Kurt Kalata is an ardent video gamer from New Jersey. He has founded websites such as The Castlevania Dungeon, which focuses on Konami's long running, vampire slaying series, and Hardcore Gaming 101, which gives comprehensive reviews focusing on the history of gaming. In addition to his own sites and books, his writings have appeared in Retro Gamer magazine, The Overstreet Guide to Video Game Collecting, and at 1up, Siliconera, Gamasutra, and The Armchair Empire. His most recent work is Bitmap Books' A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games.

Hanenashi Error is a self-proclaimed "localization researcher" from Japan. He runs a website called Innovative Game Translator's Blog, which features a variety of interesting translations and localization changes from popular video game series like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, etc.

Retro Game Super Translation Selection II by Kurt Kalata and Hanenashi Error

A sequel to the first Retro Game Super Translation Selection book originally published in 2017, this volume analyzes even more lines of dialogue from classic video games, compares how they were localized, and includes some explanation for the business or cultural reasons surrounding such changes. Originally authored by a professional video game translator, this is a localized version of a doujinshi released at the Game Legend retro game event in late 2019, and features a unique perspective rarely seen in the English speaking world! The new volume focuses on games for the PlayStation, Saturn, Nintendo 64, and Game Boy Color.

Covered games include: Dragon Warrior / Dragon Quest, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, Mischief Makers, Arc the Lad, Mega Man Legends, Final Fantasy Tactics, Magic Knight Rayearth, Alundra, and many more!

CURATOR'S NOTE

There's no shortage of entertaining, questionable, and otherwise memorable translations in video games—and that's a good thing for fans of Hardcore gaming 101 founder Kurt Kalata, who returns to explain more of the business, cultural, and other reasons for such changes. – David L. Craddock

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

It's been three years since the publication of the previous volume. The difference from the prior book is the era of games that we're focusing on. The first volume focuses on the 8-bit and 16-bit era, for games on the NES, SNES, TurboGrafx-16 and Genesis, while this volume deals with the next generation, focusing on the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, and Saturn, along with the Game Boy Color.

Overall there were many more games for these platforms, and many more of them were localized into English as well. We've included a number of popular (in Japan) titles as well as some lesser known games, so hopefully you'll be exposed to something new and interesting.

Dragon Force

Japanese： Joshua

English： Scar

In the Saturn strategy game Dragon Force, there's a military commander for the Tristan Empire who was once the leader of a group of bandits. In the Japanese version, his name is Joshua, but his name has been changed to Scar for the English version. This seems to be because of the large scar on his face, which may seem a little obvious, but there's another interesting point about his name.

Joshua's face was scarred by a female warlord named Grace, who is part of the rival Fandaria Empire, who singlehandedly annihilated Joshua's bandits. In order to avenge himself and his former compatriots, he decided to join the Tristan Empire to gain the power necessary to fight back. In the English version, Grace's name has been changed to Scythe. The two names contrast each other - Scythe and Scar - as "The person who dealt the wound" and "The person who has been wounded". Also, it may be coincidental, but both names also begin with "sc", creating a unifying dynamic not present in the original Japanese text.