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.
I didn't go with HEX, I just started with numbers and had more than 9 images. Going to 11, 12 etc would have messed up the list, so I went to letters. If I'd had more than 16 I'd be using G, H, etc. =)
If you'd asked two weeks ago I'd have said "Nothing but the PSU + HP mobo" and given it to you cheap. Now however, after about ten days of hell trying unsuccessfully to cure an XP networking issue that worked for a year and suddenly hated me, I'm using the HP case as a router.
I wonder if their patent idea ever panned out for them. When they were first starting out with this project they made noise about some of the delay being due to a patent application for the process. I always wondered: Patent for what? Cutting a piece of off-the-shelf (albeit specialized) plastic and shoving it into another company's product? Always sounded kind of egotistical and greedy to me.
Nice to see the released product is reasonably priced. It's a shame Nintendo didn't bother with it themselves. The GBA screen is a travesty.
I found Cryptonomicon to be a long and often arduous read, but I think it was more than enjoyable.
Personally I think you're confusing your opinion as fact. Clearly there are different viewpoints here.
Lawrence.
Re:Don't you proofread your posts revisited!
on
Farewell to SNK
·
· Score: 1
Oh dear god, what happened to that last paragraph's first and second sentence? I shall forever hang my head in shame.
Re:Don't you proofread your posts revisited!
on
Farewell to SNK
·
· Score: 1
Well thanks for pointing out my errors which, while significant, pale in comparison to those made in the article in question.
A quick check of dictionary.com reveals that "Throughout most of its history in English myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable..."
Regarding "english" it should be clear from the context that I was referring to the slight spin given to a ball or other object when struck.
I have no doubt I'm guilty of something, but I'm far, far superior to the author of that article. So there.
And your comment - "to slashdot a site" means "to overwhelm a site's webserver" - seems to be rather picked ye olde nits. I'd have to say that both uses are acceptably, as there's no clearly defined usage guidelines. A dictionary.com check reveals no entries for slashdot. Also, since I'm not posting anonymously and you are, I win by default.
Doesn't anyone proofread these articles??
on
Farewell to SNK
·
· Score: 1
Besides the myriad errors in the article, there's typos and things that barely qualify as english. How does this qualify for slashdotting?
The system itself was a powerful multiprocessor based system, an ability to display 4096 colors onscreen at once, the miniscule 64k of memory was all that was needed because the games themselves ran directly from the cartridges. Which is also why they reached 330 megabits in size (though in later years reached over 700 megabytes!)
What language was this originally written in?
I love seeing games on slashdot, but if any long-winded geek can ignore basic rules of grammar and skip the whole proof-reading process then maybe we shouldn't bother, hmm?
Re:Lik-sang had gutted Gamecube long ago
on
Gamecube Guts
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, they beat me by a whole two days (which was no small source of irritation) 'cause strangely Hong Kong got their systems before the street date in Japan. I had these pictures up the first day of release in Japan - not because I want to be first, but because I wanted to see what was in it.
GameSX.com is all about my obsessive need to understand how things work, and modify them to suit my own evil ends. If a few other people like the same stuff, great! That's what the site's there for. =)
Lawrence.
Re:Nintendo's Warranty
on
Gamecube Guts
·
· Score: 1
Just FYI, I currently live in Japan so the warranty on the GameCube is as easy as a five minute trip to the nearest Toys R Us. I don't intend to tell them I opened it if they don't ask. And it's not broken yet anyway. =)
My xbox warranty is going to be a little harder to take advantage of when I import one from the states in a few days. Gotta gut that too.
As for 12 month warranties, yes that's a fun idea for the consumer, but I would imagine this is a contributing reason to the UK paying so much more for their consoles.
They don't. They spin clockwise, same as every other console I have handy to check with. Strangely I don't actually own a CD player...
I dunno who started that little rumor. Or maybe it's only south of the equator they spin the wrong way?
Lawrence.
