Matt Papa holding a sealed copy of Azure Striker Gunvolt: Striker Pack
Matt Papa is an American game designer who currently resides in Tokyo. He worked as a producer, international affairs coordinator, and the English localization director for Inti Creates, acting as the primary English translator for most Inti Creates games, beginning with a retranslation of the first Azure Striker Gunvolt game and ending with Azure Striker Gunvolt 3. Matt also acted as the recording supervisor for the English dub of Azure Striker Gunvolt: The Anime, and translated the web-novel Azure Striker Gunvolt: Fleeting Memories, written by Toshiaki Tai. He also ran the English Inti Creates Twitter account, and was the narrator of the English opening of Luminous Avenger iX 2.
Matt described his joining of Inti Creates as a series of fortunate coincidences and circumstances. He had met Keiji Inafune at New York Comic Con 2010 and held a conversation with him before his autograph signings for the event. At around 2012, his Facebook group was messaged in Japanese for a request to translate something. He looked at the requester's profile, and through a series of related profile clicks, he accidentally stumbled upon Inafune's profile. He messaged Inafune on the off-chance that he remembered him, and it turned out he did. Through Inafune, he managed to network with many other members of the game industry. In 2014, he and his fiancee went back to Japan to teach English. Wanting to explore another career path, Matt contacted Inafune and asked if he was hiring (at this time, Inafune had formed Comcept). While there were no available positions at Comcept, Inafune invited him to stop by at the company for a visit. One of the people Matt had networked with via Inafune was Takuya Aizu, but the two had never met face-to-face. Matt then wondered if Inti Creates was hiring, and decided to reach out to Aizu via social media. Aizu responded the next day, and invited Matt to Inti Creates' office for a job interview. A few days after the interview, Matt received an email offering him a job at the company. This was around September 2014 (one month after the original release of Azure Striker Gunvolt).[1]
On February 10th, 2022, he announced his departure from Inti Creates on a "Hangin' At Inti HQ" stream, with Andrew Singleton taking over his duties. A month later, Matt revealed that his new job is at Limited Run Games. Following the release of the Gunvolt 3 premier trailer, he revealed on Twitter that it was arranged for him to finish translating the game.
On March 16th, 2023, he tweeted that would no longer be working at Limited Run Games. On May 29th, 2023, he officially tweeted that he would become a freelance localizer, with his first client being Sunsoft.
Trivia
- Matt's favorite GV1 character is Zeno.[2]
- His favorite Gal*Gun character is Kurona,[3] who is also his favorite character overall out of all those he worked with at Inti Creates.[4]
External Links
References
| Inti Creates employees and associates | |
|---|---|
| Main | Takuya Aizu • Yoshihisa Tsuda • Toshiaki Tai |
| Musicians | Ippo Yamada • Ryo Kawakami • Ryo Yoshinaga |
| Others | Matt Papa • Andrew Singleton |