this shit reads like a dumb teenager who thinks he's the funniest person in the world wrote it
>working designs
that explains it
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this shit reads like a dumb teenager who thinks he's the funniest person in the world wrote it. >working designs
https://cdromance.com/sega_cd_isos/lunar-the-silver-star-un-working-designs/
this doesn't retranslate the game, the script is still god awful
The script takes a lot of liberties, but it's great. I'd prefer translators not do what Working Designs did for official releases, but I've always enjoyed their humor. And the serious parts of the games are well done too. Really the scripts are fine for their biggest games like the Lunar series and Alundra. Outside of a few dumb jokes and changes, most of the stories are intact. Sure beats Breath of Fire II's translation and shit like that from back in the day.
PSP version is alright, but I wasn't a fan of how it looks compared to Sega CD or PSX. And the translation still takes a lot from the Working Designs version but with fewer jokes if I recall correctly. Plus the load times were bad, but there's ways around that I'm sure.
>And the serious parts of the games are well done too. Really the scripts are fine for their biggest games like the Lunar series and Alundra
This is why I asked him to name 5 examples, and always ask something like that in these threads. The main scripts in any of these games are barely or even completely untouched. At most you'll get a completely irrelevant npc in a village make a crude joke, or a reference about reese's pieces or something. These threads are in my experience always made by shitposters who have never played the games and know nothing at all about them outside of seeing a few screenshots continuously passed around of the notorious things like the Clinton joke. Absolutely nothing in these games changes the tone of plot of them, at all, and you need to go in with prior knowledge looking for things to get mad at to even recognize 99% of the edits.
>Posts facts
Quit being such a son of a submariner
https://tcrf.net/Lunar:_The_Silver_Star#Regional_Differences
https://tcrf.net/Lunar:_Eternal_Blue/Regional_Differences#Script
>quotes me while proving exactly what I said
Thanks.
Lunar-net is a better source if you want to read in-depth comparison of the English and Japanese versions.
https://lunar-net.com/tss/tss_diff.php
https://lunar-net.com/sssc/sss_diff.php
https://lunar-net.com/eb/eb_diff.php
https://lunar-net.com/ebc/ebc_diff.php
Thank you.
>but I've always enjoyed their humor.
the autist on Ganker loves stale '90s nerd humor, who knew
Can't argue with that
>this doesn't retranslate the game, the script is still god awful
Play Silver Star Harmony then.
Yeah it fixes some grammar I think but that's it
It at least gets rid of Vic's homosexualy mechanic tinkering.
Romhackers are all gays now who prefer to frick with scripts to get a pro localization job instead of showing it up.
Meanwhile in reality
A lot of WD fans seem to be nostalgic for the commercially available products, not the games themselves. That's why they always praise WD while giving zero credit to Game Arts and other actual developers.
Good goyim.
>That's why they always praise WD while giving zero credit to Game Arts and other actual developers.
To be fair, Game Arts was dumb enough to let WD "localize" in a huge ass "A game by / Presented by WORKING DESIGNS" with even more billing than Sega or Sony screens, and the actual developer's name is little more than a footnote. Japanese developers were idiotic about their branding, but then again if they weren't they wouldn't collaborate with WD in the first place.
Landstalker has a reference to the american aerial experiment association in the scene where the princess is kidnapped. Though Jaleco was the worst offender. They're more known for Totally Rad, but they managed to mess up the release of the Rushing Beat trilogy big time all the while requiring expensive modifications (completely changed full screen moves to avoid asian inspired imagery, linearity) and Ignition Factor has a localizer rant in the ending insulting the japanese developers, saying the plot is nonsensical and accusing the game of being a ripoff of a random american B movie about firefighting and telling the players to watch that instead, and then a list of family friends. A complete shitshow, I'm sure legal appreciated that, and no wonder Jaleco went under.
Working Designs localized Shining Wisdom for the Sega Saturn and purged all references to the Shining series reference and replaced them with random Sony first party RPG shilling. But maybe it's the job of American localizers to sabotage game series and minimize brand recognition. I'm sure nip devs would approve if they know.
>why is no one using my localizations in rereleases
>better incite a fan campaign that it's the worst thing ever to try and get game arts to use my script in mobile version
>even though it's no longer the same game but a remake, but that didn't keep me from doing it with lunar 2 back in the day
Didn't WD fans keep bullying the author of Un-Worked patches until he stopped to work on them, in part because they thought he was rewriting their beloved translations, which was completely false?
no? they're still doing un-worked patches, I'll call them out whenever the fan homosexuals try to rile shit up.
Working Designs is one of the worst fricking things that ever happened to video game localizations, it's not enough that those morons had to insert irrelevant references, they had to frick up game balance and design too.
Frick those homosexuals.
their translations are awful but it's based that they made all their games harder. 99% of jrpgs are braindead.
good
List 5 examples.
Just play the psp version
psp and gba versions are wack as shit.
Aha lunar is such a light hearted game. If you don’t like slice of life anime you won’t like lunar. If you go in expecting ff7 / ff8 level edge. You’re gonna be real sad when you uncover the dragon poo.
You're right, they were pretty light-hearted games to begin with. It might surprise some people to learn that the dragon poo thing was in the original Japanese script as well, and not just something WD added.