I've got to disagree with that.
on
Gamecube Guts
·
· Score: 1
People hated the DC controller. People hate the Xbox controller. Some people hate the snes controller. Personally I found the GameCube controller to be the most comfortable controller since the Super NES, with great tactile response and analogue sticks far easier to manage than any other, IMHO. My hands aren't small either.
My suggestion is: get used to it. I did, others have, I'm sure it's within you to love that purple thingus like the rest of us do.
Lawrence.
Slashdot crushed my site!
on
Gamecube Guts
·
· Score: 1
That didn't take any time at all. Curse these small-town ISPs and their measly drinking-straw pipes to the net.
Of course, the game-cube page is the single most graphic-intensive page on the site, so it's probably to be expected.
And four hours until I can call tech support!
At any rate, I'm sorry the site snuffed it. Please check again later at your leisure.
Hey, wow, I've been slashdotted!
on
Gamecube Guts
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Wow, I've finally made the big time after all these years. Just thought I'd say thanks to CamelTrader (whoever you are!) and welcome everyone else to my life's work - GameSX.com.
It's originally named after a retail store I opened some five years ago - Game Station X - but the store is no more.
It is, I believe, the single largest collection of game hardware pinouts and hacks and so on. It wouldn't be there without the help of all the fantastic people who've sent in their mods and info, so thanks to everyone!!
The ISP hosting the site might freak out if it's hit by the normal slashdot traffic. Please try again later if it buckles.
Lawrence.
Re:Personally I think it's an irresponsible articl
on
Copying A DVD To A CD?
·
· Score: 1
ACK! PREVIEW, NOT POST! (where's the delete comment button, dammit?) My apologies for the crappily formatted previous version.
Here's a letter I fired off to the article's writer concerning the errors I noticed and what I consider to be the irresponsibility of the whole article.
[starts here]
Still on the first page of your article and I've already stumbled across some errors and innacuracies.
First off, Video CD was wildy successful (mostly because it was cheap to pirate, I'm sure) in asia. Outside of Japan Sony's Playstation was released with built in VCD capabilities.
Second off, you say "NO noticeable loss in quality" which should quite obviously read either "negligible loss when displayed on a low res regular TV" or "surprisingly little loss" when viewed on a PC monitor. Anyone who says or perceives otherwise is either hopelessly delusional, wants to sell something, or needs to visit their optometrist.
Third, you show one picture in a low-compression format, and the second quite clearly has compression artifacts of its own. Look at the playback controls of the two screen grabs. This was either a feeble attempt to imitate MPG4 or it is someone not paying the kind of attention due this article.
now to read the 2nd page...
"TREATED AS A SPRITE?" This implies the encoder somehow magically cuts out the moving part and overlays it on the background. While concise, its hardly accurate. A better way to say it would have been "Updates only the parts of the picture that change, like the vehicle and its immediate surroundings"
You list "small buffer" under advantages of MPG4. Personally I hate this small buffer - as MS' windows mplayer and their ASF implementation of MPG4 shows, it just slows things down when you're scanning scenes - in my opinion I'd rather suffer once in a while when the CD chokes when I'm skipping around a movie than wait 4 seconds every time. A neutral point, IMO.
last notes: I'm surprised you didn't make any mention of the rampant piracy this allows. Broadband connections make dumping and compressing DVDs onto cheap and easy-to-burn CDs as easy as duping a music CD (a little more time consuming perhaps). Are you really helping the DeCSS situation here? What about the big picture? Isn't this exactly what the music industry bigwigs said we'd be doing with this info?? If it were MY site, I'd have taken this article down - it's not doing any of us any favours IMO.
And aren't you a little late? I've been trading DiVX movies since about January.
Personally I think it's an irresponsible article.
on
Copying A DVD To A CD?
·
· Score: 2
Here's a letter I fired off to the article's writer concerning the errors I noticed and what I consider to be the irresponsibility of the whole article.
[starts here]
Still on the first page of your article and I've already stumbled across some errors and innacuracies.
