The Blue Book and White Book Blues

Is there ever going to be an English version of the Blue Book or White Book published? If not, is there ever going to be a translation developed by someone on this site? I'd really like access to the information in the book...but I have no hope in hell of reading/translating the book myself or of finding someone that can.

As a side note, why on earth is PRIMA the only company that develops strategy guides for the US? Those things are no more than aesthetic reprints of the instruction book along with some copy and pasted gamefaqs.com tricks/codes. It is very rare that you ever see a quality strategy guide (in the US) anymore. I remember Tragic's and Versus Books' Tekken 3 guides were very good, there was some SF Alpha 2 guide that was pretty good, and my brother once saw a SF3 guide that was alright too. After he saw it, we tried to track it down after the home release of SF3:WI on DC. We never saw it again. Those are the only four guides I ever gave respect. Oh yeah, Gamepro's original SFII guide was also a beast...probably the best ever! That makes five total books worth buying out of the whole bunch! And none were PRIMA! Why do people even bother purchasing those pieces of crap!?

 

Is there ever going to be an English version of the Blue Book or White Book published?

No.

If not, is there ever going to be a translation developed by someone on this site

Whole book for free? I wouldn't count on it.

 

why do you need prima or any other type of strategy guide when you have virtuafighter dot com? /versus/images/icons/smile.gif

one way to think about it is to compare just how fanatical the US is about VF to how the japan is; japan is highly video-gaming centered, takes arcade play seriously, and loves virtua fighter; the US is more into computer/console play, the arcade scene is slowly disappearing, the fighting game community is very small, and even smaller when you consider that more americans would rather go play some capcom game than learn VF4. you get the idea. given those facts, who is going to write an awesome VF guide for VF4?

(that of course, doesn't look over the facts that there ARE people who write quality works on VF4, but you'll have to look on the web for them; people like Hyun, uk-guy, nutlog, me(I had to say that))

 

Many of the well-informed western players use particular ways of getting detailed information (through the mooks, experience, etc...). Here are two strong ways I've seen in my travels:

1) Consult the local Japanese player who is actually quite good and knows what he's talking about. In NY's scene, Hiro (who deserves the good words many have spoken of him in a high tone). I assume in the Bay Area, this is Yusuke aka Akapan.

2) Since option 1 isn't always available (and is downright hard to find--at least in the US), the alternative is to translate various sites and message boards. Korean and various chinese (including Taiwan, Singapore, etc...) forums provide great insights and content. Obviously, there are Japanese forums that provide great content. The hard part is probably to find these sites, then the next hard part is to understand the translations of these sites if you are relying on a translator like <a target="_blank" href=http://babelfish.altavista.com>Babelfish</a>.

Option 2 requires work, but it's still better than nothing. Being in a scene where players truly understand the game, well, you'd be quite lucky and it'd be your best bet.

Fortunately, the annual gatherings and small VF trips are excellent ways to learn more about the game as well--and that's been my primary form of "VF Education" aside from independant practice and trying hard to understand the game.

-Chanchai