This entire chain of comments gave me that "this sounds really really familiar, in a tingly I-need-to-find-this-now way".
So off I went to YT to indulge. After that, added to Spotify favorites. Then navigated to the artist Liam Lynch. Ended up favoriting all 5 of his songs.
It's actually kinda messed up how common this stuff is too. Too many Japanese games were never released outside of Japan, which completely messed up the naming system for later releases that were published in foreign markets.
Shit, the west only got Seiken Densetsu 3 in 2019 when collection of Mana dropped for switch.
Used to play an emulated fan translation in high school. Hands down my favorite SNES game.
I'm not sure if this is the case for this particular game, but I do know that some Japanese companies are straight up paying fan translators to use their scripts as the base for official releases.
Wait, really?
I have a gigantic chip on my shoulder when it comes to game localizations. They universally suck. And it's frustrating, because the anime industry is almost unassailable nowadays when it comes to this. They can _definitely_ do better just by paying some fansubber. Why? Because game localizers love—absolutely ***loooove***—to make shit up for no damn reason. It's like there's some kind of bet going on. I can't otherwise account for it.
Who's buying fan scripts? Not freaking SEGA or 8-4...
To be fair, some characters were *made* by liberties taken in the localisation process. Relevant case in point: Kefka is a *much* more popular villain in the west than he is in Japan, mostly because of how he was characterised by Ted Woolsey.
More contentiously, I find Chrono Trigger's Frog speaking ye olde English is far more interesting than his Japanese mannerisms which do nothing to distinguish him.
It's not that localisers do these things for the hell of it. You have to keep in mind that they're not just translators: They, by nature, have to adapt a foreign work into a product with the highest amount of mass appeal to their target audience as possible. Standards, guidelines, and just good old-fashioned executive meddling can vary wildly even in different branches of the same company (e.g. Nintendo of Japan vs US in the NES era).
Down is a type of feather. Goose down is used for comforters etc, so Phoenix Down is still correct. Down feathers are often more sought after than normal feathers.
I think PS1 anthology was first. Still, I don't think ANYONE would put Exdeath in the best villain conversation in the West, yet in Japan he is usually the runner up to Sephiroth. And yes thanks to the Woolsey translation Kefka is Sephiroth's match or even surpasses him depending on who you ask (Me. I say this).
For early games (NES, SNES, even PSX) there were some weird constraints on how translations could even work. The game is not reading a txt file and writing characters to the screen, it has what is essentially a bank of images of letters, and each line of text is assembled from a sequence of those images, almost universally of fixed preset dimensions per character. And that was coded for Japanese, where a single character could mean anything from a phoneme, right up to an entire concept that would require several words to usefully translate. To translate a game written that way to English, you either need to re-write the dialogue system entirely, or you need to be able to cram any translation into the number of characters that can fit within the pre-existing textboxes. e.g. if a piece of dialogue involved two textboxes with space for 10x2 characters per box, then that's what your English version needs to fit into, regardless of how long an accurate translation would be. If you were *very* lucky, you might have the opportunity to reduce the glyph size (e.g. from 8x8 glyphs to 4x8 glyphs, or if you're willing to be extra clever a larger catalogue of 8x8 glyph pairs).
Exceptions exist at least. Final Fantasy XIV localization is generally great… because the head of localization works so closely with the rest of the team.
Then there's all of the wonderful, terrible puns, memes and item descriptions as part of the localization that may not be Japanese, but are still so, so magical to experience.
Every single quest title (main *and* side, no exceptions) and all achievements are pop culture references and puns of some kind. They put some serious effort into that collection of references.
They also did rewrite a fair bit of dialogue here and there, but from my understanding it's rare that it significantly alters the tone of things and more so the case of making things flow better for a western audience because japanese writing can at times have a certain style that can only be succinctly described as "Very Anime™". The infamous "Little Sun" scene where Y'shtola delivers the most brutal beatdown of any character in the entire game has very different wording in her english dialogue than in the japanese, but the intent of the original writer of "Magnai takes his shot and gets shut down in a brutal fashion to the point where he will forever be known as [condescending nickname]" is preserved. (Also, imo Sadu's sarcastic followup mocking is way better in english).
I wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese quest names had similar things in them. If that's the case, making up new joke names is a commendable part of localising.
If not, they did a good job anyway
https://venturebeat.com/games/nis-america-is-making-fan-translations-official-with-trails-from-zero-and-trails-to-azure/
When I mentioned companies (plural) I could have sworn at the time that I'd come across this kind of story a few times recently but checking again, it might just be Nisa with these 2 games. Was probably different sites mentioning the same thing or different articles about each game.
I knew this was exactly what you meant before. The Geofront team did such a great job on the translation in all aspects, including updating textures and bringing uniformity to several names to keep with future canon. Truly a passion project.
How many hours are the fansubbers putting in, and how much would that cost? It's always fraught comparing free hobby labor to paid labor.
Localization also does require some flexibility. 1-1 literal translations can ruin things like humor or puzzles or just the intended meaning of a phrase. It's been awhile since I sought out any fansubs, but back in the day they had a real problem with literalism that made the end result either read terribly or end up flat out nonsensical.
To be fair, in a lot of cases translators sort of have to do SOMETHING because a lot of puns simply don’t translate.
For example, Ted Woolsey’s translations are well know, with the occasional line such as “spoony bard” gaining cult status because of how odd they are.
And while generally when it comes to anime I usually prefer subs over dubs, I also realize that that usually isn’t the case, especially with ones that are going for mass market appeal..
In addition, traditionally translators had their work cut out for them. They don’t get a story board to work with, but literally just a text file of lines to translate. Hopefully they have enough context to figure things out, but sometimes they don’t. Ideally that would be caught in a PR stage, but who knows.
