@Samalik I sympathise with your living situation and appreciate that learning a language is not something that happens overnight. It would be disingenuous to say ‘just go learn the language’ and leave it at that.
It is, however, a necessity if one demands a translation that is 100% faithful to the original text. For the only possible translation that meets this criterium is in fact not a translation at all: it is the original text. Translation is by definition an act of change.
Yakuza/Like a Dragon is an interesting example because of the sub/dub options. This brings it closer to media like TV shows/films than largely text-based media like novels.
Subbing and dubbing are notably different forms of translation with different goals and demands:
Subbing requires that the text be clear, easy to understand, and unobtrusive. It doesn’t matter how detailed and accurate the translation is if the viewer can’t read and digest it before the next line comes in. It should distract from the video as little as possible, which is why translated subs are generally more concise than the original spoken line. They’re aiming to be comprehensible, not comprehensive.
In contrast, the main demand on dubs is that they sounds natural when spoken by a human being in the context of the video. Timing is vital when conveying comedy, suspense, or even just the flow of basic conversation. Mess it up and everything sounds stilted and weird.
I’m sure you don’t need another essay — especially not on the minutiae of different translation styles — but the point is this: LaD has two translations because it’s closer to an interactive movie than a visual novel. This allows for separate dubbed and subbed versions, each with different characteristics. I don’t think the point was just to provide ‘strict’ and ‘free’ localisations for different audiences.
It’s not impossible that Ace Attorney could turn into something similarly cinematic — necessitating a sub/dub split — but… it does seem like a lot to ask.
Anyway, sorry for another essay. I just find this stuff really interesting and happen to have time on my hands for the first time in a while… which I’ve clearly decided to spend arguing with strangers on the internet.
I hope your living situation gets a little less messy and frustrating! Huge walls of text probably won’t help, but… well, yeah, sorry!
@boxyguy This seems a very balanced take. I’m certainly not arguing that the official localisation is the one, ‘true’ way of representing these games in English — and it’s clear that Capcom have shot themselves in the foot with a few of their earlier decisions. But they’ve regained composure and the series’ inherent silliness helps smooth out most of the bumps.
Ultimately Capcom wants to sell its games beyond the domestic market, and wants the games to sell well. The characters ‘Phoenix Wright’ and ‘Miles Edgeworth’ have worked their way into the hearts of millions of fans worldwide. Perhaps NARUHODŌ Ryūichi and MITSURUGI Reiji (names not written in western order to minimise risk of ~localisation~) could have done the same. We’ll never know. But the Anglicised names don’t seem to have hurt their success.
I’m afraid I took the words ‘original text’ to mean ‘original text’. If you’re implying that I should have interpreted your statement more loosely so as to infer what you ‘meant’ rather than what you ‘said’, then you’re essentially making an argument for a freer, less literal translation — which is exactly the sort of the thing you’re purporting to be against.
Perhaps Capcom should be exclusively pandering to the Venn-diagram intersection of ’weebs who are very passionate about Japanese culture’ and ’weebs who are not sufficiently passionate about Japanese culture to bother learning the language’. Instead, they seem more interested in writing silly puns and likeable characters that actually make sense in the target language.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t being entirely facetious when I pointed out that this game does contain the original Japanese text. I genuinely thought it might be useful. (For one thing, this is not consistent across AA games: the 123 Collection is fully multilingual, whereas the language options for Great Ace Attorney Collection vary by region.)
You could feasibly play this game with Japanese text and read it through Google Lens. It would be slightly cumbersome, but would get you a more literal (if at times nonsensical) translation.
Or you could harness your apparent ‘keenness’ for all things Japanese and take up learning the language. This game would be a good study aid and you’d finally be able to enjoy the ‘original text’ in its unadulterated glory.
@Samalik I believe the game does contain the original text. The official website lists the supported languages as ‘Japanese, English, French, German, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese’ so you should be able to switch your system settings and play it with in the original Japanese text!
If by ‘original text’ you mean ‘a completely different text’ (i.e. English or another language written in Latin script) but want some form of ‘pure’ or ‘unadulterated’ translation, then I would recommend reading David Bellos’ book, Is That a Fish in Your Ear.
Translation is in itself an act of radical change. It involves uprooting something and attempting to graft it onto a completely different object. It’s a fascinating, frustrating, meaningful, and above all, messy endeavour.
Sometimes that messiness can cause issues. There are many examples of ‘heavy handed’ localisations which can end up backfiring as a series develops. You could fairly argue that recasting the original AA games in a western setting was a bridge too far, leading to continuity issues down the line. I feel there’s room for legitimate debate on that.
What doesn’t leave much room for debate is that idea that there can be such thing as a 100% pure, unadulterated, genuinely meaningful translation of a game of this scale. You’re basically asking someone to translate it for you without translating it, so you can understand the ‘original text’ without having to learn the meaning of the original text.
Games, err… ’exist in the context of all in which they live (?) and what came before them’. They are ultimately remembered for their impact — both on individuals and the industry as a whole.
The superlatives surrounding BotW basically wrote themselves (’legendary’, ‘a breath of fresh air’, etc.). Not everyone loved it, but it left an undeniable mark on the gaming landscape.
Tears was never going to match that, no matter how neat the crafting mechanics. It also happened to launch in the same year as a game that, much like Breath, shifted expectations for what was possible in its genre.
TotK was clearly a labour of love and has a lot of fine features. But it doesn’t surprise me that it didn’t top nearly as ‘Game of the Year’ lists as its predecessor.
I think a character can still be ‘expressive’ while still leaving room for the player’s own personality.
Wind Waker Link with his big googly cat eyes is one of the most expressive protagonists out there, despite not having a single line of spoken dialogue.
@Hck I suppose the key difference is that Nintendo literally invented this sport and the players are playing at the World Championships on the company’s terms. They made the game; they make the rules. And if one of the rules is, ‘don’t be racist’ then the competitors just have to suck it up.
The entire competition is a PR exercise for the sport and the company, and anyone who wins the tournament is automatically a ‘brand ambassador’ — whether that was their initial intention or not. If they can’t represent the brand by… say, not being openly racist, then the brand is at liberty to cut ties and do what it can to erase them from its records.
One can try to argue against this decision on ethical grounds (though it’s difficult to find solid ethical footing for blatant racism), but ultimately this is about business. And business rarely bends.
