Breath of Fire/Trivia

• Development Hell: As it relates to dedicated home gaming consoles and handhelds, the entire series has essentially been in Development Hell since 2003 or so.
  • Camelot Games in particular (who has done game development for Capcom and is best known for the Golden Sun series) has in particular expressed interest in writing a new Breath of Fire, but Capcom isn't biting at their offer.
  • In a different flavour of Development Hell, the PSP port of Breath of Fire III ended up as a No Export for You (though region free and easily imported) for North American audiences thanks to Sony Entertainment US's port requirements.^[1] Of note, no other division of Sony Entertainment has this strict of a rule on console ports...
  • There are also licensing issues surrounding Breath of Fire I (for which Square did the translation) which may complicate any further remakes and ports.
  • Even cameos related to Breath of Fire seem to be stuck in Development Hell, as noted in the Capcom vs. Whatever listing.
• Fan Translation: Breath of Fire II's translation was rather poorly done, with bland dialogue and many references removed. So a retranslation patch was made, rewriting the script from the ground up and adding some features the original lacked, such as a dash button. It also restored features the German translation (which served as its base) removed, such as the ability to buy items in bulk.
  • Scanlation has also been done with much of the material in official artbooks and manga adaptations, particularly the manga adaptation of Breath of Fire IV (largely because, of course, the artbooks were Japan-only, and the manga has not yet been licensed in English).
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Presently the case for Dragon Quarter (the only game in the franchise that so far has never been re-released), Fan Translation Breath of Fire I with the non-Woolseyism names, Fan Translation of Breath of Fire II, Breath of Fire III in North American markets.
  • Arguably the entire franchise was in this state in North America for the better part of 8 years, save for Breath of Fire I and Breath of Fire II's GBA ports and Breath of Fire II's Wii Virtual Console re-release (the last game in the franchise was released in 2003 and, thanks to SEUS, the remake of Breath of Fire III ended up being No Export for You). Breath of Fire IV saw re-release on Playstation Network as a "PS One Classic" in September 2011, but has never had a non-PSN re-release in North America; Breath of Fire III" has still not seen a North America re-release, not even as a PS One Classic. Fortunately, the PSP Euro version of Breath of Fire III is playable on North American PSPs due to the lack of region encoding.
  • The Comic Blade Avarus Comic Book Adaptation of Breath of Fire IV is technically in this state in non-Francophone, non-Cantonese territories and is only available in English and Portuguese via Fan Translation.
• Name's the Same/One Mario Limit: Aside from the in-series examples... there's both another Ryu that is a ninja, and a Ryu that is a martial artist. The latter also came from Capcom.
• No Export for You: The PSP-port of Breath of Fire III. Maddeningly, even though it was translated into complete English for an European release, Sony's US division requires a content increase of 20% for a rerelease, so even though it was originally intended to be released Stateside, Sony gave them the shaft...
  • Two Gaiden Game sidestories to Breath of Fire IV, plus two other Breath of Fire IV-related spinoffs (a port of the Fishing Minigame and a Great Dalmuti/Millionaire game with Breath of Fire IV characters), never have been released outside Japan for the same reason (Japanese smartphone only).
  • The Windows port of Breath of Fire IV was, similar to the PSP-port of Breath of Fire III, only released in Europe and Asia. This, unlike the situation with the PSP-port of Breath of Fire III, was apparently Capcom's decision.
  • Breath of Fire, as a series, does have a decent amount of written spinoff material (in the case of manga adaptions of Breath of Fire I and Breath of Fire II, this even goes into Expanded Universe territory, and definitely so with the artbooks in later games). And pretty much with the exception of game playthrough guides, every bit of it is Japan-only. The sole exception is with the Comic Blade Avarus manga adaptation of Breath of Fire IV, which has a licensed Chinese translation via Tong Li Publishing (as of September 2009) and a licensed French version published by Ki-oon (as of February 2010). Needless to say, hope is springing eternal there will eventually be a licensed English version as well, and there is an active effort by the English-language BoF fandom to get potential licensees interested.
• The Wiki Rule: The Breath of Fire Wiki.

1. ↑ Which call for at least 20% new content; Sony Entertainment US essentially declared the PSP port of Breath of Fire III didn't have enough "new" content to be released in North America.