• Tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your company for those who may not know who you are or what you do.

Well, we’re a company based in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, operating since 1996, back in the stone age of the Internet. I had been teaching ESL, and when the Internet showed up I told my wife, “Honey, the world is changing. I’m going to start a company selling anime and stuff.” The first thing I thought of was licensing the PC dating-sim games, which were really not ready for a worldwide release yet (this was still during the DOS-V era in Japan), but we had to start somewhere. We began J-List at the same time, originally to sell used JPOP CDs online.

• With the recent releases of games like Chunsoft’s 999 on the Nintendo DS and the Record of Agarest of Wars on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, it seems as though visual novels and bishoujo games are slowly being accepted in the west. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think we’ll ever see more visual novels in mainstream gaming?

I think they help a lot, and also games like the Persona series, which brought a lot of awareness of some visual novel elements. When we started selling these games back in 1996, the average person had no idea what they were and we had to explain that no, they weren’t anime DVDs, they were games with multiple endings spanning many hours of play. Now there are enough widely viewed anime that reference eroge (thank you, Kirino-chan!) that virtually every fan knows what they are.

Whether major releases will start showing up remains to be seen. As always, the suits at Sony and Nintendo are the problem, not wanting to take chances on games that aren’t automatic sure-fire sellers. Maybe the arrival of downloaded console games will change this somewhat, since games don’t have to appeal to the buyer at Toys R Us or Walmart in order to be successful?

• With the steady stream of announcements that your company has had recently, has it been easier for you to break a profit on your games recently or are most of them still borderline?

Things are hard for us overall, and we have to work to make each game we publish profitable. For the longest time we were working through our back-catalog of G-Collections games we’d licensed and now we’re starting new announcements. (Heh, we’ve got some good ones to go yet, just wait.) While the bad economy sucks for everyone, one good thing is that companies that wouldn’t consider working with us are happy to, when the domestic business climate in Japan is this bad.

• You recently announced that JAST and Peach Princess had acquired the rights to ALcot’s My Girlfriend is the President on your website. Can you explain why this title was chosen in particular?

A lot of fans asked for it, so it was at the top of our list. Definitely the Youtube trailer with English voice-over helped make it popular with fans.

• Does your deal with ALcot include the rights to the game’s fandisc or anything else like the game’s soundtrack?

Not currently, but that’s a good thing to consider releasing if the game does well.

• Are there any more plans to try and license any more of ALcot’s games like Clover Heart’s and Real Imouto ga Iru Ooizumi-kun no Baai or is this a one-and-done deal?

Not at present, though they are nice. Got some other titles to announce before this, then we’ll take stock and see what we want to look at doing next. Obviously we’ll look at what games sold well for us and try to do more like that.

• If I recall correctly, I remember JAST announcing that they acquired the license to Will’s Kikoyouyoku Senko Tenkuu no Yumina last year. How is progress on the game coming along? Is it still on track for a 2011 release date?

Translation is progressing. It’s quite a long game, but it will be good. It’d be nice if we could get this out in time for summer, but I’m not sure (since we have other titles coming that will probably be ready sooner). Obviously conventions are important for us, and we try to get a full lineup of games for fans to pick up at the shows.

• With Nitro+’s Demonbane near completion, were there any significant changes that needed to be made during the localization process that have yet to be announced? What can gamers expect out of this title in terms of censorship, the translation and is there a definitive release date yet?

We’ll do an official post on the JAST USA blog and BBS noting any changes made by either us or Nitroplus, however we have no plans to make any changes to the game or remove or change any images at this time. The translation is going to be outstanding, so good that Jin Haganeya, the scenario writer for the original game, praised the translators highly — the TL Wiki translators did a great job. The delays have come from a couple places, mainly the new game engine (it was ported to Nitro’s newest engine, which looks great, but there were bugs brought about from the switch from 2-byte text to 1-byte) but also the great care Nitroplus is taking to make sure the game comes out right. They’re obsessive about their brand and this is a good thing, although it hasn’t been fun having the game take this long to ship. Also, it’s standard practice that English versions of games are made in between the “real” work at Japanese game companies, and Nitroplus is a very busy company.

• Lastly, is there anything that you would like to say to JAST supporters and/or Inside AX’s readers?

Thanks for all the support, and please continue to support our efforts to bring eroge out in English. We’ve got such a tiny slice of the world here, a niche (adult gaming) within a niche (PC gaming in general), in a world where no adult game can be sold through conventional software retailers because of “family values” or something. This means it’s up to fans to cast votes for the games by buying the titles they want to see more of. We love these games and want to do a ton more, and we hope fans will buy them.

Thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedule Peter. We wish your company continuous success and we’ll see you at next year’s Anime Expo!

For those of you interested in finding out more about JAST USA, please visit their website. Warning: content may be NSFW.