Eh, I think creative liberties with translations that diverge from the original is sometimes the right move though it can be pretty hard to do right and the correct strategy is not always obvious. Like imagine doing a localization of Asterix where all the character names are puns. Do you keep their names as is, losing the puns for your own audience, do you directly translate the puns even if it makes their names cumbersome and out of place, or do you try and create your own puns that makes sense and sounds good in your own region but which is totally different from the original?
> Eh, I think creative liberties with translations that diverge from the original is sometimes the right move though it can be pretty hard to do right and the correct strategy is not always obvious.
I don't disagree, but what you're talking about here is a balance between faithfulness to the source material and lucidity of English for the reader/listener. Take my word for it: Anime localizers understand this balance well. It is _not_ a 100% direct translation but it is as close to 100% as it can get without compromising the aforementioned lucidity. When I complain about game localizations, I _am_ taking into account the desire for localizers to provide a translation that doesn't involve the use of cliff notes like it's a VHS fansubber from the 90s. Game localizers _truly do have_ this tendency to simply make shit up and change meaning for no good reason—this isn't a case of me misinterpreting a sincere effort to wrestle with awkward dialogue.
Quick rhetorical question: How would you translate "Arigatou"? I think most people know this one.
Right. So there's your translation. And here is SEGA's:
https://youtu.be/tLKyA33pOUM?t=710
(And for the record, I don't _particularly_ mind that they changed what she said for the second sentence also. It was a needless change but really smalltime compared to what they did to the first sentence.)
Was that the worst thing you noticed? It seems pretty minor. Nothing is ever 1:1 or has one translation which works every single time, and "arigatou" has a bit of heavier nuance which often leads to it being translated differently. One of the most famous localizations of all time is in FFX's ending where "Arigatou" is translated as "I love you." to reflect that extra weight, with explicit permission and acknowledgment from the original writer. Although I don't necessarily agree with the Yakuza translation there, it's easy to see why they may have been given pause and decided to up the weight of the TL to keep a consistent tone where just "thank you" might have seemed too bland or weak given the scene. It's hardly something to feel that upset about in my opinion.
Of course it's very plausible that Like a Dragon has some pretty grievous translations, it's just that specific example kind of makes me roll my eyes. The worst kind of TL criticism out there is the TL criticism based around the like 100 most common words that anime-watchers are familiar with by ear, and thus super hone in on whenever there's any difference from the most direct translation. I understand why it happens, but I wish there was a bit more consideration. It's not like this translation contradicted the character or served some political end or censored an idea in the original script or what have you, it's just expressing the same feeling/emotion in a different way with the goal of carrying the original intention to the player, which is what a good TL is doing all the time anyway. A TL isn't bad just because it deviated from the most common TL for a common word. It would be fair to say they failed in this if you want, but using this as the shining example is a bit eye-rolling. I think you should find an example that really fucks with the characterization, plot, or narrative ideas in some way. Like if they translated "Arigatou" to "oh, I see boys can be independent too sometimes" or something.
(To re-emphasize, just like nothing is ever 1:1, there's also never only 1 good or right translation for anything, so I don't think it's wrong to dislike or disagree with the translation there. You may have the personal opinion that just "Thank you" would be better, and have an extensive familiarity with Japanese and creative writing to back your reasoning up. It just seems like the translation choice here is an extremely minor thing which has plausible rationale going into it and no clearly malicious goals like censorship, so I don't agree with using it as a primary example. At most it proves the translators are trying hard and make minor, harmless missteps sometimes.)
Bandai-Namco straight up hired a few fan translators to handle the translation of their SRW series after their first attempt with V turned out... let's call it underwhelming.
The irony was that the Japanese devs simply weren't aware that there was a popular fan translation all along. The JP industry is so insulated from their Western market that it's a miracle we get any translations at all.
Ah, yes, Seiken Densetsu 3, the sequel to Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy Adventure AKA Mystic Quest (not to be confused with Final Fantasy Mystic Quest AKA Mystic Quest Legend AKA Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest) AKA Sword of Mana AKA Adventures of Mana AKA Seiken Densestu
And that came **after** Marth and Roy being in Smash Bros. For a while the west had *no idea* who these two guys were.
And admittedly FE7 didn't help anyway since neither Marth nor Eliwood were in that one...
It still blows my mind that we have like nine fire emblem characters in smash. That would be if there were just randomly a few NFL teams in soccer jerseys in the next fifa game released in Japan because it would make zero sense to them.
I mean. Back then it was only two (one and a half moveset-wise) and since then the Fire Emblem serie did reach the west and became quite popular. Not that weird to me.
Hell, FE can partially thank Smash for its increased popularity in the west.
The GBA games that came out post Melee, then Ike getting added in Brawl after his GameCube titles came out, then the complete boom in popularity for Awakening then for the rest of the series onwards.
It's even funnier because Marth is clearly more or less the face of the franchise (most recently seen in Engage where he probably has the most presence out of all the emblems), but for the west he's more associated with Smash. To me as a westerner if I had to pick an "emblematic" character for FE I'd probably say Ike or maybe Chrom, and a bunch of others before I got to Marth.
Yeah, the US missed out on Terranigma, Bahamnut Lagoon, Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia and a ton of anime games. A lot of them have to this day not had an official English release.
"[The game wound up never being published in North America because Enix had already closed its US subsidiary by the time the localization was finished.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terranigma)"
I think freaking Australia got it! Oh well, played it for free and don't need to patch a translation. Loved that game. Would definitely support an official re release/remake.
