Announcing the First Legends of Localization Book!

A lot’s been happening this year – I recently made a deal with Fangamer to release a series of Legends of Localization books, and the first one is well underway. Sign up for a pre-order notification here!

First Book: The Legend of Zelda!

The first book is going to set the standard for all future books in the series, so we decided to go with The Legend of Zelda. The book will feature what you can read and see here, but with even more information, new content, info fixes, and lots of improvements everywhere.

I’ve been working hard on updating the content, and Tony, one of Fangamer’s designers, has been working hard on the book layout. I can’t show off any work-in-progress stuff yet, but it looks AMAZING. It’s visually entertaining AND classy at the same time. Tony’s design style matches my presentation style perfectly – it’s going to be great!

I shared more details and pics about the book during a recent Poemato CX stream, check it out below!

Currently, the book’s content and layout needs to be finished by around the end of August 2015. Fangamer hopes to release the book in November or December 2015, with preorders opening probably in October.

Pre-order Bonuses!

For preorder bonuses, we’re thinking we’ll have a fancy bookmark that matches the theme of each Legends of Localization book, but we’re open to suggestions. Some other ideas I’ve thought of include:

  • Autographs for pre-order books only
  • Small art books using art that I draw (my art is infamously bad)
  • Maybe some sort of small Japanese-to-English dictionary for the specific game in question, so gamers can play through Japanese versions of these games themselves

If you have any other suggestions, let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

Future Books

The Zelda book is going to help us figure out the book-making process. After it, we’ll be moving on to the big one: EarthBound! This is going to be a HUGE book, and it’ll have a lot of new, updated content too. We have lots of cool plans for this one – I’ll post more about it when it gets going.

A Zelda II book is also in the works – in fact, most of my work on it is already done. This was going to be combined with the Zelda 1 book originally, but it wound up being so big that we had to break them apart!

Those are the three books I’m slated to do for Fangamer so far. Beyond that, I’m really looking forward to a MOTHER 3 book. I feel like I better hurry before Nintendo finally decides to release an official translation sometime 😛

What This All Means

For the most part, Legends of Localization has just been a hobby of mine for years and years. Technically, I started doing all this back in 1999, so that’s how long this has been a part of my life. These books mark the first time I’m turning my hobby into a serious job, so I wanted to thank everyone who’s supported my work here. Whether you’ve shared the site with friends, posted comments on here, e-mailed me with info, or donated in the past, thank you!

I’d love to continue to make Legends of Localization more and more of a serious endeavor – if these books do well enough, I’ll be able to focus more and more on this site and future books. I’ll also be able to update more frequently if everything goes well! I sometimes daydream of Legends of Localization being my ONLY focus… I’m not crazy enough to make that leap yet, but let’s see how well these books do first 😛

Sign up for a pre-order notification here!
I’ve also considered turning on the “donate to unlock this page” thing that I did a few years ago. The only problem is that last time people would donate too much too fast! I couldn’t keep up, so I had to turn it off. What a fortunate problem to have 😛

But Patreon is a thing that exists these days, so that might be worth looking into instead. That’s a scary step to take, though. If you have any Patreon tips or suggestions, let me know! Maybe a high tier could get you each book for free as they’re released or something…

Other Questions and Topics

A common question I’ve gotten lately is: “Is Legends of Localization dead?”

The answer is no! 2015 has just been a crazy year. I had surgery a while back that I’m still recovering from, my professional translation work has been super-busy, there’ve been deaths in the family, I’m in the middle of buying a house, etc. Once things settle down – and if the books do well enough – I’ll be able to focus more time on updates here. I love this hobby of mine, so I want to get back to it!


I receive a LOT of e-mails about Legends of Localization every day, so I apologize if I haven’t replied to you. I do read all my e-mails and keep them organized, so even if I haven’t gotten back to you, you haven’t been ignored. My backlog of reader questions is huge, too! I feel so bad that I can’t keep up with them all… But I also feel glad that this little hobby means so much to other people.