Nintendo, as a brand, seemingly doesn’t want to be associated with open racism. As a brand ambassador, it would be pertinent to keep that in mind.
If it were 100% machine translated there shouldn’t be any spelling errors like ‘wituout’. I imagine there’s a degree of human input, but I also imagine the human in question isn’t fully at home in the English language.
We’ve already had this for years, but with the added functionality of grips.
If this new device charged multiple sets of Joy-Cons then I might be tempted, but I can’t see what this does that a charging grip doesn’t!
EDIT: @Not_Soos Yes!
ANOTHER EDIT: Oooooh! You can’t stick the Famicon controllers in the charging grips! I imagine that’s why this is being released now, and currently only in Japan*.
The Japanese physical edition of the Famicon World Championships comes bundled with controllers that won’t fit the standard grips. This provides a charging option other than directly connecting them to the device itself. Standard Joy-Cons have had better charging alternatives for ages (which is why I don’t think this comes ‘late’) so it must be the expected uptick in Famicontrollers that has caused this rather niche product to be released.
YET ANOTHER EDIT: *This is now also shown to be false.
@Liam_Doolan I think it’s worth mentioning that the Japanese text 笑み男 reads ‘Emio’ and that ‘Emio’ means ‘smiling man’.
…More or less. I mean, if you asked someone to backtranslate ‘smiling man’ into Japanese you’d probably get ‘笑っている男’ (waratteiru otoko) which would be pronounced very differently, but you can see that the first and last characters are the same!
Anyway, the point is that the text at the end is just ‘Emio’ written in Japanese — not really new information.
@ScalenePowers I wouldn’t be surprised if we both get dragged over hot coals eventually… but yeah, I’ve never really understood the Zelda comparisons.
I mean, there’s action… and adventure… and a vaguely fantastical setting, but the two series feel worlds apart. For some reason I’d assumed that Ōkami was released some time before Wind Waker and so could be forgiven for being a ‘product of its time’. I got a reality check when I looked it up and found that Ōkami was actually released in 2006 — as opposed to 2002 for Zelda.
It’s funny to think there was a time when Sony’s machine couldn’t graphically keep up with Nintendo’s. How things have changed.
@ScalenePowers I agree the art direction is excellent, but even then I find it can look a bit iffy in motion. I was thrown off by the cardboard cutout trees that rotated with the camera, and while some animations are beautifully fluid, many look stiff and artificial.
The pulsating head animations when characters talk make it look like their brains are about to explode, and the lack of facial animations in general robs the characters of nuance… I didn’t find the dialogue particularly endearing either.
I know it’s supposed to be the ‘Zelda for the sophisticated, aesthetically-minded gentleman/lady of culture’, but… I think the original Wind Waker holds up far better in terms of aesthetics, gameplay, world-building, character-building, general expressiveness, and… well, just pure fun!
@Olliemar28 No worries! Made the same mistake multiple times myself. The fact that Japanese sums of money so often resemble pinball scores makes it all too easy!
@speedracer216 Yeah… I still can’t quite get it to feel natural. Rephrasing ‘Zelda caused a spike in sales last year’ as ‘Zelda caused a drop in sales this year’ just seems a weird way of grasping causality. Not necessarily wrong, but… like, odd.
We normally treat past events as constants (to be measured against) and current/recent events as variables.
If an athlete underperforms in an event one year due to poor health, poor form, injury, or just increasing age, then we normally attribute that to… poor health, poor form, injury, or just increasing age. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this phrased as “the athlete’s descent down the leaderboard this year is being blamed on them winning the competition last year”.
@Synecdoche I’m definitely overthinking things, but I’m also genuinely confused by the use of the word ‘effect’ to describe two things that seem completely unrelated. For something to have an ‘effect’ on something else, there must be a direct relation between the two.
I don’t dispute that game sales were low this year (when TotK wasn’t released) and were high last year (when TotK was released) but saying that Zelda is the reason they are low this year implies some sort of relationship that… I simply can’t see.
It’s not difficult to imagine sales being low last year and… sales also being low this year — or being high both years.
Stating that sales are lower than the previous year is fine. Stating that sales are lower because they were high last year is quite a different statement. And if the latter isn’t true, it really doesn’t make sense to use the word ‘effect’.
TL;DR: I genuinely don’t know what effect Zelda is having on current game sales.
EDIT: To be fair, the article doesn’t really argue that game sales are ‘low’ this year because of Zelda, just ‘lower’. It mostly uses the word ‘drop’, which is comparative rather than absolute. So I have to eat a little humble pie and work on my reading comprehension.
…I still find ‘Zelda Effect’ a slightly convoluted way of describing lower sales this year though. The presence of Zelda last year seems less notable than the absence of comparatively big hitters this year, though they’re both equally responsible for the ‘drop’ in sales. The fact that sales for a given month can be so heavily skewed by a single game makes a good argument for comparing sales against wider data sets than just ‘the year before’.
@BTB20 But why would the fact it was released in May last year have a significant ‘effect’ on the sales of May this year? If Zelda where released in April or June last year would that mean that May sales would be higher this year but April/June sales would be suppressed?
When I financially justify game purchases to myself, I primarily consider how many games I’ve bought over the last few weeks/months (as well as more general financial restraints). I don’t think I’ve ever based the decision on how many games I purchased precisely 12 months ago. Certainly no more than 11 or 13 months ago. I can’t even remember what games I purchased 12 months ago.
Perhaps for consoles it might make some difference. If I bought a shiny new console over the Christmas period last year, I might feel less in need of another shiny new console this year. But for games? The thought has never crossed my mind.
If ‘sales being cannibalised by a game released 12 months prior’ is a well documented phenomenon then I’m happy to be convinced, but applying this idea in this case to this specific game and calling it the ‘Zelda Effect’ seems somewhat… arbitrary.
I still don’t understand what the ‘Zelda Effect’ is…
Is the idea that TotK’s success was so great it created some sort of temporal gravity bomb that has absorbed the sales of every game precisely a year later?
Or is there something else? As a hypothesis, ‘games aren’t selling well now because one game sold well 12 months ago’ seems to need some rigorous testing before being branded an ‘effect’.
I can go to the beach whenever, reservation or not.
