Anyone play Pokémon games in the original Japanese? Are there any interest differences between it and the localizations that caught your attention?
>>59699472I played both Heart Gold and Soul Silver in Japanese when they came out. Can't remember any noticeable differences between those and the localizations
Mostly the innuendo everywhere with Lass trainers. They are called “miniskirts” in Japanese. A lot of this made it to English, just less blatantly sexual. I can’t think of any real censorship except the old man is drunk, while in English he wants coffee. If you want a game totally butchered, BW1 is the one. You had goddesses, divine kings, Bianca being the wrong body shape to be a model and more got murdered. Some religious references are removed in RB but they are hard to translate anyway, e.g. the “elite four” refers to 4 heavenly kings of Buddhism
i played hg in japanese for le epic immersion thinking all-kana would make it easier. i stuck with it, but pokémon isn't great for beginners. it might actually be even worse if you're in your 30s-40s having spent decades used to english character, mon, item etc names. your mind will autopilot and use those instead of the japanese, which can be a tough habit to kickthat said playing in jpn made me appreciate the text speed settings. i used to laugh at the slow and mid speeds for even existing. big help for keeping up with battle text
>>59699559Aside from the Game Corner?
>>59699770A lot of the Japanese gen 1 names are really easy to remember but some of them are also way out there. I'll never remember Hitmonlee or chan. It's like Sarasa or something. Weird shit that only japs will get I guess.
>>59699816Sawamular and Ebiwalar, named after famous kickboxer Sawamura and famous boxer Ebihara. Makes a lot more sense than naming the fucking boxer Pokemon after Jackie Chan for whatever reason.
>>59699792Oh yeah. You had to remind me on that.
>>59699600There's a hiker who's laughing because he's high on mushrooms in the Japanese version who has hayfever instead in the English version.
>>59699600>bianca being the wrong body shape to be a modelBBWkings... we got officially acknowledged...
The gambler in route 8 that compares pokémon battles to eating peanuts is actually comparing them to gambling (once you start you just can't stop).The Rocket grunt in Pokémon Tower that talks about "harming useless pokémon" also mentions killing them in the original japanese.
>>59699472I played Red in Japanese once. I was/am at some sort of intermediate or below level of Japanese but not a total beginner, so I didn't pick everything up but could use my memory of the OG game text to compensate. One thing I remember now is that in Japanese, Surge/Matisse is written in this pretty stereotypical jokey "English-speaking foreigner trying to speak Japanese" way where his dialogue is in Japanese except for throwing in shit like YUU or MII when pronouns appear in the dialogue. Obviously there's no real way to include this in English translations.
>>59701477Also I realize how stupid it seems to say "OG" for English lol, what I meant was the OG RB translation rather than the later remakes etc. since I know more stuff got changed later on in later stuff like FRLG etc. But yeah my phrasing sucked
>>59699472There are some differences between JP Red and Green and JP Blue. US Red and Blue were built on JP Blue. Red and Green had different sprites, a different Cerulean Cave layout, and JP Blue patched some glitches like the Select Glitch and the Dokokashira Door Glitch which let you go pretty much anywhere using any door. A localization difference is that for Japan the Old Man was drunk but for the US he hadn't had his coffee yet.
>>59701477Actually they did do something like that in the English translation, but not for Surge. Obviously it would make no sense for the Lightning American to have broken English, so the scientist who revives the fossils has broken English instead. I'm not sure how good his Japanese is in the originals.
>>59701503Yeah that guy speaks like Surge too in Japanese iirc
>>59701477The English translation did a piss poor job getting across that Bill talks non-standard English too (he speaks in kansai-ben in the original). The Pokespe translation did much better.
