MID-WEEK UPDATE

First off, I just want to reiterate the purpose of our campaign:
We are a positive campaign that is attempting to communicate with Nintendo for the release of three critically-acclaimed RPGs: Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower. Part of our campaign being positive means we do not  promote or condone:

• piracy
• console modification
• boycott of Nintendo products
• smear campaigns against Nintendo and its executives

Instead, the approach Operation Rainfall has taken is a positive campaign that involves:

• Written and verbal petitions and pleas to Nintendo and its subsidiaries
• Submission of works of fanart, music, poetry, etc.
• Retail purchases of Nintendo products
• Encouraging a positive view of Nintendo as a company, even though we may disagree with some of the business decisions they have made recently
• Encouraging Nintendo executives to see that there exists a market for RPGs, "niche" titles, and "core" games on Wii console by purchasing these titles and recommending them to others.

In any community made up of thousands of individuals, opinions are bound to differ and there will be people on opposite extremes in favor of and against the overall goals of the community. The above statements, however reflect the stance that the administration of Operation Rainfall have taken. We cannot force our viewpoints on individuals in our community but attempt to uphold those standards as much as possible without taking away our members' freedom of speech. If, however, we see individuals posting negative remarks or messages that go against our overall mission, we will warn such individuals. Repeat offenses will result in permanent ban from the Operation Rainfall Facebook page.

I hope I was able to clear a few things up!

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Podcasts and future Weekly Rain updates

Our The Weekly Rain updates and The Downpour podcast have gotten off track lately due to our staff all having busy schedules with work, school, and other outside activities. I just wanted everyone to know that starting this month we're hoping to have things back on track for everyone. Our "Weekly Rain" updates have been kinda backwards, that will also be fixed beginning with the 11/13-11/19 update, which will be posted on Saturday, November 19th. We'll be offering both a full-length blog post as well as a simplified summary poster that can be easily spread around the internet.

Here what to expect from now on:

• (1) monthly podcast (The Downpour) (Expect to hear details on this later)
• (1) weekly update (The Weekly Rain) posted each Saturday (covering events that took place between the previous Sunday through the current Saturday as well as news and reminders for the upcoming week) in both a full-text blog AND graphic summary.
• (1) Monthly Wii Game Online Tournament (This month will be Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom on November 27)
• (1) Monthly Monster Hunter Tri Party (Held the first Friday of each month, the next one will be December 2)

Now that things are back on track, here's the recap for this past week:



1) Mission 3-3 has been postponed until Monday, Nov. 21st
2) Translation is on track and proceeding smoothly, thanks to our volunteers (We will name our full list of volunteers in our next blog post)
3) Mission 3-4 (The final mission of Phase 3) is on track for Sun. Nov. 20th


EXPLANATION:
1 & 2) MISSION 3-3 (CODENAME: COLORING BOOK) - The purpose of 3-3 is to get in touch with Nintendo Co., Ltd., located in Japan with a thought provoking letter sent in by the masses of Operation Rainfall followers, combined with works of fanart, emails, and a full print out of our petition and the many review scores praising Xenoblade Chronicles from the UK and US Importers.

3) MISSION 3-4 (Skyward!) - Mission 3-4 is a campaign to raise awareness of the titles globally by encouraging those in Europe and Japan who may not have heard of Xenoblade, The Last Story, or Pandora's Tower to give the games a shot. This campaign will be similar to Nintendo's own "If you liked ____, you may like ____" campaigns, in this case, using The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and the three OpRa RPGs. We'll be spreading the message to everything we can that is attached to Skyward Sword. This is set to begin on Sun. Nov. 20th, but can actually be given a slight headstart this weekend with the Skyward Sword "Intend to Buy" surveys.

We ask that, if possible, you refrain from leaving comments specifically requesting Xenoblade, The Last Story, and/or Pandora's Tower on Nintendo's Facebook page until further notice.

Hopefully that clears things up for everyone. Have a great week!