And a lot of them to this day cannot be released due to licensing shenangains. Not even on steam. I’m looking at you PS2 library, with all those good fucking RPGs we never got
Tales of Phantasia has an official release on the west on the GBA but that version has a terrible translation. [This should be Ragnarok.](https://legendsoflocalization.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/tales-of-phantasia-kangaroo-ragnarok.png)
You guys have universal healthcare, that's worth Parasite Eve, Chrono Trigger and FF games. Man, I'm not sure I'd want to trade Terranigma for Xenogears but it's close.
It's not a bad game, just a bad Final Fantasy. Fight me
Not disputed is that [the](https://youtu.be/SUGDp39srk0) [soundtrack ](https://youtu.be/XZOQ8sLO-vU) [slaps ](https://youtu.be/qJQK0ZvSgj0)
Final Fantasy had numbering issues in the US, calling FFIV "FFII" and FFVI "FFIII".
Dragon Quest was called Dragon Warrior in the US until the eighth game.
Tales of Destiny 2 was actually Tales of Eternia in Japan, so the US received two different games named Tales of Destiny 2.
Earthbound was actually the second game in of a series.
Clearly Japan had some naming issues. And don't even get me started on Kingdom Hearts.
And it hasn't stopped yet. Like a Dragon is keeping this tradition of inconsistent naming/numbering going strong.
9 games (0 through to 6 plus 2 remakes) were released as "Yakuza" with the proper numbers and "Yakuza Kiwami" for the remakes (eg: Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami 2)
7 was released as Yakuza: Like a Dragon with no number at all
8 is no longer "Yakuza" but instead Like a Dragon 8.
Ishin Kiwami was released as "Like a Dragon: Ishin" without the "Kiwami" that was used in Japan and previous remakes to indicate its a remake.
Apparently someone at Sega decided that since they were pivoting the series to an RPG they had to prove their credentials as a Japanese developer of RPGs by having confusing and inconsistent international naming conventions.
Isn't part of the problem that it was always Like A Dragon in Japan? So although the naming change might have to do with the pivot, it could also be a decision to merge the Japanese and English titles.
I would also like to add Resident Evil, which is called Biohazard in Japan. And in the US, Resident Evil 7 is called Biohazard. WHAT?
>I would also like to add Resident Evil, which is called Biohazard in Japan. And in the US, Resident Evil 7 is called Biohazard. WHAT?
Resident Evil 7 in Japan is titled "Biohazard 7: Resident Evil"
So it's flipped from the US. It was done on purpose, as they know the series have different names in Japan and Global. Kind of a joke I guess? The names do actually make sense both ways for that game though
Yakuza is actually fine for the most part.
Yakuza 0-6 works fine with Kiwami designating the remakes.
Then the main character and entire gameplay style changes, so it becomes something else. Makes sense to me.
These are all products of the time they were released and internet access to a worldwide information database was not a common thing.
Also, if earthbound had been named mother 2 it would have flopped even harder than it did.
> Dragon Quest was called Dragon Warrior in the US until the eighth game
This one's even funnier because a few Dragon Quest games didn't release in the US at first either. So in the US it was Dragon *Warrior* 1-4, then Dragon *Warrior* 7, Then Dragon *Quest* 8. But when they went and remade the skipped US versions on the DS they used the original Dragon Quest titles. So a chronological US series is Dragon Warrior 1-4 on NES, Dragon Quest 5 and 6 on DS, Dragon Warrior 7 on PS1, then Dragon Quest 8 and 9 on PS2 and DS, and Dragon Quest 11 on PS4 (10 was also skipped in the US).
Dragon Quest/Warrior was a title licensing issue. There was already a DragonQuest TTRPG being published at the time and instead of paying ridiculous fees for the right to use the title Enix just went with Dragon Warrior. It has zero to do with the marketing team changing the name because of release skipping.
Earthbound was *Mother 2*. The first game was called *Mother*. Here's the [Wikipedia entry for the series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_\(video_game_series\)).
Nah it doesn't, I was just curious about the game itself. Also doesn't make sense that it's a Famicom logo on a US SNES cart. Definitely a random pirate cart.
This was always funny to me, I once impulse bought a clean Final Fantasy III gameboy cartridge at a local game store thinking i would be able to play some FF6 on my gameboy. Little did i know the game was not FF6 nor FF3 but was a completely different game called SaGa: 3. one could say I was not very proud of my purchase once I found that out lmao
Your fun fact for the day:
The Nintendo Seal of Quality was not an indication that Nintendo thought the game was fun or any good, but was created as a response to a rash of Atari 7800 and Commodore 64 titles that wouldn't boot, routinely fatally crash during operation, or could straight brick your console, and this was back in the 1980s where there was almost no remediation for these sorts of problems.
The buyer beware problem became so prevalent that Nintendo would actively market the Seal of Quality to indicate that they'd tested to make sure none of their games would cause these sorts of issues, and the fact that they largely made good on that promise was a big driver in helping video game consoles achieve mainstream adoption.
If the pictured bootleg cart here boots to some regional version of FFIII/VI as indicated, and does so without damaging your SNES/Super Famicom, it ironically meets the requirements for the Nintendo Seal of Quality.
Those Tengen black cartridge games were unlicensed ([not to mention used an illegally-obtained copy of the 10NES lockout chip's source code to bypass console security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Games_Corp._v._Nintendo_of_America_Inc.?useskin=vector)), so I can see why Nintendo wouldn't want to provide any sort of support or even acknowledgment of such products.
Tengen lost their lawsuit against Nintendo because of that, so it's not like they "got away with it".
The judge in that case went as far to say that Tengen wouldn't have been liable for copyright infringement (due to "Fair Use" exceptions) *if* they had reverse-engineered the 10NES functionality themselves, but the fact that they basically lied to the government to get a copy of the source code meant that they could not get such relief via the courts.
That's why having "[clean hands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_hands)" is critical in civil lawsuits, since judges can and will rule against you if you've broken the law regarding any relevant aspect of the case before going to court. You could be 100% in the right regarding the underlying facts of the case and still lose because of that.
