Your soul is on fire!
Pointless trivia time again. Just video games this time, nothing specific, just whatever comes to my mind.
(Predator Callout is still ongoing, but progressing rather slowly. I'm still looking for victim testimonies.)
The SNES JRPG EarthBound (known as Mother 2 in Japan) had a rather nasty anti-piracy measure built into it. If the game detected that it was a pirated copy, many more enemies than normal would spawn, including in places where there weren't even meant to be enemies to begin with, in order to deter the player. If the player somehow persevered and managed to finish the game, the game would freeze at the start of the final battle, and upon resetting the player would discover their save file for the game had been erased.
The "The Manta Storm" mission in Sirena Beach in Super Mario Sunshine is a reference to Stephen King's novel The Shining. At the end of the book - which is very different from the movie - a character notices "a ghostly manta shape, floating away over the hotel. It was paper-thin, like a shadow, and broke into smaller and smaller pieces before turning into smoke and drifting away." In the game, you attack the manta by spraying it with water, causing it to break into progressively smaller mantas which eventually puff away into smoke.
The level Sirena Beach itself is shaped like a Nintendo GameCube controller.
Super Mario Sunshine takes place on Isle Delfino, an island shaped like a dolphin and whose name means "dolphin" in Italian. This is one of many references in GameCube games to the GameCube's name in development, which was the Dolphin.
The "DS" in Nintendo DS doesn't stand for Dual Screen like many think. Originally it stood for Developer's System, and was the code name used to refer to the console while it was being developed (different from the actual development name, which was the Nitro). However, the DS name got leaked somehow, and since the console actually had two screens, everyone thought it stood for Dual Screen, and the name stuck.
In Final Fantasy I, a gravestone can be found reading "Here lies Erdrick". Erdrick was the name of the protagonist from Dragon Quest III. In the Japanese version, the gravestone originally bore the name of Link from the Legend of Zelda series. It was changed back to Link in some of the modern remakes of the game.
In the first Legend of Zelda game, the old man in the cave at the start originally gave you a choice between the sword and the boomerang.
Devil May Cry was originally going to be Resident Evil 4. However, Capcom decided that the game was too much of a departure from the rest of the series, and ultimately decided to rework it into a brand new game.
In Super Mario RPG, Samus from Metroid and Link from the Legend of Zelda make cameo appearances in an inn. Speaking to Samus will make her say "I'm resting up for Mother Brain" and speaking to Link will trigger the "puzzle solved" jingle commonly heard in Zelda games.
There were originally going to be cameos from various Nintendo characters in the Starbeans Café in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. They would each come in whenever the Mario Bros. created a new type of coffee to sample the coffee and give the brothers a reward.
- Olimar, from Pikmin, would dub Mario a strange lifeform and name him Marlio, an anagram of Olimar. He then mistakes Luigi for some kind of dangerous beast and attacks him with his Pikmin. He gives you a UV Lamp.
- Wario proclaims the coffee "awful", before it's revealed he has a debt to the café. He gives you a bag of gold, presumably to pay off his debt.
- Samus fills her Energy Tanks with the coffee, and gives you one of her Energy Tanks as thanks.
- Link, who appears to be lost, fills his hearts with a cup of coffee instead of going to a fairy fountain. He gives you a Triforce.
- An Excite Bike racer causes a commotion by bringing his bike inside the café. He gives you an Excite Spring.
- Fox McCloud from Star Fox gets an incoming call from Peppy and Slippy asking for help, and gives you a Gold Ring before departing.
Though the cameos were removed, most of the items given remained in the game with little to no changes.
Wario and Waluigi's names are pun on the Japanese word "warui", meaning "bad". Waluigi's name is a double pun because in Japanese, it's pronounced "waruiji", which can be reversed into "iji waru", meaning roughly "bad man". An evil counterpart to Peach, named Warupichi, was planned to be included in one of the Mario Tennis games, but ultimately Shigeru Miyamoto scrapped the idea.
At a Nintendo conference, one of the designers who worked on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time actually apologised for the infamous Water Temple, and said that they would work on improving it for the (then upcoming) 3DS remake. One of the alterations they made was making the Iron Boots a C-button item, rather than causing the player to have to go into the pause menu and equip them like in the original game, and also making it clearer which switches affected which rooms' water levels by making coloured pathways linking the rooms and switches.
The late Robin Williams named his daughter Zelda after the game series, which he was a huge fan of. They starred together in an advert for the games.
Spyro of the Spyro the Dragon games was originally going to be green, but his colour was changed to purple to keep him from blending in with the grass.
Spyro the Dragon was the first game to be made where the focus was on interaction with the enemies. The enemies in Spyro will actively target and taunt the player, as opposed to other games at the time where the enemy AI would be static or programmed to perform a simple function.
In Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, the sleight Lethal Flame, usable by Sora and unique to the remake, was mistranslated. It was actually supposed to be Lethal Frame - the sleight causes enemies to freeze in place, so the name is referring to a "frame" of movement, rather than fire, which it has nothing to do with.
Also, many of the Organization XIII members' real names were misspelled in the Ansem Reports in the English release of Kingdom Hearts II. Xigbar's real name, Braig, was misspelled as Bleig. Lexaeus's real name was written as Eleus instead of Aeleus, and Xaldin's real name was spelled Dilin instead of Dilan. These spellings were corrected in Birth by Sleep.
A lot of the Organization XIII members' names changed pronunciation from Japanese to English. Vexen is pronounced "vixen" in Japanese, but "Vex-un" in English, likely due to "vixen" referring to a female fox in English, which wouldn't fit the male Vexen. Axel's real name, Lea, is pronounced "Lee-a" in Japanese, but simply "Lee" in English, again because "Lee-a" sounds more feminine and therefore wouldn't fit a male character. Larxene's name has an extra syllable in Japanese - it's pronounced "Lark-see-nuh", as if it was German, whereas the English voice acting simply says "Lark-seen".
The Pokémon Arceus also changed pronunciation from Japanese to English. In Japanese, the name is written Aruseusu in katakana and pronounced Ar-say-oos. The English voice acting for the movie in which Arceus appears pronounces it Ark-ee-us. This was apparently deliberate, as the dubbing studio thought that Ar-say-oos sounded too much like "arse".
Many of the Pokemon names are unfortunately pronounced incorrectly in the English dub of the anime, sometimes ruining the punny nature of the names. Bonsly, whose name is a combination of the words "bonsai", "sly" and "lie", and which is obviously supposed to be pronounced "bon-sly", instead got pronounced as "bon-slee". Growlithe, whose name is a portmanteau of "growl" and "lithe", was pronounced "Growl-ith". And its evolved form, Arcanine, a combination of "arcane" and "canine", is pronounced "Ark-uh-nine" instead of "Ar-cay-nine".
In the Flash cartoon "Awesome Series - PokeAwesome - Just a Pokemon Battle", Venusaur - who speaks perfect English for the sake of parody - occasionally says "I mean 'Venusaur'" in an attempt to sound more like a Pokémon. However, Venusaur never says its full name in the English dub of the anime - its cry is a drawn-out, very deep "SAUUUUUUR".
The same cartoon also has some other errors, including Ash's Pikachu coming out of a Poké Ball (in the anime, Pikachu refused to go back into its Poké Ball after coming out of it in the first episode, and has never been back in it since) and Ash continually mentioning a "Thunder Smash" attack, which doesn't actually exist in the games. Also, Pikachu complains about Ash not evolving him in the cartoon, whereas in the anime, Ash actually did want to evolve Pikachu, but Pikachu refused. Also, Venusaur is the same size as Pikachu in the cartoon, whereas Venusaur in the anime are gigantic, much larger than humans, let alone Pikachu.
If the voices are set to Japanese in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mewtwo will speak in full sentences during his victory pose. If the voices are set to English, he just laughs. In Japanese, he will say:
"Watashi wa makeru wake ni wa ikanai!" ("I cannot lose!")
"Watashi wa naze koko ni iru no ka...?" ("Why am I here...?")
"Orokana!" ("Foolish!")
A similar thing happens with Falco. During his taunt, he will simply scoff if voices are set to English, but in Japanese, he speaks full sentences. His taunts are:
"Ore no emono ni tewodasuna!" ("Hands off my prey!")
"Nigasu ka yo!" ("I won't let you escape!")
"Hands off my prey!" was also one of his taunts in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, this time spoken in English.
Marth and Roy speak Japanese no matter what the voice language is set to in Melee, meaning a lot of what they said went right over American players' heads. Here's what Roy says in his victory animation and what they mean.
"Kurushi tatakai datta." ("It was a difficult fight.")
"Shin no tatakai wa, korekara da." ("The true fight is yet to come.")
"Mamoru beki mono no tame ni, makerarenai!" ("For those whom I must protect, I will not lose!")
Marth is a lot more vocal, and talks during his taunt and down special move, as well as during his victory animation. When performing a taunt, Marth will say:
"Minna, miteite kure!" ("Everyone, please watch me!")
When doing his down special Counter, he says:
"Soko da!" ("Gotcha!")
"Saseru mono ka!" ("Like I would let you!")
And during his victory animation, he says:
"Konkai wa boku no kachi da ne?" ("This time, victory is mine, right?")
"Kyou mo ikinobiru koto ga dekita." ("Today, I have survived.")
"Boku wa makeru wake ni wa ikanainda!" ("There's no way I can lose!")