Not having to queue at the theme park would be novel, but having the entire place deserted because you’d booked it out would make it feel like the set of a horror movie.
Having free reign over an entire palace on the other hand sounds awesome! To be king for a day!
They should make a Metroidvania where you start with everything unlocked at the beginning and the big boss has already been defeated and the galaxy has already been saved and you just sit around at home drinking tea because there’s nothing else to do.
I really hope we don’t get a ‘great reset’ in terms of the library. It would leave a very bad taste in people’s mouths and undermine the continuity of the NSO ecosystem that Nintendo have stated they want to develop, so it seems unlikely… but you never know.
I know NSO gets a bad rap, but as someone on a family plan I don’t feel too hard changed paying the price of a posh sandwich for access to a bunch of games I probably wouldn’t bother actually buying. It’s quite fun dipping in and out of retro releases that would have otherwise passed me by.
There are unofficial fan-operated automated repost accounts, but no official presence from what I can see. The repost accounts might give much the same info, but it’s still a stretch to say ‘Nintendo are on Bluesky’.
@westman98 I don’t disagree, and I imagine that there are still enough collectors left for it to be profitable, but at this point I think the profits brought in by the amiibo line are a fraction of what they were.
Like I say, I don’t think amiibo are dead — Nintendo can keep releasing them alongside each new major release and make a few extra yen from the hardcore collectors who need a piece of official plastic to go with their video games. But whatever their future, I think it’s fair to say that their ‘peak’ has passed.
Having covered the entire Smash Bros. roster — which itself covers most major Nintendo characters — it seems that the only path left for amiibo is to get progressively more obscure.
Outside of releasing yet another Mario or Link figurine, it’s hard to imagine them being able to milk more out of the flagship franchises.
I can’t help but feel that at this point, the hardcore audience is largely sated (having already spent a good chunk of cash amassing their favourite characters) and the casual audience simply isn’t obsessive enough to pick up characters like Tingle’s pet dog Barkle from Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland and Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love.
I don’t think the entire concept of amiibo is ‘dead’ per se, but the wind has certainly gone out of its sails (sales?) and it’s difficult to imagine what would restore it.
Perhaps a big, AAAAA amiibo-focused ‘supergame’ for the Switch 2 might revive its fortunes — like Amiibo Festival but also absolutely nothing like Amiibo Festival because that was awful.
…Basically the complete opposite of Amiibo Festival.
The list of ‘Sonic games that people generally like’ is not as long as it could be… but it’s not zero either.
I wonder if the Adventure games will get a reboot… There are a lot of rough edges that would need sanding, but I’m sure there’s an audience that would lap it up.
The GBA and DS games often get forgotten, but there were some decent games there, too! Getting a ‘GBA collection’ or ‘DS collection’ with some bells and whistles might feasible, though… the fact they’ve been all but forgotten doesn’t exactly fill me with hope.
@YunoboCo It’s an online multiplayer shooter based around a ‘season’ structure which keeps players engaged with frequent events and updates. It generates news by design.
Unless you want Nintendo’s single player offerings to switch to a similar season-driven online model, then you can expect updates on these games to dry up after a month or so, because the games themselves are… done. Outside of bug-fixes, they don’t need updates. It’s like updating War and Peace. They don’t get in the news because they’re no longer ‘new’ — unlike Splatoon which keeps being given fresh licks of paint.
Thankfully for you Splatoon 3’s updates will probably cease sooner or later; we were promised two years of content which we’re fast approaching the end of. There will probably be a lot of fanfare around the ‘Final Splatfest ’ (or similar finale-style event) but after that you’ll have the sweet relief of not having to read about updates for a game you don’t play.
…Until Splatoon 4 is inevitably announced for Switch’s successor, at least.
I feel retro is essentially just an ‘aesthetic’. One based less on the objective metric, ‘how old is this?’ and more on the subjective one, ‘how old does it feel?’
The Mario Galaxy 2 vs. Wii Sports example was quite thought-provoking. Wii Sports very much feels like a product of its time — poster-child of a bygone age — whereas Galaxy 2 feels somehow timeless (at least in my head, and surely in the heads of many others, too).
I’m sure you can find similar examples in every field of technology. I would not consider the Fender Stratocaster (first released in the mid-50s) to be ‘retro’, whereas it’s hard to think of anything more decidedly retro than the CASIO DG-20, released over 30 years later.
A Fender Stratocaster from 1961: Not retro
A CASIO DG-20 from 1987: Retro AF
The passage of time carries some things with it and leaves others behind. Those we look back on fondly are called ‘retro’. Those we look back on with contempt are called old-fashioned/obsolete/anachronistic/one of any number of synonyms (seriously, there are so many words for ‘antiquated’). And those things we’re still using, we call ‘timeless’. Or more often than not, don’t call anything at all as they’ve become such a part of our daily lives that it’s difficult to even imagine a time without them.
Anyway, Galaxy 2 is good, isn’t it? Regardless of whether you you consider it ‘retro’, it’s undoubtedly a stone cold classic.
If I’d never played PM:tTYD I’d absolutely happily pay full whack for it because it’s a brilliant game and worth every penny.
But I have played it before (still got it somewhere) so I paid $0.00 for it because I didn’t buy it as I didn’t feel I needed it.
As far as I’m concerned, rereleasing a game on a new console is basically just a way of giving an new audience a chance to play it (and profiting from the expanded market).
Every time a Beatles album gets rereleased/remastered in a new format — be that vinyl, CD, cassette, whatever — it typically is priced similarly to new recordings. It’s not ‘budget music’ simply because it’s old, it’s just… music. Music that you can buy again if you want, or alternatively… not, because like, you’ve already bought it.
If you feel like paying $60 for 20 year old game you already own is a slap in the face, then the good news is… you don’t have to buy it to own it because you already own it because you already bought it. You’ve had 20 years to play the copy you own, and you can keep playing it for another 20 years or more.
This should not come as a surprise, but the primary market for like… stuff is people who don’t own said stuff.
I don’t expect the shiny new Toyota Prius to be cheaper for me simply because I own the old Toyota Prius*, and I don’t resent Toyota every time a new Prius is released. The new Toyota Prius is primarily aimed at people who don’t own a Toyota Prius and want a Toyota Prius. Maybe some people will upgrade from the previous model, but they’ll be in the minority.
