Yes, he took a great many liberties, but the localizations worked. Personally, I'd say that Chrono Trigger and FF6 were his greatest achievements.
His work wasn't perfect or anything, but he almost single handedly made it possible for English speaking gamers to play these amazing games that may not have otherwise come to the US at all. He was also forced to adhere to NOW's ridiculously puritanical censorship guidelines. Given the fact that on most of the games, he alone did all of the work - sometimes with only a month to do it - and the fact that the space was so limiting that he was forced to cut out tons of text (the Japanese language can say far more while taking up less cart space than could the more cumbersome English letter system), I thought he mostly did a pretty damn good job. I also want to say that I appreciate Ted Woolsey's work in the translation/localization of those SNES rpgs. I haven't checked it in awhile because I sort of thought he was on a hiatus.
I read literally the entire FF4 comparison (at least up to where he'd left it at that point in time, which was about 60 or 70% of the way through). Going back to Super Mario RPG, of course I understand these references were altered - they were taken from shows that were largely unknown to most Western players, but even if they had watched the dubbed anime, the references might not have been as apparent.įirst off, I love Legends of Translation. It gets a bit muddy when people would argue that our current western values should dictate how characters should appear in games, and call that "localization", but when you start imposing these values on Japan as well (see Sony's current efforts to sanitise all Ecchi from their platform), that argument doesn't hold up. Now, in the case of Super Mario RPG, this would not be censorship, technically, more localization, as correctly pointed out. I responded to an strawman argument with my own. Fri 22nd Feb no specific example - it's a amalgamation of behaviour I have witnessed over the past 5 years or so.īut I disagree with the premise of the comment I responded to - If I object to censorship, it isn't because I want to 'perv over underage characters'.It seems that the original Japanese dialogue contained many pop culture references which were altered or removed completely in the translation to English.
There are many of these and, in truth, they're a little scattershot - sometimes the line provides a clue to the monster's weakness, but more often it's some entertaining nonsense. When he does this, a quote pops up with a bespoke line of dialogue. For those who skipped this classic (sacrilege!), one of the characters is a spellcaster named Mallow who has the ability to read enemy's minds. Recently Legends of Localization ran a fascinating article detailing many of these differences in a specific part of the game. It seems that much of the absurdity may come from the translation.
Nowadays there's nary a genre the precocious plumber hasn't dipped his toe into, but his first foray with role-playing turned out to be a classic that still stands up today, filled with odd yet loveable characters and hilarious, if surreal, dialogue. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was a grand departure from the Mario template when it launched back on Super Nintendo in 1996.
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