Final Fantasy IV. I get asked this question more than any other: “When are you going to update with more Final Fantasy IV stuff?”

A few months ago I actually started to do some behind-the-scenes work to get updates rolling again. I’d like to get one or two updates out before the end of the year. It might be tough with everything else that’s going on, but I really miss FFIV.

I’d LOVE to do a book version of FFIV too, but I fear that it would literally wind up being thousands of pages. For reference, this page is currently 18 to 20 pages in our WIP Zelda book. I don’t want to do the math, but I think the current FFIV stuff would be several hundred pages, and it’s only halfway through the game!

Basically, I haven’t dropped FFIV. It means too much to me to ever drop it, don’t worry!

TL;DR

So there you go! Thanks again to everyone who’s ever supported Legends of Localization in any way!

– Clyde

Let’s Make the EarthBound Localization Book Happen!

Fangamer’s “You Are Now EarthBound” Kickstarter is ending soon, and I’m involved with one of the final stretch goals! Indeed, if it gets high enough within the next three or so days, I’ll be able to make a book version of my EarthBound localization analysis!

Believe it or not, I’ve been comparing games and translations since way back in 1999, when I first started a site that compared EarthBound with its Japanese counterpart:

I didn’t get too far – I soon studied the language a lot more, did a lot of projects, and even became a professional translator. Armed with all this, I eventually went back and did a full comparison of EarthBound and MOTHER 2 — and later turned that into the start of Legends of Localization.

After I finished it, I dreamed of making it into a book somehow. There was also a lot of content that I skimmed over that I’ve always wanted to go back and cover, plus I’ve actually had the honor of meeting EarthBound’s head localizer, discussing details with him, and even chatting about MOTHER 3!

So with all this, now would be a wonderful chance to put EarthBound Legends of Localization into a book form!

If this Kickstarter stretch goal is met and I’m able to work on a book, I’d be able to:

  • Go back and look at stuff in more detail, especially in the first half of the game
  • Cover questions and topics that have sprung up since I finished the site – I might even do a call for questions beforehand!
  • Discuss topics that concern series continuity
  • Include new insights and answers from EarthBound’s head localizer himself!

And more, of course! I’m still trying to figure out how I could include secret image text, but I think it might be a lost cause 😛

Anyway, if the Kickstarter stretch goal is met and the book does well enough, it could open up opportunities to do more books on a more regular basis! I’d love to be able to focus my efforts on plenty of other games and series – my MOTHER 3 translations noteswould be a perfect start, for example.

And I’ve already had the groundwork laid for a good EarthBound Zero/MOTHER 1 analysis too:

And there are the other projects I always have on my mind but not enough time for usually:

And if things go REALLY well, I’d love the opportunity to go and seek out the various people responsible for localizations and see what their experiences were!

Of course, this all rides on whether or not this stretch goal gets hit and if the EarthBound book does well enough. Even if you don’t back the Kickstarter, if the goal DOES get met you’ll still be able to order the book from Fangamer, but if you do back it I think there’s probably a tier or something where you can get a copy of the book automatically.

Depending on how things go, I might do a smaller, simpler book before the EarthBound one just to get the kinks and everything worked out. But that’s getting ahead of myself – for now, if any of this interests you, consider backing Fangamer’s “You Are Now EarthBound” Kickstarter!

– Clyde

Come Watch Me Play and Translate Japanese Games Live!

If you enjoy my Legends of Localization site, you might also be interested in some recent stuff I’ve been streaming!

Here’s just a quick look at stuff I’ve done recently:


MOTHER 3 Beta Testing / Translation Notes

A few months ago I started working on an update for the MOTHER 3 fan translation patch. Before releasing it, though, it needed to be tested – so I played through the game on Twitch! While testing the game and fixing bugs, I also shared translation notes, memories of the project, and more. We also had guests on, including fellow team members. Even Marcus Lindblom, the head localizer for EarthBound, participated in the chat a few times!