Too bad we have to second guess everything.
kys homosexual
Opening song is still fricking great and i wont stand for any weebs disagreement.
Every time I tried to play Lunar, I got fricking friltered from literally the first screen of the game.
That's coming from an old guy who played almost any JRPG in existence from the 16-bit era onward
Which version?
>Ashley Angel was fricking 12 when he played Alex for TSS, 17 for SSSC
>a few years later he shows up on Making the Band, ends up in O-Town
>was in an episode of Clone High as himself
I'll always have a soft spot for the SSSC dub, I can't help it
Same. PSP version having Troy Baker voicing Ghaleon instead of John Truitt just doesn't feel right. Speaking of which, found this when searching for him just now.
https://www.redding.com/story/news/local/2021/03/21/john-truitt-redding-2020-citizen-year/4792981001/
The dealbreaker for me was Nall, I could not abide some Krillin sounding shit coming out of him. I had to go undub but I think cutscenes aren't subtitled, not that I haven't already seen them like 20 years ago
Unironically drive a car into a wall at top speed you fricking homosexual.
people like you are why Ace Attorney's incredible English translations were stopped for more literal and boring translations
Based, gonna pick up the series now. Frick you and all localization homosexuals. I don't need your moron burger pop culture in Japanese video games
Japan worshippers are gross.
And you localization troons are disgusting. Dilate. You have all been outed as twatter homosexuals and 41%ers after the River City Girls "controversy". Anyone who advocates for localization should just kill themselves right now
>fun localizations are the same as troons and SJWs censoring "icky" moments in games
die in a fire
>muhhh jokerinos!!
Cope, seethe, and dilate your axewound
Are you intentionally ignoring all the bad comedy and number puns in Japanese games?
btw pretending everyone you talk to is some israelited-up troon doesn't make whatever you believe right.
So what is benefit of replacing bad jokes by the actual author with bad jokes by some guy?
To maintain the feeling and intent of the original game.
It would be shitty if all comedy was erased to create a super serious game, and it would be shitty to expect non-Japanese players to even understand any number puns or puns based on Japanese folklore or Japanese foods.
If the intent was to make the player smile or laugh, then the job of a translator is to capture that intent and adapt it for a different target audience.
>To maintain the feeling and intent of the original game.
Then tell Vic to learn what a goddamn joke is.
>it would be shitty to expect non-Japanese players to even understand any number puns or puns based on Japanese folklore or Japanese foods.
>even though it's a fricking Japanese game made by Japs
No, shitty is assuming everyone is a literal moron about cultural minutiae they've never experienced and get scared if they see food that isn't a hamburger or a joke that doesn't reference a movie one time that was parodied on some tv show with that Hollywood actor they sort of know about. Shitty is thinking everyone is dumb and you should make them dumber by rewriting something that wasn't yours to begin with.
It's like WDgays only play these weeb games with rewritten jokes to prove they're actually stupid Americans who are even dumber than your average American because they're afraid of a name pun.
There is literally no benefit other than giving a wage to a homosexual localizer. Modern MTL is a better way to experience experience these games
>Modern MTL is a better way to experience experience these games
lol you're full of shit
MTL has already been proven to be more accurate than 90s localization in many cases
accuracy in word for word translation is still wrong, its why we have translation teams instead of it doing everything. grammatically speaking, japanese works completely different from english, doesn't matter if its machine translated perfectly, not only will it be inaccurate to the way english is spoken or written, but its intrinsically different in that certain words in japanese can be read multiple ways and have multiple meanings. we have this in english but its not exactly the same thing. not to mention a perfect word for word translation is boring. scripts need to be re-written no matter what when localized. now stop larping and go to Ganker if youre in the mood to start something.
I'm not advocating for full localization either, but if the script relies so heavily on wordplay, unusual accents, and idioms, then a "literal" translation will make it sound thrice more moronic and end up breaking any immersion (even if it is paraphrased).
Translation is not just a matter of replacing words, because different languages are built on entirely different logics.
A completely literal translation is impossible.
You're never going to make weeb autists understand this shit. They want a literal translation because they want to get the 5 second dopamine rush of looking up what's being referenced, and get to feel more Japanese from it. Doesn't matter it's completely taking themselves out of the moment in the game.
The translations these morons praise are actually the lowest form of them possibly done, filled with margain notes, annotations, and explanations, to the point that it's less translation and more description.
There's 0 reason anyone in America should know what the words "baka" "keikaku" "oni-chan" "senpai" any of that kind of shit should mean, but some weeb decided those words were super cool Japanese words that didn't need translated, and so he didn't. Now you have a gigantic subduction of idiots who think making things understandable for a target audience is a bad translation, and a proper one would take a paragraph to explain that the previous sentence of dialog was actually very funny because its referencing a common folk tale from Edo period Japan, except with the hero and villain switched.
We just don't want troon shit and stupid fricking American pop culture references that are dated in 6 months and break immersion in a fantasy game
>deranged 41% rant
take your HRT
>There's 0 reason anyone in America should know what the words "baka" "keikaku" "oni-chan" "senpai
No body wants this you dumb freak troony. People don't want moron american pop culture in games where it doesn't belong. I don't give a frick about Elvis or Tootsie Pops. have a nice day
>A completely literal translation is impossible.
The whole premise is faulty.
The English scripts produced by Working Designs are shitty, that's for sure.