TL;DR: If you’re offered the option to buy something you already own, the cheapest option is to… not buy it. You’re probably not the target audience and that’s fine.
Here you are! Perhaps my description was a little uncharitable, but I do prefer Collins’ design on account of its aesthetics and relative ease of folding.
Gamers for like over a decade Bring back our beloved Thousand Year Door, pinnacle of the franchise, Mona Lisa of Mario RPGs, jewel of jewels, cruelly locked away on consoles past! Let a new generation experience its glory, its enthralling story, its wild and daring wit! By all that it good and holy Nintendo, resuscitate this gem and restore the franchise to its former splendour!
Gamers now SQUEAKY BUBBLES!!! 30FPS!!!! AAAHHH!!!
💢 ( ˃̶͈̀ロ˂̶͈́)੭ꠥ⁾⁾ 💢
Yes they’re different gamers and yes I’m being facetious, but by God, we do like to get vocally, self-righteously aggrieved over utter trivialities don’t we?
It lost out a couple of years ago* to a carefully engineered radical new design that looks like… a scrunched up receipt that’s spent too long at the bottom of someone’s pocket.
It’s a shame from an aesthetics point of view, but you can’t argue with physics. Anyway, glad to see this design still given some love.
*CORRECTION: It seems there was another design by a Korean team that came between Collins’ plane and the current record-holder which has a similar profile to the Suzanne but is quite a bit trickier to fold.
An orange is orange and a banana is like a sort of HD orange but completely remade from the ground up with new textures and lighting and an enhanced user interface and also it’s yellow and/or green and/or black and like a plantain but typically sweeter and lacking in genetic diversity due to over-propagation of a single strain putting the entire global supply chain at risk.
Those tiny differences can arguably make all the difference at the pointy end of things, but for most of us they don’t really matter.
Given the sheer scope of the game and diversity of characters/play styles/etc, I think Cap’n Sak ’n’ Co. have done a remarkably good job of balancing the whole wibbly-wobbly jelly.
@LastFootnote Completely agree. The archetypal ’Metroidvania’ (naturally including both constituent series) primarily creates intrigue through a mix of platforming and combat, with maybe some light puzzle elements sprinkled in for interest. I’d argue most games in the genre stick closely enough to this formula to not risk flooding this list and diluting it of meaning.
If the meat and potatoes of the game are essentially ‘puzzling’ and ‘platforming’ then does it really matter whether the game’s areas are selected from a level menu (as in a traditional platformer) or connected as a sprawling network (à la Metroidvania)? As entertainment experiences, ‘what you spend most of your time doing’ seems more important than the layout of the map.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Animal Well to someone who likes puzzle platformers. The fact that its puzzle/platform chambers are all connected seems largely irrelevant.
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Re: Hands On: 'Ace Attorney Investigations Collection' Devs Discuss California Rolls, Chibi Sprites & Puns
@Samalik I sympathise with your living situation and appreciate that learning a language is not something that happens overnight. It would be disingenuous to say ‘just go learn the language’ and leave it at that.
It is, however, a necessity if one demands a translation that is 100% faithful to the original text. For the only possible translation that meets this criterium is in fact not a translation at all: it is the original text. Translation is by definition an act of change.
Yakuza/Like a Dragon is an interesting example because of the sub/dub options. This brings it closer to media like TV shows/films than largely text-based media like novels.
Subbing and dubbing are notably different forms of translation with different goals and demands:
Subbing requires that the text be clear, easy to understand, and unobtrusive. It doesn’t matter how detailed and accurate the translation is if the viewer can’t read and digest it before the next line comes in. It should distract from the video as little as possible, which is why translated subs are generally more concise than the original spoken line. They’re aiming to be comprehensible, not comprehensive.
In contrast, the main demand on dubs is that they sounds natural when spoken by a human being in the context of the video. Timing is vital when conveying comedy, suspense, or even just the flow of basic conversation. Mess it up and everything sounds stilted and weird.
I’m sure you don’t need another essay — especially not on the minutiae of different translation styles — but the point is this: LaD has two translations because it’s closer to an interactive movie than a visual novel. This allows for separate dubbed and subbed versions, each with different characteristics. I don’t think the point was just to provide ‘strict’ and ‘free’ localisations for different audiences.
It’s not impossible that Ace Attorney could turn into something similarly cinematic — necessitating a sub/dub split — but… it does seem like a lot to ask.
Anyway, sorry for another essay. I just find this stuff really interesting and happen to have time on my hands for the first time in a while… which I’ve clearly decided to spend arguing with strangers on the internet.
I hope your living situation gets a little less messy and frustrating! Huge walls of text probably won’t help, but… well, yeah, sorry!
Re: Hands On: 'Ace Attorney Investigations Collection' Devs Discuss California Rolls, Chibi Sprites & Puns
@boxyguy This seems a very balanced take. I’m certainly not arguing that the official localisation is the one, ‘true’ way of representing these games in English — and it’s clear that Capcom have shot themselves in the foot with a few of their earlier decisions. But they’ve regained composure and the series’ inherent silliness helps smooth out most of the bumps.
Ultimately Capcom wants to sell its games beyond the domestic market, and wants the games to sell well. The characters ‘Phoenix Wright’ and ‘Miles Edgeworth’ have worked their way into the hearts of millions of fans worldwide. Perhaps NARUHODŌ Ryūichi and MITSURUGI Reiji (names not written in western order to minimise risk of ~localisation~) could have done the same. We’ll never know. But the Anglicised names don’t seem to have hurt their success.
Re: Hands On: 'Ace Attorney Investigations Collection' Devs Discuss California Rolls, Chibi Sprites & Puns
@Samalik
I’m afraid I took the words ‘original text’ to mean ‘original text’. If you’re implying that I should have interpreted your statement more loosely so as to infer what you ‘meant’ rather than what you ‘said’, then you’re essentially making an argument for a freer, less literal translation — which is exactly the sort of the thing you’re purporting to be against.
Perhaps Capcom should be exclusively pandering to the Venn-diagram intersection of ’weebs who are very passionate about Japanese culture’ and ’weebs who are not sufficiently passionate about Japanese culture to bother learning the language’. Instead, they seem more interested in writing silly puns and likeable characters that actually make sense in the target language.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t being entirely facetious when I pointed out that this game does contain the original Japanese text. I genuinely thought it might be useful. (For one thing, this is not consistent across AA games: the 123 Collection is fully multilingual, whereas the language options for Great Ace Attorney Collection vary by region.)
