Comparing game localizations

[DSwizzy145]

In my latest FFIV update I noticed an extra line of text that seemed to come out of nowhere and appear in the Playstation translation, the GBA translation, and the fan translation... but that doesn't seem to exist in the actual Japanese version.

I dunno what's up with that, but KingMike suggested I take a look at an earlier version of the J2E translation, prior to the "anniversary edition". I did some searching and some archive.org-ing and can't find any copies of the old translation patch. Would anyone here be able to help track some down?

The farthest back I was able to find was this: http://web.archive.org/web/20000818041946/http://donut.parodius.com/snes/ff4.html but alas, no archived patch files here or anywhere else

I have the pre-patched rom but not the ips itself if you need it or not

[KillerBob]

Hey guys
have you played Chrono Trigger today?

Oh wait, that game's actually called Final Fantasy IV!

Some more information for the interested here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=46320034&postcount=12399

Also, in LEVEL - a Swedish gaming magazine, there was a big feature about the creation of Secret of Mana in a 2006 issue, where the creators lamented the big plans they had for their game which was scrapped due to Nintendo's abandoned CD-rom attachment, and where they briefly mentioned the connection behind the three classic games, translated from Swedish:

- Many of the ideas we had for the CD-version came fortunately to use later, when we did Chrono Trigger, says Hiromichi Tanaka. In fact, the original version of Secret of Mana was not at all the same game as we eventually released. The first version of the game had for example a much darker tone.

In the same way as parts of Chrono Trigger originally had been intended for Secret of Mana, was the latter a further development of Square's Super NES-debut Final Fantasy IV. It was when Tanaka, Koichi Ishii and the legendary programmer Nasir Gebelli investigated the possibility of developing that game's active time battle as they got the idea for their innovative combat system.

- Secret of Mana is in many ways the game Final Fantasy IV could have been, says Tanaka. Many of the design decisions we discussed during the development of that game was used in Secret of Mana instead. The whole game represents a direction we were considering with Final Fantasy IV, but ultimately avoided.

[tc]

@KingMike Yeah your absolutely right! despite how america treats cutesy type anime characters like garbage & perfers characters like Dr. Robotink or someone else stupid! But Why Sega would waste they're time localizating Puyo Puyo to English and then change plans at the end makes no sense to me, Who cares what people say they Bitch & moan about every little speck they find in the games and call it weird or dumb & a waste instead of giving the F'king game a chance! That's what pisses me off as english-speaking people feel about Japanese games & you see why we never get them and start little petitions for no many reasons! P.S Never knew people cared about art in a video game before

Yeah similar happened again on Game Gear. Ronald in the Magical World detects English systems also.

[DSwizzy145]

Yeah similar happened again on Game Gear. Ronald in the Magical World detects English systems also.

Yeah that was another Japan Only release not sure why that didn't came out despite the fact that Ronald McDonald is very popular in America is confusing to me

[KingMike]

I found out I actually had downloaded all FF4 translations from the GoodSNES set.
I made patches of all of them, to be applied to a no-header clean FF4 ROM.
Downloaded them a year or so ago when some guy on ebay was selling hacked FF4 carts with, it turned out, patch "a6" (a very poor job at inserting the FF2 script into the FF4 ROM).
http://www.mediafire.com/download/36aq1xg2wbe1l6s/all-old-FF4-SNES-translations.7z

[KillerBob]

Very interesting and sort of an eye opener how different all the translations actually are, albeit subtle. Especially apparent in your latest update. Weird how the Playstation re-translation and subsequent WonderSwan/GBA translations took one big step forward from the early SNES days and made things sound more naturally for the most part but at the same time they took two step backwards and missed the points of some minor dialog which the SNES version actually conveyed, albeit a bit vague and clunky. Love the minutiae of this! Maybe someone should try to insert the DS-translation into the Super Famicom original, though I guess that might be a very tough endeavour.

[KillerBob]

I found out I actually had downloaded all FF4 translations from the GoodSNES set.
I made patches of all of them, to be applied to a no-header clean FF4 ROM.
Downloaded them a year or so ago when some guy on ebay was selling hacked FF4 carts with, it turned out, patch "a6" (a very poor job at inserting the FF2 script into the FF4 ROM).
http://www.mediafire.com/download/36aq1xg2wbe1l6s/all-old-FF4-SNES-translations.7z

Thanks for posting those. A real blast from the past! Damn, some of those are crude... this just reminds me how much I miss a properly done hack/fan-translation. From a quick look at the a1 and a3 patches, they sure look identical, probably some minor bug-fixes between them. Anyone who knows exactly what's the difference between this "J2E-anniversary" and the most recent one? I actually think the overall presentation of the early ones before the expanded dialog boxes are nicer. There's an annoying transparency issue with the Equip Menu though.

Personally I think that the only way to make the original game true justice, is to first succeed with incorporate an variable width font, there's simply not enough space for having all accurate item & spell names without sacrificing presentation and playability otherwise. For example, the J2E translation expanded all those item/magic/command names, which is very nice, but as a result the battle screen suffers instead because you get various magic spells hidden below another window, longer and accurate enemy names makes it necessary to scrap the enemy counter etc. (I think the official English FFVI/III did this as well?) I also recall the expanded "magic description-window" in battle which is originally just a tiny one located to the right in frame obscures some visual effects from magic and summons when fully expanded. As usual a constant battle against space.

