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Cho Aniki - The Strangest Game Ever?
Thanks to NFG Games for their newly-posted detailed look at Ai Cho Aniki for the PC Engine / TurboGrafx, a side-scrolling, bodybuilder-filled shoot-em-up where, as the author explains: "The game starts as many do, in space above some clouds with... floating heads, swords and a strange guy on a half-moon who throws babies at you." The extremely odd graphical presentation, encompassing "burly men, angels, [and] machines with faces", even extends to the game's front cover - and it's not the only version for the PC Engine, even. There's also now a PlayStation 2 sequel, called Mighty Brothers: The Legend of the Holy Protein, due later this year.
Most all Japanese learn rudimentary English in school. Most all Japanese don't learn much more than that. This tends to result in a lot of English in games that is, at best, not quite right. But who cares, really? The tiny handful of people in Japan who know better get over the whole "Engrish is funny haw haw" thing in a matter of weeks and find better things to be disgusted by. The average Japanese on the street sure doesn't care, they're just pleased, I imagine, that their highschool English lessons proved useful at all. Accuracy is irrelevant.
And if the game makes it big and is exported overseas it will already have name recognition that's only spoiled by correcting the oddities in the title.
Comments could be made about most of the gaming fanboys still struggling with the concept of apostrophes and therefore unqualified to ponder the nature of the titles, but that's perhaps a matter for another time.
And yes, "Legend of the Holy Protein" sounds as bizarre in Japanese as it does in English - but the entire series is based on some pretty strange subject matter. This title is no doubt intentionally laughable.
Sei Naru Protein Densetsu sounds if anything cheesier in Japanese. Certainly cheesy as fuck. Dance Dance Revolution yadda yadda yadda sounds...well, like a game title. There's a whole (and well documented) culture of using English for effect in Japan which can lead to all sorts of strangeness which doens't sound like English as such to Japanese people, but fits within the vocabulary of decorative items / game titles etc. Can make for some weird language to Western ears (but then there's the whole issue of people in the west tatooing themselves with Chinese / Japanese characters they don't understand so who am I to badmouth Japanese use of English?)
I have often found it odd that a lot of poeple find "engrish" extremely funny (and some in an offensive derogetory way) but have no problem butchering other languages or thinking its 'hip' to have a random chinese character that they can not read tattooed on them.