You could feasibly play this game with Japanese text and read it through Google Lens. It would be slightly cumbersome, but would get you a more literal (if at times nonsensical) translation.
Or you could harness your apparent ‘keenness’ for all things Japanese and take up learning the language. This game would be a good study aid and you’d finally be able to enjoy the ‘original text’ in its unadulterated glory.
Re: Hands On: 'Ace Attorney Investigations Collection' Devs Discuss California Rolls, Chibi Sprites & Puns
@Samalik I believe the game does contain the original text. The official website lists the supported languages as ‘Japanese, English, French, German, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese’ so you should be able to switch your system settings and play it with in the original Japanese text!
If by ‘original text’ you mean ‘a completely different text’ (i.e. English or another language written in Latin script) but want some form of ‘pure’ or ‘unadulterated’ translation, then I would recommend reading David Bellos’ book, Is That a Fish in Your Ear.
Translation is in itself an act of radical change. It involves uprooting something and attempting to graft it onto a completely different object. It’s a fascinating, frustrating, meaningful, and above all, messy endeavour.
Sometimes that messiness can cause issues. There are many examples of ‘heavy handed’ localisations which can end up backfiring as a series develops. You could fairly argue that recasting the original AA games in a western setting was a bridge too far, leading to continuity issues down the line. I feel there’s room for legitimate debate on that.
What doesn’t leave much room for debate is that idea that there can be such thing as a 100% pure, unadulterated, genuinely meaningful translation of a game of this scale. You’re basically asking someone to translate it for you without translating it, so you can understand the ‘original text’ without having to learn the meaning of the original text.
Re: Review: Thank Goodness You're Here! (Switch) - A Face-Achingly Funny British Romp
@CartoonDan Depends on your feelings towards soggy bottoms.
Re: Review: The New Denpa Men (Switch) - A Simple, Goofy RPG With The Usual F2P Irritations
An underwhelming (if broadly inoffensive) game, but a really nice (and entirely inoffensive) review.
Probably won’t play the game, but I’m glad I got to enjoy the read!
Re: Soapbox: 20 Years After His Last Mainline Appearance, Tingle Deserves A Comeback
tingle is
#YearOfTingle #2025 #GoGoGreenFairyMan
Re: Random: Zelda: TOTK Meets Super Mario 64 In Latest Ridiculous Ultrahand Creation
@Ralizah Exceptionally well put.
Games, err… ’exist in the context of all in which they live (?) and what came before them’. They are ultimately remembered for their impact — both on individuals and the industry as a whole.
The superlatives surrounding BotW basically wrote themselves (’legendary’, ‘a breath of fresh air’, etc.). Not everyone loved it, but it left an undeniable mark on the gaming landscape.
Tears was never going to match that, no matter how neat the crafting mechanics. It also happened to launch in the same year as a game that, much like Breath, shifted expectations for what was possible in its genre.
TotK was clearly a labour of love and has a lot of fine features. But it doesn’t surprise me that it didn’t top nearly as ‘Game of the Year’ lists as its predecessor.
Re: Dragon Quest Creator On The Challenge Of Silent Protagonists In Modern Gaming
I think a character can still be ‘expressive’ while still leaving room for the player’s own personality.
Wind Waker Link with his big googly cat eyes is one of the most expressive protagonists out there, despite not having a single line of spoken dialogue.
Re: Nintendo Strips Team Jackpot Of Splatoon 3 World Championship Win
@Hck I suppose the key difference is that Nintendo literally invented this sport and the players are playing at the World Championships on the company’s terms. They made the game; they make the rules. And if one of the rules is, ‘don’t be racist’ then the competitors just have to suck it up.
The entire competition is a PR exercise for the sport and the company, and anyone who wins the tournament is automatically a ‘brand ambassador’ — whether that was their initial intention or not. If they can’t represent the brand by… say, not being openly racist, then the brand is at liberty to cut ties and do what it can to erase them from its records.
One can try to argue against this decision on ethical grounds (though it’s difficult to find solid ethical footing for blatant racism), but ultimately this is about business. And business rarely bends.
Nintendo, as a brand, seemingly doesn’t want to be associated with open racism. As a brand ambassador, it would be pertinent to keep that in mind.
Re: Random: The New Denpa Men Is Getting Roasted For Its Translation Issues
If it were 100% machine translated there shouldn’t be any spelling errors like ‘wituout’. I imagine there’s a degree of human input, but I also imagine the human in question isn’t fully at home in the English language.
Re: Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Hololive VTuber Tournament Announced
@Liam_Doolan
Minor spelling error in one of the tube… people’s names, I believe: Shirakami Fubki → Shirakami Fubuki
Re: Nintendo Announces Official Switch Joy-Con Charging Stand
https://store.nintendo.co.uk/en/nintendo-switch-joy-con-charging-grip-000000000002510566
We’ve already had this for years, but with the added functionality of grips.
If this new device charged multiple sets of Joy-Cons then I might be tempted, but I can’t see what this does that a charging grip doesn’t!
EDIT: @Not_Soos Yes!
ANOTHER EDIT: Oooooh! You can’t stick the Famicon controllers in the charging grips! I imagine that’s why this is being released now, and currently only in Japan*.
The Japanese physical edition of the Famicon World Championships comes bundled with controllers that won’t fit the standard grips. This provides a charging option other than directly connecting them to the device itself. Standard Joy-Cons have had better charging alternatives for ages (which is why I don’t think this comes ‘late’) so it must be the expected uptick in Famicontrollers that has caused this rather niche product to be released.
YET ANOTHER EDIT: *This is now also shown to be false.
Re: 'Emio' Includes A Lot Of Horrific Mature Themes, According To Its Rating
@Liam_Doolan I think it’s worth mentioning that the Japanese text 笑み男 reads ‘Emio’ and that ‘Emio’ means ‘smiling man’.
…More or less. I mean, if you asked someone to backtranslate ‘smiling man’ into Japanese you’d probably get ‘笑っている男’ (waratteiru otoko) which would be pronounced very differently, but you can see that the first and last characters are the same!
