Takes aspects of a lively and fun game and turns it into another dull, overly literal cardboard paint-by-numbers translation that beats all of the charm out of either version of Super Mario RPG, Western or Eastern and feels like it was combed through by a humorless robot with little room for understanding the text.

Adding to this, a lot of the changes the author makes are stilted and awkward to a large degree, and not nearly as accurate to the original Japanese’s tone and spirit as he appears to believe it is.

A good example early on would be changing “Kinklink” from the early Bowser dungeon into the incredibly dull and lifeless sounding “Hang Chomp”.

Even Clyde Mandalyn’s write-up about the game from the Legends Of Localization site makes mention to how a vastly more fitting translation of the chandelier chain chomp, combining the Japanese’s wordplay of combining “chomp” to “a hanging ornament” would be something more clever but still accurate such as “Chanderchomp”

However, this hack is made by someone with a complete misunderstanding of this intent all the way through, and therefore many of it’s changes do not accurately represent even the original Japanese’s playful spirit and tone, opting for dull, lifeless changes that feel more like consulting a google translation bot rather than trying to understand what the best interpretation would be, sucking the heart and soul of the game’s dialogue out with it.

The reverting of some enemy’s names are decent, while others are suspect at best, and in particular the “Psycopath” translations offered are MUCH too focused on that same literal machine-like translation method which renders all of them dull, and utterly unfunny.

It seems to believe that swapping out the mere references made in the original Japanese is good enough, while not providing them in a context to show WHY they are funny. They are as stiff and humorless as someone with only a basic, misguided understanding of the art of translation is capable of making, and because of that, I cannot recommend this.

None of this conveys the sense of fun or whimsy that Super Mario RPG contains in either it’s North American localization OR it’s Japanese original text, and misses the point of either in it’s methodical and soulless endeavor to flatten it’s charm out with a steam-roller.

It is a very misguided attempt that, while born from good intentions, just seems to not understand the delicate nuances of the translation process whatsoever. A mistake which so many people with the overly purist, borderline otaku American mindset as this author often fall into.

The end result is something too flat and ham-handedly pretentious for those who understand what Woolseys’s intent (grammatical and simple errors aside) was, and also too dull, charmless, unimaginative and humorless for those wanting a good experience closer in spirit to the Japanese original to appreciate.

It is possibly a good idea in theory perhaps, but the execution could have been done much better by someone more willing to understand the translation process, rather than just boil down the process with only attempts to “fix”, as if it’s just “filling in gaps” like a machine that sees the original text but doesn’t feel the meaning behind it.

It’s my hope that someone will take on this concept again and do it better, because this one misses the mark.