This was pretty much our first time streaming so everything was pretty rough around the edges, but if you like MOTHER 3 or if you’ve wanted to know more about some of the translation choices that went into the patch, give it a watch. I also sometimes discussed professional experiences and the like, so if you’re into that sort of thing, you might like it!

The MOTHER 3 stream was a lot of fun, so my wife and I have gotten into streaming games more regularly. Here’s just a quick sample of recent stuff:


Live Translation of a Japanese Final Fantasy VI ROM Hack

More recently, I’ve been streaming a Japanese Final Fantasy VI ROM hack known as “Final Fantasy VI T-Edition”. It’s an incredibly extensive hack and one of the most well-known Japanese FFVI hacks out there, so I thought it’d be neat to play through it and live-translate all the new content for fellow fans’ enjoyment and future reference!

As of the time of this post, I’m about 48 hours in and I’ve STILL got a lot left to experience in this hack. While I’ve been playing it I’ve also been sharing bits and pieces of localization differences that I’m aware of. I’ve also been polishing my programming skills and making neat software that displays some translated text on the stream for viewers who don’t know Japanese. And, to everyone’s surprise, the Japanese creator of the patch showed up in the chat and has since become a regular. All in all, it’s been a really great experience and I hope you’ll join us sometime if you’re into Final Fantasy games!

I actually hope to share more Japanese ROM hacks like this in the future, so if you know of any that you think would be neat to get the live-translation treatment, let me know.


Live Translation of Japanese Games About America

To celebrate America’s Independence Day, I streamed a bunch of Japanese games about America. I want to get practice doing live-translations of Japanese games, so I thought this would be a good start. Despite my bumbling around, it was a lot of fun – way more fun than I expected it to be!

I’m hoping that if I keep doing these sorts of streams, I’ll continually polish my live game-translating skills and be able to “streamlate” (yes, I just made that up, feel free to groan) more complicated Japanese games with ease!


Live Translation of Japanese Hobby/Indie Games

I’ve always been curious about the Japanese side of games made by hobbiests and indie developers, so I’ve started to play through some of those games and translate them live. Since they tend to be pretty short and bite-sized already, they’re perfect for this style of streaming. Already I’ve seen lots of neat, weird stuff that I never would’ve experienced otherwise!

I’m especially fond of this Japanese hamburger RPG:

And this game written entirely in English by a Japanese native:


Live-Translating Other Games for Weird Events

We also stream games for odd holidays and special events. Usually we end up playing a bunch of weird Japanese games and I’ll translate them live. For example, a friend of ours got married a few weeks ago, so after the wedding we played a bunch of wedding-themed games!

On my wife’s birthday, we streamed a bunch of Japanese yokai/youkai games, which I tried to translate:

And for World Population Day, we played a bunch of mostly-Japanese games with the word “world” in their titles:

We also did something similar for World Cat Day. We tried to have a “Sneak a Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day” – which is a real day – but couldn’t find any zucchini games, sadly.


Anyway, this is all to say that if you’d like to see more things like this, be sure to follow me on Twitch and follow me on YouTube, as that’s where all the fun and translating is happening. This streaming stuff isn’t always 100% Legends of Localization-related, but sometimes the two interwtine – my MOTHER 3 stream is on the MOTHER 3 localization section, for example. Some other things I’d love to stream in the future include:

  • More extensive Japanese ROM hacks
  • Streams of other games I’ve fan-translated, so I can share memories, translation notes, secrets, and more
  • Streams of games based on anime and IPs that I’ve translated professionally. There are tons of Dragon Ball games, Lupin games, Detective Conan games, etc. out there, so it’d be neat to try them out finally!
  • It’s not translation related, but I have some neat hack ideas that would work best on stream
  • We have a huge box of random Japanese Famicom games – it’d be neat to play through them one at a time and give each one a real, genuine try!

Of course, if you have any suggestions for things we can try sometime, let me know on Twitter or in the comments here. and if any of this sounded interesting, I hope you’ll join us sometime!