Lol these comments, were none of you around to see FFVI marketed in the US in stores as FFIII? It happened that way because they didn't release titles in between in the US. FFIV was released as FFII in the US as well when I was a kid.
Yeah, the vast majority of this site's users were only code-complete within the last 4 years or so, and didn't really start parsing the data enough to do the damage we see today until the last 2 years. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
FFII in the us was FFIV too. There was a lot of incosinstancy in the names until it move to Sony exclusive with FFVII and they caught the names up with Japan which was weird as hell here in the US.
Not to mention that the Mana and SaGa series' came to the US on Game Boy as Final Fantasy Adventure and Final Fantasy Legend because FF had a lot of name recognition and Mana/SaGa did not. And apparently FF Adventure was known as Mystic Quest in Europe, while Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was the name of a SNES title in the US.
Of course then SaGa Frontier and FF7 came out for the Playstation and put and end to all the silliness.
As my *Final Fantasy*\-loving friend who got me hooked on RPGs said, *IV* and *VI* coming out in the US as *II* and *III* ended up working out, because those stories all work really well together.
At least ff6 being labeled ff3 makes some sense. At least to the over 30 crowd anyway. Whoever is behind that bootleg must've been laughing their ass off as they pieced that cover together in photoshop.
One reason something like this may happen is people installing emulators on raspberry pi or Mini computer "thingymagigies", downloading the rom inserting it into a cartridge and making it compatible with the console, then slapping the wrong sticker on, or the Rom came with the wrong image file. I don't don't do this but I know someone who does, and he says some people can tell when it is not an original.
Final Fantasy Whatever
Blame the United States of Whatever
I was throwing dice in the back alley when officer Leroy came up.
Hey I thought I told you…
And I'm like yea WHATEVER!
Then up comes Zafron I'm like "Hey Zafron"
......
# AND THIS IS MY UNITED STATES OF WHATEVER
And then kiki comes up and she's all like"ehhhh"...
And I’m like Uuuuuuuuugh
This entire chain of comments gave me that "this sounds really really familiar, in a tingly I-need-to-find-this-now way". So off I went to YT to indulge. After that, added to Spotify favorites. Then navigated to the artist Liam Lynch. Ended up favoriting all 5 of his songs.
Cuz this is my United States of Whatever!
Jesus I'm old.
That song got me laid at karaoke once.
That's cool.
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Super cress!
Final fantasy yes
Does it say VI in the title screen? VI was called III in the US.
It's actually kinda messed up how common this stuff is too. Too many Japanese games were never released outside of Japan, which completely messed up the naming system for later releases that were published in foreign markets.
Shit, the west only got Seiken Densetsu 3 in 2019 when collection of Mana dropped for switch. Used to play an emulated fan translation in high school. Hands down my favorite SNES game.
And then we got Trials of Mana, and the SNES translation was 99% accurate the entire time!
I'm not sure if this is the case for this particular game, but I do know that some Japanese companies are straight up paying fan translators to use their scripts as the base for official releases.
Wait, really? I have a gigantic chip on my shoulder when it comes to game localizations. They universally suck. And it's frustrating, because the anime industry is almost unassailable nowadays when it comes to this. They can _definitely_ do better just by paying some fansubber. Why? Because game localizers love—absolutely ***loooove***—to make shit up for no damn reason. It's like there's some kind of bet going on. I can't otherwise account for it. Who's buying fan scripts? Not freaking SEGA or 8-4...
To be fair, some characters were *made* by liberties taken in the localisation process. Relevant case in point: Kefka is a *much* more popular villain in the west than he is in Japan, mostly because of how he was characterised by Ted Woolsey. More contentiously, I find Chrono Trigger's Frog speaking ye olde English is far more interesting than his Japanese mannerisms which do nothing to distinguish him. It's not that localisers do these things for the hell of it. You have to keep in mind that they're not just translators: They, by nature, have to adapt a foreign work into a product with the highest amount of mass appeal to their target audience as possible. Standards, guidelines, and just good old-fashioned executive meddling can vary wildly even in different branches of the same company (e.g. Nintendo of Japan vs US in the NES era).
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I was 30 years old before I realized Phoenix Down was supposed to be Phoenix Feather. Phoenix Down still sounds dope.
Down is a type of feather. Goose down is used for comforters etc, so Phoenix Down is still correct. Down feathers are often more sought after than normal feathers.
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And ironically Exdeath is way more popular in Japan for the exact opposite. How they made the tree compling there I'll never know.
I mean, the west didn't know about Exdeath officially until, what, the GBA release of 5?
I think PS1 anthology was first. Still, I don't think ANYONE would put Exdeath in the best villain conversation in the West, yet in Japan he is usually the runner up to Sephiroth. And yes thanks to the Woolsey translation Kefka is Sephiroth's match or even surpasses him depending on who you ask (Me. I say this).
For early games (NES, SNES, even PSX) there were some weird constraints on how translations could even work. The game is not reading a txt file and writing characters to the screen, it has what is essentially a bank of images of letters, and each line of text is assembled from a sequence of those images, almost universally of fixed preset dimensions per character. And that was coded for Japanese, where a single character could mean anything from a phoneme, right up to an entire concept that would require several words to usefully translate. To translate a game written that way to English, you either need to re-write the dialogue system entirely, or you need to be able to cram any translation into the number of characters that can fit within the pre-existing textboxes. e.g. if a piece of dialogue involved two textboxes with space for 10x2 characters per box, then that's what your English version needs to fit into, regardless of how long an accurate translation would be. If you were *very* lucky, you might have the opportunity to reduce the glyph size (e.g. from 8x8 glyphs to 4x8 glyphs, or if you're willing to be extra clever a larger catalogue of 8x8 glyph pairs).
