A large majority of video games are localized from Japan. In the process, a lot of blatant and frustrating mistakes can cause the end product to be well… incomplete. These changes are usually based on the localization team’s opinions on what is acceptable to Western audiences.

These changes can range from story and character overhauls, to the deletion of unique cultural aspects.  In the latter case the reasoning is slightly understandable since an explanation of such aspects may require further programming which can become costly.

One aspect of games that almost always undergoes a dramatic change is the cover art of video games.  This topic was first brought to my attention while wasting some time on 4chan’s /v/ message board.  At first I didn’t think much of it, but then it really began to bug me.

Why do video game companies fear that which is Eastern in origin?  Do they really think that we as consumers are incapable of accepting a foreign culture?

Here are 3 covers that were brought to my attention by 4channers and by my own digging:

Suikoden
Publisher: Konami
US release date: 1996

The left cover is the original Japanese cover, and the right is the North American cover.  The 90’s are marked by a high level of xenophobia when it comes to localizing games.  You can plainly see that the anime style art has been replaced by hideous art western in nature.  The localizers may have been trying to pass the game off as a WRPG rather than a JRPG.

Ico
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
US release date: September 24, 2001

It is important to note here that everywhere but North America received the left cover art.  Everywhere.  The left cover art puts the emphasis on the castle, the game’s setting, and arguably the most important element of Ico’s story.

Making people the focus of art has long been a western tradition, whereas making people’s surroundings the focus (with little to no emphasis on people) is a common element in Eastern art–especially brush painting and sumie.

The Japanese cover was painted by Fumito Ueda, the creator of both Ico and Shadows of the Colossus.  His inspiration for the piece was the surrealist works of Giorgio de Chirico.  As for the other piece, I can only think that SCEA wanted to show off the graphics of the game, so they decided to go with CG.

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wnderer
Publisher: Chunsoft, localized by Sega
US release date: March 4, 2008

Here is a game near and dear to my heart.  It is the most recent of the 3, possibly making it the most relevant.  The Japanese cover art features smooth anime style art complete with tranquil looking characters.

The North American cover art is quite different.  All three featured characters (I am including Koppa the weasel) look angry.  Even the reddish background suggests rage.  Also, the art looks much more western.  Even Shiren’s sword doesn’t look like a katana–it appears straight.

The only reasoning I can conclude for these covers to differ so dramatically from their originals is that the localizers fear the game will not be received well, and they won’t make money.

Such a fear today seems ludicrous.  Gamers do not purchase a game based on the box art.  Speaking for myself, purchasing a game is based on brand loyalty, research, and genre.

Many Western gamers seem to appreciate the influx of Japanese or Eastern culture in their games.  Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 for example brings the player into the shoes of an (almost) average Japanese  school student.  All cultural references to Japanese food, religion, etc. were retained, and yet the game was immensely popular.

So c’mon, America!  Give gamers some credit.  We can’t stand anymore garish cover art!

Related Entries:
Final Fantasy VII as a Reflection of Modern Japanese Society
Know Your Video Game History: Persona: Revelations

Roy artwork, history 4 comments

As many die-hard Atlus fans know all to well, Persona 2: Innocent Sin will most likely never be making its way to the West. In Japan Persona 2: Innocent Sin was released prior to Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, and while the stories were different, they still had many cohesive elements which created one great gaming experience.

Only the later chapter; Eternal Punishment, was localized in America. The former; Innocent Sin, is considered by most fans of the series to be the better of the two, but still Atlus has refused to bring it over. There is hope on the horizon for us poor English speakers, however.

A fan of the series going by the psuedonym Gemini has begun the incredulous task of creating a translation patch of the entire game. All menus, all characters and spells, all story and dialogue… Did I mention incredulous?

Currently his translation is at 68%, and Gemini believes it is possible to have it completed around Christmas. The patch will allow fans to create burned versions of the game entirely in English as well as run the game on PSX emulators.

If you are as excited as I am (but not nearly as poor) you should check out his site and show your support!

*NOTE* Be weary of a flood of overpriced burned copies of the game appearing on e-Bay–it may be cheaper to make your own.

Related Entries:
Know Your Video Game History: Persona
All Kotowari entries on Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 can be found here.

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So Crisis Core comes out for the PSP today in the states. I gotta say, I have mixed feelings about it. I keep hearing that is has an outstanding story, which accents Final Fantasy VII. For this reason I am very excited. However, I don’t know how I feel about the addition of some new bad guys who are supposedly as bad-ass as Sephiroth… I guess I will wait and see what everyone thinks.

To celebrate I want to explain the underlying elements of Japanese thought which are persistent throughout the game. Before getting into it, this post assumes the reader has played Final Fantasy VII and is familiar with its themes and major events which occur in its world. If you have NOT played the game, reading on may spoil parts of the game and be a tad confusing.

