Nintendo Releases New EarthBound Beginnings Switch Online Icons

@FawfulDX I've checked as well now and I can see it's there. Updated the article to reflect this.

Nice, definitely getting these - I always try to get all icons, but still!

@Isaix Yep, and this is just one of the reasons why Western censorship of Japanese games - or really, anything that doesn't conform in general - sucks, unfortunately it keeps on getting worse as for example "localization" teams started travelling to Japan to alter contents at the source (I don't fully agree with all the examples shown here as I think the addition of same-sex marriage is great since it's just an option and the more options the better, but this documents several cases when such changes happened: https://twitter.com/iuntue/status/1753988520849416404)!
@PoeTheLizard How I wish they limited themselves to such disclaimers as you can simply ignore them!
@john_with_a_j @Mana_Knight @Princess_Lilly It definitely is the Magypsies first and foremost (https://www.eurogamer.net/controversial-elements-scuppered-mother-3-western-release-report), but there are also several mature themes that would require a much higher game rating if left as is (https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/04/feature_smiles_and_tears_-_a_mother_3_retrospective).
@imadeanaccount I also blame Nintendo... but only to an extent as Western censorship is what we should blame first and foremost!

@Mana_Knight You're welcome!

@Princess_Lilly Couldn't agree more, too bad that Nintendo and other companies unfortunately don't think the same!

@Not_Soos I thought the same when I saw this yesterday.
Didn't particularly see it as a taunt or trolling. I saw this either as a "whatever, idc" or "stay tuned". I'm not getting my hopes up but I'm not up in arms either

@Porky Y'know, I'm starting to get really sick of all this badmouthing of localization. I keep seeing such a baffling, caricatured version of it being paraded around as some incredible offense and evil against the Japanese and their culture.

Localization, when done well (and yes, it CAN be done well) is better than a straight translation, full stop. It can more effectively convey the tone and the ideas of the work, and appeal to the target audience in a way closer to how it did in Japan. And even when it doesn't do those things, it can make the end product more interesting: for example, the Olde English way that Frog speaks in the localization of Chrono Trigger, which has been removed in more recent translations.

It was charming! It was memorable! It enhanced the work. And now it's just gone. Everything's more faithfully translated, which is nice in many ways, but it's missing the spark and fun that actually made people fall in love with Chrono Trigger here in the west.

Localization is not some all-consuming evil, and it's (usually) not motivated by racism or anything. It's just another layer on translation that can help the final product find its audience and make the splash it deserves to make.

There are plenty of individual changes to certain games that I have complained about, especially when entire features of a game have been just removed outright. But there are other changes I have loved, that I feel enhance the game instead of stripping its identity away. I feel like it needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, instead of being treated like it's a monolith.

@Semudara While I partially agree with you, there are good reasons why localization has such a bad reputation, especially because it is increasingly becoming a synonym of censorship as I mentioned in my previous post... and even when that isn't the case, I will always prefer a localization that is first and foremost faithful to the source material.
Let's make one concrete example (which I posted here on Nintendo Life before when this topic came up) by comparing the original English localization of Super Mario RPG with the remake's as the former:

• had straight up mistakes, for example ラブラブリング Love-Love Ring becoming B'tub Ring (maybe because raburabu vaguely resembles バスタブ basutabu bathtub?);
• didn't acknowledge the names of several pre-existing characters in the series, even common ones like ノコノコ Nokonoko Koopa Troopa in "NokNok Shell";
• speaking of that, leaving in Japanese instead of translating them into English certain words, even common ones like 槍 yari spear in the name "Yaridovich";
• added questionable jokes like the poop one for the female Toad NPC in "Mushroom Kingdom" (actually キノコ城 Kinoko-jō, Mushroom Castle) instead of her just being a fan of Mario.

Most of these have luckily been addressed in the remake - and even more so in the new non-English translations like the Italian one I'm experiencing by playing it myself while I'm seeing the English one thanks to a let's play - and they even went beyond that by having what I consider good localization, for example the Thought Peek (ex "Psychopath") quote of Arachne has become "They call me Arachne 'cause I lack knees.", a pretty clever adaptation of the original Japanese one which is アッシノアシハ、ロッポン、ナノデ、タリンチュラ。 Asshi no ashi wa, roppon, nanode, Tarinchura. As for my legs, [I have] six [of them], because of that, I'm Tarintula. - notice that they use a word for I asshi which sounds almost identical to ashi leg/foot, and that the enemy is called Tarintula because it's a combination of tarantula and tarin, literally not sufficient so lacking (not to mention that the kanji for ashi and tarin would be the same 足 if the original text employed it instead of using only katakana)!
On the flip side, there is at least one potential example of censorship I've only recently found out since they have removed any mentions of Dodo being called fat, but in that case I don't know if those were in the original and have been kept in the Japanese script of the remake or they were exclusive to the first English translation so I'm not able to confirm it.
Overall, I hope you can see why I much prefer the remake's localization and why I hope going forward we'll see more of that and less like the original's - although as I mentioned what I'd love to see the most is less censorship as that is the absolute worst to me, but unfortunately it seems to be currently increasing, especially in anglophone countries and the sad thing is that it ends up affecting also localizations in other languages whenever they are based on the English version instead of the source material if not even straight up the Japanese version!