Most games undergo a fair amount of alteration before they're released in various markets internationally whether that's censorship in an attempt to make something more palatable or acceptable for a given culture or to comply with government regulations in some parts of the world, or to rework the dialogue and plot to compensate for untranslatability between languages. There are also instances of companies trying, but not quite hitting the mark, such as the script for the infamous Zero Wing or arguably unneeded content removal or other forms of censorship such as certain character customization options in Xenoblade Chronicles X. I mean... they see what we watch on TV, right? Is a bust size slider important to the game? No. Is it really necessary to take out before releasing it? I don't see why it is. Then there are complete rewrites of scrips as with Samurai Pizza Cats on the NES where the localization is arguably great, but the original content of the game was lost.


So what, in your opinion, makes for a good or bad localization? What are your opinions on game censorship or reworking for international audiences?

In my opinion, the only things that should be altered in the localization process is the dialogue (and that strictly for translation purposes), and anything that may be required by law, or maybe if the rating board for a given country is considerably more strict on certain things and leaving something will bump the rating up higher than the intended demographic (say from T to M) because that's a big problem.

Content should never be removed because it's less acceptable or some such thing, because that decision is up to the gamer. Besides, if the gamer wants that game, it's likely that they want it because of what it is already, or what it's based off of. Changing that alters the product and gives them something that they didn't want in the end. Besides, the experience should be universal so as to maintain the singularity of the experience with fellow gamers worldwide.


Censorship is something that I am strongly opposed to, especially if you mean the sense of the company itself censoring things in order to make it more acceptable in a given country. So long as the alterations are not legally required, and leaving them undone doesn't bump the rating too high, they should not be made. Games are art, and altering art so someone else will like it better is a crime against the creative minds behind it. I mean they wouldn't want me painting their car a different color while they slept because it was more pleasing to my eye, would they?

Just seeing the 'Zero Wing' game mentioned reminded me of my all-time favourite Internet meme. In Vizzed terms, I guess all your Viz are belong to Davideo07

Some things do get lost in translation especially in earlier games, such as Cammy's ending in SSF 2 (which is completely messed up, in the Japanese text it says Cammy is a clone of Bison, while in the US/EU version it states Cammy was in love with Bison). Heck, a mistranslation supposedly managed to inspire the creation of Akuma (the infamous Sheng Long quote). There are also jokes that Japanese people would get in games sometimes that get lost in US/EU translations.

Speaking of which, I find NOE to have more competent translations than NOA, in terms of Nintendo.