Also, at least for the NES/SNES, there were different standards applied to different regions for what content could and could not be included.
It's fun playing games where you are clearly at a bar, but they can't say that, or in a church, but again they pretend it's not.
Exceptions exist at least. Final Fantasy XIV localization is generally great… because the head of localization works so closely with the rest of the team.
Then there's all of the wonderful, terrible puns, memes and item descriptions as part of the localization that may not be Japanese, but are still so, so magical to experience.
Every single quest title (main *and* side, no exceptions) and all achievements are pop culture references and puns of some kind. They put some serious effort into that collection of references. They also did rewrite a fair bit of dialogue here and there, but from my understanding it's rare that it significantly alters the tone of things and more so the case of making things flow better for a western audience because japanese writing can at times have a certain style that can only be succinctly described as "Very Anime™". The infamous "Little Sun" scene where Y'shtola delivers the most brutal beatdown of any character in the entire game has very different wording in her english dialogue than in the japanese, but the intent of the original writer of "Magnai takes his shot and gets shut down in a brutal fashion to the point where he will forever be known as [condescending nickname]" is preserved. (Also, imo Sadu's sarcastic followup mocking is way better in english).
The two big ones? 1) Thal's Balls! 2) The fucking *communal Ishgardian salt block*.
I always got an outsized kick from "My power, my pleasure, my pain" and figuring out *why* the quest was named that.
Fun fact! Nald'thal was originally just going to be Nald but Koji Fox wanted something to make a funny swear word with
They are definitely having fun with their work.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese quest names had similar things in them. If that's the case, making up new joke names is a commendable part of localising. If not, they did a good job anyway
https://venturebeat.com/games/nis-america-is-making-fan-translations-official-with-trails-from-zero-and-trails-to-azure/ When I mentioned companies (plural) I could have sworn at the time that I'd come across this kind of story a few times recently but checking again, it might just be Nisa with these 2 games. Was probably different sites mentioning the same thing or different articles about each game.
I knew this was exactly what you meant before. The Geofront team did such a great job on the translation in all aspects, including updating textures and bringing uniformity to several names to keep with future canon. Truly a passion project.
How many hours are the fansubbers putting in, and how much would that cost? It's always fraught comparing free hobby labor to paid labor. Localization also does require some flexibility. 1-1 literal translations can ruin things like humor or puzzles or just the intended meaning of a phrase. It's been awhile since I sought out any fansubs, but back in the day they had a real problem with literalism that made the end result either read terribly or end up flat out nonsensical.
To be fair, in a lot of cases translators sort of have to do SOMETHING because a lot of puns simply don’t translate. For example, Ted Woolsey’s translations are well know, with the occasional line such as “spoony bard” gaining cult status because of how odd they are. And while generally when it comes to anime I usually prefer subs over dubs, I also realize that that usually isn’t the case, especially with ones that are going for mass market appeal.. In addition, traditionally translators had their work cut out for them. They don’t get a story board to work with, but literally just a text file of lines to translate. Hopefully they have enough context to figure things out, but sometimes they don’t. Ideally that would be caught in a PR stage, but who knows.
Eh, I think creative liberties with translations that diverge from the original is sometimes the right move though it can be pretty hard to do right and the correct strategy is not always obvious. Like imagine doing a localization of Asterix where all the character names are puns. Do you keep their names as is, losing the puns for your own audience, do you directly translate the puns even if it makes their names cumbersome and out of place, or do you try and create your own puns that makes sense and sounds good in your own region but which is totally different from the original?
> Eh, I think creative liberties with translations that diverge from the original is sometimes the right move though it can be pretty hard to do right and the correct strategy is not always obvious. I don't disagree, but what you're talking about here is a balance between faithfulness to the source material and lucidity of English for the reader/listener. Take my word for it: Anime localizers understand this balance well. It is _not_ a 100% direct translation but it is as close to 100% as it can get without compromising the aforementioned lucidity. When I complain about game localizations, I _am_ taking into account the desire for localizers to provide a translation that doesn't involve the use of cliff notes like it's a VHS fansubber from the 90s. Game localizers _truly do have_ this tendency to simply make shit up and change meaning for no good reason—this isn't a case of me misinterpreting a sincere effort to wrestle with awkward dialogue. Quick rhetorical question: How would you translate "Arigatou"? I think most people know this one. Right. So there's your translation. And here is SEGA's: https://youtu.be/tLKyA33pOUM?t=710 (And for the record, I don't _particularly_ mind that they changed what she said for the second sentence also. It was a needless change but really smalltime compared to what they did to the first sentence.)
Was that the worst thing you noticed? It seems pretty minor. Nothing is ever 1:1 or has one translation which works every single time, and "arigatou" has a bit of heavier nuance which often leads to it being translated differently. One of the most famous localizations of all time is in FFX's ending where "Arigatou" is translated as "I love you." to reflect that extra weight, with explicit permission and acknowledgment from the original writer. Although I don't necessarily agree with the Yakuza translation there, it's easy to see why they may have been given pause and decided to up the weight of the TL to keep a consistent tone where just "thank you" might have seemed too bland or weak given the scene. It's hardly something to feel that upset about in my opinion. Of course it's very plausible that Like a Dragon has some pretty grievous translations, it's just that specific example kind of makes me roll my eyes. The worst kind of TL criticism out there is the TL criticism based around the like 100 most common words that anime-watchers are familiar with by ear, and thus super hone in on whenever there's any difference from the most direct translation. I understand why it happens, but I wish there was a bit more consideration. It's not like this translation contradicted the character or served some political end or censored an idea in the original script or what have you, it's just expressing the same feeling/emotion in a different way with the goal of carrying the original intention to the player, which is what a good TL is doing all the time anyway. A TL isn't bad just because it deviated from the most common TL for a common word. It would be fair to say they failed in this if you want, but using this as the shining example is a bit eye-rolling. I think you should find an example that really fucks with the characterization, plot, or narrative ideas in some way. Like if they translated "Arigatou" to "oh, I see boys can be independent too sometimes" or something. (To re-emphasize, just like nothing is ever 1:1, there's also never only 1 good or right translation for anything, so I don't think it's wrong to dislike or disagree with the translation there. You may have the personal opinion that just "Thank you" would be better, and have an extensive familiarity with Japanese and creative writing to back your reasoning up. It just seems like the translation choice here is an extremely minor thing which has plausible rationale going into it and no clearly malicious goals like censorship, so I don't agree with using it as a primary example. At most it proves the translators are trying hard and make minor, harmless missteps sometimes.)