– Clyde

A Year of Localization Articles!

I was just looking through the Legends of Localization article archive and realized that today marks one year since I started doing these single-topic articles!

The very first article, which seems like just yesterday, was about someone sending me a copy of Zelda II for the Famicom Disk System. Since then, there’ve been 145 articles, or about 1 article every 2.5 days 😯 I had no idea I’d written that many!

Anyway, that aside, here’s a quick site status update!

For a while there, I was able to keep the updates flowing at a good rate, and even managed to do the big Final Fantasy IV and AVGN updates once a month. But alas, the work of a freelance translator can get crazily unpredictable, so right now Legends of Localization is back in the hectic “update whenever a hole in time opens up” mode. More specifically:

  • Final Fantasy IV: I posted an intermission thing here a while back. I’m not as burned out on FFIV anymore, so I look forward to getting back into this when I can!

  • MOTHER 3: I get asked about this a lot – for now it’s on hold. I *have* started putting together the version 1.2 patch this past week, though. No expected release date yet. It’ll mostly fix a lot of bugs that existed in the original game.
  • A Link Between Worlds: I announced this a few months back. I’ve fully played through both versions of the game, gathered all the screenshots and videos and stuff, and even have a good amount of work done on the layout and content, but freelance work overload last month put everything on hold.

  • Blog posts: I get requests for one-topic article posts all the time – if you’ve sent any in, don’t worry if I don’t respond! I put every single request in a spreadsheet, so you haven’t been ignored. The spreadsheet’s getting pretty big, it’s amazing!

Now that I think about it, I did recently do some small updates that you might’ve missed:

Pretty much every day I wake up thinking how swell it’d be if I could monetize Legends of Localization somehow so I could focus more time on it. I fear that a Kickstarter wouldn’t succeed, and I don’t think Patreon would have enough backers. If anyone has any suggestions, though, let me know! There are a million things I’d like to dig into and write articles about sometime – just off the top of my head:

  • Final Fantasy VI
  • MOTHER / EarthBound Zero
  • Pokemon
  • Shadowgate
  • Other English->Japanese localizations
  • The Wizard
  • Gitaroo Man
  • Symphony of the Night
  • Ninja Gaiden
  • Sonic stuff
  • Phantasy Star
  • Alex Kidd games
  • Pretty much every game ever I guess, especially 80s/90s games 😛
  • Maybe look at how some American shows got handled in translation
  • Live translations (on Youtube or wherever) of Japanese-only games

Anyway, while that’s the dream, in reality I’ve been working on lots of really cool and rewarding professional translation projects too, the most recent of which I can mention is Attack on Titan!

It’s crazy to think back to when I first started learning the language so many years ago, and now millions of people are watching the result of those studies. It’s actually kind of stage fright-y!

Oh yeah, and Legends of Localization is apparently in the running for top professional language blog of 2014 at some language site… even though I write about poop jokes and horse wieners.

Oh, and there was a Polygon article the other day about fan translations, which includes some snippets about MOTHER 3 and some interview bits from Jeffman and me. Check it out here!

So that’s the latest so far! If you wanna keep up with more of my goings-on, follow me on Twitter, where I often post stuff that’s too small to write a whole article about here, like:

– Clyde

New and Current Legends of Localization!

The past few days/weeks have been filled with some interesting and unexpected things for me and Legends of Localization, so I thought I’d share of them! I’ve forgotten about half of them now, so here are just the ones I can remember:


Academic Journal

That’s right – apparently I was mentioned and quoted in an academic journal called The Journal of Internationalisation and Localisation 😯 This was actually from many years ago too, so it’s surprising that I’ve only now heard about it. You can check it out here and you can find the stuff about me by searching for my name.

You know, sometimes when I think back on some of my projects, I just remember, “Oh, that’s the game where I had to translate poop jokes,” so it’s a pretty crazy feeling to be a quotable source for academic writing, heh.


