Who was Working Designs?
A logging-software company that became the West's loudest advocate for the Japanese RPG, and Lunar's second author.
Working Designs was a Redding, California publisher founded in 1986 as a software firm and remade, after programmer Todd Mark's death in 1988, by Victor Ireland into a localization house for the CD era: TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD first, Saturn, then PlayStation. It brought the West dozens of games Japanese publishers considered unexportable, and it is inseparable from Lunar: Working Designs published every North American Lunar from 1993 to 2000, and its Lunar is a distinct edition of the series, not a translation laid over one.
THE PHILOSOPHY
How they translatedHumor as equivalence
Working Designs replaced Japanese jokes Americans could not get with American ones: pop-culture references, fourth-wall breaks, a running debt to This Is Spinal Tap (the old slogan ran Our games go to 11!). Ireland defended the practice as fidelity to effect over letter; players have argued about it for thirty years, which is itself evidence the scripts were read closely.
The notes
Nearly every manual closed with translation notes describing what was changed and why, signed off with the same line: We're nothing without you! In an era of silent alteration, the notes made the localization itself a documented object, and collectors still cite them.
Harder by design
The company also tuned balance. In the original Lunar, English players earned roughly 15 percent less experience and 11 percent less silver than Japanese players, and the remake's bosses scale against the party. The stated economics of the rental era: a game that could not be finished in a weekend was a game bought, not rented.
Packaging as argument
Foil-stamped, full-color manuals when Western manuals were going greyscale; embossed lettering; seven disc-art stamps on The Silver Star to reward collectors; and eventually the $60 deluxe box. Working Designs sold the idea that a translated RPG was a premium object, years before collector's editions were an industry category.
THE END AND THE AFTERLIFE
2005 onwardDecember 12, 2005
After PS2 approval delays gutted its revenue, Working Designs closed, Ireland announcing it on the company's own message board. He founded Gaijinworks in 2006, which has published in the West ever since, in a quieter key. The Lunar rights reverted to Game Arts, setting up the Xseed and GungHo eras.
The voice-print problem
One practical legacy: the English performances Working Designs recorded did not travel with the games. Both the PSP's Harmony (2010) and the Remastered Collection (2025) use entirely new English casts: the beloved old dub survives only on the original discs, which is one more reason those discs stay collectible.