Anyway, the point is that the text at the end is just ‘Emio’ written in Japanese — not really new information.
Re: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Update Now Live (Version 1.0.1), Here Are The Full Patch Notes
@FarTulip Unfortunately the entire Star Fox budget was spent on correcting the song name "Searching Pedal Meadows" to "Searching Petal Meadows".
Re: According To Hideki Kamiya, Ōkami's Development Team Was 'Weak'
@ScalenePowers I wouldn’t be surprised if we both get dragged over hot coals eventually… but yeah, I’ve never really understood the Zelda comparisons.
I mean, there’s action… and adventure… and a vaguely fantastical setting, but the two series feel worlds apart. For some reason I’d assumed that Ōkami was released some time before Wind Waker and so could be forgiven for being a ‘product of its time’. I got a reality check when I looked it up and found that Ōkami was actually released in 2006 — as opposed to 2002 for Zelda.
It’s funny to think there was a time when Sony’s machine couldn’t graphically keep up with Nintendo’s. How things have changed.
Re: According To Hideki Kamiya, Ōkami's Development Team Was 'Weak'
@ScalenePowers I agree the art direction is excellent, but even then I find it can look a bit iffy in motion. I was thrown off by the cardboard cutout trees that rotated with the camera, and while some animations are beautifully fluid, many look stiff and artificial.
The pulsating head animations when characters talk make it look like their brains are about to explode, and the lack of facial animations in general robs the characters of nuance… I didn’t find the dialogue particularly endearing either.
I know it’s supposed to be the ‘Zelda for the sophisticated, aesthetically-minded gentleman/lady of culture’, but… I think the original Wind Waker holds up far better in terms of aesthetics, gameplay, world-building, character-building, general expressiveness, and… well, just pure fun!
Re: Nintendo Live Suspect Admits To Threats, Blames Being A Sore Loser
@Olliemar28 No worries! Made the same mistake multiple times myself. The fact that Japanese sums of money so often resemble pinball scores makes it all too easy!
Re: Random: Nintendo Considered Some Bananas Names For DK, Including "Kong Dong"
We laugh at Kong the Kong, but Nintendo’s main mascot is canonically called ‘Mario Mario’.
Re: Nintendo Live Suspect Admits To Threats, Blames Being A Sore Loser
@KidSparta @Olliemar28 700 million yen is roughly equal to 4.4 million USD, not 44 million!
(Still a large amount, but also 10 times less than stated!)
Re: Game Freak Launches A New Mobile Title, But It's Not Pokémon
Game Freak: I see your Palworld and raise you a Pand Land.
Re: 'The Zelda Effect' Causes Game Sales To Drop This May (Europe)
@speedracer216 Yeah… I still can’t quite get it to feel natural. Rephrasing ‘Zelda caused a spike in sales last year’ as ‘Zelda caused a drop in sales this year’ just seems a weird way of grasping causality. Not necessarily wrong, but… like, odd.
We normally treat past events as constants (to be measured against) and current/recent events as variables.
If an athlete underperforms in an event one year due to poor health, poor form, injury, or just increasing age, then we normally attribute that to… poor health, poor form, injury, or just increasing age. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this phrased as “the athlete’s descent down the leaderboard this year is being blamed on them winning the competition last year”.
Re: 'The Zelda Effect' Causes Game Sales To Drop This May (Europe)
@Synecdoche I’m definitely overthinking things, but I’m also genuinely confused by the use of the word ‘effect’ to describe two things that seem completely unrelated. For something to have an ‘effect’ on something else, there must be a direct relation between the two.
I don’t dispute that game sales were low this year (when TotK wasn’t released) and were high last year (when TotK was released) but saying that Zelda is the reason they are low this year implies some sort of relationship that… I simply can’t see.
It’s not difficult to imagine sales being low last year and… sales also being low this year — or being high both years.
Stating that sales are lower than the previous year is fine. Stating that sales are lower because they were high last year is quite a different statement. And if the latter isn’t true, it really doesn’t make sense to use the word ‘effect’.
TL;DR: I genuinely don’t know what effect Zelda is having on current game sales.
EDIT: To be fair, the article doesn’t really argue that game sales are ‘low’ this year because of Zelda, just ‘lower’. It mostly uses the word ‘drop’, which is comparative rather than absolute. So I have to eat a little humble pie and work on my reading comprehension.
…I still find ‘Zelda Effect’ a slightly convoluted way of describing lower sales this year though. The presence of Zelda last year seems less notable than the absence of comparatively big hitters this year, though they’re both equally responsible for the ‘drop’ in sales. The fact that sales for a given month can be so heavily skewed by a single game makes a good argument for comparing sales against wider data sets than just ‘the year before’.
Re: 'The Zelda Effect' Causes Game Sales To Drop This May (Europe)
@BTB20 But why would the fact it was released in May last year have a significant ‘effect’ on the sales of May this year? If Zelda where released in April or June last year would that mean that May sales would be higher this year but April/June sales would be suppressed?
When I financially justify game purchases to myself, I primarily consider how many games I’ve bought over the last few weeks/months (as well as more general financial restraints). I don’t think I’ve ever based the decision on how many games I purchased precisely 12 months ago. Certainly no more than 11 or 13 months ago. I can’t even remember what games I purchased 12 months ago.
Perhaps for consoles it might make some difference. If I bought a shiny new console over the Christmas period last year, I might feel less in need of another shiny new console this year. But for games? The thought has never crossed my mind.
If ‘sales being cannibalised by a game released 12 months prior’ is a well documented phenomenon then I’m happy to be convinced, but applying this idea in this case to this specific game and calling it the ‘Zelda Effect’ seems somewhat… arbitrary.
Re: 'The Zelda Effect' Causes Game Sales To Drop This May (Europe)
I still don’t understand what the ‘Zelda Effect’ is…
Is the idea that TotK’s success was so great it created some sort of temporal gravity bomb that has absorbed the sales of every game precisely a year later?
Or is there something else? As a hypothesis, ‘games aren’t selling well now because one game sold well 12 months ago’ seems to need some rigorous testing before being branded an ‘effect’.
Re: Retailer GAME Reportedly Ending In-Store Sales Of Physical Games And Hardware
It’s over.
GAME, set and match.
