Pokemon (Series) Archive

Round 2 of the Pokemon Gold/Silver Beta Localization Challenge featured this steel shark thing:

This was a tough one to localize, since I asked people to forget anything they learned about the Gold/Silver Beta before suggesting a new localized name. As pointed out to me by someone on Twitter, The Cutting Room Floor lists this Pokemon’s name asイカリ (ikari). Two kanji are listed next to the name in the notes: 錨 and 怒リ. Both of those characters are pronounced “ikari”, but one character means “anchor” and the other is “rage”. So Anchorage is the perfect name for this guy in English.

Can anyone beat that localization? Here are the top suggestions from Twitter and Instagram!

• Shankor / Shanchor
• Sharchor
• Fangchor
• Shankery
• Megaloadin
• Hainker (from German Hai (shark) and Anker (anchor))
• Anchorbiter
• Hookjaw
• Ankor
• Chain Chomp

Most people suggested some variation of Shanchor, so next time I gotta pick a harder one >:]

A week or so ago on Twitter, I challenged people to come up with a localized English name for this prototype Pokemon from the Gold/Silver demo leak:

I received a lot of good responses! Here’s a short list of some of the most popular ones (based on likes) and also some personal favorites:

• Purrent
• Shockat / Shockitty
• Voltiger
• Amplidude
• Cirkitt
• Ampster
• Chubbs McFattybolt
• Tigawatt
• Wattashock
• Volcub / Circub
• Thunpurr / Zappurr
• Bob
• Amplirunt
• Tiger Electronics

Of course, I ignored the character limit for the best-of list 😉 That was fun, so I might do a few more in the coming weeks.

Mato stayed up late last night working on the latest article about what Japanese fans think of the Pkmn G/S Spaceworld leak. He posted a possible thumbnail in the work chat and said “i tried but this is the best I can do 🙁 ” and asked for me or Tony to improve it. Here’s the pic Mato posted:

And then Tony, being a professional graphic designer and a lover of all things font, came up with this before I even woke up!

Mato & I are very grateful to have Tony on our team~~

English keyboards are used to type non-English languages all the time. I remember when I knew nothing about how people typed Japanese stuff into computers. The topic could probably get its own full LoL article sometime but basically it’s crazy and you can type words in a bunch of different ways to reach the same spelling. For example, here’s how you can type Pikachu’s Japanese name with some English keyboards depending on your setup:

I actually only came across that when I decided “maybe I should see if other names like Yoshi have weird alternate spellings in Japanese” and then found Pikatyu being used on rare occasion. I’d love to make a gallery of alternate spellings of beloved characters someday.

Here’s a little blast from the past. In this February 1998 issue of UK magazine Computer and Video Games, I found an article about that Porygon episode of Pokemon that caused some kids in Japan to have seizures. We know now that it was caused by rapid flashes of red and blue lights from one of Pikachu’s attacks (read more here), but this article was written before they knew what sent so many kids to the hospital.

It’s interesting because Japanese TV networks started banning the show in response, and Tokyo TV threatened to cancel it outright if the cause wasn’t determined. Imagine a world where the Pokemon anime ended in the middle of its first season and never came back!