Final Fantasy's Lost Translation, Greatest Hits

nixon66 writes "You may have seen the 'lost' Final Fantasy game, the Japanese Final Fantasy II for NES, debut in the U.S. as part of the recent Final Fantasy Origins PlayStation re-release, but interestingly, Square did try to localize the game much earlier. Lost Levels has a new feature up about the abandoned translation of Final Fantasy II for the NES back in 1991. They talk with the translators, Kaoru Moriyama and Ted Woolsey, about the factors that led to Final Fantasy IV for SNES being called Final Fantasy II in the States." Elsewhere, RPGamer reports that four SquareEnix PlayStation 1 titles have just been re-released as Greatest Hits for a $19.99 price point, including Final Fantasy Chronicles, Final Fantasy Anthology, Vagrant Story and Xenogears, and they clarify: "Final Fantasy Anthology includes Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI (originally released in North America as Final Fantasy III), while Final Fantasy Chronicles contains Final Fantasy IV (originally released in North America as Final Fantasy II) and Chrono Trigger."

Comments

Re:Interesting little read

[Kyouryuu]

Yes, but in the bounds of a cartridge-based format, translation is not quite so simple. Japanese rarely translates directly into English without difficulty and in order for it to make sense, translators often have to stylize the text for that specific region. Things that this tick off the ever-critical otaku and ultimately put Woolsey at the butt end of their insipid wrath.

It can take more space to elaborate on such things, but don't forget - RPG text boxes are of a specific size, there are significant memory constraints, and there is a ton of inconsequential dialogue that also has to be translated.

The art, at least back with cartridges, was in making the whole thing fit together in a fixed space, yet still get the same point across. Of course, with CDs and more recently DVDs, it doesn't matter so much now.

The Rom?

[jpmoney]

Anyone else notice the ROM linked to at the bottom. That can't be very legal even if the game was never officially released...

Re:Lost in translation

[cgenman]

Theory 1: The American gamer is very different than the Japanese gamer.

This theory holds some weight. While DDR was a worthy title to bring over, there are many somewhat inferior dance games that did well in Japan yet are flailing in US arcades. Would a Dating Sim fly over here? Or an Air Traffic Controller sim? How about a game where you chop vegetables? Some of the games released in Japan just lack that kind of fantastic escape from real life that American gamers crave. And what about American games based around Basketball, or the endless run'n'shoot games? They still sell in Japan, but hardly as well.

Theory 2: Translations are a pain.

This one also holds weight. Many american games are created with 8 bit characters in mind... Designers would make bitmaps out of fonts and use that in game, with special spacing and formatting. Cramming Japan's significantly longer characters into a fixed space may not be practical, especially if the designers gave the text bank a fixed size. Likewise physically cramming english into a Japanese textbox is difficult, as while english is a slightly faster spoken language, it is a much longer written one. And you can forget about fitting anything else into a native chinese textbox.

Theory 3: Developers won't do it, publishers are afraid.

When you push 80 hours a week to make the perfect game... polish it, craft it, love it... you generally don't have the energy or desire to go back and do a translation. Publishers handle them for this reason, and publishers exist to hedge risk. If a game is released in one market, a foreign publisher will generally not pick up the tab until it is obviously a hit. Counterstrike fits this bill nicely. Savage did not. Publishers have such a backlog of hits waiting for translation that they can pick and choose, and they choose the winners.