Toby Fox’s Undertale is coming soon to PlayStation systems, and publisher 8-4 sat down with the PlayStation Blog to talk about the porting process, and the indie title’s Japanese localization. There is a lot of good information for Undertale fans to delve into!
First, there’s the story of how the PlayStation 4 and Vita ports came to be:
When Toby Fox, Undertale’s creator, first approached us about working on the game, it wasn’t to bring it to consoles – it was to localize it for Japan. (As some of you may know, 8-4 is primarily a localization company; we’ve been localizing games back and forth between Japan and the west since 2005.) So at first, our goal was (relatively) simple: give this game the best Japanese localization possible, and that’s it!
But along the way, we realized that just localizing it into Japanese wasn’t going to be enough. We put a ton of effort into the localization, so how could we make it so a wider audience could experience it? Especially in Japan, where the game hadn’t seen an official Japanese-language release yet. The answer? We would bring it to PS4 and Vita!
Given a market like Japan, it makes a lot of sense to port Undertale to consoles, as a console or handheld will get a lot more visibility than a PC title.
Additionally, 8-4 has added a little something to this release of Undertale, cosmetic borders:
BUT… since Undertale’s native resolution is displayed in a 4:3 format, we called on original Undertale artist Temmie Chang to create some optional borders that can be turned on to fill the space surrounding the screen. (Spoiler: they’re really pretty!)
There’s two varieties – the pixel art “Sepia” border, which provides a nice floral design, and the hand-drawn “Dynamic” border, which actually changes in real-time depending on which area of the game you’re in. There’s also a “Simple” option if you just want to throw a literal border around the game screen.
A nice touch, as especially for console players. As the PlayStation 4 version of Undertale will be played on a bigger screen than a computer monitor. Otherwise there’d be a lot of dead space.
Undertale for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita will be available August 15. It’ll support cross-buy, so one purchase will allow players to play it on both PS4 and Vita.
(Source: PlayStation Blog)