The Weekly Rain - October 30-November 5, 2011

Time to Reload, Stay tuned for further updates.
This week Amazon.com has taken away the ability to pre-order Xenoblade under its working title Monado: Beginning of the World.

This was our primary source of ammunition in our campaign, and was one of our driving forces to gaining momentum. Monado sat for nearly a week at #1 (All Games) and for nearly two weeks (Wii Games), and went on to hit #1 again multiple times during the course of our campaign. The fact that the page still exists on Amazon is reassurance that they have simply frozen the ability to pre-order until they receive confirmation from Nintendo.

Either way, this makes it more important than ever before to get the message across to Nintendo Co., Ltd. (Japan) and Nintendo of America through written letters, phone calls, and emails. Please stay tuned for more information when we will target a call-in/email/physical mail date.

SSBB Tourney Winners!
First off, we'd like to say that our first ever Wii game tournament ran much smoother than we anticipated, and the few bumps along the way are just a part of the learning process. We will be interviewing our winners on our blog next week!

The winners of our Super Smash Bros. Brawl Tournament are: 

Amateur
Name: Eric Llarenas
Username: Cerix
Character: Toon Link

Pro
Name: Jordan Fostinye
Username: xLeex
Character: Pit

Congratulations!

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Monthly Monster Hunter Tri Parties!
Operation Rainfall will be holding monthly hunting parties in Monster Hunter Tri. Because of the server region blocking, we will only be able to play with people from our own region.

The first hunt begins on Friday, November 4 (This Friday!). If you'd like to join us, be sure to sign up on our Event page:

Click here to sign up for our November 4 MH3 Party!

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Mission 3-3: Codename: Coloring Book
Please have all of your artwork/poetry/essays/videos/music/etc linked to us in some form by 11:59 PM PST Monday, November 14, 2011.

Click here for full details

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Operation Rainfall en Español
Because NTSC-U region includes both North and South America, many of our followers speak Spanish as their primary language. We want to welcome our new Spanish Team, who will be providing official translations for Spanish speakers, and eventually, we are hoping that our Spanish Team will be able to get in touch with the Latin American representatives at Nintendo of America.

Operation Rainfall en Español (Official Facebook Page)

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Open Letter to Nintendo of America
The staff of Operation Rainfall will be writing a personal letter to the management and marketing teams at Nintendo of America. This will be separate from any of our phases/missions. Is there anything you would like us to address in our letter? Please let us know in the comments below.

Have a great week!

     Operation Rainfall Staff

Submit your works of fan art!

Yesterday, Operation Rainfall held a large initiative to reach out to NCL (Japan). This was a targeted approach that was only meant to last one day. However, if you missed that opportunity yesterday, we strongly encourage you to send your email to the Nintendo offices in Japan ASAP. All of the information needed to email NCL can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/notes/operation-rainfall/mission-3-2-starts-now/265215216847363

Also, we are currently accepting submissions for Mission 3-3, which involves sending physical artwork, poetry, essays, music, and videos to the offices at NCL in a single, giant package. Find out more about how to submit your work here:
http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/mission-3-3-codename-coloring-book-t264.html

This will also include videos, music, poetry, or any other fan submission you'd like us to send to Nintendo. We will be sending DVDs containing the videos and CDs containing any music submissions.

We will also be including in our package to NCL and NOA printed versions of the many excellent reviews that Xenoblade is getting by online review sites and print journals. Xenoblade Chronicles currently has a Metacritic Score of 93, which is actually very high (AAA status, if you will).

Physical art or digital artwork: submit it to our deviantArt page: http://oprainfallsupport.deviantart.com/
Videos: Please submit videos to a video service and email us the link: oprainfall@gmail.com
Music, Speech, Songs: Please upload these files to a file sharing service (MegaUpload, RapidShare, MediaFire, etc...) and email the link to us.