First off, Video CD was wildy successful (mostly because it was cheap to pirate, I'm sure) in asia. Outside of Japan Sony's Playstation was released with built in VCD capabilities.
Second off, you say "NO noticeable loss in quality" which should quite obviously read either "negligible loss when displayed on a low res regular TV" or "surprisingly little loss" when viewed on a PC monitor. Anyone who says or perceives otherwise is either hopelessly delusional, wants to sell something, or needs to visit their optometrist.
Third, you show one picture in a low-compression format, and the second quite clearly has compression artifacts of its own. Look at the playback controls of the two screen grabs. This was either a feeble attempt to imitate MPG4 or it is someone not paying the kind of attention due this article.
now to read the 2nd page...
"TREATED AS A SPRITE?" This implies the encoder somehow magically cuts out the moving part and overlays it on the background. While concise, its hardly accurate. A better way to say it would have been "Updates only the parts of the picture that change, like the vehicle and its immediate surroundings"
You list "small buffer" under advantages of MPG4. Personally I hate this small buffer - as MS' windows mplayer and their ASF implementation of MPG4 shows, it just slows things down when you're scanning scenes - in my opinion I'd rather suffer once in a while when the CD chokes when I'm skipping around a movie than wait 4 seconds every time. A neutral point, IMO.
last notes: I'm surprised you didn't make any mention of the rampant piracy this allows. Broadband connections make dumping and compressing DVDs onto cheap and easy-to-burn CDs as easy as duping a music CD (a little more time consuming perhaps). Are you really helping the DeCSS situation here? What about the big picture? Isn't this exactly what the music industry bigwigs said we'd be doing with this info?? If it were MY site, I'd have taken this article down - it's not doing any of us any favours IMO.
And aren't you a little late? I've been trading DiVX movies since about January.
Lawrence Wright
http://www.gamesx.com is the internets largest compilation of console game tech.
It's funny how my site often gets overlooked - perhaps 'cause I don't code it's not as cool..;)
www.gamesx.com is the inernet's largest collection of gaming hardware references bar none, as near as I can tell. If you've ever wanted a pinout, it's probably there. I'm an update slacker though, so the last thing I had up was a bit on the neato analogue buttons on the PS2 pads.
There's also a mirror of Joakim Ogren's fantastic Hardware Book.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah, it was set to a mere 80 simultaneous connections. I bumped it to 200. My apologies.
You guys aren't even hitting 15% of my home connection so far, and the server response locally in still instant. (knock wood) ^_^
Props to 100mbit to the home, and props to the Abyss webserver.
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.
I didn't go with HEX, I just started with numbers and had more than 9 images. Going to 11, 12 etc would have messed up the list, so I went to letters. If I'd had more than 16 I'd be using G, H, etc. =)
If you'd asked two weeks ago I'd have said "Nothing but the PSU + HP mobo" and given it to you cheap. Now however, after about ten days of hell trying unsuccessfully to cure an XP networking issue that worked for a year and suddenly hated me, I'm using the HP case as a router.
I can't see the collection in question (And I'll wager no one else can at the moment either) so here's mine, if anyone cares.
It's big, I'm serious.
It's a serious illness - I love hardware. I love playing with it, tinkering with it, hacking it up and putting what I learn online:
GameSX.com
NFG games
It doesn't work for me either, running XP and no firewall, using PPPoE and an NTT fiber modem. No common thread I'm seeing...
I wonder if their patent idea ever panned out for them. When they were first starting out with this project they made noise about some of the delay being due to a patent application for the process. I always wondered: Patent for what? Cutting a piece of off-the-shelf (albeit specialized) plastic and shoving it into another company's product? Always sounded kind of egotistical and greedy to me.
Nice to see the released product is reasonably priced. It's a shame Nintendo didn't bother with it themselves. The GBA screen is a travesty.
I found Cryptonomicon to be a long and often arduous read, but I think it was more than enjoyable.
Personally I think you're confusing your opinion as fact. Clearly there are different viewpoints here.