Let us start with Makou, or Mako energy, a substance which is contained in all life on the face of the planet (including the planet itself). Bugenhagen, Red XIII’s “father” explains that when a creature dies, its mako returns to the earth, and is transferred into a new living being. Unlike most energies, it is extinguishable when consumed by Shin-ra’s reactors AND there is a limited amount of it.

The cyclical aspect of mako “life”, is very similar to life as seen in eastern religions such as Buddhism’s idea of samsara or reincarnation. Life does not have a clear beginning and end like it does in the west. There is no heaven and no hell,–just transition. In addition to Buddhism, mako also has characteristics of nature seen through Shinto, Japan’s native folk religion. According to Shinto all elements of nature have a kind of energy and purity to them. Therefore tampering with nature, effectively destroys this purity or energy.

The fact that mako is consumable by Shin-ra’s reactors is where things get a bit more complex. Japan began modernizing rapidly during the Meiji restoration, and going on until the Taisho era. This time period marked an increasing dependence on industrialization. The earth was scoured for resources, forests were cleared, and enormous factories were constructed. The Japanese government was the main force pushing these advances, and part of the force behind the government were Zaibatsu, or mega-corporations, which existed since the early Meiji period.

Shin-ra can be seen as one of these Zaibatsu or mega-corporations, advancing the world of the game with their industrial technology, the mako reactors, by consuming mako, or the planets life-fource. While these parallel events were taking place in Japan, there was a sense that this advancement came at a cost. A character in the village of Kalm explains her feelings to Cloud:

“Mako energy’s made things a lot more convenient…..”
“But it seems like a lot of plants and animals have been
disappearing at a rapid pace.”
“I think the old life was better.”
“Don’t you think so?”

_{credits to Little Chiba}

The world of Final Fantasy VII was once home to the ancients, a race of nomadic people who could speak with the earth and understand its deeper workings. As time went on, some members of the ancients stopped wandering and began settling down, losing the ability to communicate with the earth. These individuals are who became the populace of the earth, and eventually the ancients all but died off. As the situation on earth becomes more dire, the characters in Final Fantasy VII turn to their ally Aerith, the last remaining ancient for guidance.

In modern Japan the ancients would be those who mastered a craft hundreds of years ago and whose teachings have been passed down for generations. These crafts can be anything from gardening to knowing how to put on a kimono properly. The more people keep up their busy lifestyles, the more these trades are forgotten, thus the ancients are still dying in Japan today.

Modern Japan regrets what it lost during the process of modernization. For this reason many forms of Japanese pop-media portray this struggle between convenience and losing touch with nature as well as a longing for simpler times. To those who get their hands on Crisis Core: do you notice any of these themes?

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Maken Shao is an action RPG developed by Atlus with character designs by Kazuma Kaneko. A bad action RPG suffers from a few main faults: unimaginative storyline, monotonous battle system, and awkward controls. Any one of these three is enough to ruin an otherwise good title. Well luckily Maken Shao suffers from none of these setbacks. If anything, its only problem is that its localization was not taken very seriously. It was released in very small numbers in the West, and the voice acting and translations are considered by many to be atrocious.

The world of the game is a bleak one. China and the US battle each other for superiority via means of terrorism. In Japan, a team of scientists attempt to awaken an ancient entity known as Maken, or demon sword. Just as the team succeeds in awakening the sword, an unknown creature breaks into the research lab and kidnaps the head scientist. The iconic girl in red on the cover, Kei Sagami, is the daughter of that scientist. She decides she will take up the Maken to rescue her father by traveling the world, hunting down whatever forces set these events into place.

While you may think that Kei is the main character, Atlus would surely correct you. The game is actually the story of the Maken, traveling from body to body ultimately unraveling the mysteries of the evil powers of the world. That’s right; you can transfer bodies. The Maken gives the player the “Brain Jack” ability which lets you drop whichever sack of skin and bones it’s currently attached to, and upgrade to a new one. There are around 20 playable characters, each with their own weapon (the Maken changes shape when held by different people) and skills.

So what is the combat like? Well perhaps it’s best to just show you.

As you can see there are quite a few familiar elements to most action titles. Attack, block, lock-on, dodge-roll, and you can even deflect enemy attacks.

If you are interested in snagging a copy, you are in luck, it shouldn’t cost you a whole lot. It pops up every once and while on eBay for around $10.00, but usually its location is the UK. Be sure to check that the seller ships to America before bidding. If you are one of the lucky few who still has a Sega Dreamcast floating around you can instead purchase Maken X, which is basically the same game, but with a first person viewpoint. It should only run you around $5.00 on eBay. If possible though, I would recommend the PS2 version, since there are some issues with the first person mode.