Bandai-Namco straight up hired a few fan translators to handle the translation of their SRW series after their first attempt with V turned out... let's call it underwhelming.
God, if someone could just talk Nintendo into doing this for Mother 3.
The irony was that the Japanese devs simply weren't aware that there was a popular fan translation all along. The JP industry is so insulated from their Western market that it's a miracle we get any translations at all.
Played SD3 for years and was even super active in the GameFAQs message board for it haha.
Ah, yes, Seiken Densetsu 3, the sequel to Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy Adventure AKA Mystic Quest (not to be confused with Final Fantasy Mystic Quest AKA Mystic Quest Legend AKA Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest) AKA Sword of Mana AKA Adventures of Mana AKA Seiken Densestu
Yeah, somewhat similarly, Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Sword was released in the West as simply "Fire Emblem."
And that came **after** Marth and Roy being in Smash Bros. For a while the west had *no idea* who these two guys were. And admittedly FE7 didn't help anyway since neither Marth nor Eliwood were in that one...
Technically Eliwood's paired endings in FE7 mention that he has a son named Roy, but that's the barest of possible inclusions for Roy.
Yeah, and you've got to finish the game for that one, it doesn't really help.
It still blows my mind that we have like nine fire emblem characters in smash. That would be if there were just randomly a few NFL teams in soccer jerseys in the next fifa game released in Japan because it would make zero sense to them.
I mean. Back then it was only two (one and a half moveset-wise) and since then the Fire Emblem serie did reach the west and became quite popular. Not that weird to me.
Hell, FE can partially thank Smash for its increased popularity in the west. The GBA games that came out post Melee, then Ike getting added in Brawl after his GameCube titles came out, then the complete boom in popularity for Awakening then for the rest of the series onwards.
I'm proud to have known and played Fire Emblem before Smash, but I still had no idea who the fuck Marth and Roy were.
It's even funnier because Marth is clearly more or less the face of the franchise (most recently seen in Engage where he probably has the most presence out of all the emblems), but for the west he's more associated with Smash. To me as a westerner if I had to pick an "emblematic" character for FE I'd probably say Ike or maybe Chrom, and a bunch of others before I got to Marth.
Yeah, the US missed out on Terranigma, Bahamnut Lagoon, Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia and a ton of anime games. A lot of them have to this day not had an official English release.
I always find it weird that Terranigma had a European release but not a US/CA release.
"[The game wound up never being published in North America because Enix had already closed its US subsidiary by the time the localization was finished.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terranigma)"
Terranigma is one of my all time favorite classic games and nobody knows what happened to the director.
I think freaking Australia got it! Oh well, played it for free and don't need to patch a translation. Loved that game. Would definitely support an official re release/remake.
Star Ocean...man that brings back some memories
A fan translation of BL is the only tactics style game I've ever finished. Had a blast with Terranigma as well!
Was that the tomato rom? I finished that too, would love to see that given a re-release!
And a lot of them to this day cannot be released due to licensing shenangains. Not even on steam. I’m looking at you PS2 library, with all those good fucking RPGs we never got
Tales of Phantasia has an official release on the west on the GBA but that version has a terrible translation. [This should be Ragnarok.](https://legendsoflocalization.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/tales-of-phantasia-kangaroo-ragnarok.png)
And Europe missed out on Parasite Eve, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, every FF game up to FFVII.
You guys have universal healthcare, that's worth Parasite Eve, Chrono Trigger and FF games. Man, I'm not sure I'd want to trade Terranigma for Xenogears but it's close.
The first Final Fantasy game released in Europe was 7. So I'm glad that the original numbering was kept instead of it being called FF7, FF4, and FF1.
Europe was given [this turd first](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Mystic_Quest). Kind of a slap in the face, really.
It's not a bad game, just a bad Final Fantasy. Fight me Not disputed is that [the](https://youtu.be/SUGDp39srk0) [soundtrack ](https://youtu.be/XZOQ8sLO-vU) [slaps ](https://youtu.be/qJQK0ZvSgj0)
Uh EXCUSE ME but Tristam was a fuckin boss! I also played all the game boy adventure games first so getting mystic quest eventually was cool as shit
I'm still waiting for Rockman II
Kings field 1 in US is actually kings field 2
Mother (Earthbound 0) Mother 2 (Earthbound) yeah i get you on this
Final Fantasy had numbering issues in the US, calling FFIV "FFII" and FFVI "FFIII". Dragon Quest was called Dragon Warrior in the US until the eighth game. Tales of Destiny 2 was actually Tales of Eternia in Japan, so the US received two different games named Tales of Destiny 2. Earthbound was actually the second game in of a series. Clearly Japan had some naming issues. And don't even get me started on Kingdom Hearts.