They were probably shitty incomplete literal translations dressed up as americanized rewrites.
What WD did was to try and differentiate themselves from the then common awful English translations churned by Nintendo and Capcom, which would have bad grammar, basic reading comprehension issues, censorship, and incomprehensible events.
They obviously ended up with an initial English script with a lot of those same flaws. They probably translated it literally, judging from some of the mistakes in there. It's even worse than those other translations because their result is incomplete, lacking in detail, and contradictory with other lines.
What they then did was to rewrite the hell of it to cover up their tracks. Can't be called a bad translation if it's no longer a translation. That train of thought is even invoked directly when they'd tell you "it's not a translation, it's a localization", "translations are those old english versions from before 1990, localizations are those english versions after that try to make it obvious an american wrote them".
Concepts like rewrites, adaptations, literal translation, by intent, by meaning, by word, by syntax... all exist since eons ago and are covered by translation. Established, even. Can't defend the shit incomplete rewrites, so they try to delegitimize translation as a whole and attack its basic ethics. Ethics such as "your opinions about the work don't matter", "you're a paraphraser, not a writer", "you should disclose major changes to your client(s)", "you don't have the right to put your words in the mouth of another writer and leave him with the consequences of your speech, especially inflammatory discourse" and so on.
have a nice day you israelite troon
enjoy your TL notes, gay
I see you've been to the Asian part of California.
It was worse in Lunar II
Good, I love TGAA
>Anonymous 07/19/22(Tue)10:58:59 No.9104287▶
It makes no sense; it breaks the immersion
Miami Vice, Kevin Bacon, ABBA, Jenny Craig, Eggo, Cocoa Puffs...these things don't fricking exist in this setting
Though, to be honest. I feel like a game like Popful Mail does fit the tone better for 'anime club' style localisation.
I mean...
What's the problem?
It makes no sense; it breaks the immersion
Miami Vice, Kevin Bacon, ABBA, Jenny Craig, Eggo, Cocoa Puffs...these things don't fricking exist in this setting
then retranslate it yourself if it bother you so badly, I think it's kinda unique
Here, how about them removing an NPC's dialogue about Vane falling from the sky, which is foreshadowing, just to replace it with a stupid Tootsie Pop and M&M joke
That's not foreshadowing you mongaloid
>NPC talks about what if Vane were to fall
>it falls later in the story after being shot down
how is it not?
Because it's an irrelevant NPC conversation involving a common thought anyone would have and said by someone with 0 impact on the event.
Nash disappearing, Luna clearing the fog, and talking to Royce on black rose street or Phacia in the temple are foreshadowing.
>boy I'm kinda weirded out by these super tall buildings, can you imagine if something bad happens and you're all the way up on the top floors?
You the dipshit moron: OMG 9/11 foreshadowing!
>boy I'm kinda weirded out by these super tall buildings, can you imagine if something bad happens and you're all the way up on the top floors
If somebody said that in a story that ends with the characters in the World Trade Center on 9/11, it would be foreshadowing in that story.
I loved the random Tootsie Pop commercial reference as a kid, so I can't be too upset over this.
>Random NPC in starting village: Don't forget to check out the local shops for better weapons and armor, so you can stay alive!
Amazing final boss fight foreshadowing here.
Do you not know how foreshadowing works?
You're right, it was foreshadowing, but other anon is right in that it doesn't impact the plot at all. In 1993, no one had self-aware dialogue like this, it was very entertaining and made the game seem more relevant like a TV show or movie.
>I don't know how to read!
Of course illiterates eat this shit up.
They actually do. The Blue Star is Earth in the distant future and the citizens of Lunar are transplants that moved to the terraformed moon.
none of these things will be known in a distant future, still not making any sense
who the frick is Jenny Craig? i understood the other references
Jenny Craig is a weight loss program. Very popular in the 90s.
Yeah, what
said. It was something you'd see in commercials and know about back then. I remember a friend's mom doing it. Basically they give you weight loss counseling and prepared meals. It's still around actually.
Heh, that's pretty good. I'm already having fun.
Ah yes, the brilliant, incredible, highly accurate Gyakuten Saiban translation that changes Itonokogiri Keisuke's name to Dick Gumshoe.
Ace Attorney's localization would've worked better if the setting wasn't so obviously Japan. Their attempts to pass it off as Los Angeles were amusing though, honestly.
The European localizations avoid mentioning Japan by name, instead using "this country", but have none of the "cultural exchange village of american asians in an alternate history where WW2 didn't happen".
The problem was that the series stopped getting European (or South Korean) localizations after Apollo Justice and Ghost Trick, over poor sales.
The Great Ace Attorney omits a lot of cultural quirks and puns they can't get across, but try to explain most of them. It strikes a sweet balance... if not for the fact they told Capcom JP to delete "japanese monkeys" from the JP phone versions to avoid accusations of censorship.
Didn't the French version of the first game move the setting to Paris?
Just the time zone for 1-1. They changed the homosexual cook to a Lebanese, then Italian cook. To be fair his french nationality was a complete fabrication of the english localization, he's supposed to be a japanese mutt with a french sounding name.
The rest was fairly non descript. If memory serves it was a Nintendo of Europe team that would coordinate work from the English localization then correct particularly disastrous deviations from the Japanese script, they had an interview detailing their process for Hotel Dusk but its later parts were deleted because "reasons".
