Poor Japanese to English game title changes - The Bear and Badger

retroking1981

Been talking Bust-A-Move in the retro thread and it's made me think of what an absolute shambles of a title it is compared to its original Japanese title - Puzzle Bobble. Being a puzzle game in the Bubble Bobble universe it was perfect, why they changed it baffles me.

Because of the that the music dance off/fighting game Bust a Move was forced to change to Bust a Groove, not terrible but would have been unnecessary had it not been for the Puzzle Bobble fiasco.

There's the famous Capcom double, Mega Man from Rockman. Mega Man sounds ok, but Rockman makes more sense as the bosses were based on Rock paper scissors.

Resident Evil kinda made sense at first as it was based in a mansion, but Biohazzard makes perfect sense what with the whole virus aspect of it all.

Anyway, what other titles do you all think had an odd/poor title change when they released in the West? Do you even prefer some of of the Western ones?

nick_md

This isn't games but I love the Spanish title for Die Hard - 'Crystal Jungle'. It makes so much sense for the first film, skyscraper of glass, moving through the jungle of enemies etc. For the sequels though? Fucked.

Eric

Bare Knuckle and Streets of Rage is a topical one at the moment. I think I actually prefer Streets of Rage naming tbf.

Konami used to love doing it, Probotector and Contra, Green Beret and Rush n Attack and Winning Eleven and Pro Evo.

Kow

Not a game either. Rosemary's Baby in Spanish is called La Semilla del Diablo - The Devil's Seed. A bit like calling a film The Butler Did It.

Also 'cristal' in Spanish is glass, so it's more The Glass Jungle.

Tempy

The Resident Evil one is a fun one at least - the Japanese got to have make it a joke with 7 being “Biohazard 7: Resident Evil”

The flip around doesn’t work so well here. Thanks, mid 90s Hardcore Band/pre-existing DOS game.

JonB

I don't think Rock Man works well at all. I think they did a good job changing that.

Contra is a weird one, because it refers to 80s resistance fighters in Central America, and only gets less relevant as the series turns more to alien invasion stuff. But then it sounds better than Probotector, which is a shit name. Weren't the original ones also known as Gryzor? Not that that's any good either.

EvilRedEye

The mucking about with the numbering of the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games when they first came out in the West has ended up being a bit annoying. The FF numbering was understandable but then they started buggering about pointlessly removing the numbers from the DQ games when they first came out in Europe.

It's kinda annoying when people starting talking about the NES games and people wondering if they're taking about the US SNES games and vice versa.

Tempy

I much prefer the new brave future we live in where we get games called UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH EXE:LATE[CL-R]

nick_md

Kow wrote:

Not a game either. Rosemary's Baby in Spanish is called La Semilla del Diablo - The Devil's Seed. A bit like calling a film The Butler Did It.

Also 'cristal' in Spanish is glass, so it's more The Glass Jungle.

Nice, it's a quality name for a film imo. Most of my team is in Madrid so I enjoy asking them about this stuff. They probably think I'm a twat, except for Kike, he loves the 80s/90s action films and is the guy who told me about Crystal Jungle. Sound guy, Kike.

Kow

Spanish films have a reputation for translating titles into something completely different to the original.

My favourite is Billy Elliot - which became Billy Elliot, Quiero Bailar. Billy Elliot, I Want to Dance.

monkey

90s, Christian Slater skateboarding film Gleaming The Cube. Rather than translate something no one even understood in English, the Spanish just thought fuck it and called it Flying Over Danger.

davyK

Kow wrote:

Not a game either. Rosemary's Baby in Spanish is called La Semilla del Diablo - The Devil's Seed. A bit like calling a film The Butler Did It. Also 'cristal' in Spanish is glass, so it's more The Glass Jungle.

I got mixed up there with Demon Seed - a Julie Christie 70s effort. Think she gets raped by a computer in that though . Bizarre one - only have a fleeting memory of it.

davyK

Donkey Kong and Pac man are the original translation changes.

Pacman was for practical reasons - is Puckman in Japan. Wags in arcades were anticipated.

Donkey Kong was a bizarre blend of mistranslation and licence wrangling over the King Kong IP..

Moot_Geeza

Iirc Soleil had three different titles. Soleil here, Crusaders of Centy in the states and Ragnacenty in Japan maybe? 'Story of Thor' never made much sense to me, Beyond Oasis is much better.

Diluted Dante

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Iirc Soleil had three different titles.

The story centers on Corona

Son of a bitch

davyK

Cameltry in Japan is On The Ball here.

Our version makes sense as it's a 2D roll-em-up. No idea what the name's origins are in JP though.

davyK

Starwing and Lylat Wars made us think of playing a game sponsored by tampon manufacturers.

davyK

That whole character renaming/swapping thing in SF2 - what was that all about ?

retroking1981

davyK wrote:

That whole character renaming/swapping thing in SF2 - what was that all about ?

That's a good one to bring up actually. Madness. Guess it all revolved around M.Bison/Mike Tyson.

cosmicjellybean

I always got annoyed by the street fighter name switcharoo, M Bison for the boxer made WAY more sense when I found out.

On the flip side, I love the name ‘Darkstalkers’, which one Japan was originally called... ‘Vampire’. Just ‘Vampire’.

Edit: got to SF name before me... yes it was Capcom scared of legal action from Mike Tyson. Claw=Balrog, Dictator=Vega, Boxer=M Bison

retroking1981

Pang seems better than Buster Bros to me. The character art from safari men to radical 90s dudes even more so.

LivDiv

Robotnik and Eggman.
Shoulda kept Robotnik, Eggman just sounds so shit.
Then there are lots of things they shouldnt have done with Sonic but did anyway.

Diluted Dante

Aye, Eggman is toss.

ChopperByrne

Salamander being renamed Life Force was another weird Konami one.

Castlevania is just called Dracula's Castle in Japan. Good thing that got changed, or we could all be playing Metroidracula's now.

Moot_Geeza

Gynoug > Wings of Wor

retroking1981

ChopperByrne wrote:

Salamander being renamed Life Force was another weird Konami one.

That one kinda makes sense to me, in the game your in organic living environments.

retroking1981

Along with Hero Turtles we also had Shadow Warrior instead of Ninja Gaiden on the NES.

Although on the front cover it's full title reads Shadow Warrior - Ninja Gaiden and the word Ninja appears in the game. Also the MS version was called Ninja Gaiden.

So the word Ninja was never taboo enough not to be mentioned so I'm not sure on all the changes. Was Ninja instead of Hero really that bad?

retroking1981

Vodka Drunkenski changed to Soda Popinski didn't make me addicted to fizzy drinks over alcohol, so that proved that unnecessary.

JonB

cosmicjellybean wrote:

Edit: got to SF name before me... yes it was Capcom scared of legal action from Mike Tyson. Claw=Balrog, Dictator=Vega, Boxer=M Bison

I'm not happy with either version there. Our version surely gets Vega right, because he's the Spanish guy. Their version gets M. Bison right. So the last boss should be Balrog.

cockbeard

hahaa, also not games but in Finland they thought calling a movie "Good" was a bit arrogant so that film Damon and Affleck wrote was called "Will Hunting"

cockbeard

JonB wrote:

cosmicjellybean wrote:

Edit: got to SF name before me... yes it was Capcom scared of legal action from Mike Tyson. Claw=Balrog, Dictator=Vega, Boxer=M Bison

I'm not happy with either version there. Our version surely gets Vega right, because he's the Spanish guy. Their version gets M. Bison right. So the last boss should be Balrog.

Interesting, perhaps "dictator" had like many of his ilk fled to Argentina??

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