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Changes made during localization

SolVanderlyn

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
One that always stood out to me was the name changes from Rockman -> MegaMan.

We have:

Rockman = Mega Man

Blues = Proto Man

Forte = Bass

Gospel = Treble

Vava = Vile

Vile = Weil

Then the Maverick names were different in the X series, having an artsy flair to them in the Japanese releases (X6 being the exception). They were also called "Irregulars" instead of "Mavericks". Boomer Kuwanger was the sole boss in X1 not to have a name change in the US release, hence his weird sounding name. Against the likes of Burnin' Noumander (Flame Mammoth) and Storm Eagleed (Storm Eagle), his name seems to fit in. Then X5 went totally crazy and renamed the mavericks after Guns N' Roses members. Spiral Pegasion could have been normalized to Spiral Pegasus, and Spike Rosered could have been the same or changed to Spike Rose, but what did we get? The Skiver and Axl the Red. Hoo boy.

I can understand changing the admittedly weird sounding (but awesome) Maverick names to gel with an American audience, and getting rid of the Engrishy "Irregular" moniker, but why they decided to neuter the music references in the classic series is beyond me. And then they go and change Forte and Gospel to Bass and Treble for no reason at all. They just changed the musical reference... why?

What are some other changes made to games during the localization process? I know some games went the extra mile and added new modes or edits to character sprites/models.
 
Not a name change, but... why is Shion looking at her hands and being so shocked/petrified? It's almost as if she was coughing something out!

Ks4swhR.jpg
 
Dr. Eggman > Dr. Robotnik, only for them to actually switch to Dr. Eggman later on.

Angry Kirby in US boxarts as opposed to Happy Kirby in Japan.

A more recent one would be Azure Striker Gunvolt: The titular character, Gunvolt, has a bare midriff in the Japanese version but that was altered for the English release.
 
D15GR4C3D said:
Biohazard to Resident Evil and Psycho Break to The Evil Within.
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I think The Evil Within is the original name while Psycho Break is the change that occurred, not the other way round.
 
Shikigami no Shiro



localised to Mobile Light Force 2



Its a shmup if you don't know what kind of game it is. Truly bizarre localization
 
The English translation of the first Drakengard game makes it much less obvious that your sister wants to fuck you and that one of your party members is a pedophile.
 
From Chrono Trigger

05.gif


Complete with morning after being "hung over" from all the soup they ate the night before.

I was 9 when I played this game. I had no idea what was going on.
 
In Final Fantasy VI, Kefka was rewritten into a highly memorable JRPG equivalent of the Joker from being a lot more generic in the original.

The main character's name was also changed from "Tina" to "Terra" because Tina is a more common anglophone name and the idea was to have her sound somewhat exotic.

FFVI had a lot of stuff like this courtesy of Ted Woolsey, and most of it contributed heavily to the game being so well-loved and remembered in America. It's my favorite kind of translation, honestly; they took liberties with the script to help convey the spirit of the work, rather than being as dry and literal as possible.
 
Peach's 'Grandma' in Super Mario RPG. IIRC, in Japanese the character was just an older motherly figure, maybe chambermaid? My memory's a little funny, but it might've been a word that could be interpreted as Grandma in Japanese.

But when localized it got outright switched to Grandma, leading to the speculation that Peach is at least part Toad.

My own personal theory is that the Toad people are like bees, and Peach is the "queen bee". Hence, why she rules over them but looks so different.
 
The SF2 bosses.

In Japan, the final boss is Vega, not Bison; the boxer is Mike Bison, not Balrog; and the claw guy is Balrog, not Vega. The names were swapped to avoid a potential lawsuit from Mike Tyson AFAIK.

They also made other name changes, like Nash becoming Charlie and Gouki becoming Akuma. Several Darkstalkers characters have completely different names in Japan as well.

Edit: Beaten worse than Justin in 2004, LMAO.
 