Dick gumshoe is way better name than wakatajazushinagatoronata sama
Sounds like Americanized original works like Harvey Birdman (Ace Attorney clone) or that PSP Tokimeki Memorial clone is more your alley. Ace Attorney still has Japanese shrines, anime eyes, and references to the nip legal system.
I'm ok with a jap game, i just can't stand when the names get too long and hard to remember.
Yoshi? Miku? Hideo? Easy to remember.
Full blown anime shit like Ace, Spike, Miles Edgeworth, etc? Easy to remember.
But once you get into some fricking Yokotokonokawatsukiyo Daknawatanabata Sama bullshit... I just guess in one ear and out the other. I can't remember a cast full of bullshit names like that, especially when they're the same fricking sounds over and over in different order.
It would be like an American game where the characters are named Billy-Jo Bobson, Bobby-Jo Billson, Joey Bo Joeson, Joseph McBillsworth, Bill McBobarty, etc...
Yes, I hate it when names get too long and too hard to remember for me.
>Localizer Note: Esty Dee (read "S-T-D") is N3 Japanese for seibyou 性病
I don't care about that gay shit. I'm only here to defend Dick Gumshoe. Best name ever. Should have been the main character.
Ace Attorney is full of puns, every single name is a pun, they had to do this. The first three games were even designed with localization in mind.
>even designed with localization in mind
Given that they explicitly based the storie around Japanese culture and legal practice, I find that pretty unlikely and would like a source.
Actually, I think it was just the first game?
I'm having a hard time finding the interview where this is mentioned, but I believe they meant things within the cases themselves, like avoiding too much japanese wordplay.
I remember they also mentioned how the game ended up not even being localized so they abandoned this effort, only for the first and future games to then be localized on the DS.
Changing names was absolutely necessary regardless, things like Naruhodo's name meaning "I understand" was localized into "Wright" to properly communicate the jokes.
>Takumi: I figured everyone knew about yakuza from Takashi Kitano movies and the like.
AA1-3 wasn't designed with localization in mind but latter games took that into account. In general trying to do the whole "localization is bad!!!!" thing is moronic with modern games because localizers tend to work with the Japanese team in order to pull off worldwide releases.
As another example, some of the plot changes for the Fire Emblem Tellius games were actually suggested by the Japanese staff themselves, because those games sold real poorly over in Japan to begin with.
The Tellius games didn't have plot changes as much as Fire Emblem Blazing Sword did (pretending Binding Blade didn't exist and rewriting the ending so that they all die or disappear because they didn't plan on localizing it), because they had multiple difficulty settings and the harder ones had the extended full storyline while the easy mode was the abridged script. NoA cut corners and translated the short version.
Alexander O. Smith probably was high on his farts and thought that the reason why Ogre Battle / Final Fantasy Tactics and Ace Attorney were lauded was because they felt like they were set in America / England, not that there was an element in that story that required the name changes ("character names hint at criminals" for Ace Attorney, "medieval European fantasy" for Final Fantasy Tactics/Vagrant Story/Tactics Ogre and even then it's overdone at times), so he took that random Japanese horror game and dumbed down the folk tales to be about banshees (have you heard about murderous sharp-clawed weasel-like banshees?) and rewrote the characterizations to be american-like. It wasn't serving the story. It was americanizing a work to remove (not carry over/replace with equivalents) as much foreign aspects as possible, 4kids/netflix style.
>Fire Emblem Blazing Sword did (pretending Binding Blade didn't exist and rewriting the ending so that they all die or disappear because they didn't plan on localizing it),
What? That was all in the Japanese version. All the references to FE6 were kept in the English version. Did you miss Sophia's cameo or the blatant cliffhanger epilogue?
>NoA cut corners and translated the short version.
Actually, they used a hybrid script, not as long as the long version but not as abridged either. It's hard to say whose decision that was.
The contents of said cliffhanger episode were NOT translated properly. The American version killed off a lot of characters that are alive and well in the prequel, and the European version just removed it.
lolwut? It implies that Bartre dies due to a mistranslation (and simply less room for words), but no one else was killed off. This happens in the ending credits and not the "cliffhanger episode" we're talking about. I wonder if you actually played FE7 or you just googled for FE translation issues to shitpost about.
That's the interview I was thinking of, thanks. Seems I misremembered it.
Whose idea was to localize it anyways?
Alexander O. Smith worked on the first one, and he is pretty legendary in the fields of translation (Front Mission 3,Final Fantasy 8,Vagrant Story,Tactics Ogre), so it's weird that he suddenly decided to take such crazy liberties with Ace Attorney.
I tried to find information about it both in English and in Japanese, but couldn't find anything concrete.
Does anyone has any info about it?
If I had to guess, AA1 being more comedic compared to those examples made Alexander think that the best approach was to take more liberties in order to make the jokes land. Almost everyone in AA is named after some Japanese pun.
Alexander O. Smith worked on Kamaitachi no Yoru, which pretended the whole thing is set in America, redrew all of the art, and messed up with the series continuity. Spike Chunsoft listed it years later in a poll about which "unlocalized game you want translated next". He has his big blunders, but now has largely moved on from game translations.
