/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4285669
I think it's less a matter of "different markets" and more a question of what the localiser's idea of "good game design" was. when you read Vic's justifications for the changes he made to Alundra's difficulty, it sounds like he finds the original game design inferior to the one in the localisation. rather than changing the game to fit the (subjective) tastes of a new market, he wanted to fix what he saw as (objective) shortcomings in the original game.

Isn't it downright embarrassing that it's been 20 years since the heyday of WD and translations of Japanese games STILL suck? Have game translators learned nothing in two decades?

>>4285669
Over the last decade or so I've sort of come around to the conclusion that the SMB2USA substitution was more about Miyamoto not really thinking much of SMB2J and really truly loving Donkey Dong Picnic.

>>4285697
I mean, I think they obviously have. For the publishers, it's about getting it done fast and cheap. The unintentional kitsch of so many games probably does more to sell product to normalfags than all the muh literal translation could possibly push sales to hardcore weebophiles who probably don't actually BUY their games anyway, especially not dialogue heavy ones.

>>4285675
God bless Vic Ireland. He brought so many games to me I wouldn't have played otherwise and laid the groundwork for weebs to even exist.

>>4285669
Devil May Cry 3 has the difficulty shunted up one step in the US release. US Normal is the Japanese Hard.

Most of the Squaresoft SNES JRPGs went unreleased in the west because they were too lazy to translate a couple more languages.

>>4285675
>>4285669

>>4285721
This also happens a lot. I think maybe Code Veronica is also this way one way or the other. These days, I think those decisions are very feedback based from Jap gamers and easy to do since we're used to games having multiple difficulty settings. I'm sure if Vic had just stuck a difficulty selection in Alundra he'd be much less reviled.

>>4285669
Jap version of Contra Hard Corps allows you to take three hits before you die, NA version is one hit kills.

>>4285697
>>4285697
What? Game translations are way way better now than they were.

>>4285715

I thought it was more that SMB2J was a lazy level pack for the original game instead of something truly new. The difficulty probably played a role, but they wouldn't want to admit that SMB2J wasn't going to sell overseas because it was a dull rehash because of whatever corporate culture Nintendo had.

Having a completely new game that the SMB team had worked on that was similar to SMB, but different enough to make it stand out certainly helped solidify their choice.

>>4285715
>the SMB2USA substitution was more about Miyamoto not really thinking much of SMB2J and really truly loving Donkey Dong Picnic.
This is virtually a confirmed fact, since Miyamoto went on record saying his favorite Mario game was Super Mario 2/USA because of how different and off-the-wall it was. To be honest, the Japanese 2 is very underwhelming, especially in a franchise where (at least for the retro games) every game had a very different style.

>>4285715
>God bless Vic Ireland. He brought so many games to me
He did, and that's good, but as a translator he's bad. There aren't two ways around it. A translator is supposed to be invisible and carry the message from one language to another with as little alteration as possible. Sometimes you just need to alter a lot of things to carry that message (as in the localization process of the Ace Attorney series), but this is not what Vic Ireland did. He never encounter any project that required a massive localization effort (again, like the AA series) or had deadlines or memory constraints that limited his translation efforts (like Woosley usually had). Vic just replaced regular dialogue with his own brand of humour whenever he felt like it, added fart jokes to opening songs because he felt like it, and even changed mechanics often not just to improve a game, but because he felt like it. Stuff like Exile 2 is virtually unplayable because of his ego, and from a professional perspective, there's nothing worse than an egomaniac translator.

So he did bring games over to this side of the pond and that was great, but that shouldn't let him off the hook for his terrible egomaniac translation practices which still carried over well after the retro era, like when he registered on fan forums to shit on XSEED's Lunar and shitpost to regular fans who questioned his tantrums.

A switch like the one they did in SMB2 USA would never fly today and would always be assumed as "fake" SMB2.

The only reason it's accepted that SMB2 is mainline Mario is nostalgia and using weak excuses "oh SMB2j wasn't made by Miyamoto".

>>4285853
A game like SMB2J would never fly as a full fledged sequel today

>>4285758
>>4285813
I think that VsSMB is a great combination of both games and should probably be considered the definitive game but SMB is just SO accessible it's hard to compete.