Retro Gamer

I’m also in the latest issue of Retro Gamer magazine! I swear, every time I see pictures of this magazine it makes me want to buy every issue ever. So it’s an honor to be within its pages! You can actually see a quick video preview of the issue here:

Haha, I just realized that the Japanese text next to “Key Figures” means that I’m an “important number” 😛


New Project in the Works

For the past many weeks I’ve been putting together a new project – a comparison of the latest Zelda game for the 3DS. Late last year I finally sat down to play through A Link Between Worlds and started thinking – since I’ve already taken a detailed look at the first Zelda game’s localization, it would be cool to look at the very latest game’s localization too to see how things have changed in all these years. So I’ve been doing just that, and it’s actually turning out to be a lot more fascinating than I expected!

Anyway, I don’t have a timeline for this project yet, but it’s coming along nicely. I originally wasn’t even going to mention it until it was ready, but the main reason is this: if you have any questions or suggestions for stuff I should look into, lemme know! I don’t want to miss anything if I can help it, since it won’t always be easy to go back and check things.

In fact, while playing through both versions of the game and gathering screenshots, I also decided to record video for future reference and to supplement any screenshots I miss. I also decided to start uploading them to YouTube, so if you’re interested in checking out videos of the Japanese and English version of A Link Between Worlds, I’ve started slowly posting them on my YouTube channel here!

When the time comes I’ll be adding these to the appropriate comparison pages too. Be sure to let me know if I’ve missed anything or if I should try not to miss certain things – as of writing this I’m about to get the Master Sword.


Final Fantasy IV

My Final Fantasy IV comparison section has turned into a huge monster over time! But my recent decision to try to do one update a month has made it a lot easier for me to handle, so I’ll probably keep doing it that way for a while. The next update is going to be the Tower of Zot… which means some serious stuff’s about to go down!


AVGN Section Stuff

The other week I posted a new section about Angry Video Game Nerd-related stuff, and it’s actually been one of the most-viewed section of the site since 😯 My aim is to do a new article every couple of weeks; the ones that don’t involve creating comparison videos are surprisingly quick for me to write up, so it’s pretty easy and fun. Next up will be Who Framed Roger Rabbit… ugh.


Xenoblade for Fun, Research, and Health!

Last year I played through Xenoblade, and after some initial frustration it went on to become one of my all-time favorite games. I spent about 150+ hours on it, and about half of those were actually while I was on my exercise bike. I actually mentioned this to some friends and they were like, “Holy crap that’s a great idea, I’m gonna do it too!”

Anyway, I wanted to get back in the swing of things, so I decided the other day to start a new game of Xenoblade. Then I realized, you know, maybe I should record my gameplay for future reference if I ever want to do a comparison project, or if I just want to do tiny mini-articles like this one. So I’ve started recording Xenoblade videos and uploading them too, in what I call a “Let’s Workout” 😛

It’s not especially exciting stuff to watch, but if you’re interested, it’s on my YouTube channel too. Eventually I hope to move on to the Japanese version and record it too, but that won’t be for a while I’m sure. But, again, if you have any suggestions on what I should look out for or what I should try not to miss, let me know!

(Just to be clear, I’m not announcing a Xenoblade comparison, but I’d love to do one someday, which is why I’m recording these videos.)


Man, I know there’s a lot more that I ought to mention, but I can’t remember it right now. But anyway, if you have any info or suggestions or whatever, please share them with me~

Also, after writing all this up, I’m amazed at how I rarely play games how they’re meant to be played anymore – I play them for research purposes and workouts now? Man, what a weirdo.

– Clyde

The Legends of 2013 and the Future of 2014!

It’s almost the end of 2013, so I thought it’d be neat to take a look back and see how the Legends of Localization site has done!

Legends of Localization used to just be a small section of my personal blog, but around March of 2013 I moved it and my separate EarthBound/MOTHER 2 comparison stuff to its own dedicated site. I also started doing smaller, blog-like articles around the middle part of the year – in fact, this is actually my 100th article! Man, I can’t believe I’ve written so many in such a short amount of time 😯

A Look at 2013

For fun, I decided to take a look at the site’s stats for 2013 – originally I wasn’t going to share this stuff, but for the sake of entertainment and future reference, here’s some of the more interesting data!

