Fried crawfish tails in horseradish sauce - June 2, 2000 -
Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of
the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There
is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. It's Friday, but who cares? I
got the day off anyway. Don't say we didn't warn you.
That's what I had for an appetizer at lunch today, and it was tasty, booya! And that's
about all I can talk about, since my net access is limited to downloading your email and
uploading a column. Email in, column out. The sad part is reducing systems to that level
of simplicity is 90% of engineering. Master that and you too can be paid an obscene amount
of money for sitting on your butt, drinking coke and listening to CDs. Nifty.
Onward.
| Miranda Juliet, lead character in VS2 |
| Finally, someone who understands where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
from! Their first names in VS suck (Romeo????) but the characters were pretty cool
overall. BTW, if you liked the play R and G are Dead, you have to check out the movie. Tim
Roth and Gary Oldman as R and G? Ummm, yea! I think that's Oldman's only protagonist role
ever. Hmmm.... Anyway, I just thought I'd comment on the porting of games to other
countries. Square has been notorious for not porting good games to America (before joining
forces with EA, that is). We missed out on tons of sweet RPGs for the SNES, and we didn't
even know about it! My biggest gripe has to be about FF4. It is easily my favorite of the
FF games. Dunno why. I guess because of the combination of the music, story, graphics
(which were excellent at the time) and everything else. But when Anthology came out over
here, we were left empty handed!! It was a travesty not to include FF4. Personally, I
would have rather had FF4 as it was meant to be played than FF5 or 6. I love 6 and all,
but I love 4 more. And quite honestly, I have a very bad impression of FF5. Didn't really
like the story (too cheesy), didn't have any feelings for the characters, didn't like how
the job system was (but that was improved on a lot in FFT), the music didn't strike me,
and so on. Square (who is also notorious for making lousy excuses) claimed it would take
too long to translate FF4. Well, pardon my language, but that's just bullshit. They didn't
translate FF6, they just did a simple port to PSX and changed a FEW things in the text
(the biggest being the word Phoenix instead of Fenix, regarding Phoenix Downs) and added
the CGI intros and stuff. I don't know, I'm just ranting.
What I'm getting at is that if someone decides not to port something to a different
country, they should just get off their high horses, quit lying and say "dammit, we
don't want to port it!" People will be pissed, but it will be the truth. And the
truth hurts, but you gotta live with it.
FLee |
Seen the movie. It's pretty good, and surprisingly enough seems to have gotten a good
chunk of the original Stoppard play. If you've seen the movie or the play I'm sure you're
aware that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and only borrowed
by Stoppard. Thus "Romeo Guildenstern" (I think that's the correct combo) makes
sense - if you're going to steal names, steal from the best, you know?
It's a bit of a dead horse by now, but I'm gonna weigh in with my opinion on not
bringing FF4 over in the Anthology. I've already said FF4 is my nostalgic favorite of the
games, but frankly I don't think it's that big a deal. And this is coming from someone
whose original cart is so flaky it erased a game with 5 level 99 characters. The FF4
Japanese port was buggy, from what I've heard, with mediocre FMV and few extras. If I'm
gonna play a shaky hacked version of FF4, I'd frankly rather play my old cart than a PSX
version I had to pay $40 for. There's a world of difference between FF4 not getting to the
States and Chrono Cross not getting to Europe, and confusing the two just messes up our
priorities.
| Nah, Japan's just like south Philly |
| Well, I don't work at a Japanese game developer so I can't say anything
for certain, but a likely reason for why Japanese focus so much on Japan is that it's what
they know best. Things like nationalism aside, Japan and the West are very different, more
than I think most people realize--not just in terms of language, but also culture,
customs, and so on. If the developers tried to make a game that was easy to translate, the
result would end up half-baked in both Japanese _and_ English--there's very little common
ground to work with. So, rather than stressing themselves only to alienate all their
players, they cater to their Japanese audience and let the foreign teams deal with
localization. (Although I have heard of some companies (Round[*]) where the Japanese
programmers insist on being the ones to do the final editing. That I don't get at all.) As
far as the 6-letter problem, that's the fault of the localization team, plain and simple.
They had no trouble expanding FF7's names from 6 to 10 characters, for example.
--Nobody in particular
[* Names changed to protect the innocent, or whatever.]