[Update]
It’s apparently… err, not over. Not yet, anyway.
…GAME on… I guess?
Re: Splatoon 3 Reveals 'Summer Nights' Splatfest Theme & Dates
I can go to the beach whenever, reservation or not.
Not having to queue at the theme park would be novel, but having the entire place deserted because you’d booked it out would make it feel like the set of a horror movie.
Having free reign over an entire palace on the other hand sounds awesome! To be king for a day!
Re: Hands On: Can Lord Of The Rings Spice Up A Stale Genre With 'Tales Of The Shire'?
Amazing how many shades of ’dull’ can be squeezed out of a single series.
Gollum gave us a distinctly dark, dreary and deliberately depressing kind of dull.
This game appears to focus on the more insipid, sedative kind of dull that aims for cosy and lands on banal.
Any potential vibrancy has wilted, making for the gaming equivalent of a microwaved salad.
I should really hold judgement until the game is released, but in it’s current form, this looks less Middle Earth and more just… mid.
Re: No, The Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Trailer Was Not Running On 'Switch 2'
@DripDropCop146 I think the Switch is running on the Switch 4.
Re: New 2D Adventure 'The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom' Announced For This September
I can’t believe it. After all these years, we finally get to play as Metroid!
Re: Metroid Dread Director On Samus Losing Her Abilities: "Yes, It Has To Be Like That"
They should make a Metroidvania where you start with everything unlocked at the beginning and the big boss has already been defeated and the galaxy has already been saved and you just sit around at home drinking tea because there’s nothing else to do.
…Sounds quite nice actually.
Re: Nintendo Is Seeking More Talent To Help Run Its Switch Online Service
I really hope we don’t get a ‘great reset’ in terms of the library. It would leave a very bad taste in people’s mouths and undermine the continuity of the NSO ecosystem that Nintendo have stated they want to develop, so it seems unlikely… but you never know.
I know NSO gets a bad rap, but as someone on a family plan I don’t feel too hard changed paying the price of a posh sandwich for access to a bunch of games I probably wouldn’t bother actually buying. It’s quite fun dipping in and out of retro releases that would have otherwise passed me by.
Re: Feature: 20 Great Gaming Accounts You Should Follow On Bluesky
@RetroGames
https://bsky.app/profile/nintendousa.bsky.social
https://bsky.app/profile/nintendoeurope.bsky.social
There are unofficial fan-operated automated repost accounts, but no official presence from what I can see. The repost accounts might give much the same info, but it’s still a stretch to say ‘Nintendo are on Bluesky’.
Re: Talking Point: amiibo Were First Revealed 10 Years Ago Today, And We Still Want More
@westman98 I don’t disagree, and I imagine that there are still enough collectors left for it to be profitable, but at this point I think the profits brought in by the amiibo line are a fraction of what they were.
Like I say, I don’t think amiibo are dead — Nintendo can keep releasing them alongside each new major release and make a few extra yen from the hardcore collectors who need a piece of official plastic to go with their video games. But whatever their future, I think it’s fair to say that their ‘peak’ has passed.
Re: Talking Point: amiibo Were First Revealed 10 Years Ago Today, And We Still Want More
Having covered the entire Smash Bros. roster — which itself covers most major Nintendo characters — it seems that the only path left for amiibo is to get progressively more obscure.
Outside of releasing yet another Mario or Link figurine, it’s hard to imagine them being able to milk more out of the flagship franchises.
I can’t help but feel that at this point, the hardcore audience is largely sated (having already spent a good chunk of cash amassing their favourite characters) and the casual audience simply isn’t obsessive enough to pick up characters like Tingle’s pet dog Barkle from Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland and Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love.
I don’t think the entire concept of amiibo is ‘dead’ per se, but the wind has certainly gone out of its sails (sales?) and it’s difficult to imagine what would restore it.
Perhaps a big, AAAAA amiibo-focused ‘supergame’ for the Switch 2 might revive its fortunes — like Amiibo Festival but also absolutely nothing like Amiibo Festival because that was awful.
…Basically the complete opposite of Amiibo Festival.
I’m not counting on it though.
Re: Sonic Team On Remasters: "If There's A Title People Like, We'll Think About It"
The list of ‘Sonic games that people generally like’ is not as long as it could be… but it’s not zero either.
I wonder if the Adventure games will get a reboot… There are a lot of rough edges that would need sanding, but I’m sure there’s an audience that would lap it up.
The GBA and DS games often get forgotten, but there were some decent games there, too! Getting a ‘GBA collection’ or ‘DS collection’ with some bells and whistles might feasible, though… the fact they’ve been all but forgotten doesn’t exactly fill me with hope.
Re: Nintendo's 'Mega Extreme Fun Sale' Brings Tasty Discounts To Select eShop Titles (North America)
A princely sum indeed.
Re: Nintendo Expands Switch Online's Game Boy Library With Five More Classics
Many many Mega Men.
Re: PSA: Splatoon 3 News Channel Giving Out Free In-Game Banner
@YunoboCo It’s an online multiplayer shooter based around a ‘season’ structure which keeps players engaged with frequent events and updates. It generates news by design.
Unless you want Nintendo’s single player offerings to switch to a similar season-driven online model, then you can expect updates on these games to dry up after a month or so, because the games themselves are… done. Outside of bug-fixes, they don’t need updates. It’s like updating War and Peace. They don’t get in the news because they’re no longer ‘new’ — unlike Splatoon which keeps being given fresh licks of paint.
Thankfully for you Splatoon 3’s updates will probably cease sooner or later; we were promised two years of content which we’re fast approaching the end of. There will probably be a lot of fanfare around the ‘Final Splatfest ’ (or similar finale-style event) but after that you’ll have the sweet relief of not having to read about updates for a game you don’t play.
…Until Splatoon 4 is inevitably announced for Switch’s successor, at least.
Re: Talking Point: How Do You Define 'Retro'?
I feel retro is essentially just an ‘aesthetic’. One based less on the objective metric, ‘how old is this?’ and more on the subjective one, ‘how old does it feel?’
The Mario Galaxy 2 vs. Wii Sports example was quite thought-provoking. Wii Sports very much feels like a product of its time — poster-child of a bygone age — whereas Galaxy 2 feels somehow timeless (at least in my head, and surely in the heads of many others, too).
