Tom

@iiotenki

The Tony Hawk of Tokimeki Memorial

He/him
freelansations.com/

A most of the time Japanese>English game translator and writer and all the time dating sim wonk.

❓ Ask Archive

cohost.org/iiotenki/tagged/tom%20talks

Tom @iiotenki6/29/2024, 8:33 AM

xdaniel @xdaniel

Bekoha @bekoha5/1/2024, 4:16 AM

K.K. Kinema Font Lab's "Movie Subtitle Font" / キネマ・フォント・ラボ「手書きの映画字幕書体」

Also known as "Cinema Calligraphy" (according to title field of the font file) and "MovieFont-OTF.otf".
Seemingly almost lost media. A nice Japanese font from 2005 that tries to replicate a feeling of older handwritten subtitle cards, similar to Dynacomware's DFCinemaRin and Fontworks' NewCinema.

Originally hosted on and sold exclusively through its own website, which was seemingly abandoned relatively quickly and has been offline for more than 10 years at this point according to Wayback Machine's snapshots. From what other people posted on other platforms, recent-ish attempts to get in touch with the company directly were unsuccessful.

After many hours of trying to find a reupload of the file (and even more hours before that of trying to identify what *that Deadly Premonition 1 subtitle font* is actually called), I managed to find a single working reupload.

DOWNLOAD HERE: archive.org

#fonts #The Cohost Global Feed #preservation #deadly premonition

Variant @variantxyz5/2/2024, 3:10 AM

If someone makes an 8x8 version of it...

I'll throw it into my next romhack project.

Variant @variantxyz6/29/2024, 12:49 AM

A month later I finally got around to trying it in DW3

Showing off @bekoha's 8-bit versions of this font in DW3

From left to right: Normal, Kinema Movie Subtitle Font 8-bit, Kinema Movie Subtitle Font 8-bit narrowed

No, I didn't sync-up the recordings :x.

It's a pretty cute font, I kinda wish we got the English DW3 with this font when I was a kid.

#fonts #vwf #dragon quest #gameboy color

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in reply to @bekoha's post:

Cian @SeshohoCian5/1/2024, 10:01 PM

oh hell yes, ive been looking for this for years. distant cousin of NewCinemaA...

Bekoha @bekoha5/1/2024, 10:28 PM

Probably not even that distant! Comparing it to other "Cinema"-type fonts, both this and Fontworks' New Cinema B share a surprisingly similar "闇", suggesting a stronger connection

Top to bottom: Kinema Font Lab's Cinema Calligraphy, DynacomWare's DFCinemaRin, Fontworks' FOT-NewCinemaB, Cinecaption

Cinecaption's (another "cinema"-styled font, distributed for free by its creator) website mentions that some of the glyphs are based on the notes that a different person published online, and that person basically says that those notes are them happening to catch a movie with handwritten subtitles on TV, recording it and then redrawing these. Considering that Fontworks' New Cinema is an "official" successor based on works of and approved by the original letterer Hideo Sato, I wouldn't be surprised if Kinema was ~~traced from the movies he did subtitles for~~ directly inspired by his works, maybe utilising similar techniques to the person who published their notes mentioned earlier.

@felix5/2/2024, 12:42 AM

For a while this and/or NewCinema was my Papyrus, since I kept noticing this really eclectic choice in Capcom/Konami games and I guess Deadly Premonition as well. Nice find!

Bekoha @bekoha5/2/2024, 2:05 AM

Haven't actually encountered this one much outside of DP, but Latin character set of New Cinema is a certified instantly recognizable classic for sure! Even outside of Capcom and Konami games it keeps popping up, I remember seeing it in Y:LAD on in-universe designs and the most recent example would be Logiart Grimoire. In a very ironic twist of fate Deadly Premonition developers also chose it as the main subtitle font for the sequel, permanently muddying up the search results for people like me 😂

Xīn Jīn Mèng @xinjinmeng5/2/2024, 4:25 PM

Oh my stars, I'd always assumed that this was one of the thousand-dollar fonts. Thank you for finding this.

Bekoha @bekoha5/2/2024, 4:35 PM

Somewhat close! According to the archived font pricing page, OpenType version of the font would've costed the buyer ¥39,800, which would roughly be $362 in 2005, assuming 1 USD = 110 JPY as that seems to be the average conversion rate during 2005.

in reply to @variantxyz's post:

Bekoha @bekoha6/29/2024, 1:53 AM

Honestly looks kinda better than I expected working purely in a vacuum? The biggest issue to me is li pair looking a bit weird, but other than that looks kinda alright, even with the missing characters. Thanks for trying it!

Variant @variantxyz6/29/2024, 4:14 AM

Yeah, personally I think the angle on the exclamation is a lot more pronounced in an 8-bit font, so I'd probably decrease the angle a bit, but otherwise, they're pretty good.

For the 'li', the 'l' probably needs to have one more pixel for its width... or maybe one less pixel on the i? I don't think it looks egregious at any rate.

Tom