Lawrence.
Oh dear god, what happened to that last paragraph's first and second sentence? I shall forever hang my head in shame.
Well thanks for pointing out my errors which, while significant, pale in comparison to those made in the article in question.
A quick check of dictionary.com reveals that "Throughout most of its history in English myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable..."
Regarding "english" it should be clear from the context that I was referring to the slight spin given to a ball or other object when struck.
I have no doubt I'm guilty of something, but I'm far, far superior to the author of that article. So there.
And your comment - "to slashdot a site" means "to overwhelm a site's webserver" - seems to be rather picked ye olde nits. I'd have to say that both uses are acceptably, as there's no clearly defined usage guidelines. A dictionary.com check reveals no entries for slashdot. Also, since I'm not posting anonymously and you are, I win by default.
What language was this originally written in?
I love seeing games on slashdot, but if any long-winded geek can ignore basic rules of grammar and skip the whole proof-reading process then maybe we shouldn't bother, hmm?
Yeah, they beat me by a whole two days (which was no small source of irritation) 'cause strangely Hong Kong got their systems before the street date in Japan. I had these pictures up the first day of release in Japan - not because I want to be first, but because I wanted to see what was in it.
GameSX.com is all about my obsessive need to understand how things work, and modify them to suit my own evil ends. If a few other people like the same stuff, great! That's what the site's there for. =)
Lawrence.
Just FYI, I currently live in Japan so the warranty on the GameCube is as easy as a five minute trip to the nearest Toys R Us. I don't intend to tell them I opened it if they don't ask. And it's not broken yet anyway. =)
My xbox warranty is going to be a little harder to take advantage of when I import one from the states in a few days. Gotta gut that too.
As for 12 month warranties, yes that's a fun idea for the consumer, but I would imagine this is a contributing reason to the UK paying so much more for their consoles.
They don't. They spin clockwise, same as every other console I have handy to check with. Strangely I don't actually own a CD player...
I dunno who started that little rumor. Or maybe it's only south of the equator they spin the wrong way?
Lawrence.
People hated the DC controller. People hate the Xbox controller. Some people hate the snes controller. Personally I found the GameCube controller to be the most comfortable controller since the Super NES, with great tactile response and analogue sticks far easier to manage than any other, IMHO. My hands aren't small either.
My suggestion is: get used to it. I did, others have, I'm sure it's within you to love that purple thingus like the rest of us do.
Lawrence.
That didn't take any time at all. Curse these small-town ISPs and their measly drinking-straw pipes to the net.
Of course, the game-cube page is the single most graphic-intensive page on the site, so it's probably to be expected.
And four hours until I can call tech support!
At any rate, I'm sorry the site snuffed it. Please check again later at your leisure.
Wow, I've finally made the big time after all these years. Just thought I'd say thanks to CamelTrader (whoever you are!) and welcome everyone else to my life's work - GameSX.com.
It's originally named after a retail store I opened some five years ago - Game Station X - but the store is no more.
It is, I believe, the single largest collection of game hardware pinouts and hacks and so on. It wouldn't be there without the help of all the fantastic people who've sent in their mods and info, so thanks to everyone!!
The ISP hosting the site might freak out if it's hit by the normal slashdot traffic. Please try again later if it buckles.
Lawrence.
ACK! PREVIEW, NOT POST! (where's the delete comment button, dammit?) My apologies for the crappily formatted previous version.
Here's a letter I fired off to the article's writer concerning the errors I noticed and what I consider to be the irresponsibility of the whole article.
[starts here]
Still on the first page of your article and I've already stumbled across some errors and innacuracies.
First off, Video CD was wildy successful (mostly because it was cheap to pirate, I'm sure) in asia. Outside of Japan Sony's Playstation was released with built in VCD capabilities.
Second off, you say "NO noticeable loss in quality" which should quite obviously read either "negligible loss when displayed on a low res regular TV" or "surprisingly little loss" when viewed on a PC monitor. Anyone who says or perceives otherwise is either hopelessly delusional, wants to sell something, or needs to visit their optometrist.