On the debug menu, Marth also sometimes says "Let's dance!" in English.
(Predator Callout is still ongoing, but progressing rather slowly. I'm still looking for victim testimonies.)
The SNES JRPG EarthBound (known as Mother 2 in Japan) had a rather nasty anti-piracy measure built into it. If the game detected that it was a pirated copy, many more enemies than normal would spawn, including in places where there weren't even meant to be enemies to begin with, in order to deter the player. If the player somehow persevered and managed to finish the game, the game would freeze at the start of the final battle, and upon resetting the player would discover their save file for the game had been erased.
The "The Manta Storm" mission in Sirena Beach in Super Mario Sunshine is a reference to Stephen King's novel The Shining. At the end of the book - which is very different from the movie - a character notices "a ghostly manta shape, floating away over the hotel. It was paper-thin, like a shadow, and broke into smaller and smaller pieces before turning into smoke and drifting away." In the game, you attack the manta by spraying it with water, causing it to break into progressively smaller mantas which eventually puff away into smoke.
The level Sirena Beach itself is shaped like a Nintendo GameCube controller.
Super Mario Sunshine takes place on Isle Delfino, an island shaped like a dolphin and whose name means "dolphin" in Italian. This is one of many references in GameCube games to the GameCube's name in development, which was the Dolphin.
The "DS" in Nintendo DS doesn't stand for Dual Screen like many think. Originally it stood for Developer's System, and was the code name used to refer to the console while it was being developed (different from the actual development name, which was the Nitro). However, the DS name got leaked somehow, and since the console actually had two screens, everyone thought it stood for Dual Screen, and the name stuck.
In Final Fantasy I, a gravestone can be found reading "Here lies Erdrick". Erdrick was the name of the protagonist from Dragon Quest III. In the Japanese version, the gravestone originally bore the name of Link from the Legend of Zelda series. It was changed back to Link in some of the modern remakes of the game.
In the first Legend of Zelda game, the old man in the cave at the start originally gave you a choice between the sword and the boomerang.
Devil May Cry was originally going to be Resident Evil 4. However, Capcom decided that the game was too much of a departure from the rest of the series, and ultimately decided to rework it into a brand new game.
In Super Mario RPG, Samus from Metroid and Link from the Legend of Zelda make cameo appearances in an inn. Speaking to Samus will make her say "I'm resting up for Mother Brain" and speaking to Link will trigger the "puzzle solved" jingle commonly heard in Zelda games.
There were originally going to be cameos from various Nintendo characters in the Starbeans Café in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. They would each come in whenever the Mario Bros. created a new type of coffee to sample the coffee and give the brothers a reward.
- Olimar, from Pikmin, would dub Mario a strange lifeform and name him Marlio, an anagram of Olimar. He then mistakes Luigi for some kind of dangerous beast and attacks him with his Pikmin. He gives you a UV Lamp.
- Wario proclaims the coffee "awful", before it's revealed he has a debt to the café. He gives you a bag of gold, presumably to pay off his debt.
- Samus fills her Energy Tanks with the coffee, and gives you one of her Energy Tanks as thanks.
- Link, who appears to be lost, fills his hearts with a cup of coffee instead of going to a fairy fountain. He gives you a Triforce.
- An Excite Bike racer causes a commotion by bringing his bike inside the café. He gives you an Excite Spring.
- Fox McCloud from Star Fox gets an incoming call from Peppy and Slippy asking for help, and gives you a Gold Ring before departing.
Though the cameos were removed, most of the items given remained in the game with little to no changes.
Wario and Waluigi's names are pun on the Japanese word "warui", meaning "bad". Waluigi's name is a double pun because in Japanese, it's pronounced "waruiji", which can be reversed into "iji waru", meaning roughly "bad man". An evil counterpart to Peach, named Warupichi, was planned to be included in one of the Mario Tennis games, but ultimately Shigeru Miyamoto scrapped the idea.
At a Nintendo conference, one of the designers who worked on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time actually apologised for the infamous Water Temple, and said that they would work on improving it for the (then upcoming) 3DS remake. One of the alterations they made was making the Iron Boots a C-button item, rather than causing the player to have to go into the pause menu and equip them like in the original game, and also making it clearer which switches affected which rooms' water levels by making coloured pathways linking the rooms and switches.
The late Robin Williams named his daughter Zelda after the game series, which he was a huge fan of. They starred together in an advert for the games.
Spyro of the Spyro the Dragon games was originally going to be green, but his colour was changed to purple to keep him from blending in with the grass.
Spyro the Dragon was the first game to be made where the focus was on interaction with the enemies. The enemies in Spyro will actively target and taunt the player, as opposed to other games at the time where the enemy AI would be static or programmed to perform a simple function.
In Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, the sleight Lethal Flame, usable by Sora and unique to the remake, was mistranslated. It was actually supposed to be Lethal Frame - the sleight causes enemies to freeze in place, so the name is referring to a "frame" of movement, rather than fire, which it has nothing to do with.
Also, many of the Organization XIII members' real names were misspelled in the Ansem Reports in the English release of Kingdom Hearts II. Xigbar's real name, Braig, was misspelled as Bleig. Lexaeus's real name was written as Eleus instead of Aeleus, and Xaldin's real name was spelled Dilin instead of Dilan. These spellings were corrected in Birth by Sleep.
A lot of the Organization XIII members' names changed pronunciation from Japanese to English. Vexen is pronounced "vixen" in Japanese, but "Vex-un" in English, likely due to "vixen" referring to a female fox in English, which wouldn't fit the male Vexen. Axel's real name, Lea, is pronounced "Lee-a" in Japanese, but simply "Lee" in English, again because "Lee-a" sounds more feminine and therefore wouldn't fit a male character. Larxene's name has an extra syllable in Japanese - it's pronounced "Lark-see-nuh", as if it was German, whereas the English voice acting simply says "Lark-seen".
The Pokémon Arceus also changed pronunciation from Japanese to English. In Japanese, the name is written Aruseusu in katakana and pronounced Ar-say-oos. The English voice acting for the movie in which Arceus appears pronounces it Ark-ee-us. This was apparently deliberate, as the dubbing studio thought that Ar-say-oos sounded too much like "arse".
Many of the Pokemon names are unfortunately pronounced incorrectly in the English dub of the anime, sometimes ruining the punny nature of the names. Bonsly, whose name is a combination of the words "bonsai", "sly" and "lie", and which is obviously supposed to be pronounced "bon-sly", instead got pronounced as "bon-slee". Growlithe, whose name is a portmanteau of "growl" and "lithe", was pronounced "Growl-ith". And its evolved form, Arcanine, a combination of "arcane" and "canine", is pronounced "Ark-uh-nine" instead of "Ar-cay-nine".
In the Flash cartoon "Awesome Series - PokeAwesome - Just a Pokemon Battle", Venusaur - who speaks perfect English for the sake of parody - occasionally says "I mean 'Venusaur'" in an attempt to sound more like a Pokémon. However, Venusaur never says its full name in the English dub of the anime - its cry is a drawn-out, very deep "SAUUUUUUR".
The same cartoon also has some other errors, including Ash's Pikachu coming out of a Poké Ball (in the anime, Pikachu refused to go back into its Poké Ball after coming out of it in the first episode, and has never been back in it since) and Ash continually mentioning a "Thunder Smash" attack, which doesn't actually exist in the games. Also, Pikachu complains about Ash not evolving him in the cartoon, whereas in the anime, Ash actually did want to evolve Pikachu, but Pikachu refused. Also, Venusaur is the same size as Pikachu in the cartoon, whereas Venusaur in the anime are gigantic, much larger than humans, let alone Pikachu.
If the voices are set to Japanese in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mewtwo will speak in full sentences during his victory pose. If the voices are set to English, he just laughs. In Japanese, he will say:
"Watashi wa makeru wake ni wa ikanai!" ("I cannot lose!")
"Watashi wa naze koko ni iru no ka...?" ("Why am I here...?")
"Orokana!" ("Foolish!")
A similar thing happens with Falco. During his taunt, he will simply scoff if voices are set to English, but in Japanese, he speaks full sentences. His taunts are:
"Ore no emono ni tewodasuna!" ("Hands off my prey!")
"Nigasu ka yo!" ("I won't let you escape!")
"Hands off my prey!" was also one of his taunts in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, this time spoken in English.
Marth and Roy speak Japanese no matter what the voice language is set to in Melee, meaning a lot of what they said went right over American players' heads. Here's what Roy says in his victory animation and what they mean.
"Kurushi tatakai datta." ("It was a difficult fight.")
"Shin no tatakai wa, korekara da." ("The true fight is yet to come.")
"Mamoru beki mono no tame ni, makerarenai!" ("For those whom I must protect, I will not lose!")
Marth is a lot more vocal, and talks during his taunt and down special move, as well as during his victory animation. When performing a taunt, Marth will say:
"Minna, miteite kure!" ("Everyone, please watch me!")
When doing his down special Counter, he says:
"Soko da!" ("Gotcha!")
"Saseru mono ka!" ("Like I would let you!")
And during his victory animation, he says:
"Konkai wa boku no kachi da ne?" ("This time, victory is mine, right?")
"Kyou mo ikinobiru koto ga dekita." ("Today, I have survived.")
"Boku wa makeru wake ni wa ikanainda!" ("There's no way I can lose!")
On the debug menu, Marth also sometimes says "Let's dance!" in English.
Comments
Post a Comment