First, here’s a look at the site’s visitor count over the year:

I forgot what that giant spike was near the end of November, it turns out my article about the tourist lady in Pokemon X/Y hit the Reddit front page or some big sub-Reddit! I was mostly amazed that my site stayed functional; usually in the past Reddit would crash my other sites, even with caching plugins activated!

I’m 100% honestly amazed at how many people visit the site on a regular basis – thanks for always coming and commenting and sending in your interesting questions! It’s also incredibly humbling to think that this dinky little site got enough unique visitors to fill a couple stadiums!

Next, here were the most visited parts of the site:

Holy Giygas I had no idea EarthBound dominated the site so much 😯 I guess the fact that I run EarthBound Central plays a big part in that, but wow. It’s also interesting to see that Pokemon tourist lady post ranked so high!

And lastly, I was curious to see what the most common search engine searches were:

There are a couple eyebrow-raising entries in there, but I’m mostly surprised that so many folks were looking for Strawberry Tofu stuff on the site!

A Look at 2014

I’m having a lot of fun with Legends of Localization, and here are a few things I’d like to accomplish in 2014!

  • Continue to make small blog posts – these keep me from getting burned out on the bigger projects, and I enjoy finding answers to readers’ localization questions! Right now my update queue has about 100 questions in it, so already I got lots to write about 😯A few weeks ago I had a Twitter poll for what I should do my next blog update about, and it went over pretty well. It’s got me wondering if I should do similar things more often, or if there’s some way to help prioritize some questions that readers most want to see answered. I’ll have to figure something out.
  • Finish my thorough article about Vivian in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door – I love this game and this is a common question I get, so I’m aiming for a really clear and informative article.

  • Continue to update the Final Fantasy IV section at the rate of about one section a month, or more if a section is shorter. I feel that’s a good pace for the amount of detail I go into… I just gotta tell myself never to go into such detail again for future projects 😛

  • MOTHER 3 is in a really weird place for me right now, so I don’t know about the MOTHER 3 notes just yet. I’m not going to drop them, though.
  • Figure out how to speed up the comparison process to get a few more full comparison sections finished next year – right now I’m leaning toward something Zelda (a new-ish one probably) and/or Pokemon, but I’m planning to put up a poll later on. For now, if you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments or message on Twitter!
  • Maybe not in 2014, but someday I want to do a detailed look at some of my own early fan translations, as they’re full of funny bloopers and laughably amateur fan translator mistakes. It’s interesting, insightful stuff!

  • Get a new site design for the front page and the blog stuff – what I have now is pretty blegh. But I’m not sure who to ask about this, as being a gamer who understands the site is a big prerequisite, and if I ask around I’ll just get a bunch of marketing guys bugging me.
  • Create a section for really interesting external articles and videos – I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time but haven’t gotten around to it. There’s so much cool stuff here that I’ve never even touched on yet!
  • Create dedicated pages for control code mistakes in official games, games with untranslated lines in them, and more. Readers have been sending me these, so I need to compile them eventually!

  • Earlier this year I tried an experiment with progress meters and donations; I might try to improve that system to help keep things running smoothly and so I can focus more time on the site and update more!
  • I just remembered I still need to come up with a good hashtag for my updates on Twitter and Facebook. #lol obviously isn’t an option… but everything else I can think of sounds pretty wacky and unclear. #legofloc? Sounds like some kind of food or a badly translated wrestling move 😛
  • I’d like to at least publish one Legends of Localization book just to say I’ve done it. I think it’d be a neat experience, and it’d be fun to design!
  • Continue to get in touch with industry veterans and legends, maybe even do interviews with some of them – maybe I could even ask them some reader-submitted stuff!
  • I don’t know how yet, but I’d like to do some sort of videos. I think even just playing games side-by-side might be interesting, or at the very least they’ll be useful for reference. Videos take so much time that whatever I do will have to be something simple and light.
  • Give some more inside looks at how localization works and how you can get into the industry for those who are interested – which seems to be a lot of people, actually!
  • Similarly, for years I’ve wanted to come up with a small site or tiny page or book or something to help out a lot of the people who ask about how to start learning Japanese. If I can find the time, I’d like to finally make this happen!

