Hot takes

[miguk]

Ted Woolsey was never a good translator

I think for the most part the guy did a pretty good job considering the hand he was dealt. He was often battling as much with NA censorship as he was the technical constraints of the games themselves. I appreciate many people crave the AUTHENTIC nihongo experience (and yet do not play the games in Japanese, curious...) and I think it's really cool that fans have retranslated the scripts and modern tools exist to allow for easier text formatting and editing, but his translations are as much a part of squaresoft's success and history as anything else.

So I addressed this in the Chrono Trigger review thread, but given that we're talking about retranslations now, I'd like to add a bit more.

The Woolsey hate has been overblown by fan translators to the point that they've wasted time retranslating his work when they had no good reason to do half of them. For one, half of everything he worked on got a rerelease with an official retranslation. That doesn't mean no one could do better, but it does mean that it wasn't entirely necessary. Secondly, the majority of fan retranslations are just for his work (as well as entries in series he worked on), while there are plenty of retro games that need it more.

Like I said before, Woosley wasn't the first game translator. He was preceded by a lot of "translators" who were just some random guy around the Japanese office with the bare minimum 英語上手 to write something that looked correct at a glance. And there were others like him, both before and after, who were working within constraints that made things difficult. Worse still, there was the whole Working Designs cult of "f*** translating, write whatever you want, throw some bad jokes in, and just make sure the grammar's good so the audience thinks you did your job correctly." That strain of amateurness took years to get rid of from "professional" work, and still hasn't disappeared from "fan" translations by people falsely claiming to be making "the most accurate English script ever." (J2E, DeJap, and — most of all — Dynamic Designs are all guilty of this.)

Really, Woosley gets the most hate because he was the first translator that clearly made mistakes and was known by name to fans. Nobody remembers Toshi from accounting for his 1986 translation of 変態英雄の伝説 as Great Warrior Big Adventure. Nobody even realized Vic Ireland mistranslated everything because, unlike Woosley, he put out propaganda (excuse me, documentaries) to promote his translations as 128% accurate. And there were plenty of others after him that deserved hate too (particularly the ones who put memes in official translations), but they got let off the hook because nobody knew their names.

Like I said before, Woosley's work is outdated, but it wasn't that bad for its time, and it has been mostly replaced already by later translations. If fans want to complain about bad translations, they should focus on the tons that haven't been retranslated — from Working Designs, random unskilled "professionals", and bad-faith fanslators — and fix those.

 

[Xdqwerty]

For one, half of everything he worked on got a rerelease with an official retranslation.

What if someone wants to play the original release of the game but with another translation?

 

[miguk]

What if someone wants to play the original release of the game but with another translation?

That's fine, but at the same time, those games have had plenty of translations already. I'm not 100% satisfied with the Chrono Trigger DS translation, but if I had to choose between a new retranslation of CT and a retranslation of, for example, Popful Mail (or any WD game, but especially that trainwreck of flat-out wrong on more than one level translation), I'm not going to focus on the game that got both a good enough translation and a mildly flawed but still very good translation. I can play CT DS in front of friends and convince them it's a good game with no difficulty; I can't bring myself to play PM in front of any intelligent being since I don't feel like apologizing for the "product of its time" garbage coming out of the "heroes'" mouths.

(Related note: Final Fantasy IV has about as many translations to English, between official and fan work, as the Bible. At this point, I don't really care if it gets another, as we still can't play GDLeen, the first RPG for the SFC, in English yet.)

So, yes, you could ask for an A+ when you already got A-. But if you also have a separate C-, and you actually care about that one, you might want to focus on that first.

 

[Xdqwerty]

Zelda 2 is one of the best Zelda games

 

[tropicalavera]

Zelda 2 is one of the best Zelda games

that's true.

but the original Legend of Zelda? That IS the best Zelda game.

 

[Ikagura]

Mario slam basketball sounds better than Mario hoops 3 on 3.

I forgot but which region is the first?

Zelda 2 is one of the best Zelda games

Is that a flaming hot take nowadays? I thought the whole "Zelda II is trash" era from the 00's was over.

But I would still say that objectively speaking Ocarina of Time and ALTTP are still on top.

that's true.

but the original Legend of Zelda? That IS the best Zelda game.

Zelda 1 suffers from lack of story and not having a lot of tools.

It was innovative for its epoch but fundamentally too limited. Like with Metroid the third episode on the SNES is where the franchise truly started, the previous ones were drafts.

 

[Asian girls lover]

Zelda Breath of the Wild is boring and overrated.

 

[SwordBreaker39]

Oh forgot a hot take I have. Falout NV is not the best in the series it has the great story for sure but not the best gameplay and mechanics and worse stability when it comes to modding even worse than fallout 3.

 

[Tonberry]

Oh forgot a hot take I have. Falout NV is not the best in the series it has the great story for sure but not the best gameplay and mechanics and worse stability when it comes to modding even worse than fallout 3.

My hot take is that no Fallout game has particularly good gameplay, but I think New Vegas has the other Bethesda games beat in terms of roleplaying.

 

[Insomnia_ig]

I personally think a lot of Atlus's moderen games suck. I think the only good game they put out in recent years is Shin Megami Tensei 4. A lot of their games just feel like they want to be the next Persona 5 which is a game I actually like. Not as much as the original trilogy but I still like it more than 3 and 4 but that might be me being biased as it was my first Persona game. These games where never all that hard but they are slowly stripping the other MegaTen games identity to be more mainstream which just makes them really boring imo. Oh also Doi's demon designs suck at least his female Demons they're all just woman and I love women but they aren't anything interesting like Keneko's designs

Post automatically merged: Monday at 6:18 PM

My hot take is that no Fallout game has particularly good gameplay, but I think New Vegas has the other Bethesda games beat in terms of roleplaying.

