so a one word option is probably fine. It looks a bit better that way anyway IMHO.
Cool. Yeah, I checked and in the Retro Game Challenge release, "Games," "Chat" and "Magazines" are used for those screens. I changed "Start" (from your translation as "Start Game") to "Play" for the challenge selection screen, since that was how RGC phrased it, just for consistency. The new mockups are below.
The names are about as short as I can think to make them, but space is really tight. "Magazines" and "Challenges" just barely fit with a bit more scaling. "Game Shop" and "JoyCoLand" could fit, but I used "Shop" since they would be noticeably squished - I'd need to severely scale the text horizontally to make them fit. I went ahead and removed the red selector arrow just in case that makes the relevant part easier to import, if these are acceptable.
Nice work, but it seems like there's a lack of whitespace around all the text... This lack of whitespace sort of makes it look misaligned and the options aren't quite separated from one another enough. Perhaps going a tiny bit smaller with the fonts would work better.
if it's a problem, you may change the word for a synonym:
Magazine synonyms:serial, monthly or weekly;zine, fanzine, issue
Challenge synonyms: test, trial
I wouldn't recommend it tho.
Why don't you try taking the longest word's format and apply it to
the rest of the menu, so everything looks the same?
For the record, I actually like how it is now and I have no issues with
Magazine and Challenges looking a bit narrow.
Thanks for the feedback! I just want to make sure I understand, so I went back and compared to the original:
(pics)
It appears the original actually has less white space (since the kanji generally take up a fuller rectangular space), and I tried to retain the same buffer on the top/bottom of text. So I must be missing something - can you clarify?
Awesome news. And sorry for being nitpicky, Aaron. I'm a bit like that when it comes to aesthetics and all too willing to give feedback on something seemingly small like that.
Fonts used are DejaVu Sans and Sansation respectively. Though maybe a long boldish font like the one you used is more fitting to the original.
I think your version looks just fine. I'd rather have bold than a 4px border of whitespace on all sides of each word.I think we're all on the same page that this is a small nitpicky issue, but I applaud your thoroughness in making the mockups. For reference, here is a screenshot from the original Retro Game Challenge (I could only find one off YouTube quickly), with mine for comparison:
Basically, I think my font gets pretty close to the style and line thickness, and you can see the original setup did in fact squish "Magazines" a bit to make it fit (compare the "M"), so I think I still prefer mine. That said, if people think yours is better, I'm fine with it either way.
I think we're all on the same page that this is a small nitpicky issue, but I applaud your thoroughness in making the mockups. For reference, here is a screenshot from the original Retro Game Challenge (I could only find one off YouTube quickly), with mine for comparison:
Basically, I think my font gets pretty close to the style and line thickness, and you can see the original setup did in fact squish "Magazines" a bit to make it fit (compare the "M"), so I think I still prefer mine. That said, if people think yours is better, I'm fine with it either way.