Vulcan = Cybernator

In the Japanese version of Cybernator the President shoots himself in his office at the end. You don't see this in the US version.

In No More Heroes the Japanese version has the blood censored out.

How times have changed.
 
For the initial release of Persona in the West, they changed the setting to the US, made one character black and then billed it as part of the "Revelations" series, which is what they hoped to call Shin Megami Tensei over here.
 
Silent Hill was an odd case--the grey children monsters were censored in the Japanese version but not US. Not sure if that count as a "change" since US basically got the original version.

Classic:
comic331_zps0e179cf7.png
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Chrono Cross - In the Japanese version some of the plot explanations were kinda vague and worded mysteriously. The translator thought players would be completely lost so he asked the director for clarifications and the two of them ended up adding huge plot dumps near the end of the game in the English version to make things clearer.
 
The original Japanese version of Bloody Roar 3 had a debug mode akin to Garry's Mod where you can modify the character's skeleton. This mode caused some controversy as images of debug mode contained NSFW content causing Activision to remove it from the US version.

mowWk.jpg
 
Sayter said:
Vulcan = Cybernator

In the Japanese version of Cybernator the President shoots himself in his office at the end. You don't see this in the US version.
Click to expand...
There was also a much more extensive storyline involving the main character's main rival in the enemy forces that included a supporting character that got completely cut out of the US version.

On the other end of the coin, Dragon Quest 2 gained a whole prologue scene when it got brought over as Dragon Warrior 2.
 
germany had a branch von nintendo here where they actually translated games directly from japanese to german. and we had some funny translations here where they actually swapped places and names with actual real people connected to nintendo.

they also used "großostheim"(the place where nintendo HQ was) in secret of evermore, where the lab of the doc is. pretty funny. i never realized this until i read this on the internet nearly a decade later.

there are other things, i cant think of right now.
 
I was grateful to Working Designs for bringing over niche games that more than likely would have never seen the light of day otherwise but the extreme liberties taken with localisation were a bit much at times.

Playing Neptunia mk2 over the weekend I was surprised to see a Powerthirst reference. It made me laugh NISA but I doubt that was there to begin with ;)
 
Ar tonelico II's localization had tons of unnecessary lewd moments from what I've been told and is less serious than the Japanese version.
 
Beyond plot points and names, there are so many mechanical changes among older games out there. And so many are undocumented.

Just recently I compared my copies of Contra: Shattered Soldier and Shin Contra, for example, and they have different life and continue amounts. And this was 2002! I can't find any English-language mention of this anywhere on the entire internet, so here you go, internet.

If I were less lazy I'd set up a database for this sort of thing.
 
Snatcher changed the age of Katrina from 14 years old to 18 years old so the shower scene wouldn't be so pervy and pedophiley.
 
Didn't lotsa games in the 80's & early 90's get made harder/easier for western releases?

MrBS said:
I was grateful to Working Designs for bringing over niche games that more than likely would have never seen the light of day otherwise but the extreme liberties taken with localisation were a bit much at times.
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Even if ya weren't super keen on their translation choices they still get props for spiffing up many games for release. Fixing bugs, adjusting game balance, an other stuffs!

Playing Neptunia mk2 over the weekend I was surprised to see a Powerthirst reference. It made me laugh NISA but I doubt that was there to begin with ;)
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It seems like NISA is known for taking liberties with stuff so I guess thats not suprising...

ibB071qxD0UfU.png

...case in point x.x
 
MrBS said:
I was grateful to Working Designs for bringing over niche games that more than likely would have never seen the light of day otherwise but the extreme liberties taken with localisation were a bit much at times.
Click to expand...
Oh yes, they were. I've been replaying Vanguard Bandits recently, and I can't help but think that they had a field day with Andrew's dialogue. I really wonder how liberal they were with it. It gets so obscene at times that it actually made me cringe.
 
Ristar.

They pulled a "Kirby" iirc, adding some new, meaner animations to Ristar. Like he frowns far more in the US Version.

