Some bad news to report. Major updates of this site are going to be put off a bit longer than anticipated due to some unavoidable computer issues. Every thing should be back to normal within a week. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Just a quick update to address a few lingering issues.

1. Some of you may have noticed that the site has been down quite often over the past few weeks. I brought this up to my host and have been moved to a different server. Since then, I’ve not personally witnessed any issues. Let’s hope it stays that way.
2. The site still has quite a few missing sections, which in turn bring you to a 404 Error page. I’ve been working on gettin this under control and am on track to have at least a few of these finished by this weekend. I’m not very happy about this whole issue, but it’s being dealt with as much as possible.

Thanks for your patience with these matters. The worst of it is over, thankfully.

1Up added impressions for the English version of Persona 3 to their site a few days back. It covers some of the basic aspects of the game, as expected, but most notably it discusses some of the localization that’s in place.

In an early version of the English game we played, the localization is shaping up nicely. Fitting American teen-slang to Japanese kids usually has disastrous results in other games and anime productions, but here it at least fits with the game’s stylish presentation. And since the voice acting doesn’t sound too mechanical, fans (and cynical gamers in general) shouldn’t be disappointed.

Be sure to check out the rest of the impressions for more information.

I received an e-mail today from Alex informing me that Lightbox 2.0 might be better to use than Lightbox Plus for the site. I think this was somewhere in the back of my mind; I was uncomfortable with Lightbox Plus (let’s face it, image resizing by a browser isn’t exactly going to result in quality output). and Alex’s e-mail kind of just snapped something in my mind that made me realize the best course of action was to drop it entirely.

As I went to find Lightbox 2.x (which, incidentally, was actually installed here briefly before making way for Lightbox Plus), I stumbled upon a different version known as Slimbox. It did the same thing, but its file size was substantially lower. This isn’t important so much for my bandwidth as much as it’s important for the stability, processing consumption and speed of the site for the users. I figured it was worthwhile to use it instead. I feel that it runs noticeably more quickly.

So, in a round-about way, thanks to Alex for finalizing my opinion :). You can still check out our About Lightbox/Slimbox page for more information. It’s been updated to reflect the change and contains some information that you might find useful.

In addition, if anyone has any suggestions for things they’d like to see on the site, feel free to contact us. Personally, I’m open to anything that will improve Digital Devil Database in any way.

Thanks!

I’ve gotten a few e-mails asking where some of our older game sections are. Part of the reason it is taking so long for these sections to appear on the new design is due to some changes in construction of stuff behind the scenes.

Our resident programmer, Alan, recently created new image gallery software that has been implemented into the site. He’s tweaked some random things for me and I think we’re both happy with the final result. Now that this is finished, there’s more reason to actually bother with the additional sections. If we were to make the sections beforehand, it would pretty much double the work involved. It just didn’t really seem worthwhile.

The result of that specifically is that gallery pages (screen shots, merchandise, art, etc.) in individual game sections now display differently. They still make use of thumbnails, but we now have something called Lightbox Plus enabled when viewing the large versions. You can read more about that on our about Lightbox page. Most importantly for me, all of this is handled as close to automatically as possible.

In any case, I expect that the older sections will appear on the site (as opposed to bringing you to nasty 404 pages) within the week.

Atlus updated its press site today with a whole bunch of English Persona 3 images. These are actually the first translated screens to surface. They have made their rounds on a bunch of web sites already, but assuming you’ve not seen them you can check them out on our Persona 3 screenshot page.

Something I noticed is that Aegis appears to be called “Aigis” in these screens. I wonder if that was deliberate or just a typo?