P.S. I _like_ my blue LED, thankyouverymuch. |
There's no reason to tailor the Japanese script to make it easy to translate to other
languages. As you point out, it should be the translation team's job to give us the flavor
of the text, not the original words. However, there are things at the software level that
companies can do that don't even begin to touch the actual text in the game -
specifically, over designing the text system so it can include the proper number of
characters for an English, German, or whatever translation. The translation team might be
able to change a 6 letter limit to a 10 letter limit, and in perfect software doing so
won't cause any problems. But since no one on the planet builds perfect software, getting
it right the first time should be a high priority.
Hey man, I got nothing against blue LEDs. I'm just not gonna pay 300 bucks for one.
Yet.
| Mod chips? I think I've heard of those... |
| Hi! Just wanted to tell you that you don´t need to buy an NTSC PSX
(and if you´re unlucky, an NTSC TV set). There are a lot of companies and stores where
you can buy (computer) chips that enable your PAL PSX to runb NTSC games. I myself live in
Sweden (NOT Switzerland :) and would´ve been unable to play classics such as Xenogears et
al if I hadn´t had my PSX rebuilt. So there´s hope yet! These chips doesn´t cost much,
and if you´re a bit technical (and daring...) you can weld it to the PSX board yourself.
But usually the stores will offer to do it for you for somethng like *converting
currency...* $20? I dunno... Anyway, get a chip and live happily ever after!
Yours,
Peter aka Obake-chan |
I'm very aware of the existence of mod chips, but they've always struck me as dicey
because of constant upgrades in mod chip lockouts. What works wonderfully today may
prevent you from playing FF9 tomorrow. Seeing the sheer amounts of email the GIA gets
whenever a new game comes out saying "What are the workaround codes for game X?"
has only cemented this opinion firmly in my mind. It's your money, it's your PSX, but I'd
just as soon get one of the original systems than worry about lockouts.
However, many people sent in letters about the existence of NTSC to PAL converters, so
apparently you don't have to buy an NTSC TV to display an NTSC PSX.
| Gumpei. Damn cool name. |
| Of COURSE a lead producer of a game series is important. They must be,
because otherwise Nintendo would waste no time picking up where the late Gumpei Yokoi left
off. SonicPanda |
I thought Gumpei-san was a hardware designer more than a game producer. (He came up
with the Game Boy and the Virtual Boy.) Although I'm sure tons of people will email AK
tomorrow saying "Gumpei was producer on Famous Game Series X."
Regardless, he will be missed.
| Chris-bo, the new ultra intense video game
workout! |
| howdy there bucko, i read the VS stuff yesterday about attaching gems
to handle the affinities and such, but i only seem to have 3 weapons that can equip gems
and the gems don't help much either. This game has certainly put me in my place. It's
showed me that I need to hone my gaming skills and work on precise areas of my playing.
Will you be my personal trainer?
And does Digicube really sell 99% of all Square's games? Or was that just an
exageration?
oh well.
later,
opul (Map Man) |
I ain't good enough to be training anyone. But I may be able to help you here. You're
either very early in the game, when weapons that can attach gems are rare, or you're not
building good weapons. The latter is key - you gotta go to workshops, disassemble and
reassemble weapons to give a good balance of power, class affinity, and gem slots. Playing
only with the weapons you pick up along the way is gonna be very tedious. And make sure
you're not leaving gems attached to weapons and forgetting about them.
Also keep an eye out for good unattached grips, they're just as important as blades. I
really can't stress how important this is - later in the game previously super-tough
bosses show up as regular characters, and if you can't reconfigure to slice through them
you're gonna have big trouble.
Digicube sells just about all of Square's games in Japan, but not over here.
| A Lucky Dan by any other name... |
| CJ, While I certainly enjoy debate and all that, who honestly cares
about the character limit in Chrono Cross? Even in games that do allow me to make up a
different name, I still keep the original. Putting "Simon" as the main
character's name is not going to immerse me anymore than "Squall",
"Alex", "Cloud", or "Denim". In fact, if the option of
renaming is the only way the your going to feel immersed the game, you probably shouldn't
be playing RPGs in the first place.
Also, maybe it's just me, but I have no problems with the three lines of text per
speech box. Just imagine playing a speech-heavy game like Xenogears with scrolling text
boxes. I personally like the fact that I can read what the characters say at my leisure,
that I don't have to have my eyes glued to the TV because I might miss something they've
said. The suspense during a conversation can still be there. And I figure that if these
3-lined boxes of text are what they've been using for ten years now, I guess they're
easier than any other means.