Sorry for being a little bit off topic, this thread and your fine article has just reinvigorated my love for this old gem.

[Bregalad]

There's an annoying transparency issue with the Equip Menu though.

This is the case of all (SNES) versions of the game I think. The colour which is supposed to be "black" is the colour you choose for the window (because black is transparent).

Same thing happens in battle, when you cast black magic, the black magic symbol in the window is actually transparent.

[KillerBob]

This is the case of all (SNES) versions of the game I think. The colour which is supposed to be "black" is the colour you choose for the window (because black is transparent).

Same thing happens in battle, when you cast black magic, the black magic symbol in the window is actually transparent.

Yeah, I know what you mean about the magic icons but in this case the icons on the Equipment menu is affected instead (text below shines through making the icons look white where it should be black) This is not the case in the original game or the "j2e-anniversary" patch. So I guess it was something that appeared when they first hacked the menus but was later fixed.

[Bregalad]

This is not the case in the original game or the "j2e-anniversary" patch.

Phephaps, but that WAS the case with the original game (both (J) and (U) versions)

[FlamePurge]

I was testing my FFII US mod today, and the black of the icons is actually removed in the equipment text box, but not the item text box.



It's based of v1.1, and I didn't change this behavior.

[Bregalad]

Ah sorry I didn't understood this subtlety. My bad.

[FlamePurge]

Ah sorry I didn't understood this subtlety. My bad.

It's cool; I didn't even notice it myself until I read through this topic!

[KillerBob]

I was testing my FFII US mod today, and the black of the icons is actually removed in the equipment text box, but not the item text box.

I see, that may explain why it appeared in their hack then. Had not noticed the lack of black in the Equipment box before you pointed it out.


Mato, was checking out your great Zelda article again and noticed where this line ゴーマ　ノ　メヲネラエ was being translated to "Aim at the eyes of Gohma." in the NES version, you naturally suggested that a better translation would've been, "Aim at the eye of Gohma." or "Aim for the eye of Gohma." due to the fact that the creature only has one eye. As Gohma being not only one single creature, there's several of them in the game like Dodongos and Digdoggers, would perhaps an even better alternative have been, "Aim at the Gohma's eye." or "Aim at the eye of the Gohma."? As I'm not an native English speaker I'm not sure if my take on it sounds natural or not. I guess the plural form would be Gohmas. One of the reasons I'm asking about this rather trivial issue is because I'm working on translation patches for the game where I'm mostly taking use of your excellent translations if you don't mind.

[Tomato]

Hah, cool, I was actually considering making patches for the FDS ROM, the English ROM, and the FC ROM sometime soon, so I'm glad to hear I won't need to now

If you can fit it in, I'd definitely go with one of your suggestions. The use of "the" definitely makes things clearer.

[Spooniest]

This is all well and good, but what I want to know is which localization is the BEST...

...But not really.

I feel that if you're going to compare them, it's worth saying that they generally have gotten better over time. I haven't played much of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, but the localization in that seemed pretty natural, I got what they were saying (sure beat the original on PS1).

[KillerBob]

Hah, cool, I was actually considering making patches for the FDS ROM, the English ROM, and the FC ROM sometime soon, so I'm glad to hear I won't need to now

Oh, good thing I asked then, wanted to make sure I wasn't stepping on any toes. You take all the credit of course.

If you can fit it in, I'd definitely go with one of your suggestions. The use of "the" definitely makes things clearer.

Thanks! I felt really stupid for asking this when it's such a simple line but something about it made me unsure of the grammar in my suggestions.

Man, the GBA version of FFIV really had a lot of bugs! Have to check if those text errors seen in your Agart update was fixed for the EU release...

[Piotyr]

Do you think someday you can do the lunar games? That its a huge undertaking because lunar has more different ports than any final fantasy game but its one of my childhood favorites.

[Tomato]

Yeah, I'd like to do the Lunar games sometime. I really gotta find a better way to handle things so I can work on more stuff more often though, as it is now I'll be on FFIV for a long time to come 

Anyway, the other day I posted an article about control codes in translations. I thought some hackers here might appreciate it: http://legendsoflocalization.com/an-inside-look-at-video-game-control-codes/

I'm also curious to know what other control code goofs exist out there in official releases! KingMike sent me one from Secret of the Stars that was pretty cool that I might do another update about sometime too.

[Gideon Zhi]

Anyway, the other day I posted an article about control codes in translations. I thought some hackers here might appreciate it: http://legendsoflocalization.com/an-inside-look-at-video-game-control-codes/

One thing to note about Earthbound and games like it as opposed to something similar to, say, Laplace's Demon - just about every game has its own built-in event scripting language:

• Many games (like Laplace) store their text strings in an array and simply access it via index in said scripting language: "[02][001E] - display string 001E" as a completely made-up example.
• Other games, like Treasure of the Rudras and Front Mission: Gun Hazard, don't store their strings in indexed arrays and instead access them by hardcoded address, i.e. "Display string at addr E70000"
• Still other games, like Earthbound and the SFC Aretha games, store their strings as constants within the scripting engine. "Display string '@Ah![DELAY 14] Here's the problem, and it's not too tough to fix.[PAUSE][LINE]@Hang on for a second or two...[PAUSE]'"