Randomz post #1049389427!!!
.
First off...
I can't get this song out of my head. Bashing my head into walls, shock therapy, it won't get out. And so I inflict this upon all of you. D:<
On another note... the first RPG I ever played was an SNES game called Breath of Fire 2. It's still one of my favorites. One of the problems I always had with it, though, was the translation. There are rough translations, and then there's BoF2. They changed character names randomly, completely botched entire sections of dialogue, and even (apparently) accidentally copy+pasted sections of dialogue where they didn't belong. Like a line from the king of Simafort, placed in the middle of dialogue randomly when he wasn't even in the room.
I still loved the game, but... honestly, it was at the tail-end of the era of horrible translations, and it stands as a hallmark of how bad it could get.
Well, I'd always hoped for a fan translation, as a ton of games over the years received re-translation and distribution from harcore fans. It only took them FOURTEEN YEARS TO DO IT, but I finally found one. And it's pretty much perfect. They restored the original character/item/spell names, the dialogue makes sense, and the characters' personalities come through a lot better then they did before.
That being said, there are a few oddities I've noticed. Like the crazy axe-wielding hermit in the woods, who you have to defeat and take the place of in a tournament. In the original version, his name was Baba, and they translated it into English as such. This character had recurring roles in all the later games, and he was always meant to be named Baba, but the English translators always felt BUNYAN was somehow a better name. Because he was usually a lumberjack. And it's simplistic thinking like that that made poorly translated games all the worse in the 80s and 90s. >.>
But rather than stick with his original name, the translators decided to give him his later name; Bunyan.
*facepalm*
Another oddity was from the NPC in the bathroom of the magic school in Hometown(now called Newhaven). Originally when you spoke to this girl, she'd yell something along the lines of; "Aaaah! It's Hanako!"
Remember, I was around 12 at the time I played this game, and didn't have internet until a few years ago. So I always wondered wtf this odd girl in the bathroom was saying. As it turns out(from what I read), Hanako is an urban legend of sorts in Japan. It's supposed to be a spirit of some sort that haunts school bathrooms. From what I read, it's somewhat similar to Bloody Mary.
If it were me, I'd have changed the reference to Bloody Mary. Because it's fairly recognizable and a close enough equivalent in the West. Instead in the re-translated version, the girl instead yells; "Run for your lives, it's Moaning Myrtle!"
...yep, a Harry Potter joke put in a game that was created 3 years before JK Rowling released the first book. Not a move I'd make. :P
In any event, I'm so glad somebody finally re-translated the damned game. It's amazing what coherent dialogue and better character development can do for a story. It feels like an entirely new game.
.
First off...
Click to viewI can't get this song out of my head. Bashing my head into walls, shock therapy, it won't get out. And so I inflict this upon all of you. D:<
On another note... the first RPG I ever played was an SNES game called Breath of Fire 2. It's still one of my favorites. One of the problems I always had with it, though, was the translation. There are rough translations, and then there's BoF2. They changed character names randomly, completely botched entire sections of dialogue, and even (apparently) accidentally copy+pasted sections of dialogue where they didn't belong. Like a line from the king of Simafort, placed in the middle of dialogue randomly when he wasn't even in the room.
I still loved the game, but... honestly, it was at the tail-end of the era of horrible translations, and it stands as a hallmark of how bad it could get.
Well, I'd always hoped for a fan translation, as a ton of games over the years received re-translation and distribution from harcore fans. It only took them FOURTEEN YEARS TO DO IT, but I finally found one. And it's pretty much perfect. They restored the original character/item/spell names, the dialogue makes sense, and the characters' personalities come through a lot better then they did before.
That being said, there are a few oddities I've noticed. Like the crazy axe-wielding hermit in the woods, who you have to defeat and take the place of in a tournament. In the original version, his name was Baba, and they translated it into English as such. This character had recurring roles in all the later games, and he was always meant to be named Baba, but the English translators always felt BUNYAN was somehow a better name. Because he was usually a lumberjack. And it's simplistic thinking like that that made poorly translated games all the worse in the 80s and 90s. >.>
But rather than stick with his original name, the translators decided to give him his later name; Bunyan.
*facepalm*
Another oddity was from the NPC in the bathroom of the magic school in Hometown(now called Newhaven). Originally when you spoke to this girl, she'd yell something along the lines of; "Aaaah! It's Hanako!"
Remember, I was around 12 at the time I played this game, and didn't have internet until a few years ago. So I always wondered wtf this odd girl in the bathroom was saying. As it turns out(from what I read), Hanako is an urban legend of sorts in Japan. It's supposed to be a spirit of some sort that haunts school bathrooms. From what I read, it's somewhat similar to Bloody Mary.
If it were me, I'd have changed the reference to Bloody Mary. Because it's fairly recognizable and a close enough equivalent in the West. Instead in the re-translated version, the girl instead yells; "Run for your lives, it's Moaning Myrtle!"
...yep, a Harry Potter joke put in a game that was created 3 years before JK Rowling released the first book. Not a move I'd make. :P
In any event, I'm so glad somebody finally re-translated the damned game. It's amazing what coherent dialogue and better character development can do for a story. It feels like an entirely new game.
.