There are a number of other projects and mini-projects I’d like to get done for Legends of Localization, but I don’t want to make any promises or get any big hopes up yet. I think some readers might already have some ideas about some of them, though, so mum’s the word!

This past year has been a blast for me, and I hope it has been for you too! Here’s to 2014 being even more legendary than 2013!

– Clyde

Attack of the Giant Package from Japan!

A big batch of goodies arrived from Japan today, hooray! Pretty much all of it’s going to be used for Legends of Localization stuff eventually, some sooner than others. Many thanks to Dr. Fedora for being the middleman for it all – it would’ve cost probably twice as much if it weren’t for you, so thanks again!

I used to have a Japanese PS2 that I hardly ever used, but when I went to try it out a few months ago it suddenly died in a bad way 🙁 So unfortunately I can’t check out the Japanese Gitaroo Man just yet.

I thought I could play the Japanese Symphony of the Night on my American PS3, but alas, I was wrong about that – it gives me a lame region error.

So it looks like I’m going to have to bite the bullet and get a Japanese PS2 someday, the only problem is that they don’t manufacture them anymore. Weird modchip/disc swapping stuff is another option too, but that seems like a hassle and unreliable. Emulation is another option too, but my computers aren’t very good and I was never very happy with the state of PS1 emulation the last time I checked.

I dunno – if anyone has any suggestions, let me know!

Finally, thanks to everyone who’s donated so far – my recent progress meter experiment has been pretty interesting and promising, and it’s a big reason I’m able to pick up stuff like this and eventually share the gooey goodness of the info within it all. So thanks a million!

(Seriously, give me a million dollars please)

– Clyde

Legends of Localization Getting Noticed!

As I’ve been slowly putting the Legends of Localization site together over the past few weeks, it’s actually started to get noticed by some people in the gaming press, which is pretty exciting. For example, Gametrailers’ Pop Fiction series featured the 256 worlds of Super Mario Bros. 1 trick that I posted about a while ago:

The guy behind Pop Fiction actually got in contact with me a few weeks beforehand and I provided more info, pics, and such. So it was really cool not only getting mentioned in something, but also playing a tiny part in it 😀

Legends of Localization’s also gotten a few big mentions on Kotaku in the last few weeks, particularly thanks to Jason Schreir’s “Random Encounters” series. One post involved JRPG censorship:

And another article featured the “Mistwalker trick” that I’d posted over on the Final Fantasy IV section:

It’s a lot of work putting together these localization thingies, so it’s cool to see the word slowly getting out little by little. Hopefully I can keep digging up more neat stuff like this as time goes on too 😀

– Clyde

Generosity: Zelda II Famicom Disk and Booklet!

A kind fellow by the name of Eric recently sent me a copy of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the Famicom Disk System for free! Thanks a ton, man! Here’s what he sent:

I’ve never seen a Famicom Disk System manual in person (well, I probably have, but just never paid attention), so I was surprised to see how tiny they were. Here’s a peek inside this one:

And here’s a closer look at the disk – I’m still shocked that the disks didn’t come with protector things on them 😯 Hopefully this disk still works after all these years…

Anyway, Zelda II is an absolute must-do project for me, so there’s no doubt I’ll get to it at some point. I think I want to do a few other small comparison projects first, though. I don’t want to end up focusing entirely on one franchise or series, you know? But I can’t wait to do Zelda II so I can move on to III and beyond. Man, those are gonna be some majorly fun projects too 😀

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out my detailed analysis and comparison of the first Zelda game here!