Final Fantasy IV (Game) Archive

About a year or two before I started working with Fangamer to make Legends of Localization books, I considered making books on my own. Anyone who knows me knows that my design senses are poop though, as this mega alpha first test prototype experiment PDF shows:

• Mega early prototype test thing PDF download

I think I was just seeing how the current LoL site would look if converted straight into book format. I’m glad I decided it was a bad idea. I think I also calculated it out and a Final Fantasy IV LoL book in this sort of format would’ve been around a thousand pages or more anyway 😯

We’re using some purposefully glitchy pics of Final Fantasy IV for added flair in our upcoming book. Here are a couple of neat glitch pics I took the other day!

Part of my job is to buy things for photography.  I received a package today…

 

Progress on the Funky Fantasy 4 book is chuggin’ along. Here are some pics from today’s meeting:

Tony always prints and staples together the latest version of whatever book we’re working on. It really helps to envision the final product.

Zuuly butted in several times today seeking attention. She wanted to sleep in my chair, but I wasn’t budging.

We also ordered some gorp.

 

Mato & Tony have been hard at work writing and designing the Funky Fantasy 4 book these past few weeks. Here’s a peek at a page printed on our weird office printer that will definitely change by the time the book is finished:

We also need to figure out what to call this book. “Funky Fantasy IV” doesn’t get the point across very easily! D:

Working on the Funky Fantasy book got me thinking about this old video.

Three years ago, Mato drew pictures of the entire plot of Final Fantasy 4. And then he had me watch this video and narrate what was happening. And I barely remembered the plot of Final Fantasy 4 back then.

Please enjoy.

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:

• A quick look at an often-missed line in Final Fantasy II/IV
• A look at how to kill Pols Voice enemies in the Japanese 3DS version of The Legend of Zelda

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

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:

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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.

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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” 😛

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.)

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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

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

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