Onto another current thread: I believe that FFIV was easily the mostedited Square game to ever hit US shores, with challenge and otherelements of gameplay greatly reduced. This is why I'm irked about itsexclusion from US release, and apparently so are a few others. If theJapanese remake was bad, they should correct it for the US, I think thatblaming that for a non-release is a bit of a cop-out. Fix the PSX bugsand give us the *real* FFIV.

- Ed McGlothlin

You know what's gonna happen when FF8 finally hits the states don't you?

People may be praising it now, but you watch, when it hits, a fewgoddamn nitpickers are gonna tear it shreds, and since most of us are sostupid that we fall into this mob-mentality, we'll start sharing intheir opinions.

Which is what happened wih FF7. People who *played* it were proclaimingit the best RPG ever made (I loved it! The plot was dense andcomplicated.....kind of like a good X-Files episode, and if it was toocomplicated for you......theres only one answer, you're dumb. :) ) but a few people came out and said they didn't like it...and well fastforward to present day and you see what's happened?

FF8 doesn't have a chance past it first few months.

(Although I'm confident it will KICK ASS)

I think It's obvious where the next gen consloes are headed once theyreach thier graphical limitations: After photorealistic 3D, theyre offto 4D! Yes, Conslole systems that can warp time and space! Its only amatter of.. err. time.

Seriously, graphics aren't the only things consoles can improve on:better MIDI chips, rewritable space (Like the 64DD), better mediums,better controllers, Internet acess, the list of things consoles canimprove upon is limitless.

--Aaron Gover

Ok, the problem is that people are judging FFIV by the artsy standardsof Xenogears and FVII. Quite appropriately, considering the age whenmost of us played FFIV, it should be looked at as a fairy tale.Perhaps not the deepest of stories, but one that holds a special placefor many of us. Think about it, we have the pure and noble Cecil(after he delivers the crystal to Mist, he becomes totally on the sideof good, despite his armor and stuff), the damsel in distress (Rosa),the force of pure evil (Zeromus), and even the perfect fairy taleending where everyone winds up being a king. It's the epic of Cecil,not a probe into the nature and drives of humanity (it does have itsshare of meaningful lines, though).

Raymond Wu

Damn you and your space capsule! I rue the day you landed on our planet! I damn you to hell! Catchy subject, neh?

Anyhoo. Bill Gates said 640k was all that anyone ever needed. Rememberthe DOS days and that %$&^ 640k conventional memory limit? Thank god forHimem.sys and EMM386.exe or X-Wing never would've worked.

8 - Do you like vertical shooters? I still say Raiden 2 is the best gameever made, and it hasn't been topped yet, not even by RayStorm, which wasstill pretty cool.

-nZero

Is it just me or is everyone who works on GIA, and/or has their letterson GIA really freaky?

You guys be weird!

The Hell Spawn of Interestingness (aka Futsin)

In response to James Sellman's letter on translations, I have a few pointsto make. The question of a literal translation verses an artistic one is aproblem that has plagued translators of books and poems ever since peoplethought of publishing a literary work in a different language. Nabokovthought that it was impossible to make a translation that could reproduceboth the original meaning and artistry of a great work and proceeded toproduce a translation of a great Russian poem in a form so literal as to beunreadable as proof. I wouldn't go so far as to say that a faithfultranslation is impossible, but it does require a great amount of writingability on the part of the translator, not to mention complete mastery ofthe two languages involved. And honestly, translators of that caliber arerather hard to find and more likely than not to be more interested inwriting their own works rather than translating someone else's.

In reading Sellman's letter, I can't help but get the feeling that mostadvocates of literal translations believe them to be in some way morefaithful to the original than an artistic one. That's not necessarilytrue. In languages, there often exist ideas and thoughts that have no trueequivalent in another, a phenomenon that particularly holds for twocompletely unrelated languages such as Japanese and English. Certain wordsor phrases can be approximated by another language, but they cannot betruly replicated, not to mention the loss of nearly all of the shades andinflections that such a word may contain. (There really is a differencebetween words with similar meanings such as plummet and drop) But thislack of precise equivalences isn't the only problem that can plague aliteral translation. The ultimate purpose of language is the communicationof thoughts and emotions. While a literal translation can remain faithfulto the words of a piece, it often fails to remain true to the originalintent and almost always kills any mood that the author established. Onthe other hand, while a artistic translation may often vary in specificdetails from the original, it has a better chance of capturing the mood andfeeling established.

There is a final consideration that needs to be made in understanding whycompanies usually choose looser translations over literal ones, and this isa purely economic one. Simply speaking, most games are targeted toward thegeneral audience of a genre rather than specific minorities. It's the samereason why dubbed anime is cheaper than subbed anime even though it costsmore to produce. There's a larger market for it. You might not like thefact that the vast majority of rpg players out there would rather see anartistic translation rather than a literal one, and I personally don't havethat high an opinion of dubbed anime, but that's what sells, and companiesare ultimately looking for the bottom line. (Not that the two subjects arein any sense related)

In the end, I really don't think that "Mr. Noguchi [feels] that we areincapable of thinking in any cultural context outside our own", but ratherthat Square and other companies think that liberal translations are morefavorable than literal ones. Chalk it down to making the best game theycan, or to simple greed, but that's the way it is, and matters are unlikelyto change anytime soon. If you really have a problem with thetranslations, then there's a very simple solution, the one that youoffered. Learn the original languages. Now it isn't quick nor easy to do,but if you are looking for a translation that is the true equivalence ofthe original, well, let me just say that you'd have an easier time trackingdown the Fountain of Youth.

Before I end this, there is just one last thing that I would like to say.It is impossible to even attempt to appreciate another culture or languagethrough what you see in a video game, as games reflect but one facet of anation's society. If you truly want to learn, there is no real way buttraveling to the country and experiencing the culture and lifestylefirst-hand, as all books and movies are limited and can only describe somuch. After all, you can teach a blind man about color, but he will notunderstand unless he experiences it for himself.

Jae Shin, the Secret Asian Man