I’m sure you can find similar examples in every field of technology. I would not consider the Fender Stratocaster (first released in the mid-50s) to be ‘retro’, whereas it’s hard to think of anything more decidedly retro than the CASIO DG-20, released over 30 years later.
A Fender Stratocaster from 1961: Not retro
A CASIO DG-20 from 1987: Retro AF
The passage of time carries some things with it and leaves others behind. Those we look back on fondly are called ‘retro’. Those we look back on with contempt are called old-fashioned/obsolete/anachronistic/one of any number of synonyms (seriously, there are so many words for ‘antiquated’). And those things we’re still using, we call ‘timeless’. Or more often than not, don’t call anything at all as they’ve become such a part of our daily lives that it’s difficult to even imagine a time without them.
Anyway, Galaxy 2 is good, isn’t it? Regardless of whether you you consider it ‘retro’, it’s undoubtedly a stone cold classic.
Re: Poll: Is $60 Too Much For Nintendo's Switch Re-Releases?
If I’d never played PM:tTYD I’d absolutely happily pay full whack for it because it’s a brilliant game and worth every penny.
But I have played it before (still got it somewhere) so I paid $0.00 for it because I didn’t buy it as I didn’t feel I needed it.
As far as I’m concerned, rereleasing a game on a new console is basically just a way of giving an new audience a chance to play it (and profiting from the expanded market).
Every time a Beatles album gets rereleased/remastered in a new format — be that vinyl, CD, cassette, whatever — it typically is priced similarly to new recordings. It’s not ‘budget music’ simply because it’s old, it’s just… music. Music that you can buy again if you want, or alternatively… not, because like, you’ve already bought it.
If you feel like paying $60 for 20 year old game you already own is a slap in the face, then the good news is… you don’t have to buy it to own it because you already own it because you already bought it. You’ve had 20 years to play the copy you own, and you can keep playing it for another 20 years or more.
This should not come as a surprise, but the primary market for like… stuff is people who don’t own said stuff.
I don’t expect the shiny new Toyota Prius to be cheaper for me simply because I own the old Toyota Prius*, and I don’t resent Toyota every time a new Prius is released. The new Toyota Prius is primarily aimed at people who don’t own a Toyota Prius and want a Toyota Prius. Maybe some people will upgrade from the previous model, but they’ll be in the minority.
TL;DR: If you’re offered the option to buy something you already own, the cheapest option is to… not buy it. You’re probably not the target audience and that’s fine.
*I don’t actually own a Toyota Prius.
Re: Nintendo Celebrates Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door With A Free Paper Airplane
@Otoemetry
Here you are! Perhaps my description was a little uncharitable, but I do prefer Collins’ design on account of its aesthetics and relative ease of folding.
Re: UK Charts: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Storms To The Top
Gamers for like over a decade Bring back our beloved Thousand Year Door, pinnacle of the franchise, Mona Lisa of Mario RPGs, jewel of jewels, cruelly locked away on consoles past! Let a new generation experience its glory, its enthralling story, its wild and daring wit! By all that it good and holy Nintendo, resuscitate this gem and restore the franchise to its former splendour!
Gamers now SQUEAKY BUBBLES!!! 30FPS!!!! AAAHHH!!!
💢 ( ˃̶͈̀ロ˂̶͈́)੭ꠥ⁾⁾ 💢
Yes they’re different gamers and yes I’m being facetious, but by God, we do like to get vocally, self-righteously aggrieved over utter trivialities don’t we?
Re: Nintendo Celebrates Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door With A Free Paper Airplane
I believe that’s the previous world record holding design - the Suzanne!
It lost out a couple of years ago* to a carefully engineered radical new design that looks like… a scrunched up receipt that’s spent too long at the bottom of someone’s pocket.
It’s a shame from an aesthetics point of view, but you can’t argue with physics. Anyway, glad to see this design still given some love.
*CORRECTION: It seems there was another design by a Korean team that came between Collins’ plane and the current record-holder which has a similar profile to the Suzanne but is quite a bit trickier to fold.
Re: Rumour: 2K Secures License To FIFA And Will Develop The Next Game
@Lofoten It’s Harvest Moon all over again (but the cows are even rounder).
↓
Re: Talking Point: 'Remake' Vs. 'Remaster' - What's Your Definition?
An orange is orange and a banana is like a sort of HD orange but completely remade from the ground up with new textures and lighting and an enhanced user interface and also it’s yellow and/or green and/or black and like a plantain but typically sweeter and lacking in genetic diversity due to over-propagation of a single strain putting the entire global supply chain at risk.
Re: Netflix Reveals The First Official Look At Liam Hemsworth In 'The Witcher'
Can we establish a rule that all content must be at least 70% Donkey Kong by volume if it is to be reported on by Nintendo Life?
Journalistic standards must be upheld.
Re: Sakurai On Smash Ultimate Win Rates: "Any Fighter Has A Shot At Winning"
Those tiny differences can arguably make all the difference at the pointy end of things, but for most of us they don’t really matter.
Given the sheer scope of the game and diversity of characters/play styles/etc, I think Cap’n Sak ’n’ Co. have done a remarkably good job of balancing the whole wibbly-wobbly jelly.
Re: Random: Could Mewtwo Take LeBron One-On-One? ESPN's Stephen A. Smith Weighs In
Hard to say until we know more about LeBron’s Mega Evolutions, Z Moves, Gigantamax Forms, Tera Type, etc.
He always kept such info under wraps. It’s a pity we never got to see him at full power.
Re: Best Nintendo Switch Puzzle Platformers
@LastFootnote Completely agree. The archetypal ’Metroidvania’ (naturally including both constituent series) primarily creates intrigue through a mix of platforming and combat, with maybe some light puzzle elements sprinkled in for interest. I’d argue most games in the genre stick closely enough to this formula to not risk flooding this list and diluting it of meaning.
If the meat and potatoes of the game are essentially ‘puzzling’ and ‘platforming’ then does it really matter whether the game’s areas are selected from a level menu (as in a traditional platformer) or connected as a sprawling network (à la Metroidvania)? As entertainment experiences, ‘what you spend most of your time doing’ seems more important than the layout of the map.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Animal Well to someone who likes puzzle platformers. The fact that its puzzle/platform chambers are all connected seems largely irrelevant.