The liberties taken with Ace Attorney were rationalized by the first case containing a time zone hint, the character names being meaningful to case resolutions (something they stopped caring about by Spirit of Justice, Ghost Trick, and The Great Ace Attorney) and a desire to replace puns and cultural references with equivalent references. Capcom of Japan even got a list of the suggested English names for each character and they got to reject a ton of them and pick ones that didn't kill the brand.
Capcom then started giving the Japanese script to the English translators early (the Taka pet eagle in AA5 was a leftover English name pun / hint related to a scrapped storyline) to save time because translation production delays harmed AA3's performance.
AA1 was "self-contained", even in Japan.
AA1's success in the west was a surprise and they did additional print runs. It's very possible AA2 and AA3 on the DS (with English even in Japanese copies) only happened because of that success.
AA3's English release was uncertain for a while and had production issues, some of it was outsourced, the European version ended up releasing after AA4, rating board issues happened, and the release was chaotic with some languages releasing before others).
They still regretted that choice later.
>Kamaitachi no Yoru
Jesus, whats the point of changing the names of characters in a murder mystery vn intended for adults? I get treating children like they get confused by foreign names, but no Western child was interested in Night of the Sickleweasel.
It's a bit odd how they decided to change yakuza, but kept zaibatsu in the first Edgeworth game which released just 2 years later because I think the latter term would be even more unfamiliar to western audiences.
The fact that the Ace Attorney games (the original three, anyway) didn't have a jury should've been a dead giveaway that the setting wasn't the US.
May I remind you of Sal Manella...
Part of me almost misses leetspeak. Almost.
>Ace Attorney's incredible English translations
Aside from completely changing the setting, those were at least trying to remain accurate whenever possible.
Working Design "translations" are just pure mockery.
(and that's a good thing)
You have to admit there's a lot of things about the original Ace Attorney trilogy localization that are super dated. I guess there's a charm to it but it's mostly cringe.
And the Japanifornia shit was dumb as frick, and got increasingly dumber with each sequel as they doubled down on it despite it becoming increasingly nonsensical. "Why is there all this Japanese shit in Los Angeles? Uhhh immigrants idk."
t. resetera member who was probably on board with the older neogaf attempt to take over the fan translation patch for GAA and localize Imperial Japan as California, Ryonusuke as "Gregory Wright", and remove all of the "problematic racism"
and yes, they really attempted that. (things like the unworked designs / goemon 3 shitshow was pent-up resetera rage against the fan translation community because stuff like americanized GAA didn't happen)
That "basic translation" column is an adaption too ("localization" for the low iq WD stans out there) but the liberties it takes are acceptable and appropriate expressions of the same idea, the way a native speaker would say it. That's how localizations should be ideally like.
Yeah, I'm not native so jinx doesn't meant much for me before checking it.
>this shit reads like a dumb teenager who thinks he's the funniest person in the world wrote it
anon, when your post reads like that, it'll be an improvement becuase your post is crap
Your mind is tainted by modern troonylators to hate anything that isn't dry Japanese writing. Working Designs was doing something way different from the crowd, making their work authentically humorous and soulful. Not to mention better than the Japanese dialogue.
Its ok if you want to play the game with a shit translation, full of forced humor to keep your interest up, fellow burger. Just know there are better options now and some people prefer quality whenever possible.
>dry Japanese writing
There's that meme again.
>shouganai
It can't be helped
ITT: seething weebs who would laugh their ass off if there was a panty stealing joke
Why are you complaining about weebs in a JRPG thread?
If you play working designs homosexual shit like Lunar or MK Rayearth then you are a turboweeb.
>the year is 2093
>114 year old WD cultists still argue with 94 year old weaboos on the information superhighway
I fricking laughed. And you know they will.
have a nice day.
I'm not annoyed with how they messed with the stats.
I hated Alundra's localization and the bs stuff WD to make it harder. I got the Un-WD patch, but its a shame no one will ever bother to fix the translations for all the games.
The world needs an extremely socially awkward young hacker who has no nostalgia for Working Designs and also doesn't use social media at all, so they can't be harassed by old Lunar fans. Them they could start retranslating WD catalog from scratch.
The world has many of those. Most don't give a frick about re-translating shit for no credit/cash.
And we remember a time when they gave a frick for no compensation
There's a difference between giving people garage and giving a frick. Also epen is compensation.
I'm not defending the shitty translations that most English localizers do nowadays, but the people that want a 1:1 translation of the source material are so direly autistic that I can't even fathom how this happens. They would shit on the Ghost Stories dub for being inaccurate to the source material and the cultural nuances and shit. Like dude, it's a fricking entertainment medium. Lighten up and have some fun. If you want to learn about Japan like I do, then read a book about Japan's culture and history.
as a native engrish speaker myself I can confirm these translations are 100% accurate. would working design again.
Fricking jap localizers bastardizing our sacred interactive art. Can you believe these fricking changes?
Billy-Jo Bobson -> Yoshi Matsudo
Adam Dave Johnson -> Tetsuya Mitsu
Bobby-Jo Billson -> Hitomi Kawata
David John Adamson -> Hideo Taro
Joey Bo Joeson -> Ichigo
Joseph McBillsworth -> Hero Kisume
Bobert Adam Davidson -> "Spike"
Bill McBobarty -> Mr. X
Mickey McAdams -> Miku Nomura
They ruined the game.
