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Fooling around on Wayback and discovered that the defunct Japanese Spy Fiction website was hosted on Sammy's old domain as well as Sega's. Archive.org's preservation of the Sammy mirror is more complete than that of the Sega original and includes some of the Range Murata production sketches. Unfortunately: most of the sketches for the main characters are missing (no Nick, Sam, or Michael; very few of Billy or Sheila), and none of the "vocabulary" pages I wanted to translate are present.
IIRC, the missing sketches weren't revelatory - no great shots or drastically different designs (save for Sheila, who, as expected from Range Murata, got a passel of sketches and a variety of designs being the female lead, but the quality on all of them was rather rough). The vocabulary was also mostly duplicated in the in-game Garbologies and in the official guide. It's the principle, though. And I do remember one tidbit from the vocab about how Kelly Wong's guards were called "Black Butterflies" because they all consisted of handsome men and were meant to conjure the image (expressed in a Chinese four-character phrase) of "black butterflies around a red rose," the red rose being Wong. I like little world-building tidbits like that, and it makes me wonder if there were any others I missed in the now-vanished webpages.
Sigh. Always back up your files, kids.
There was, however, salvaged a early sketch of Dietrich in a more sedate design:
He looks like a watchmaker.
Also on archive.org: Parts of the U.S. Spy Fiction website. Access Games took it over after it lapsed, so there's newer, Japanese-language content mixed in with the vintage stuff, but if you sift through and mind the dates, you'll find a Flash animation where Nick gets a kinda nifty intro (not prudent to focus on his eyes so much there, though) and an old Swery Q&A where he weighs in on the "pirate vs. ninja" question.
Anyhow, while we're at it: Here, have a fanart of Dietrich.
.
IIRC, the missing sketches weren't revelatory - no great shots or drastically different designs (save for Sheila, who, as expected from Range Murata, got a passel of sketches and a variety of designs being the female lead, but the quality on all of them was rather rough). The vocabulary was also mostly duplicated in the in-game Garbologies and in the official guide. It's the principle, though. And I do remember one tidbit from the vocab about how Kelly Wong's guards were called "Black Butterflies" because they all consisted of handsome men and were meant to conjure the image (expressed in a Chinese four-character phrase) of "black butterflies around a red rose," the red rose being Wong. I like little world-building tidbits like that, and it makes me wonder if there were any others I missed in the now-vanished webpages.
Sigh. Always back up your files, kids.
There was, however, salvaged a early sketch of Dietrich in a more sedate design:
He looks like a watchmaker.
Also on archive.org: Parts of the U.S. Spy Fiction website. Access Games took it over after it lapsed, so there's newer, Japanese-language content mixed in with the vintage stuff, but if you sift through and mind the dates, you'll find a Flash animation where Nick gets a kinda nifty intro (not prudent to focus on his eyes so much there, though) and an old Swery Q&A where he weighs in on the "pirate vs. ninja" question.
Anyhow, while we're at it: Here, have a fanart of Dietrich.
.