We will also be considering sending physical art projects/crafts as part of the package to NCL/NOA. Due to the expense of shipping overseas, we may ask that individuals with LARGE PHYSICAL ART PROJECTS (statues, figurines, models, paper mâché, Legos, etc...) cover the cost of shipping themselves as a separate package scheduled to arrive on the same day with a photograph that we can include in our packages to NCL/NOA.

Please make sure your items are family friendly, clean, and "work-safe". We will automatically reject any submissions containing excessive profanity, sexual content, discriminatory content (racial, sexual, etc...) or hate content against Nintendo or any other developers/publishers.

SIGN UP FOR THE SSBB TOURNEY ENDS THURSDAY!

Finally, sign-up for our first every Operation Rainfall Tournament ends on Thursday @ 10:00 PM PST. The title of choice nominated by fans is Super Smash Bros. Brawl. To sign up and see official rules, please visit this page:

http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/super-smash-bros-brawl-tournament-10-29-2011-t295.html

That's it for today! Thank you so much for all of your hard work and dedication to having quality games localized!

MISSION 3-2 starts NOW!

STEP 1:
Send your emails to NCL (Japan) using the form letter on this page:
https://secure2.nintendo.co.jp/n10/support/online_form.html
The fields are:
1) Name
2) Age
3) Address (pick any)
4) Email Address
5) Phone # (Enter 75 662-9600)
6) Product you are writing about
7) Subject Line of email
8) Body of email (COPY/PASTE the letter below)

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任天堂株式会社の岩田聡さん会長への公開状、


岩田さんへ、


全 ての3DSを持っている人々のために、オペレーション・レインフォールの私たちは任天堂の最近行に心から感謝しておらると伝えております。岩田さん達は直 ぐに3DSを買った人々へ立派に謝る事に仕上がりました。大切なテレビゲーム会社をサポートする人々の方へ心を通わせる事は珍しくて素晴らしい事でござい ます。こんなにやさしい事は本間に任天堂の素晴らしさを証明しております。
私達はコアその結果に宥める事は難しいであり、結果は任天堂株式 会社の収益は少し無くなってしまった事をはっきり分かっています。私達にとって、その状態は恐ろしくて悲しいですが、任天堂は何時も一番のテレビゲームや エンターテインメントなど会社でありますように望んでおられます。確かに3DSの価格の削減は任天堂を助けるようになるに違いないんです。
残 念ながら、私達はもう直ぐにこの公開状の本間目的を伝わなければなりません。私達はなぜ任天堂アメリカ株式会社はアメリカでラスト・ストーリやゼノブレー ドなどゲームをリリースしないか、本当に分かりません。今は任天堂にとって大変な時であり、この株式会社は本当にコア・ファンが要るでしょう。NOAは任 天堂LTD.から「これらのゲームをリリースしない方が良い」って言う命令を受けたそうですけれど、任天堂Wiiはすごく苦しんでいる見たいんです。確か に、アメリカでこれらのゲームをリリースする事は販売を増えるようになるだけじゃなくて、ゲームをリリースする事は岩田さんをサポートする人々の暖簾も増 えて来るようになります。
任天堂のファンをとして、今までリリースしてくれたゲームや貢献など事に心から感謝しておりますよ。消費者をとし て、これらの一番ほしがっているゲームのリリースはちゃんと成功出来ますように、私達は一生懸命頑張らなければならないんですよ。確かに岩田さんは任天堂 の現在状態を改善出来る力を持っているし、完成されたゲームをリリースする事によって失った客自身を治す事が出来ます。
私達は岩田さんが一 人でこの作業を引き受けてほしくないけど、オペレーション・レインフォールはこれらのゲームをリリースのが一番大事な物で御座います。それに、これらの ゲームの販売やサポートも本間に大切だと思います。これらのゲームの促進を楽しんで、任天堂は販売費用を払う必要がないんであります。私達は民さんに坂口 さんや高橋さんなどゲームプログラマーの実を示す事が出来ますように。
数十年間任天堂LTD.は皆さんにとってすごく大切会社であります。 私達はマリオやリンクやサマスア・ランがいないゲームカルチャーを想像出来ないんですよ。私達はファンをとして、岩田さんを本当に控訴しておりますよ。是 非、アメリカのファンはもう一回任天堂の方へ自身を持てますように、お助けになって下さい！岩田さんしかおりません！

