I pre-ordered Pier Solar from Watermelon. Took an eternity to actually be released.
Same here. I was close to actually cancelling my order, because I no longer believed it would come out. It was the first game to be released in this fashion, and the project itself was insanely ambitious. I know Super Fighter Team had their translation releases, but this was the first game developed from the ground up. All in all, I'm glad I've waited, because the finished product was impressive, to say the least.
However, I do feel WM's way of doing business sucks. I used to be active on their old forums, but ever since the redesign, I can't really wrap my head around how that place works. On top of that, the "magical game factory" idea is insane. It's all unnecessarily convoluted. Focus on one thing, get it done, move onto the next project.
They have definitely scored some negative points with me over the years. First thing was the Pier Solar release and its CD soundtrack. They screwed up the CD pressing, and Mega CDs were unable to read the disc properly. They blamed it on the old hardware, of course, but their solution was to release an image, so that people could burn their own CD-R, which worked properly. So effectively, they would claim the Mega CDs laser can't handle their pressed CD, but somehow can handle the CD-R? Please.
Another thing was the "posterity" edition of Pier Solar, where you could have your own message in the end credits of the game. This was meant to be something special for people who helped to finance the development. It was a cool idea, and a well deserved tribute to all those involved, I thought. Well ... as soon as they have started releasing ports, they started selling posterity messages again, removing the old ones. I have even asked them directly about this, but got no answer. I did confirm this by watching end credits of Dreamcast and PC versions. Same goes for console releases, I guess. Sure, my text will always be a part of the Megadrive release, but without it, there would be no console ports, so I always thought this was a dick move on their part.
I have paid for Paprium ages ago, but the story repeats yet again. No updates, no news, just silence and endless waiting. I'm still excited about the game, but does it have to be like this every time? Their forums are useless. No one has a clue. There seems to be no information flowing from the inside, so it's just a bunch of relatively new members throwing guesses around, and older members playing the expert role with more guesses. People are asking if the game has already shipped, because they have no idea. Someone else asked about Paprium 2. It's a mess.
