Braving the wait for Rune Factory 4 with gorgeous fanart

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Sorry for the radio silence over the past week! I’m back from presenting at my very first academic conference, so I can finally take a breather and return to a regular blogging schedule. I don’t want to inundate everyone with too much Animal Crossing: New Leaf (lest you think this has converted into an Animal Crossing blog), so today I’ll talk about another game that’s been on my mind: Rune Factory 4.

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It went under my radar a couple weeks ago, but XSEED Games actually dropped a hint on their Facebook page that they might have picked up (or be working on obtaining) the license for Rune Factory 4. In a response to a fan inquiry, an XSEED employee wrote, “We’ve had an itch to work on another Rune Factory game since we loved Frontier so much, so let’s see if we can’t grab a back scratcher somehow…”

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Natsume has brought over all of the Rune Factory games besides Frontier, but the above statement certainly makes it sounds like they don’t have exclusive rights to the series. Personally, I’m a big XSEED Games fan, so I’d be more than happy to purchase the localized Rune Factory 4 from them, but in the end I really don’t care who picks it up, as long as somebody does!

Of course, with a Japanese 3DS now in my possession, I could very easily import the Japanese version of the game, but for titles like these that are likely to come out in English I generally like to support their western releases. So how do I deal with the waiting game? As you can see from the above three examples and the title of this post, with fanart, of course!

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I’m glad to see some really beautiful pieces of Japanese fanart floating around on the internet, and that so many of the characters are represented! But looking at all of this great art is just making me want the game more, if anything. Unfortunately, given the track record of Rune Factory localizations, we probably won’t see it released in English until well into next year. Good thing I have Animal Crossing: New Leaf to keep me busy! And yes, there are already Rune Factory 4/Animal Crossing crossovers in the form of fan-made clothing…

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And I’m sure there’s more where that came from!

About Anne

Also known as apricotsushi. Anne can be written with the kanji for apricot (杏), and sushi was the most quintessentially Japanese thing I could think of when I was 13, resulting in my goofy, albeit memorable, nickname.

9 thoughts on “Braving the wait for Rune Factory 4 with gorgeous fanart”

  1. First of all: Welcome back! I hope your presentation went well?

    Second: You never need to worry about talking about AC: New Leaf too much. Or, well, that’s how *I* feel, anyway 🙂

    Third: I’m kind of amazed that this game’s NA localization hasn’t been announced so far! Maybe Natsume or XSEED is taking a page from Nintendo’s book and not mentioning it until closer to release?

    Fourth: I loooooooove the AC: New Leaf outfit shared here. Really, it’s amazing what folks have been able to come up with so far.

  3. It’s painful how long we have to wait for Harvest Moon/ Rune Factory games.

    I’m going to have to go back and play some of the old ones now. Thanks! 😛

  4. Rising Star publishes these games in Europe/ Australia, and it generally takes a year (or longer) after the US release before we see them.

    Very small publisher, Rising Star. They do a good localisation job usually, but it takes time.

  5. Didya miss me? 😉 I think my presentation went alright, actually! I’ll be doing another one in Sydney in January, so hopefully I’ll be a little less freaked out then.

    I’m glad you don’t mind me writing about Animal Crossing! I have a feeling I’ll be talking about it for many weeks/months to come. I hear you’ve started a new Animal Crossing game yourself??

    Well Natsume/XSEED do have a history of taking a while to release the Rune Factory games. They almost always take about a year, so since the Japanese version came out in July, I have a feeling we won’t be seeing it until mid-2013. As for announcing it, though, I’m not sure! In the case of the latest Harvest Moon game, Natsume gave at least a few months warning, as I recall…

    As for the AC: New Leaf costume… It’s great, isn’t it?! I don’t have the QR code ability yet, but as soon as I do, I’m going to get tons of anime/game-inspired clothes from the internet 😉 There really are some talented people out there – there are threads on 4chan, etc. that catalog all the amazing clothing creations people have come up with. I’ve even seen a Pikachu-themed room floating around, where they’ve got various tiles of all kinds of Pikachu images. So very cute!

  6. Does Rising Star actually do a separate translation job? I actually saw some fans lamenting that Natsume’s translations are a bit messy in terms of grammar/typos, but since I haven’t played one yet I can’t comment on that myself.

  8. Haha! Well one can never have too much Rune Factory/Harvest Moon, right? 😉

    It’s funny how into the series I am, considering I’ve never actually played a Rune Factory game! Which is your favorite? I’ve got Frontier on my xmas list, so that’ll probably be what I start with

  9. Oh, of course I don’t mind you writing about Animal Crossing. Not that you should care either way, though — this is your blog and you should write about what you want!

    Also, yes, I’ve started a new game of the original (GC) Animal Crossing. I’m completely hooked! I keep telling myself I’ll play until 2013 starts and then stop — as I don’t want to feel burned out on AC when New Leaf finally hits the streets here.

    That’s too bad that we’ll likely have to wait until July or later to get Rune Factory 4, by the way. Not sure I’ll actually pick it up, of course, but still …

    Going back to AC: NF — I’m envious of your ability to download all of these great, fan-made costumes and stuff! Hopefully some NA gamers will make similarly stunning stuff — since you know Nintendo probably won’t allow people from different regions to play with each other 😐

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