You wont ever be real women
because Amnesty International totally exists in this fictional fantasy settings, so funneh
Working designs while juvenile they know when to be serious. It's absolutely not the same thing as modern writing that makes everything a joke at all times
They did what any good translator should have done. They did go too far in some cases. Woosley was the better localizer of the era anyway.
There's absolutely no reason to do the majority of the shit they did. If there's some obscure Japanese pop culture reference nobody in the west would know because the Internet wasn't really a thing yet that's one thing, but just changing shit wholesale because you don't like it or think you are a better writer than the creator is unacceptable. That doesn't even get into all their game-breaking balance changes. People called them Wrecking Designs for a reason.
The job of a localizer is to present $media as if it were made in $localizercountry.
I'm sorry about your crippling autism.
That's an extremely arbitrary definition that can be used to support your position regardless. There's plenty of media made in my own country that don't have topical pop culture refereces when they're in fantasy settings.
And plenty that does. Now I'm not saying that WD were good writers, but to hold up the originals as some pinnacle of quality is fricking silly.
There are precious few media that were improved by a localization, and Lunar sure wasn't one of 'em.
>That doesn't even get into all their game-breaking balance changes.
I beat both Lunar games when I was 9 years old. The games were changed to prevent beating these 0 difficulty games in one rental period, and because Americans like to actually have to play the game instead of mash X on trash mobs until the next anime cutscene
The Doug Walker approach to comedy: you can't be funny unless you reference something else.
Watch the WD apologists cry about censorship when one word of their jokes is removed from their abridged dub
That Alundra line wasn't in the final game
It wasn't canceled back then. It was a simpler time.
What was even the original word they translated from?
Super problematical
get your fainting couch re-upholstered buttercup, youre in for a bumpy life
I thought americans localizers were all about that witty writing and fourth wall breaking tropes and meta and shit and loved it so much they'd fill games with that cringe, what's the thought process here?
Oh let me guess, this is a localization that obviously shat the bed, so it must be a "literal translation" and "the reason why we need even more localization changes". OR, they'd admit it's bad here, but only because of the "r-word" Black person and "that's why we need the ethics department and even more localization".
Calm down spergy. FF7 was done by 1 unpaid intern on a crunched schedule
Is there like a better retranslation on PC?
Also a better fontset for FF8 on PC?
>Is there like a better retranslation on PC?
Yes. Problem is one of the more popular choices is the fricking moronic translation that literally used other names for items and such when the canon is already ready for the taking.
And the reason?
>
>FF7 was done by 1 unpaid intern on a crunched schedule
lmao, you're not even joking are you
Not in the slightest
The basic translations sounds bad too. With my low level Japanese I would rather translate it as: "Hey! Don't say it even as a joke!"
I wanted to have intercourse with all the girls in this series
thank you for reminding me that there is a bitter b***h any time someone does something special that they themselves could never do.
WD was actually the best of the localizers, by the PS2 era every rpg character had to talk like a boy band member on MTV, or speak in a southern drawl or have a wearying latinx accent. The above isn't like family guy humour where the narrative is just thrown off-course for a moment, it's designed to punctuate an idea like a punchline in a comic strip; a successful localization.
This is the kind of joke I'd expect from an elementary schooler in the 90's.
And I should know, because I was one.
So highbrow humor by today's elementary schooler standards?
why is it so hard to find an actual picture of the real Lunar cover for Sega CD? It's always these cropped versions.
Do people get angry about Crayon Shin-chan's Adult Swim dub too? That takes it way further than WD. It's alright to enjoy goofy localizations even if you'd prefer people stick to the source material. The WD localizations exist and they're entertaining, so I can have fun with them even though I'd much rather people translate things more faithfully. I don't get why people seethe over them to this day, just enjoy it as a curiosity. I like the random Austin Powers/Tootsie Pop references.
If people enjoy the WD stuff, hey, whatever floats your boat. It'd be nice to have an alternative though.
The Un-Worked versions still use the same scripts; the only things fixed were the gameplay changes WD did (which are indefensible, IMO).
Even the "translation" of the Saturn version of Lunar SSS just used WD's script.
Oh, and unrelated, but the translation of the Saturn version of Grandia advertised a "censorship-free script". Looks like the just reused the US PS1 script.
I mean, who the hell says BOGUS! whilst presumably falling to their certain death from high up? That's obviously a censored line.
>If people enjoy the WD stuff, hey, whatever floats your boat. It'd be nice to have an alternative though.
Agreed, it would be nice to have more options.
That's a shame. Grandia's localization could've been better, particularly the voice acting. You look at the Japanese version and it has some big name VAs like Noriko Hidaka (voice of Akane Tendo and many others) as Feena. I do like some of the voices in the English version, but it's a mixed bag and some characters like Mullen sound really corny. Is the Saturn version worth playing over the Playstaion one? I've always heard it's a bit nicer in terms of graphics and stuff.
It largely looks better, and you get the JP voices. It's the original version too, and personally, I'm an advocate for playing the original version of a game whenever possible.
Grandia wasn't even WD's butchering; it was done by Snoy of America. Hell, as long as you paid good money to Vic so he COULDN'T rewrite or tamper with the mechanics, WD could've done a better job.
