Friday, May 23, 2014

Hacks / Wishful Translating / Capcom USA laughs

There's a fair share of hacks and patches on the internet for ROMs. Especially for the Original series of the franchise.

The EXE series gets some attention with particular fun hacks that are pretty customizable. But they tend to lead off the focus of the original game. Mainly with localized versions people use. One of them which I refuse to name because I think it should not exist right now. As a solution to restore features that were removed from a localized release. Takes the Japanese game, and puts all the dialogue text from the tampered released, and sticks them on to the original game. I've heard lots of reports of bugs and glitches. Not to mention that it tries to restore features that are there, but call upon other means of using them like Chip Gates or Card e-Reader+.
 


I just cannot believe that people would go such lengths to avoid playing the original game for it's gutted content. And using the localized script just makes things much worse with all the name changes and story dialogue that's made-up for the patch. Not to mention any typos and gimped graphics they'd want back in.

I've said this to people a couple of times within this past decade. Wishful thinking. In a perfect world. I would absolutely love to see these games, with true translations.

*True Translations of all dialogue (maybe a smaller and less uglier font would do nicely for this)
*No localized terminology
*No gutted / changed content throughout the 6 games


I've never liked how Capcom USA has handled games from 2001 and onward. Multiple delays for games, botch ups with naming, canned releases.
 


It seemed like they went downhill with the localized release of Rockman X5 from I had experienced. With an occurance of two delays, and the way Bosses were named were just laughable to me. With the Japanese Boss names being so easy to transliterate into English, there's really no excuse. I was so happy at that point when I had bought the original release prior. I had my localized copy on Preorder so that I could understand the Story better, which I ended up just letting a Friend have. Since I already had the game.

Megaman Battle Network 2 was like this. Many delays, and I had not know about Game Boy in general being Region Free. And in the end, it was perfect just trading with myself or letting another friend borrow or have to play with.

But I think the one that certainly takes the cake is none other than the Megaman Anniversary Collection for GBA. This really looked awesome, and it's too bad that it never saw a release. After the mess that was the Anniversary Collection for home consoles with butchered Complete Works stuff. This was a collection of the Original series Game Boy games, with complete recoloring of the graphics with the sprites, backgrounds, etc. Again. I suppose it's not a perfect when it comes to good things with the branch and this particular franchise.

I'm not sure if we can count all the digital stuff, since they are two different things and were probably treated better in the long run. Rockman 9 and 10 were amazing to see after long since Rockman & Forte. I think they were primarily developed USA based first and foremost (?), even with it's releases. Megaman Universe might've been something good to be canceled since it didn't seem to do anything for me. And finally Rockman Dash 3, I really thought that should have been on a home console and not on the 3DS to begin with.

I consider myself going fully Japanese based due to the X5 problems. I had collected all the Japanese RCW games before X5's original release. The CW games were what I enjoyed as a Child through localized NES releases.

I also don't mean to offend anyone that happens to like the USA games. Where it might a case where you don't prefer the Japanese region, or if it's all you have. I suggest to enjoy it by all means. This is just what I've went through with some of my experiences concerning this branch and the franchise. As well as giving a second choice to the user. I really just wish they treated some of the past titles better being a consumer.

2 comments:

  1. I mostly agree, and I'm aware of the hack you're talking of too.

    However, in cases like EXE/BN, I'd argue that in terms of localization, the actual story isn't butchered to a point where it's significantly different from the original japanese version, especially with EXE1/2/3. Chip names and terminology are a different thing entirely however. Honestly terms like 'Jack in' instead of 'Plug in' aren't that terrible but the way that chip names are handles due to space limitations and such are awful.

    I think if you consider the fact that the series is primarily aimed at children who aren't going to care about such details in the first place, it doesn't matter toooooooo much.

    (I do prefer the original japanese names for most things though)

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    Replies
    1. I also agree that the premise of story is probably accurate enough. But I feel as if there's kind of a made-up process along the way for localization and not real translations not 100% of the time with all that amount of dialogue in these games. I'm not sure what it is, something really felt off to me up to the second game I played in English when I finally stopped around there. With all those dumb typos around these games that you see, it really makes me really wonder. Especially with the later installments for these games.

      I really think they could have used a better font style if they were smarter for the chip names. The fact that they could screw up things like the Z Saber with condensed chip names is really no excuse, especially with what that chip was.

      I just feel like there could be more effort put into a good and decent translation / patch in the end.

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