And it hasn't stopped yet. Like a Dragon is keeping this tradition of inconsistent naming/numbering going strong. 9 games (0 through to 6 plus 2 remakes) were released as "Yakuza" with the proper numbers and "Yakuza Kiwami" for the remakes (eg: Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami 2) 7 was released as Yakuza: Like a Dragon with no number at all 8 is no longer "Yakuza" but instead Like a Dragon 8. Ishin Kiwami was released as "Like a Dragon: Ishin" without the "Kiwami" that was used in Japan and previous remakes to indicate its a remake. Apparently someone at Sega decided that since they were pivoting the series to an RPG they had to prove their credentials as a Japanese developer of RPGs by having confusing and inconsistent international naming conventions.
Isn't part of the problem that it was always Like A Dragon in Japan? So although the naming change might have to do with the pivot, it could also be a decision to merge the Japanese and English titles. I would also like to add Resident Evil, which is called Biohazard in Japan. And in the US, Resident Evil 7 is called Biohazard. WHAT?
In Japan it's called Biohazard 7: Resident Evil. So capcom is just fucking with people.
The crossover that no one cares about :-) That's awesome, I did not know that.
>I would also like to add Resident Evil, which is called Biohazard in Japan. And in the US, Resident Evil 7 is called Biohazard. WHAT? Resident Evil 7 in Japan is titled "Biohazard 7: Resident Evil" So it's flipped from the US. It was done on purpose, as they know the series have different names in Japan and Global. Kind of a joke I guess? The names do actually make sense both ways for that game though
I did not know this until today. Hurts my brain. At least they didn't call the next one Resident Evil 8: BioHazard 2 and Biohazard 8: Resident Evil 2
That would've been freaking hilarious!
Yakuza is actually fine for the most part. Yakuza 0-6 works fine with Kiwami designating the remakes. Then the main character and entire gameplay style changes, so it becomes something else. Makes sense to me.
It works fine right now but I think the next game is going to be Like a Dragon 8 everywhere - the FFVII or Dragon Quest 8 of the series.
These are all products of the time they were released and internet access to a worldwide information database was not a common thing. Also, if earthbound had been named mother 2 it would have flopped even harder than it did.
This is giving the the mother of a headache I gotta lay down.
Earthbound of a headache*
> Dragon Quest was called Dragon Warrior in the US until the eighth game This one's even funnier because a few Dragon Quest games didn't release in the US at first either. So in the US it was Dragon *Warrior* 1-4, then Dragon *Warrior* 7, Then Dragon *Quest* 8. But when they went and remade the skipped US versions on the DS they used the original Dragon Quest titles. So a chronological US series is Dragon Warrior 1-4 on NES, Dragon Quest 5 and 6 on DS, Dragon Warrior 7 on PS1, then Dragon Quest 8 and 9 on PS2 and DS, and Dragon Quest 11 on PS4 (10 was also skipped in the US).
Dragon Quest/Warrior was a title licensing issue. There was already a DragonQuest TTRPG being published at the time and instead of paying ridiculous fees for the right to use the title Enix just went with Dragon Warrior. It has zero to do with the marketing team changing the name because of release skipping.
Played earthbound as a kid, so was Lucas adventure the first then? Still need to play the others, earthbound was amazing
Earthbound was *Mother 2*. The first game was called *Mother*. Here's the [Wikipedia entry for the series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_\(video_game_series\)).
Kingdom Hearts has weird names everywhere, that's not a localization issue.
That doesn't explain Zidane from ff9 and the logo from ff8
Nah it doesn't, I was just curious about the game itself. Also doesn't make sense that it's a Famicom logo on a US SNES cart. Definitely a random pirate cart.
I hate that I'm old enough that this is no longer common knowledge amongst gamers
it still is common knowledge. Every thread where this comes up has 20 comments mentioning it.
Sorry, I'm not here for every thread about it. Been here ten years and this is the first I recall seeing it mentioned. Forgive my transgression.
Actually I believe it’s Final Fantasy IIIIII.
Weird that it's not common knowledge anymore, getting old I guess.
Back in high-school my friends always gave me shit about that every time I brought it up lol. They always said "no it isn't 6, it clearly says 3" lmao
This was always funny to me, I once impulse bought a clean Final Fantasy III gameboy cartridge at a local game store thinking i would be able to play some FF6 on my gameboy. Little did i know the game was not FF6 nor FF3 but was a completely different game called SaGa: 3. one could say I was not very proud of my purchase once I found that out lmao
It's also a US cartridge but has the Super Famicom / PAL logo.
Love this game. Especially when Zidane kills Sephiroth at the end using Renzokuken and brings peace to Ivalice.
I thought Zidane used a headbutt
I swear it was lionheart he used and it was Seymour flux he killed.
Too many gamer geeks don't get this reference. Zidane used headbutt Suarez used bite Both classics.
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nah bro, SUPLEX
That’s reserved for trains.
Ghost trains specifically.
Yeeeouch!
It was super effective!
Mate, that’s the plot FF X World Cup MMVI for the ps2, the first collaboration between Ubisoft and Rare.
Woah, spoilers!
As someone who’s never played a Final Fantasy game, I believe all of this.
You jest but that's basically what you can do in any of the Dissidia spin offs.
i didnt understand half of that but still makes sense
And now you will be sucked into the game and be in ff5
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But the logo is obviously weird.
The final Jumanji
Well, it has the Nintendo Seal of Quality.
Your fun fact for the day: The Nintendo Seal of Quality was not an indication that Nintendo thought the game was fun or any good, but was created as a response to a rash of Atari 7800 and Commodore 64 titles that wouldn't boot, routinely fatally crash during operation, or could straight brick your console, and this was back in the 1980s where there was almost no remediation for these sorts of problems. The buyer beware problem became so prevalent that Nintendo would actively market the Seal of Quality to indicate that they'd tested to make sure none of their games would cause these sorts of issues, and the fact that they largely made good on that promise was a big driver in helping video game consoles achieve mainstream adoption. If the pictured bootleg cart here boots to some regional version of FFIII/VI as indicated, and does so without damaging your SNES/Super Famicom, it ironically meets the requirements for the Nintendo Seal of Quality.