JP Version had Ristar called by a Goddess to save the day, US Version added stuff about his father, and the ending credits have him meet his dad (you see his arms).

The Freon Boss was a cat, because of the Japanese pun "cat-tongue" since he's weak to hot food, changed to a more generic monster in the US.

Also one part in the JP Version Ristar begins to float because of low-gravity, US Version added special shoes he collected to explain why he could suddenly float.

Pretty interesting stuff.
 
In the first breath of fire the character karn was changed from black to white.

The snes version of the tmnt fighting game had the female ninja wear somewhat less skimpier clothes.

Then of course there's final fight with poison. I think they also edited the sequel but left 3 alone in regards to female enemies.
 
Old_man.png


The Old Man from Pokémon Red/Green/Blue/Yellow/FireRed/LeafGreen was passed out drunk in the Japanese version but they changed it to him being grumpy from lack of coffee.

So me saying "Go home you're drunk" is actually correct when I first saw him.
 
Somehow the original japanese version of No More Heroes was cut along with the european release. Only the US got the uncut version. Some of the scenes make no sense in the cut version...
 
In the original Final Fantasy, in the Japanese version there were Cross shaped buildings that served to restore your HP, but in the American versions the Cross was replaced with a Heart
 
I think we had a similar thread a while ago.

German versions are quite funny (although not language related):

Fallout 2 didn't have children in the game.
SoF2 had robots instead of humans and played in a parallel universe instead.
The old CnCs had cyborgs instead of humans. When drying over them, they also sounded like metal (instead of having human screams).
CnC: Generals had rolling bombs instead of suicide bombers...
 
I'm going to go ahead and cite the worst translation I have ever experienced... because I'm almost positive there isn't a Japanese equivalent (I could be wrong though... I don't know that much about the Japanese language):

Final Fantasy V:
When the fan translation came out, it was great, I patched it into a ROM and started emulating -- I never got very far into the game on account to my saves constantly being lost, but I had always made it to the portion where you'd gathered all 4 members of your initial party.
I finally got sick of trying and gave up.
Then I picked up the US version on the Collection (or Anthology) and funny enough, I didn't drop the game because of the egregious loading times... I dropped it because the translator thought it'd be a good idea to run every line of Ferris' dialogue through a "talk like a pirate" translator.
At that point, it was a "FUCK THIS, I'M OUT."
 
Gyakuten Saiban means "Turnabout Trial/Court". It became "Ace Attorney"


Kulilin -> Krillin in the US. In most other DBZ translations they simply say "Kuririn"
 
corrosivefrost said:
I'm going to go ahead and cite the worst translation I have ever experienced... because I'm almost positive there isn't a Japanese equivalent (I could be wrong though... I don't know that much about the Japanese language):

Final Fantasy V:
When the fan translation came out, it was great, I patched it into a ROM and started emulating -- I never got very far into the game on account to my saves constantly being lost, but I had always made it to the portion where you'd gathered all 4 members of your initial party.
I finally got sick of trying and gave up.
Then I picked up the US version on the Collection (or Anthology) and funny enough, I didn't drop the game because of the egregious loading times... I dropped it because the translator thought it'd be a good idea to run every line of Ferris' dialogue through a "talk like a pirate" translator.
At that point, it was a "FUCK THIS, I'M OUT."
Click to expand...

Supposedly that translation was a rough draft from Ted Woolsey from when they were going to bring it over as Final Fantasy Extreme. They just used it as-is for the FF Anthology release.
 
Final Fantasy Series

FFVIII, the entire game was butchered when translated into English

Here's an example- http://radiantbutterfly.tumblr.com/post/71485958945/ff8-ultimecia-dialogue-comparison

In FFXIII like FFVIII, they butchered it. They were too afraid to use God or Goddess so they just made up words like "the maker"

They messed the Analects up by making even more vague.

Hope's reason for being a kid was omitted in the English LR.

Lightning is more of an asshole in the English version.
 
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