Journeying Through Mario Odyssey in English and Japanese

Yesterday, Mato & I started our game-cataloging journey through Super Mario Odyssey. We’re playing through both the English and Japanese versions and getting crisp, high-quality PNG screenshots of all the text in the game. We’re also streaming the journey! Join us on Twitch Mondays through Fridays at 5pm AZ time (currently MST), chat with us, and give us tips! We’ll be streaming on that schedule until we finish the game.

And here’s the archive of Day 1 if you missed it:

LoL Prizes at Awesome Games Done Quick 2018

We’ve donated handfuls of Legends of Localization books as Awesome Games Done Quick prizes! You can be entered for a chance to win one if you donate during these runs:

  • [Wednesday] Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga – LoL Book 2: EarthBound + MOTHER 2 Passport
  • [Thursday] Awful Games Done Quick block (Arabian Nights to Deadly Towers) – This be book bad translation, video games!
  • [Saturday] The Legend of Zelda NES – LoL Book 1: The Legend of Zelda + Zelda Passport
  • [Saturday] Final Fantasy IV – press start to translate
  • [Saturday] Zelda: Breath of the Wild – LoL Book 1: The Legend of Zelda + Zelda Passport

The days up there are based on timezones within the US, and definitely check the AGDQ schedule to see when the games will be run in your timezone. Fangamer and their partners have donated even more prizes, so you have plenty of chances to win some free stuff all while donating to the Prevent Cancer Foundation~

I also think it’s funny that the only Final Fantasy game being run is FF4, which was perfect for our “press start” book as a prize 😀

LoL at MAGFest 2018!

Are you at MAGFest this weekend? Every single Legends of Localization book is there too! Stop by the Fangamer booth to pick up a copy or two, if you desire.

I was planning to go to MAG to work at the FG booth, but some things came up, so I’m actually not there. I’m kinda glad, too, after seeing what the weather’s been like on the east coast this week. x_x Stay warm, my MAGFest friends!

Move Over, Dr. Wowee!

Day 2 of mega file organization. Here are some of my folder names: Booze to Coffee, L/R, References, SNK, Soft Hard, Wrong, YES NO.

And here’s the pic that made me laugh the most today:

Let’s Organizing!

A new year is the perfect time to scrub through all your files and put things in order. Right now I’ve taken on the monstrous task of organizing Mato’s big, unruly “Localization Pics” folder. It’s full of images he’s been dumping in there for years, and most have file names like DNw8ZYSWkAEBD55.jpg

I’d like to share my favorite pic from today’s organization session:

Imagine working at Sega and being the one who has to fix this and then tell people about it, haha.

Ahh, the Fresh Smell of a New Year

Happy 2018! Mato & I took a much-needed break over the last 2 weeks to relax and play a lot of video games. I played tons of Stardew Valley on the Switch while he played a bunch of PS4 games. The Switch has become my favorite console of the current generation, just because I can take it anywhere I want. It’s great for married couples who want to play different games at the same time! But if you want to play a Switch game at the same time… well, I guess buy another Switch x_x

Getting back to Legends of Localization, today we had (and are still having) a long meeting about our plans for 2018. Hoo, boy! There’s a lot we want to do. We’ll probably start a new stream project pretty soon. Right now we’re working on redesigning our stream layout.

How was your holiday? 😀

A Neat Find in the Desert

Mato and I had a nice time visiting a little Japanese garden in the middle of the Arizona desert recently. In the gift shop, we found a neat book:


Just a few days previous, we’d seen this book on the anthropomorphism episode of Japanology Plus. And then here it was near where we live!

It’s a goal of mine to utilize the many photos I’ve taken over the past decade by making my own photography book(s). This book is good inspiration and motivation for me!

Japanese Ads for Foreign Consumers – Winter 1958

Mato & I found a set of 4 magazines from between 1958-1960 at an antique store recently. It’s called “Japan Magazine” and it appears to be targeted toward Americans and Europeans living in Japan. The whole magazine is in English and the articles are written by both Japanese and foreigners, and everything is edited by a Japanese staff. That’s probably why there are some silly-sounding phrases here and there.

I picked out some interesting advertisements to share from Volume 1, Issue 3:

Click on the thumbnails for a closer look:

Looks like the focus is on industry and production, with a few sprinkles of creature comforts. That Ajinomoto ad in the style of American 1950s ads is my favorite of the bunch. And given that there’s been a sort of anti-MSG movement in recent years, it’s doubly amusing.

A Pliable Layout

I was going through some old files the other day and found some pages Tony had printed out for me. They’re from when press start to translate was still in mid-development, and it was time for me to take photos. I thought it’d be neat to show a before/after thing:

The top sheet of paper is the in-progress layout, and the blue square with the green X is where the picture was originally going to go. You can see by comparing it to the finished book below it that page layouts almost always change when we add a photograph or some other kind of visual aid.

I’ll make a point to save more of those in-progress pages to share when we’re working on future projects!

Shorts and Guides and Manga, Oh My!

We got a cool package in the mail yesterday:

Talk about your opposites attracting! The Yoshi stuff is more examples of “Yossy” being used as an alternate romanization of Yoshi’s name. And the Yakuza 0 stuff we got because that game is just damn amazing and I need to absorb everything about it.