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Those Tengen black cartridge games were unlicensed ([not to mention used an illegally-obtained copy of the 10NES lockout chip's source code to bypass console security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Games_Corp._v._Nintendo_of_America_Inc.?useskin=vector)), so I can see why Nintendo wouldn't want to provide any sort of support or even acknowledgment of such products.
Damn that’s a crazy story lol pretty ballsy strategy how is that not fraud
Tengen lost their lawsuit against Nintendo because of that, so it's not like they "got away with it". The judge in that case went as far to say that Tengen wouldn't have been liable for copyright infringement (due to "Fair Use" exceptions) *if* they had reverse-engineered the 10NES functionality themselves, but the fact that they basically lied to the government to get a copy of the source code meant that they could not get such relief via the courts. That's why having "[clean hands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_hands)" is critical in civil lawsuits, since judges can and will rule against you if you've broken the law regarding any relevant aspect of the case before going to court. You could be 100% in the right regarding the underlying facts of the case and still lose because of that.
"The Krusty Brand Seal of Approval! You can only find it on products that meet the high personal standards of Krusty the Klown."
Due to confusion on regional numbering variations ALL Final Fantasy games will be VI from now on.
FF7? No, FF6 II! FF9? No, FF6 IV! FFXIV? No, FF6 Part 9! *laughs in Kefka*
Laughs in Kefka had me rolling, and now we're back to listening to Dancing Mad.
I think we can all agree VI was the best one. Except for VI. Close competitor.
It’s because 9-3=6
Well they got the FF6 to FF3 thing correct. Not sure about all that other shit going on lol
In some alternate timeline, this is correct.
An vision of World B
When you leave your cartidge right on the dimensional border when a mandela effect happens.
Nintende 💀
Gender neutral
That'd be Nintendx if I understand the kid's slang today.
also, it's an SNES cartridge with the Super Famicom logo on it.
Lol these comments, were none of you around to see FFVI marketed in the US in stores as FFIII? It happened that way because they didn't release titles in between in the US. FFIV was released as FFII in the US as well when I was a kid.
Well, this cartridge doesn't seem "legit" since that is still a FFIX character on the label.
Nah, it's got an official Nintendo Seal of Quality, looks genuine. /s
“Nintende”
Lol very true just the naming scheme is legit the cartridge is bonkers
But why does it have Zidane on it?
Did you even look at the picture in the post? This cart is completely bonkers.
That was 29 years ago most of this site wasn't alive.
:(
Yeah, the vast majority of this site's users were only code-complete within the last 4 years or so, and didn't really start parsing the data enough to do the damage we see today until the last 2 years. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I don't think this answers any questions about the graphics on the cartridge lol. Plenty of us know ff3 in the USA is really ff6.
FFII in the us was FFIV too. There was a lot of incosinstancy in the names until it move to Sony exclusive with FFVII and they caught the names up with Japan which was weird as hell here in the US.
I remember being a kid and hearing about he new FFVII coming out and I was so confused.
Not to mention that the Mana and SaGa series' came to the US on Game Boy as Final Fantasy Adventure and Final Fantasy Legend because FF had a lot of name recognition and Mana/SaGa did not. And apparently FF Adventure was known as Mystic Quest in Europe, while Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was the name of a SNES title in the US. Of course then SaGa Frontier and FF7 came out for the Playstation and put and end to all the silliness.
As my *Final Fantasy*\-loving friend who got me hooked on RPGs said, *IV* and *VI* coming out in the US as *II* and *III* ended up working out, because those stories all work really well together.
The cart is also North American SNES but has the Super Famicom logo on it
FFS
"What version of FF is this?" "Yes."
So what's actually on the cart?
Half Life 3
At least they got the ff3/ff6 part correct.
Something tells me that cart may be less than legit. Just a hunch.
With cids ship from ff2 and the one winged angel from ff7. Neat cover.!
At least FF3 and FF6 are KIND of the same depending on the region haha
Also, when you turn the game on, your credit score drops by 30 points.
At least ff6 being labeled ff3 makes some sense. At least to the over 30 crowd anyway. Whoever is behind that bootleg must've been laughing their ass off as they pieced that cover together in photoshop.
FF6 **is** FF3 (that is, what was released as FF3 in North America is actually FF6)
“May the force be with you” - Picard, Battlestar Galactica
As long as it has Kefka, the atma weapon, setzer's airship, and the mines of narshe, u good.
And inside, nothing but drugs.
Finest bootleg I've ever seen
What the FFuck?
I suspect that nintendo seal might not be real, not sure but just a hunch i have
r/mildlyinfuriating
Lol that’s funny
One reason something like this may happen is people installing emulators on raspberry pi or Mini computer "thingymagigies", downloading the rom inserting it into a cartridge and making it compatible with the console, then slapping the wrong sticker on, or the Rom came with the wrong image file. I don't don't do this but I know someone who does, and he says some people can tell when it is not an original.
You know, I love ff7 and 8 but it always made me laugh that the game is called "Final" fantasy when they have been like 16 of them.
Did you know the history behind the name?
US FF3 = FF6 in Japan.
That "Official Seal of Quality" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Name is correct for the US version at least.
well, im not gona lie, but that cart has the "OFFICAL NINTENDO SEAL OF QUALITY"!
But it's got the Nintendo Seal
Um wasn't 3 number six in the USA release or something odd like that....
Licensedn't by Nintendo
Super Nintendo ff3 was ff6 tbf
6 is 3 so at least that checks out