Yeah you're right, it's another Game Arts game but translated by Sony instead. We were just going on a tangent about Grandia's translation (
says "and unrelated").
>Hell, as long as you paid good money to Vic so he COULDN'T rewrite or tamper with the mechanics, WD could've done a better job.
I think so too. Even back then, this old Gamespot review from 1999 compared it negatively to Working Designs:
https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/grandia-review/1900-2547736/
>While it's a fairly minor point, Grandia's translation is pretty inexcusable by today's standards. With companies like Atlus and Working Designs turning out such impressive localizations, it's a little disappointing to see a better game like Grandia get so little attention in this department. Grandia's text is grammatical, but that's about it. Because the game's not dark and could theoretically attract a younger audience, Sony has taken a rather Nintendo-like approach with its translation. For example, what was once alcohol is now coffee. A few innuendoes remain, but the text has been sanitized as not to glorify anything Americans might hypocritically consider immoral. As with Ape Escape, Grandia's voices are uniformly terrible and blandly recited. To make things worse, the voices are used a little too often and the characters, who sounded "cool" in Japanese, come across sounding more annoying than anything else.
>Translation aside, Sony has a real winner on its hands and it probably doesn't even know it - Grandia is every bit as worthwhile as Final Fantasy VIII, just in different ways. While a more casual RPGer might opt for Final Fantasy VIII, as Sony's sad ad campaign admits, Grandia is a fantastic game for anyone looking for a lighthearted, truly satisfying adventure.
>this old Gamespot review from 1999 compared it negatively to Working Designs:
That's only because it was 1999 and nerds were still enamored with seeing mildly obscure weeb game get released in English that wasn't filled with awkward Engrish phrasing and grammar errors. In exchange you get "translations" from native English speakers who think they're comedic geniuses because they've seen an episode of South Park.
>I think Vic Ireland was an early example of those retro gamers who think difficulty is paramount to a quality game. Like Magic Knight Rayearth is extremely easy. Like an actual baby game easy. WD tweaked it to make it somewhat harder. Whether or not that's a good thing is up in the air
You don't have to hem and haw about it; it is under no circumstances a "good thing". Ireland is not a designer. He is not a writer. He was not an employee or even a contracted worker at Game Arts or Sega or whatever devs were in Japan. He is a distributor. His job is to release these games to an overseas market AS THEY SHOULD BE, not frick with them.
If a game like Rayearth was made as a moron proof baby game by its devs, then it stays a moron proof baby game.
>In the manuals, they'd talk about the changes like they were adding extra care making them game better when bringing it over.
Translation: Look at the couple of nifty things we did so no one notices all the other things we fricked up because "hurr who else would localize it?"
>Translation: Look at the couple of nifty things we did so no one notices all the other things we fricked up because "hurr who else would localize it?"
Well they considered a lot of the things people complain about to be nifty things. They didn't think they were fricking it up, though obviously it's debatable. Like they'd proudly talk about boosting the difficulty and stuff too. Didn't seem like they were trying to hide anything either, even if the full details weren't there.
>Like they'd proudly talk about boosting the difficulty and stuff too.
This is a lie. Pic related is from the Alundra English manual, yet all but two enemies were made harder, and only one boss had any of its stats decreased.
It's not a lie, gave an example of them proudly talking about their difficulty boost even for a game where people generally thought it fricked things up as mentioned by
. Most of their changes weren't nearly as controversial. I know their notes were sometimes vague or even misleading in the case of Alundra. That's why said they wouldn't give all the details. And sometimes they'd talk about their changes, but not accurately or fully describe how it actually affected the game. But my point was only that they proudly presented these changes as an improvement they made, along with improvements like adding rumble support or analog controls.
On a side note, I wonder if the changes to Alundra are really just the enemy stats. I wonder if they tried tweaking the AI or something else a bit too. Either that or it's possible they changed stuff after preparing the manual.
> He is a distributor. His job is to release these games to an overseas market AS THEY SHOULD BE, not frick with them.
If his changes cause the game to have more sales, then that actually is kinda his job.
>If his changes cause the game to have more sales, then that actually is kinda his job.
His job is to market and distribute games. If you have the resources and know how you can market a baby game or an autistically hard game and still get sales. Changing mechanics isn't required.
>the gameplay changes WD did (which are indefensible, IMO).
As a matter of principle, I think it's something translators shouldn't mess with, especially to the degree WD did (beyond some of the nice quality of life changes they made like adding analog controls). That said, it varied from game-to-game in terms of how good or bad the changes were. In some cases they totally broke the game (Exile 2), while in other cases I actually prefer the balancing in the WD version (Lunar SSSC). Translators shouldn't be in the business of making difficulty hacks though. Maybe if they offered it as a separate hard mode you could select.
That does look noticeably better. I'll try the Saturn version if I replay it someday.
>According to Victor Ireland: On Exile 2 it was an issue of limited number of modifications because we weren't doing the game reprogramming, Telenet was. It was a small number of tries. And on the second-to last time, we had it *almost* right, so we added like +1 to the monsters, but it was like that scene with the fat guy in Meaning of Life where the waiter gives him that one wafer and he explodes. That +1 exceeded some limit internally and made the monsters exponentially harder rather than incrementally. Since it was our last "fix" and we had production discs, I thought we were screwed and had made an unwinnable game. Fortunately, with some time and special strategies, we found out you could finish it. We made one of the hardest games ever - by accident.