>>4285813
>A translator is supposed to be invisible and carry the message from one language to another with as little alteration as possible
Is it though? Maybe that should be their art and aspiration but their JOB is to produce something that will sell and to not take too long doing it. Back in the day there was a firm belief that video games could easily be "too Japanese" and not sell - q.v. how many games had western style artists do their covers. I expect there was plenty of market research done at the time to back that up, too. Gamers tastes and especially cultural appreciation have changed considerably and it's unfair to judge translators of the past by modern standards.

I personally found that Schwartzeneggar shit to be amusing at the time and it adds nostalgia value now.

>>4285813
>A translator is supposed to be invisible and carry the message from one language to another with as little alteration as possible.

I hate a lot of what Vic did but I don't really agree with this. It's their choice how they want to localize something, we're just free to not think it was a good choice.

>>4285753
Translations are still trash.
I'm glad that it's easier nowadays to play games in their original language.

>>4285753
fuck yeah dude. recently played ace attorney dual destinies and danganronpa 1 + 2. loved all the memes they referenced in them. epic.

>>4286110
Soon there will be instant or fairly instant machine translations and I'm sure there will be no shortage of people who can't shut the fuck up about them being too literal.

>>4286146

Accurate is not equal to good.

Take FFIV. Some will here will recommend the original SNES translation for FFIV claiming that it's the most accurate. While technically true, it's horribly written and confusing to understand because it was translated by an ESL Japanese employee without the best grasp on English, making it an actually poor translation to read and play through despite being accurate to the original source material.

>>4286084
>Is it though? Maybe that should be their art and aspiration but their JOB is to produce something that will sell and to not take too long doing it.
A translator's job is to translate, and translating is carrying a message without altering it too much (unless you absolutely need to do it for the message to make sense, like I mentioned before). 90's memes and poop jokes may add nostalgia, but they have nothing to do with translating. It is the marketing department's job to sell the game, and while during that age there was fear of games being too Japanese, Working Designs' entire existence revolved around bringing niche games that were too Japanese to the west, so that logic doesn't really apply to them.

Translator's invisibility has been a mainstay theory of translation studies for over 20 years, so while not technically "enforced" during the formation of Ireland, I think we can all be pretty sure that nobody encourages just making shit up in lieu of actually translating, because ever since man started translating in ancient ages that was frowned upon as lazy and stupid. Which it is. Making shit up defeats the purpose of translating. I'm not talking about making the script more dynamic, adding accents, or adding a bit of slang, I'm talking about replacing entire lines of dialogue with unrelated bullshit you think is cool just for shits and giggles. That's not professional and never has been, and it shouldn't get a pass just because we grew up with it.

>>4286101
Again, a translator that just makes shit up instead of conveying the message is not translating. He's just making shit up. It was their choice to not translate and make shit up instead, and they did. We're free to think whether THAT was a good choice or not, but from a translation perspective it wasn't even a translation to begin with. Try to pull off that "lol they can do whatever they want" attitude in any other field. It won't fly.

>>4286205
This, literal dictionary translation is not a good translation. Translation is about conveying the message, and if a translation is too literal the message often isn't conveyed properly because it's obscured by syntax, context, or what have you. It's a fallacy to go straight to "have literal machine translations then" when we're talking about adding Monica Lewinsky references and fart noises during credits when translating something that had none of that before. There's no justification for that level of unprofessionalism unless you really want to just base it all off how it tickles your nostalgia.

At least gaming translations have definitely grown up, because people nowadays won't think adding Doge meme references to modern translations isn't "fun and adds nostalgia value", they think is bullshit, and rightfully so. The fact that we can't say the same for retro games speaks more about how blinded by nostalgia some people are than anything else.

>>4286143
totally
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbdhp8P90Yw

>>4286223
>>4286213
There's an important difference between a translation and a localization. Working Designs was the later. You can not like what they do, but it wasn't "bad" per se.

What I don't understand is why don't those fucks at WD understand that they shouldn't fuck around with breaking games with difficulty? The only defence these assholes have is that supposedly they are the only ones that brings certain titles over (which obviously isn't true)

>>4286318
It was bad

>>4286341
He thought a lot of jap games were too easy.

