...It seems this website has a larger readership than any of our staff had reason to expect. Tumbleweeds were rolling through our official forums for years before it was unceremoniously closed, and I can count the number of people who use our official email on my fingers. In light of that lack of reader feedback, I'd been content with making our news updates via the Schwer and Schwer Alike blog and reserving this site for actual releases (and the occasional "one-stop shop" for attendees of our Otakuthon panels).

Apparently, some outlets have taken our silence as an indication that we are unresponsive to fan feedback or that Darkside Translations had somehow closed up shop. Rather than ask us for confirmation, clarification, or comment, people have relayed these bits of "news" to us via romhacking forums, random anime blogs, a self-admitted copyright kidnapper's web comic, and even the Internet Hate Machine™. Seriously, now, is everyone outside of the Schwer and Schwer Alike regulars painfully shy? Or is someone actively stripping our contact information from our releases and repacking them? Given that one of our more frequent contacts is the abuse department of a certain popular upload service, evidence points to the latter (much to our chagrin)...

In any event, I figured I may as well post an official update for those who hadn't realized that the staff of Darkside Translations and Schwer and Schwer Alike are one and the same:

1) Rosenkreustilette Freudenstachel, the sequel to Rosenkreuzstilette, was released in Japan last month. My copy of the game arrived Thursday; it goes without saying that Darkside Translations will be releasing an English localization of the game in due time (if you thought otherwise for some reason or other, you really should be asking yourself why you never asked us if that was really the case).

2) Thanks to one of my contacts coming through on his word, physical copies of Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel can now be purchased from J-Box. I've been importing from these guys for years, so I can safely confirm their reliability. Yes, they ship internationally, and, in my experience, I've never had to pay customs. Their visual novel selection is pretty good, too (I personally recommend Go Go Nippon! and Kira Kira).

3) Yes, we are working on an updated re-release of the original Rosenkreuzstilette. This re-release will feature a revised script as well as optional English voiceovers starring a handful of industry professionals. You can listen to the official project announcement, with voice samples from the preliminary cast, here (be sure to play the audio clip at the top of the post and follow along with the transcript).

4) The two above projects will be handled in tandem. This is to maintain consistency in the English scriptwriting and to ensure that subtle hints dropped in the prequel that we may have missed the first time around are not overlooked. That, and we'd like to guarantee that the English actors reprise their roles between games.

There are a few more things in the works that we'd like to announce, but I'll save those for when the time is right. We've already seen what happens when we let the cat out of the bag before we should...

Until then!