丁重に、

大切なオペレーション・レインフォールのファンより

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PLEASE NOTE: If you happen to catch any grammatical errors in this letter, please correct them and send a completely revised version to oprainfall@gmail.com. Simply commenting individual character errors does not help our admin team, who are not fluent in Japanese and do not understand context. Thanks!

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STEP 2:

• Send polite emails to Nintendo of America at http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform.jsp

STEP 3:

• Send THANK YOU emails to Nintendo of Europe for making the bold move to release Xenoblade Chronicles and announce Pandora's Tower and The Last Story in Europe.You may email Nintendo of Europe at customer-support@nintendo.co.uk (NOE does not have a webform)

THAT'S IT!!! You can also help by spreading the word to your friends and family.

Keeping the campaign positive!

Hey folks, Marko here with a friendly reminder to our followers. We've been noticing the need for some crowd control via our various social media sites lately and have posted some updates on our Facebook regarding our current direction. I'm simply copy/pasting what has already be stated on our Facebook page, but we want to make the message loud and clear that Operation Rainfall does not promote or condone using spam. Also, our admin team agrees that Nintendo of America already has a packed holiday schedule for the remainder of 2011, so if we were to eventually see Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower, Spring 2012 would be a more realistic launch period. I know that waiting can be hard, but realistically, we are not going to see these games in 2011. Patience is not only a virtue, but is a requirement for anyone truly passionate about seeing these titles making it overseas. We are confident that Nintendo of America has heard us and we are patiently waiting for them to make an announcement. If you would like to find other creative ways to channel your passion and enthusiasm, please visit our forums to see full details for Phase Three: http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/

Here are some posts our staff have made earlier on our Facebook page:

Operation Rainfall is looking to head in a new direction regarding how we post on Nintendo's Facebook. We at Operation Rainfall feel that seeing any of these games in 2011 is not as likely as seeing them in 2012. That is not to say we won't receive good news this year, because we could. Nintendo has a busy schedule through the end of the year on the Wii with Zelda and Kirby releasing as well as a busy holiday lineup on the 3DS.

As such, we would suggest that those who comment thank Nintendo for their great Holiday lineup on both the Wii and 3DS and ask Nintendo to release these games for Spring 2012.

Also, Operation Rainfall's official stance is to post a productive and courtesy response to Nintendo, and then leave. Those who stick around and talk with other members are not representing Operation Rainfall. We have been seeing a lot of arguing on both sides regarding these games and it needs to stop. Remember, we are talking to Nintendo and not trying to convince Nintendo fans of anything.

We also suggest you comment ONE time per Nintendo post. Remember that we need to be considerate of those who are there who have no interest in these games.
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The staff at Operation Rainfall would like to remind everyone to keep this campaign clean and positive. First off, we have noticed many comments made on other pages (specifically those run by Nintendo) that may come off as rude, argumentative, or offensive. While we encourage everyone to use their voices to get in touch with Nintendo of America, the Nintendo Facebook page is meant for Nintendo fans to voice their appreciation for all things Nintendo, not for starting flame wars. If you have a relevant comment to make, make your comment and leave. Do not linger and take the bait.
Second, please try to keep negativity to a minimum, we like some constructive criticism but there is a limit and it is best to always remain positive and not destructive to our campaign.
Don't forget what this campaign is all about!
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Facebook and Twitter present a unique opportunity to make comments directly with PR staff, and for that reason they are wonderful tools.
At the same time, they are a double-edged sword, because people will inevitable abuse those tools. As long as they are used properly for their intended purpose, social media sites are great for getting in touch with large corporations, as an example, Nintendo of America's reply to the enthusiasm of Operation Rainfall fans back in June.
But what has been going on over the past few weeks is simply unacceptable.
Operation Rainfall has set missions and objectives for those who would like to help us out. Submitting art for our package to NCL is a great creative outlet that is part of our current campaign. Pre-ordering a copy of Monado from Amazon is another great way to help the campaign. Spreading word through other means is also great.