I like how they completely misunderstood how strong Surosa Lv5 was in Silhouette Mirage and made it cheaper, as opposed to every other weapon that they made more expensive.

>>4286318
That's the stupidest argument ever, and may only ever slightly apply when the source material is so rearranged (like Robotech) that you can instantly tell which work we are discussing on the basis of name alone. If it's Macross it's Macross, if it's Robotech, it's Robotech.

But when you want to discuss something like "I really like Alundra's quirky writing", or "Alundra's writing sucks, 90s references instantly date a product", are they even talking about Alundra as it was originally conceived, or the professional "localization"?
It would be much better if it was called "Alundra (Vic ver.)", because the moment they strayed that much from the original intent it started becoming its own thing, and creating an useless contextual barrier between fans of the original Japanese and the ones who only played the localized version so they assume that is how the story was meant to be since inception, but both are talking about the same piece of work. You are only giving it a pass because it's a kids' medium and or you have nostalgia for it, and hey that's all subjective, but you can't argue it is a shitty practice that's in any way respectful of the work they were supposed to port over, the one that had not existed wouldn't have given them a chance to make money.

I realize I provided an extreme condition, but this is the kind of crappy aftereffects bad translation or localization produces. If I want to talk about something I wouldn't expect anyone to know the various intricacies of any released version but the original, and neither should you.

>>4286364
It's not an argument it's a statement of fact.

>>4286364
I was just about to ask you if Robotech makes you insane but I guess changing the names makes it fine. It's too bad Working Designs didn't have their own logo that they could have put on all the games they localized.

>>4286364
be honest with me anon: how many westerners played the jap version? and how many times have you discussed alundra with actual japs?

it was the localisation that made the game available to the western audience, so obviously it's the localisation that 99% of all western consumers saw. you're not ever going to notice the effects of the "contextual barrier" you describe.

>>4285669
weren't harder games mostly done to fight rentals

>>4286364
>But when you want to discuss something like "I really like Alundra's quirky writing", or "Alundra's writing sucks, 90s references instantly date a product", are they even talking about Alundra as it was originally conceived, or the professional "localization"?

Either or both? Seems like a pretty simple thing to ask as part of a conversation, and one that needs to be asked about most games that get ported. Serious question but are you an aspie or something?

>>4286450
Didn't they use to, at some point during the fifth gen I think, plaster their logo all over packaging, merchandise and in-game splash screens, going so far as to REPLACE the original developers' logos with their own logo?

>>4286452
So basically "because it's fun lol". How is this good localization? He's not changing things to ease a foreign audience into the material, he's just adding things that never needed to be added because it's fun lol.

>>4285669
Localization is all about putting out a game that other areas will enjoy while keeping it as close as possible to the original.

Both are wrong. LL fails the first while WD fails the second.

>>4286491
Yes

>>4285813
>So he did bring games over to this side of the pond and that was great, but that shouldn't let him off the hook for his terrible egomaniac translation practices which still carried over well after the retro era, like when he registered on fan forums to shit on XSEED's Lunar and shitpost to regular fans who questioned his tantrums.

I don't think people understand just how fucked up Victor is. The man literally tanked his own company in a two-part tantrum over Goemon and the GBA/DS succeeding over the PSP. To this day you can probably trigger that motherfucker into frothing rage with the phrase "Dark Scimitar." Dude's a tool.

>>4285669
>censored all boobs from games
>censored more religious symbols than nintendo
>artificially increased all game difficulty
>inserted bill clinton monica lewinsky 90s pop culture reference and poop jokes in every single game
>artificially inflate prices for collectors items on ebay store
>delayed games for years and took all the profits
>criticizes other localizations out of spite
>neofag tier sjw defense force
Just fuck my shit up senpai

>>4286318
>There's an important difference between a translation and a localization.
No, there isn't. The distinction is an entirely made up, arbitrary one that internet losers try to use to make their personal tastes sound like an objective thing. It's based on the absurd idea that language is somehow separate from and unaffected by culture, which is an idea that anyone who has learned two or more languages could tell you is just fucking bats.

Language does not exist in a vacuum, there is no independent universal repository of meaning which disparate languages mutually reference. Even your ideas of what constitute neutral are culturally constructed.