Localizations (the best and worst)

[miyabi95_]

One thing that annoys me quite a bit is when a game is fully localized to appease western culture. It's just one of those things that abides by the motto "life is unfair." It was as if there was something wrong with experimenting with new things back then...

Here's a game that was localized pretty well for the most part...Aside from its boxart. 

Spoiler

For me personally, anime-inspired art used to promote a game just screams "YOU WILL LOVE THIS GAME IF YOU LIKE ANIME!"

Then it came to the US as a game most of us probably know...

Spoiler

I get that a lot of work was put into this...But really...They may as well have made a goofy cartoon/comic about it. If I were a kid and saw this, I probably would have bought the game anyway, but the boxart is not at all fit to my tastes. Maybe if I were still into silly cartoons, I would find it pretty charming in a way.

[Dolphman]

That ugly American art was done by the late Greg Martin who was famous for his game and VHS cover art. But he does have bad ones as well.
For one thing he's notable for is the infamous "Assface & Mohawk" Sonic that plagued most of the American and some PAL version covers.
Sega openly hated this design, and requested him to make Sonic more on-model. But still allowed AOSTH Robotnik for some reason.

One example of horrible localisation is how all the classic Contra games became Probotector for PAL regions. Blame Germany for this one.
Everything that looked human was turned into robots. There's no fun in that! Even Hard Corpse wasn't safe, making the wolf guy a robot too.
This sucked when it came to the Virtual Console rereleases as they were still Probotector. Pal VC was garbage I can tell you that.
After the release of the Wii-U, we finally have them in their original Contra glory, thanks to them finally having some dignity.

Here's another fun fact: The Probotector himself ended up as an unlockable character in Contra 4 for the original DS.

[Koh]

Chaos Wars is easily the worst localization. Dat voice acting.



But of course, in general, a lot of silly things happened when it came to localizing games. Removal of any religious references, just because of the triggered nature of people here. Whenever a Puyo Puyo game came out with Satan in it, they kept renaming him Dark Prince, for example.

[psychospacecow]

Bad Box Art Megaman is now officially his own character because it became so infamous.

[NICKtendo DS]

Bad Box Art Megaman is now officially his own character because it became so infamous.

What bugs me is that the Bad Box-art Megaman from SFxT is a redesign of the actual Bad Box-art Megaman rather than being 100% faithful to the 100% unfaithful rendition of Mega Man. The fact that he looks more polished, yet dumber ruins the whole joke for me.

[miyabi95_]

That ugly American art was done by the late Greg Martin who was famous for his game and VHS cover art. But he does have bad ones as well.
For one thing he's notable for is the infamous "Assface & Mohawk" Sonic that plagued most of the American and some PAL version covers.
Sega openly hated this design, and requested him to make Sonic more on-model. But still allowed AOSTH Robotnik for some reason.

I personally enjoyed his Sonic design when I was little. The US boxart (because I had no access to PAL/Japanese games) for many old games drew me closer to drawing and being creative in general. The way he designed Sonic is fine through my eyes, but the human characters he drew look like they belong in Animaniacs.

[Dolphman]

Some American games were censored for reasons that didn't make sense. Like changing the blood in DooM 64 and Hexen 64 from red to green.
From what I've read, this was done on the Japanese versions. I don't see the point when they do have games with red blood in them.
With both games, you're pretty much fighting monsters. And Japan has heaps of violent & gory anime and manga as well.

But take a look at the South Korean version of Duke Nukem 3D. The enemies bleed white, which looks so wrong!

[miyabi95_]

The enemies bleed white, which looks so wrong!

lol, I never really thought of that having played a couple fighting games that have the option to make the blood white xD.

But let's spice things up a bit. I'm gonna show some very surprising boxart that will probably confuse some people. But, they're both for the same game that was localized.

Spoiler

     

No comment. I'm done.

[psychospacecow]

Here is an interesting one. World of Warcraft in China has a lot of arbitrary and inconsistent censorship in regards to the dead. Certain corpse models are replaced with straw men. Certain gore is replaced with bread. Some skulls are covered by boxes or removed. Others are not.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/49...onlots_of/

[Deathbringer]

Some American games were censored for reasons that didn't make sense. Like changing the blood in DooM 64 and Hexen 64 from red to green.
From what I've read, this was done on the Japanese versions. I don't see the point when they do have games with red blood in them.
With both games, you're pretty much fighting monsters. And Japan has heaps of violent & gory anime and manga as well.

But take a look at the South Korean version of Duke Nukem 3D. The enemies bleed white, which looks so wrong!

And yet strangely appropriate.

[K0n9]

The Playstation version of Final Fantasy V is pretty bad:
The enemy names took the biggest hit, T-Wrecks!?!? T-WRECKS!?!?!?
And L/R miss placements worse than Samurai Shodown 4's Victoly.

[Deathbringer]

At least T-Wrecks in punny, Y-Burn on the other hand.

[Dolphman]

Nah, puns like that sounds like something a child would make. Then later finding it cleaver and funny, along with his friends.
This is one thing I roll my eyes at American Splatoon fans for. They think their version is better all because of the stupid puns and memes.
Speaking of memes. We know many were pissed at the Doge reference in Triforce Heroes. I've read Fire Emblem Fates has the same problem.
Whoever's in charge of the translations should get fired. Sounds like freaking Family Guy writers, and that show has a habit of ruining memes.

Spoiler

One thing that bugged everyone outside America was the censorship to South Park: The Stick of Truth, despite the higher ratings for games.
While the majority of Europe got this:

Us in Australia on the other hand got this:

It does make us question our classification board, as we've had an R rating for games since 2013. Though, the crying koala is still funny.
No surprise why it was censored. All boiled down to Craig and the playable kid receiving anal probes, and an abortion mini-game.

[Deathbringer]

^Speaking of which, what about the 3 random houses you can't enter? The ones that have the naked chick, the dude whacking it on the couch, and the bestiality neighbor.

[Dolphman]

I can confirm they did have the first two when I played it. Didn't know there was a third one until I saw it on YouTube. That one's messed up.
There's also a fourth one in the Canada map which a couple having sex and the man's says "who the fuck just walks into someone's house?!?!"

When translating the game isn't a problem. It would be a cover art that shows very little of what the game is about, like Phalanx for SNES

The Super Famicom and PAL SNES share the same artwork, but America has an old banjo-playing hillbilly on their cover for some odd reason.
AVGN does have a point that the ship in the original picture looks phallic.