>hacking the rom shows that all the changes were clearly intentional
What did WD mean by this?
What do you mean? Obviously the changes were "intentional" as they intended to make them. What wasn't intentional were the consequences.
Frankly, this is really crazy to me. It's one thing to screw around with difficulty if you're doing stuff in-house like WD eventually started doing. But if you're going back and forth with the original developers in JAPAN and they're essentially doing you a favor you'd think that you would want to fiddle with shit as little as possible because of exactly this potential hazard.
Why did they feel the need to constantly frick with game mechanics and difficulty? Was it really JUST because of the rental market?
(checked)
>Was it really JUST because of the rental market?
They may have worked as an excuse in the 16 bit era when they were working on the Sega CD and the policy was put into use for cartridge games, but by the PS1 era it was likely complete bullshit, and Vic if anything came off as the typical bullheaded weeb dildo who used his position of authority to not just bring over games but frick with them so he'd have some sense of "authorship" over them.
It's like he was a precursor to the modern "fan translator" who goes from translating Jap-only games as accurately as they can to straight up fricking with them because rewriting shit that isn't theirs is about as creative as they get.
I think Vic Ireland was an early example of those retro gamers who think difficulty is paramount to a quality game. Like Magic Knight Rayearth is extremely easy. Like an actual baby game easy. WD tweaked it to make it somewhat harder. Whether or not that's a good thing is up in the air but at least in that case it wasn't too aggressive. Silhouette Mirage became very grindy after the fiddling and in Lunar Eternal Blue you have to pay to save your game, which is...yeah.
I think he thought one reason Working Designs was successful because they "spiced up" the games a bit by adding their personal touch. In the manuals, they'd talk about the changes like they were adding extra care making them game better when bringing it over. In some cases this was true, especially when it was just things like adding new control options or adding support for memory cards in both slots. Like
says, having their own sense of authorship over the games was probably part of it to some degree too. Taking extra care bringing the games over was their signature, which is also why the games had such fancy packaging with goodies. They wanted you to know you were getting something from Working Designs.
I don't think the rental defense works for WD because their games weren't commonly available for rent anyway. And in the event that they were available, they were RPGs and kids weren't likely to be able to marathon those on one rental anyway.
It caused game magazines reviewing the PS1 English version of Silhouette Mirage to recommend readers not buy it and just import the Saturn build. Vic Ireland engaged in flame wars with commenters online in 1998 over this topic. It was another time.
For Growlanser and then the Goemon games he really toned down the "WD localization" bullshit... in weird ways. One of the NA-exclusive "enhancements" he requested from Konami for Goemon PS2 was adding lines for examining door knobs and flags and furniture, and he'd fill those lines with the usual random crass "jokes" but leave the main game alone. But the game never released.
And don't give me crap about "rabid WD fans are stopping us from making retranslation patches." People translate things without any support whatsoever all the time, there's no massive effort to stop those projects. At most you'd see a few people shitting on them for attempting it, but if you let that stop you then you're a pussy.
>And don't give me crap about "rabid WD fans are stopping us from making retranslation patches."
You could check the forum thread yourself, they were requesting him take the links for the previous patches offline and constantly pestering him how the existence of the patches is "an insult" to their "nostalgia".
Is it dumb? Maybe. Supper has since moved on to work on translation romhacks from scratch for other games, and reiterated he would help any translator willing to provide full English scripts of WD games insert that ingame (he did fix the all caps Lunar translations, to the rage of WD eye rape enjoyers everywhere)
>You could check the forum thread yourself
I saw it, you're exaggerating how big of a deal it was. Some people disagreed with him and his attitude towards WD, that's natural. And I see people agreeing with him in threads about the translations. If he chose to stop over some people disagreeing with his views (while others agree with him), then that's his decision. But there's no massive mob of WD fans stopping people from doing it. And he already knows some people are interested in seeing a retranslation. It was entirely his call whether to translate it or not.
I think it's funny these weebs are calling others trannies, SJWs, Twittergays, whatever, but when they see someone they like get merely criticized they do the exact same exaggerated "stop harassing and bullying them!!!" routine. It's no wonder that a lot of Gankerners end up going down the SJW pipeline, eh?
With the bizarre victim complex and cries of racism going on in this thread, I'm basically already there.
Thank you I've always asked if the translation of this is good since working designs did it but no one has answered me
Gen X was a mistake
I can't watch Gen X movies without getting mad at the characters. I find myself siding with the Principal in Breakfast Club because of it. All these self-important spoiled teenagers squandering a booming economy and affordable college and real estate in some vague mission to "stick it to the man." Meanwhile "the man" was the Greatest Generation that won in World War II.
> game is marketed for dumb teenagers
> Wow why does it sound like it was written by a dumb teenager
Why do you gays even play games in English in 2022? It's never been easier to learn Japanese and it's never cost more to play these fan fiction trash. Even when they aren't fricking up the translation intentionally, they're still fricking it up.
Its not worth learning jp when the only use is to consume video games. 80% of the unstranslated games arent worth playing, and you can do better use of the time spent on learning useless language
Totally worth your time to b***h about these shitty translations for decades though?
Face it, you're a loser and a moron. That's the only reason you haven't started.