Tbh Fallout in general has better gameplay that most Bethesda games idk I personally can't get into their other games like I thought Skyrim was okay but idk just wasn't all that interesting compared to Fallout which I found way more fun

Post automatically merged: Monday at 6:21 PM

Zelda Breath of the Wild is boring and overrated.

This but with TotK lol. I like BotW granted not my favorite Zelda but I still enjoy the game TotK however is just BotW 2 in the worst way possible it didn't fix any of BotW's problems in fact TotK created more problems then it did solve them lol.

 

[Tonberry]

Tbh Fallout in general has better gameplay that most Bethesda games idk I personally can't get into their other games like I thought Skyrim was okay but idk just wasn't all that interesting compared to Fallout which I found way more fun

I have a hard time in general with shooting games with RPG mechanics, when headshots still are DPS rolls etc.
It took me almost a decade to figure out how to make Skyrim more enjoyable for myself, and once I discovered that it was by not leveling weapon skills until like at least level 20, the game, and even the combat, became much more enjoyable and tactical compared to the swingfest it's known for.

The best thing about Fallout is def it's cool setting though. It's got a pretty unique atmosphere throughout the entire series!

 

[Insomnia_ig]

Oh yeah while I'm here I think From Soft haven't made a game that tops Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2 is well Dark Souls 2 it's just very hard and everything about it is very annoying granted I still think it's a solid game overall but it's definitly the worst game they've put out in recent years and the worst Dark Souls game. Dark Souls 3 I like from a narrative perspective but it's just not as good as the first. Bloodborne is okay actually but I find the game underwhelming maybe because I got my expectations real high cause everyone says BB is From Softs magnum opus but idk. I played a bit of Sekiro and Elden Ring and I'm sorry I'm not particularly a fan of those two but I will try my best to beat them eventually. And I'll also try out Demon Souls to see if it's good.

 

[Tonberry]

Oh yeah while I'm here I think From Soft haven't made a game that tops Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2 is well Dark Souls 2 it's just very hard and everything about it is very annoying granted I still think it's a solid game overall but it's definitly the worst game they've put out in recent years and the worst Dark Souls game. Dark Souls 3 I like from a narrative perspective but it's just not as good as the first. Bloodborne is okay actually but I find the game underwhelming maybe because I got my expectations real high cause everyone says BB is From Softs magnum opus but idk. I played a bit of Sekiro and Elden Ring and I'm sorry I'm not particularly a fan of those two but I will try my best to beat them eventually. And I'll also try out Demon Souls to see if it's good.

I agree. I posted my thoughts on this somewhere in the depths of this thread a while back, but I agree with DS1 being the best one. I like DS2 because it dared to try new things, and I think DS3 is just an awful, soulless cashgrab with no identity whatsoever.
I like Bloodborne alot, and I think Elden Ring is okay, but I have no real desire to replay it because it's so staggeringly huge, and I'm pretty sure I explored every single little nook and cranny on my main guy.

 

[Insomnia_ig]

It's funny you say that about DS3 cause iirc DS2 was the cashgrab I'm pretty sure Miyazaki didn't even work on the game and Bandai just wanted another Dark Souls game cause money.

 

[Tonberry]

It's funny you say that about DS3 cause iirc DS2 was the cashgrab I'm pretty sure Miyazaki didn't even work on the game and Bandai just wanted another Dark Souls game cause money.

Yaeh I know. It's just that I think it's cool they tried a bunch of new things for DS2 where everything didn't work, but DS3 felt like a massive overcorrection and safe bets which just coasts along on the success of DS1 so they lift literally everything from it.

 

[Insomnia_ig]

That's understandable tbh

 

[Leon]

Not sure if i posted it already, but the sega saturn i believe had the best controller of all time, add a couple of triggers, a select button and 2 thumb sticks and it would beat both the xbox and playstation controllers in the modern day.

 

[Xdqwerty]

Rare should have stayed as rareware

I forgot but which region is the first?

Europe

 

[Jeanfranc]

Popful Mail

As much as I hate Working Design's translation work, I actually like Popful Mail's dialogues and find them quite funny. Honestly, the real problem with that release is how those guys fucked with the difficulty but luckily there's a patch to fix that.

 

[Xdqwerty]

The Sonic 3D in 2D fangame sucks

 

[Jeanfranc]

but the original Legend of Zelda? That IS the best Zelda game.

Absolutely true

 

[Xdqwerty]

The Sonic 3D in 2D fangame sucks

Mostly bc its quite unfair

 

[Jeanfranc]

Mostly bc its quite unfair

The Sonic 3D in 2D fangame sucks

I see, never knew about this one. It seems there a billion different sonic fan games coming out every year.

 

[Xdqwerty]

I see, never knew about this one. It seems there a billion different sonic fan games coming out every year.

 

[Jeanfranc]

-The music took a nosedive with Etrian Odyssey 4 and 5

The bgm's style changed a lot after three, especially with Koshiro abandoning fm sound for the series.
What about the alternative fm soundtrak for 5 though?

Post automatically merged: Monday at 8:31 PM

I though this was a 2d conversion of 3D blast but it seems just a sonic fan game with music from that game. From what I'm seeing here, it lacks any mechanic unique to 3D blast like gathering the Flickies.