Third, you show one picture in a low-compression format, and the second quite clearly has compression artifacts of its own. Look at the playback controls of the two screen grabs. This was either a feeble attempt to imitate MPG4 or it is someone not paying the kind of attention due this article.
now to read the 2nd page...
"TREATED AS A SPRITE?" This implies the encoder somehow magically cuts out the moving part and overlays it on the background. While concise, its hardly accurate. A better way to say it would have been "Updates only the parts of the picture that change, like the vehicle and its immediate surroundings"
You list "small buffer" under advantages of MPG4. Personally I hate this small buffer - as MS' windows mplayer and their ASF implementation of MPG4 shows, it just slows things down when you're scanning scenes - in my opinion I'd rather suffer once in a while when the CD chokes when I'm skipping around a movie than wait 4 seconds every time. A neutral point, IMO.
last notes: I'm surprised you didn't make any mention of the rampant piracy this allows. Broadband connections make dumping and compressing DVDs onto cheap and easy-to-burn CDs as easy as duping a music CD (a little more time consuming perhaps). Are you really helping the DeCSS situation here? What about the big picture? Isn't this exactly what the music industry bigwigs said we'd be doing with this info?? If it were MY site, I'd have taken this article down - it's not doing any of us any favours IMO.
And aren't you a little late? I've been trading DiVX movies since about January.
Lawrence Wright
http://www.gamesx.com is the internets largest compilation of console game tech.
Here's a letter I fired off to the article's writer concerning the errors I noticed and what I consider to be the irresponsibility of the whole article. [starts here] Still on the first page of your article and I've already stumbled across some errors and innacuracies. First off, Video CD was wildy successful (mostly because it was cheap to pirate, I'm sure) in asia. Outside of Japan Sony's Playstation was released with built in VCD capabilities. Second off, you say "NO noticeable loss in quality" which should quite obviously read either "negligible loss when displayed on a low res regular TV" or "surprisingly little loss" when viewed on a PC monitor. Anyone who says or perceives otherwise is either hopelessly delusional, wants to sell something, or needs to visit their optometrist. Third, you show one picture in a low-compression format, and the second quite clearly has compression artifacts of its own. Look at the playback controls of the two screen grabs. This was either a feeble attempt to imitate MPG4 or it is someone not paying the kind of attention due this article. now to read the 2nd page... "TREATED AS A SPRITE?" This implies the encoder somehow magically cuts out the moving part and overlays it on the background. While concise, its hardly accurate. A better way to say it would have been "Updates only the parts of the picture that change, like the vehicle and its immediate surroundings" You list "small buffer" under advantages of MPG4. Personally I hate this small buffer - as MS' windows mplayer and their ASF implementation of MPG4 shows, it just slows things down when you're scanning scenes - in my opinion I'd rather suffer once in a while when the CD chokes when I'm skipping around a movie than wait 4 seconds every time. A neutral point, IMO. last notes: I'm surprised you didn't make any mention of the rampant piracy this allows. Broadband connections make dumping and compressing DVDs onto cheap and easy-to-burn CDs as easy as duping a music CD (a little more time consuming perhaps). Are you really helping the DeCSS situation here? What about the big picture? Isn't this exactly what the music industry bigwigs said we'd be doing with this info?? If it were MY site, I'd have taken this article down - it's not doing any of us any favours IMO. And aren't you a little late? I've been trading DiVX movies since about January. Lawrence Wright http://www.gamesx.com is the internets largest compilation of console game tech.
It's funny how my site often gets overlooked - perhaps 'cause I don't code it's not as cool.. ;)
www.gamesx.com is the inernet's largest collection of gaming hardware references bar none, as near as I can tell. If you've ever wanted a pinout, it's probably there. I'm an update slacker though, so the last thing I had up was a bit on the neato analogue buttons on the PS2 pads.
There's also a mirror of Joakim Ogren's fantastic Hardware Book.