slimequest | New York Quest VIII

I'm going to be in New York next week. Like, the city. I've never been there. Naturally I'm planning to visit the Nintendo Store while I'm there... and I guess that Statue of Whatever and the Museum of Natural.. somethings.

Decided to pick up Tales of Phantasia for GBA for the trip. They really butchered the translation in places and took out fun stuff like the opening theme, renaming function and sound test. I'm really hoping they bring out the new and improved PSP version out here, but in the meantime I'm enjoying the GBA version simply for the fact that it's ToP, and portable at that.

Oh and I beat Metal Gear Solid. Meryl ending of course, but immediately

krile made me promise to get the Otacon ending on the Gamecube version. Because, you know, love can bloom on the battlefield............ in the butt.

(Now I'm waiting for MGS2 to come in the mail, I actually found MGS3 at the mall so I'm in the awkward situation of being tempted to play them out of order. It might not even really matter if I do or not, but oh well~)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That aside, how the GBA translation can get KANGAROO from "Ragnarok" is entirely beyond me. Cress vs Cless is one thing, but that?
They probably did it to be funny. Additionally, Cress seems to fit better, since there's a character with the name "Mint". But, Cless sounds better. Much like how Lefia/Lephia sounds better than Refia. I guess 'L' sounds are just more appealing than 'R' sounds. At least, when it comes to names of people.

Yeah, but DeJap's was fun.
I prefer accurate over fun, but that's just me.

Still, the fact that they took it out at all is just plain unnecessary to begin with.
You mean the vocal song, right? Maybe they couldn't secure the rights to the song? I don't know if it was in the Japanese version. If it was, I don't blame them for taking it out in the localized version -- shitty Japanese music doesn't appeal to everyone. It's even less appealing when it sounds like it's being streamed through a dying hand-held transceiver.

Yeah, I'm aware of "Cress" going along with the pun because of "Mint", but like you said, Cless sounds better. The name change doesn't really bother me in itself. Initially I just thought "Okay, fine, I'll just change it back to Cless with the rename feature...", but they took that out. For no apparent reason. Probably just to spite me.

I prefer accurate over fun, but that's just me.

I recall a project someone started to re-translate Final Fantasy VI because they weren't happy with the liberties Ted Woolsey took in the SNES version. In the end, the game script ended up being so wooden and lifeless after the retranslation that very few people took it seriously.

So, was it more accurate? Probably. But it was a lot more boring and awkward-reading. "Fucks like a tiger" is a classic, and is really just an exaggeration of what is being said in the scene anyway. It just conveys the same meaning in a more entertaining way.

Tales of Symphonia had its vocal song removed as well, for no apparent reason. I assume they just think it's too Japanese for Westerners to appreciate.

ToP's vocal probably isn't the most rockin' thing ever coming out of GBA speakers, but the fact that the SNES version had a freaking vocal song in it to begin with was legendary. That just carried over to the GBA version, and it's still pretty impressive that it exists at all in the game.

I recall a project someone started to re-translate Final Fantasy VI because they weren't happy with the liberties Ted Woolsey took in the SNES version
Ted Woolsey is the shit. I wouldn't take anyone's shitty re-translation over Woolsey's. If we had Ted Woolsey working on Final Fantasy VII, the game still would've sucked, but the translation would've been far better.

I liked the Tales of Phantasia vocal song. It's catchy. It's better without the vocals. I enjoyed the Dog Version they had in the, I believe it was, PSX version.

Tales of Symphonia had its vocal song removed as well, for no apparent reason.
That was the one by that one by that one band, uh, "Moon Gate", right? It was catchy, too. Better than the ToP theme. Too bad it's in Japanese.

Yeah I really have no problem with Woolsey's work. Hell, I grew up on the RPGs he worked on. I could've done without changes like Cait Sith to Stray in FF6, among other things, but "totally unnecessary changes" are my pet peeves translation-wise.

I can accept changing Cait Sith/Cat Sidhe. It seems like it'd be a difficult word to romanize from Katakana without some knowledge of Celtic mythology. The translation for Persona 2: Eternal Punishment mis-romanized "In-Laqetti" as "In Rakech".

I hate stupid and intentional changes, though. Especially name changes -- mostly because I usually memorize what their names are before they're localized, so I have to go through extra effort to remember their new names and shit. This was a huge problem for me when Shin Megami Tensei 3 came out. I had memorized all of the Demon race names, from playing the first 2 SMT games, and had memorized which demons belonged to which races, and then I found out they changed the Demon race names to English words and shit. I still haven't been able to memorize the English race names.

Name changes are the worst. Anything else is fairly easy to get over, or the change is understanable (most of the time), but a character's name is a pretty important thing that should be consistent and recognizable. Especially nowadays when we learn character names months (or years) before they localize it thanks to the internet.

New York Quest VIII

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