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Since man first realized that swinging a stick or throwing a rock could inflict bodily harm, there has been fighting. As these fights became more and more important, so too did the sticks and rocks. I have decided to start a several part post on the history and myth behind legendary weapons in some of our favorite video games to get a better appreciation for the thought that goes into weapon design.

Part III - Ninja Gear

I am afraid I may make some enemies with this post, as I may be dissolving much of the mysticism surrounding Ninja-lore that the Ninja themselves worked hard to establish. The role of the Ninja was generally to infiltrate an enemy castle/fife and then gather information, i.e. espionage. In feudal Japan, espionage meant blending in with the faceless masses, therefore running around in a black outfit with a sword hurling shuriken would not have been the best idea. True Ninja tactics were much more subtle.

Shuriken

Yuffie from Final Fantasy VII wielding a giant shaken

In the Final Fantasy series, as well as many video games, characters portraying Ninja generally throw shuriken. These shuriken are flat, sharp, star-shaped discs thrown with a quick flick of the wrist. This style of shuriken is actually called a shaken, and historically were rarely used in combat by actual Ninja. Such a weapon, if captured, would immediately give away one’s intentions of causing harm.

It is possible that Ninja may have used some type of throwing weapon, but most likely, it would have been bo-shuriken. The definition of a bo-shuriken is anything metal, sharp and around 6-10 inches long. They could have been nails, or other objects one could find in a hurry. They would not be thrown unless absolutely necessary, since, as we will learn, the Ninja’s primary skill was hand to hand combat. A bo-shuriken had the versatility of being thrown or being used as a dagger, but they were also subtle. If captured, a Ninja could quickly come up with a story about being a wandering carpenter for hire or etc. This subtlety and versatility would make a bo-shuriken a much more ideal weapon to a Ninja than a shaken.

Sword

Hotsuma wielding the legendary Akujiki on the cover of Shinobi for PS2

The game Shinobi features a Ninja with a cursed blade that drains his life. A sword to a Ninja would probably be the dumbest thing to carry around. In Feudal Japan, only those in the Samurai class (and in some cases Merchant class) were allowed to carry swords. When attempting to invade an enemy territory, illegally wearing a sword would attract much unwanted attention. There is some evidence to suggest that Ninja may have carried short, straight swords, but most likely it was not during infiltration.

Kunai

An Assassin in the MMORPG Maple Story throwing “steelies”, a weapon modeled after the pop-culture notion of a Kunai.

Many video games and anime feature characters throwing kunai with great accuracy as weapons. Actual kunai were designed as blunt, crude tools used for digging, and possibly masonry. Their metal was very low quality, and they were heavy and unbalanced so throwing them would have been clumsy. I can not entirely discount the use of kunai as a weapon by Ninja for the same reasons I mentioned earlier. They were versatile since they could be used as a stabbing tool, and could be sharpened easily since their blades were made with poor quality metal. Also, they were subtle since they were a popular tool of the sixteenth century. This made them easy to find in a pinch, and offered a valid alibi if captured. Since they were used in a number of professions, such as masonry and jobs involving horticulture (like medicine making, a job that often required travel) it wasn’t hard to come up with an excuse for having a kunai.

Magic

Sheena Fujibayashi performing ninja summoning magic in Tales of Symphonia

Many games such as Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden have characters that can use Ninja abilities such as elemental attack. The Ninja themselves enjoyed spreading the belief that they had supernatural abilities. One common belief was that Ninja could transform into animals. Some Ninja would dress animals up to perpetuate this very notion.

The Ninja’s true strength came from their unconventional method of getting things done. During the era that the ninja thrived, fighting was very structured. There was always a winner and a loser, and the loser always died. It was an accepted fact, but costly in terms of lives. Since Ninja often had to relay important information, their death would mean their mission was a failure. To prevent this, they began utilizing a variety of techniques that emphasized survival. To the average Japanese warrior of this era, their tactics seemed cowardly.

If threatened with capture or death, a Ninja’s primary goal would be escape. This meant hiding, or employing misdirection. Misdirection could be something as simple as throwing something to create a sound down an adjacent allyway or etc.

If that wasn’t enough, Ninja-style martial arts had many debilitating blows. This meant attacking tendons, muscles and pressure points which would leave an enemy nearly paralyzed.

If captured, a Ninja’s next goal would be to create an alibi to inflict doubt among his captors. This could often be more psycological than one could imagine.

Since these tactics were never seen in feudal Japan, it is understandable that they may be seen as supernatural or magical. Being skilled at hiding creates the myth of invisibility, creating doubt in captors becomes mind control etc. As stories are passed on by word of mouth, they become more grandiose and eventually become legend.

Previous articles:
- Part 1: Lances and Spears
- Part 2: Katana

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