Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

Same for me. Would be great to play that game in English one day. For now, take a look at some in-game-impressions of Bakumatsu Korinden Oni. Especially the second vid looks really cool to me. I like it!
Btw, does anyone know what the term "Bakumatsu Korinden: Oni" means in English?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyofZ3nhwEI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsk6XKTyTgg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0if71RViAIc&feature=related

Something like: "The Closing Days of the Tokugawa Shogunate - End of Edo era - Descent Legend - Oni" (One reading of "Oni" appears to be "Ogre".)

One possible English title might be: The Legend of the Edo Descent - Oni -or just Oni-II.

The story begins when four sailing ships arrive from foreign powers. These emissaries demand that Japan end its isolation.
The plot following that is somewhat akin to a Japanese version of Chaos Seed, but I don't believe the game requires building dungeons.

How about "Oni - The Passing of the Edo Era"?

Or Oni - Decline of the Edo Period, keeping with encyclopedic nomenclature and borrowing "decline" from Edward Gibbon's work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I think keeping the name Oni in there would be appropriate, too.

Okay Pete, I have examined three of the games:

1. Mahoujin Guru Guru

Cute as all get-out! Huge sprites - Action RPG - FAQ by Ritchie released - Looks like a medium-sized game with around seven towns.
I will help with this one if the team wants to do it.

2. Shinseiki Odysselya

Looks good right from the start, Intro reminds me of Feda, music puts me in the mood to settle in,
but I couldn't figure out the battle system from shinola! Tried on BSNES and ZSNES. After the Intro,
a battle screen comes up with three monsters carrying femur bones, but no matter what I tried,
going in and out of screens, pushing everything, but I couldn't get my chars to start the freaking battle!
Wondering if it's emulating correctly. Title screen is a bit woozy. Battle menus look incomplete.
No FAQ released.

3. Shinseiki Odysselya-II

Oh, yeah! I would act as coordinator on this one in a heartbeat! FAQ by Ritchie, game looks Huuuuge! Right down my alley.

Plot: Town burns. Chars flee on ship. Enemy ship catches them and burns ship. Chars cast upon shore of strange land.
Chars wind up in a town. They follow a man into a cave. Boom, you're in battle! Nice-looking battle imagery.
Outside the cave, a handy fountain for free HP/MP restoration is right there! Weapon shop in town, etc. I like it!

Bongo`, have you ever checked out this one?

Sounds good! I like the fact you took Edward Gibbon's work as inspiration. Oni - Decline of the Edo Period - very catchy in my eyes


Concerning the three games you've mentioned:

1. Mahoujin Guru Guru: Cute as hell! I've played it for round about one hour and it looks really cool although I didn't understand anything. The second installment of the game (Mahoujin Guru Guru II) is even better. So maybe this sequel would be the right one to start with...

2. Shinseiki Odysselya and Shinseiki Odysselya-II: I only know Shinseiki Odysselya-II. Taking some screenshots as basis of a decision I would say Shinseiki Odysselya-II is way better than its prequel.
Have a look: http://www.dqtranslations.com/projects. Seems they had started working at Odysselya-II some time ago but abandoned it. Maybe they've already hacked or dumped it or they could give precious advice?!?

As to Odysselya 1, I remember Bongo` said he made compression tools for the game before. I tried to do it, but it was too difficult for me then. I had almost finished a decompressor, but still had some bugs I never fixed.
(seems it was good enough to have been officially localized as The Lost Mission, but was canceled at the last minute. Too bad no proto has ever surfaced.)

Hehe, you are right and I just looked at the nasty code written back in 2005.
Messy! Anyway, I have a game that people have been passing over for a long time but
I will not say it's name.

I have work done on it already but the table file has not been created yet.
Well, three of them have but the main script table is missing the all important
kanji characters.

As for S-O-II, I looked at that game a while back. It was a cool looking game but
not too sure about the story because I don't speak japanese!

OK, over the course of the last week I took some time and played all the games on the list for round about one hour each.

First of all I liked them all. The only game I found a bit disappointing was Popful Mail. Maybe I was a bit too enthusiastic about it when constructing the list.

So, here are the details:

Honestly, I was stunned when playing Far East of Eden Zero. I can't believe such a great game has never been translated. The graphics look as good as those of the the best SNES-RPGs I've ever played in terms of presentation: Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, Secret of Mana 2, Terranigma. This is not one of those mediocre RPGs out there - this is upper class! The last game I've played which matched the level of FEoEZ was Secret of Mana 2.

Second place goes to Bakumatsu Korinden: Oni. Not surprising at all. Don't know which one to put at third place though. There are some other really good looking games (frankly speaking almost all of them, especially Daikaijuu Monogatari II, Traverse Starlight & Prairie and DunQuest) but Oni and Far East of Eden stand apart from them.

My personal priority-list would be:
1.) Far East of Eden Zero
2.) Bakumatsu Korinden: Oni

So, if there's anybody out there wanting to start a new project: Have a look at these two games!
I know you guys at Dynamic Designs are suffering from severe project-overload at the moment. But maybe after having finished Chaos Seeds, Burning Heroes and Silva Saga II there is room for new projects. If this is the case I would really appreciate if you could take these two games into consideration at least. Maybe you'll like them as much as I do.

One final thought: The really great games deserve to be translated by the most skilled and dedicated people. If you tackle it from that perspective, Far East of Eden Zero and Dynamic Designs would be a perfect match. Have a look at the past: Lennus II and Mystic Ark. There you see what happens, if great games are translated by great people .

Even though it's idle right now, FEoEZ is a project of byuu's and Tomato's. I would imagine that anyone who undertakes the project would have to climb a huge mountain in the programming and translation aspects.

http://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=520

wow, thanks for the link. I didn't know they are working at it. The last post is symptomatic though:

"Hasn't been started, things aren't looking so good for it.
If there were more of me that'd be great, but I always have so much other stuff to do." quote from byuu.

Maybe it's possible to join forces at some point in the future.