Spamming the Nintendo Facebook page... not only is it NOT part of our campaign, but it is also ineffective, and frankly, annoying. We would just like to request that everyone stop spamming the Nintendo Facebook page. Polite requests are one thing, spamming and flaming are just plain unacceptable.
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If you do want to hang around the comments section on Nintendo's Facebook you're obviously free to do so but you're not representing Operation Rainfall if you respond to other people's comments. Our stance is to post a relevant post without spamming and get out.
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Sometimes it's better to just ignore the trolls. It seems like in our quest to defend these games, some have taken things into their own hands, which is great that they are that passionate about the games, but it really does nothing but aggravate others and smear our reputation. Don't feed the trolls and don't take their bait. Instead we have several other things you can do to channel your passion.
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Thanks to everyone for all of your hard work, and have a great week!
-The Operation Rainfall Staff

Phase Three Details (PART ONE)

Phase Three is now in motion.
Yesterday, I said we will be kicking things into a higher gear, and I meant it.

First off, we've updated our Frequently Asked Questions PDF, so be sure to check that out.

Second, please join us in the FORUMS. It is easy to sign up, free to join, and a great place for your ideas to be heard, and better yet, for those ideas to grow into a useful part of the campaign. Here are some select areas that are in need of special attention at the moment:

1) We are currently in the process of selecting a charity.
http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/phase-three-charity-t261.html

2) We are currently accepting submissions for artwork, videos, letters, songs, poetry, and more....
http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/mission-3-3-codename-coloring-book-t264.html

3) We are attempting to communicate with Nintendo of Europe to request Professor Layton's London Life RPG for eShop/DSiWare.
http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/mission-3-1-god-save-the-layton-t262.html

4) Nintendo of Europe is holding a contest for Xenoblade Chronicles, with the winners receiving a copy of The Last Story and Pandora's Tower. (Contest is for PAL regions only)
http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/mission-3-b-bbbbbonus-round-t271.html

5) We are in need of BOTH designs and funding to have t-shirts and stickers created.
http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/t-shirts-stickers-t269.html

Third, as part of Mission 3-3, we will be sending a printed copy of our petition in its entirety to both NOA and NCL. Please spread the petition to everyone possible. We will be sending the packages on November 10, 2011, we request that you please sign before the deadline.
To sign the petition, please visit this page and hit "Click Here to Sign Petition":
http://www.petitiononline.com/OpRain01/petition.html

Finally, our official Press Release (Dated 10/06/2011) is now available for download and immediate distribution at: http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/press-release-phase-three-oct-06-2011-t274.html

Have a great day, and LET'S GET OUR GAMES!!

- Marko

Commence Phase Three!

Hey folks, Marko here, just wanted to make sure everyone is up to speed and know that we've been VERY active, but hadn't had a chance to update the blog yet. UNTIL NOW!

We've begun Phase Three, full details can be found on our forums at this page: http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/phase-three-summary-t260.html

I'll be back here to recap and explain each step over the next few days, so be on the lookout. We'll be providing some MASSIVE updates in the coming weeks, including a new, easy to navigate hub website so you'll never get lost here again! Operation Rainfall is alive and well, ready to kick some ass, take some names, and localize some games!

OPERATION RAINFALL IS HERE TO STAY!

For the absolute LATEST news on Operation Rainfall developments, please visit our Facebook page:
http://facebook.com/OperationRainfall

Hope you all have a great day,
Marko