People can complain about all that but I'd rather count the blessings that Japan gives
us any good RPGs at all. We did after all, nuke them twice, carpet-bomb their civilians,
and made sure that they'd never have a standing army ever again. I guess they have the
right to be a little stingy with their translations.
Just my opinion.
-Red Raven, on his first day of summer |
Good names in a game, or anything else, are probably like good graphics. The lack
thereof in a work won't kill it, but good ones can make a decent game great. If you doubt
this, ask yourself how cool Snow Crash would have been without Hiro Protagonist.
Three lines of text can convey much, much more information in Japanese than they can in
English - thus limiting English translations to such a format changes the flavor of the
whole game. One of Fei's rants about identity probably seems much more concise when you
can see it all at once rather than spread across 6 screens, frex.
I don't want to get in to the ethics of past US/Japanese military conflicts, believe me
- doing so would destroy this column faster than you can say "Omnislash".
However, it should be noted that the Japanese were not exactly helpless victims in the
last World War - many of their actions, especially in China, were not those of nice
people. I'm not saying this excuses US military actions one way or another, but it does go
to show that cultural interactions are far more complicated than any single explanation
can hope to encompass. Therefore, this discussion ends now. DO NOT send any letters about
this to AK, or I'll kick your butts. And that should not be read as a challenge to do
otherwise, seriously.
| Now stop stiffing us, you silly company, or I
shall taunt you again! |
| Hi, Let's get right to the point: i'm French, translations in my
country are incredibly crap (spelling, grammar... ff7 is the perfect example), games such
as PE, Xenogears, ffT, and now Crono Cross will never be released here, import games from
the US cost more than 60$, and yet nobody seems to care. The reason for this is simple:
the only games that really sell out here are soccer and racing games. The only RPGs that
have sold here are Final Fantasies, but I doubt if they made money: those high sales were
only due to great advertising: magazines, TV spots, which are quite rare here among
non-european publishers. In fact, games here are not supposed to have you think, as Rpgs
do, but to entertain like sports would do: thus the best selling games are sport games or
short, simple to play action games. Furthermore, the rpg genre is not known to the public.
Imagine, two years ago when ff7 was released, special magazines had to give a definition
of "rpg" because the concept was completely unknown to casual French gamers and
the game was marketed by Sony Computer France as an "adventure" game! Same with
ff8: TV commercials here only featured fmv, and not a single gameplay image. Square and
Sony knew all too well that French gamers would only be sensitive to eye candy because
they just don't know what to expect from an rpg. Finally, French adults have a lot of
prejudices against Japanimation and mangas, which they find too violent compared to
traditional European comics for kids; thus they hesitate to buy Japanese games for their
kids. Overall, rpgs don't come here because people don't know what they are, and because
marketing costs are too high for Japanese publishers to justify the French release of a
game that won't sell. I'm the first one to complain about this. Fortunately, things begin
to change as Square is getting involved in the release of its games itself, and thus
trying to make the genre popular (releases of Saga Frontier 2, Vagrant Story...), but I
believe I will still be importing games from the US for a while...
Vik |
The French do indeed see things differently - if I remember correctly, no French dubbed
episodes of He-Man included Skeletor, since the French thought he was too scary for little
kids. As you can imagine, this changed the series a fair amount.
But if the above is true, perhaps the French should be celebrating getting FF9 more
than getting upset about a lack of Chrono Cross. Half full and all that.
| Been there, done that |
| Dear letter answering Agent dude: Well yesterday you asked for the
stupidest thing you have ever done in a videogame. Well, mine ranks up there dude.
I got my first copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES way back in 1988. In 1999 I
finally figured out you could run by holding the B button down. It shocked the heck out me
when I found this out.
Thats right...It took me ten years to figure this out....pretty sad eh? |
I'm still not sure if I'll do a dumbass things people've done in games contest, but
this was just too good to pass up. However, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the same
thing had happened to me. The only difference is it took three weeks instead of 10 years.
Good effort, tho. Have a cookie.
Closing Comments:
Headed off to Illinois tomorrow, where my already tenuous Internet access gets even
more doubtful. But I still might be able to do the column on Monday. If not, Wednesday
night for sure. In the meantime, play nice with AK or I'll have to send you to the
time-out corner. Adios.
-Chris Jones, drinks Barq's root beer with his seafood, of course. |
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