Another fact about Marco Rodrigues, after changed to Marco Rodrigues he was RodrigueZ..but here in Brazil, nornally was with S...then recente Marco RodrigueS with S.
My fav little thing to point out to people who don't know about the Boxer/Claw/Dictator switch around is that boxer being M. Bison is also why all his moves are buffalo themed.
Yea he's American, where Bison roam, changing his name made no sense, even Mike Tyson just learnt about the character being based on him quite recently and he was fine with it. Vega(Dictator) is not American, he's from an unknown region but he's always based in Thailand so he's likely Thai or Asian.
My theory with Kushnood Butt is the localization team liked the name Marco Rodriguez but couldn't argue with the higher ups, so they came up with the worst name they could think of, believing the higher ups would stick with Marco when they saw how horrible the alternative was. But, like a typical executive who fails upwards, they liked the horrible alternative that was never intended to actually be used.
Also these kind of localization decisions were even worse in the 90s overall, because there were not solid standards. And in the case of SNK, their level was below the average of that time... If we remember that all SNK games had bad translation in the arcades.
I heard they just read the name backwards in Japanese but that makes no sense. There should be an alternate character mode in the new game where you can unlock The Butt, like Mr. karate.
In the case of Talbain, Rikuo and Raptor, it's the other way round: they were named by Capcom USA first and then had their names changed for the Japanese release. Talbain is probably a reference to the Wolfman's surname Talbot, and Rikuo was named after Ricuo Browning, one of the actors who played the Creature From the Black Lagoon. What I wanna know is what's the deal with Cammy's special move names? Why all the flip-flopping between Spiral Arrow/Cannon Drill and Cannon Spike/Thrust Kick?
@@megapussi It's not random. He has a mechanic where he gets better versions of his charge moves if he presses the last direction and the button at the exact same time. He says "somersault" when it's not a perfect input, and "flash kick" when it is. The same goes for Sonic Boom: he'll say "sonic boom" if it isn't a perfect input, and "perfect" if it is.
@@TaimMeichI think you both are right, it changed a bit in previous games for seemingly no reason. But by SF6 he uses both names, SSK for the generic one, and Flash Kick for the perfect timed one. It's likely why Sonic Boom has no different name but he just says "Perfect" since it was perfectly timed Sonic Boom and it always went by that name when Guile uses the move.
It's interesting that Capcom always just rolled with the SFII name change and didn't change it back. The big comparable 90's situations, Sega with the Robotnik name in Sonic, Nintendo with the Princess Toadstool name in Mario, both had the company change it back, *technically* canonizing the American rename but only rarely actually utilizing them. Capcom meanwhile chose to just shrug their shoulders and let it rock forever.
I feel like if they had switched back with boxer, claw, and dictator, they'd be obligated to do it with their other games, and there's no way in hell I'm calling Protoman "Blues".
@@nicksrandomreviews and I personally think Rockman is a terrible name. I prefer Capcom's US names. Especially: Bionic Commando > Hitler's Resurrection: Top Secret
Kyo and Athena interaction in SvC is wild Kyo: "A battle with a babe? I must be in Heaven! Athena: "Don't let your hormones go wild. You don't want to peak too soon, right? Kyo: "When it comes to battle, I last a long time."
khushnood butt is a pakistani name. what i've heard from people is that back in the 90s the biggest importer of neo geo in pakistan was a guy called khushnood butt who was apparently buddies with the higher ups at snk.
@@qazifaran really? I know SNK games were popular in the Middle East and places adjacent to it, so it could make sense. I mean, Kim Kaphwan got his name from the president of a South Korean company called Viccom which distributed SNK games in South Korea, and it seems Kim's sons, Jae Hoon and Dong Hwan, were named after the real Kim Kaphwan's brothers
@@pablocasas5906 art of fighting 1, 2, samsho 2,4 kof 94 to 2003, puzzle bobble and other snk games were extremely popular in pakistan. we used to have local tournaments back in the day.
Khusnood Butt was a Neo Geo promoter and importer in Pakistan back in 90s, Actually there are two guys Khusnood and Babar Iqbal there were the Big Shot promoters of arcade games, one can see Babar Iqbal name written on a wall of one of the stages in KOF 99
Yo seriously dude I was one of those guys that thought you guys spoke Spanish in Brazil until I came across this song called Zona de perigo by Leo Santana I was trying to learn the lyrics and pronunciation cause I thought it sounded smooth as fuck 😄🤟🏽
@Pizone81 glad you found a song you liked. To be honest I do not know this artist, had to Google it haha. If you want a recommendation, take a look at Águas de Março by Tom Jobim :)
That's one of the few innovation highlights of the game. That kind of personalized dialogue system didn't exist back then. The some old Samurai Showdown games and Art of Fighting have dialogues but they are simpler and only in arcade mode.
All SNK arcade games have bad translation, so it's tough going through all their issues and pick the best cases to show in a video. Not to mention some controversial cases like the English version of Samurai Showdown 4 writing the "k.o" screen as "Victoly", that must have some racist tone.
@@carlosaugusto9821 at least some of the English translations are kind of creative, SNK also included Spanish and Portuguese translations in various of their Neo Geo games but they obviously read like direct translations of the English ones, like if Google Translate existed back in the day. The worst example is in Art of Fighting 3 where sometimes Spanish and Portuguese get mixed into nonsensical phrases
Its awkward but at least it makes sense. Even back when spunky means at best courageous. At worse its a euphemism for bodily fuilds. I still don't know what Dweebenheimer means though. (Kyo win Quote KOF98)
@@carlosaugusto9821 Sounds more like the translator was Japanese and didn't notice the difference since R and L are interchangeable in Japanese. The demo version of Mario Kart on the DS has a truck on one of the courses written with "Flesh" on the side and the full release has "Fresh" written instead. My favorite go-to translation issue was taking the Norse goddess Verthandi and Japan translating it to "Belldandy" in Ah! MY Goddess.
Exactly. "Engrish" was incredibly common back in the days when the budget for a localization was basically; "You have a cousin who took that language in High School, right?"
One thing that gets lost in translation with Akuma's name change is his actual and thematic relation to Gouken, as the two are brothers and have similar sounding names, which I always took as a nod to how they represent two opposing philosophies of martial arts
Thing about this is that his name has always been Gouki in Japanese... Capcom didn't really start adding to the lore until SF4 I'd say. So you're correct but I highly doubt they had it planned this way from the beginning. A lot of what they have done has been in response to the fans. Same with Netherrealm and MK.
@@neah2k11 Just cuz he wasnt playable in a game until sf4 doesnt mean thats where his backstory started. Their relationship is directly referenced in akumas sf alpha ending. There are plenty of other comics/ movies/ etc that explore it. Like no, Gouki Gouken and Goutetsu isnt a random coincidence lol
Yeah, SF4 when Gouken became playable is when they should've done the switch to Gouki, but they didn't for whatever reason. I wish you could switch his name in options or something.
@@neah2k11More like Capcom didn't start acknowledging lore in-game until SF4. SF has _always_ had tons of lore that was never acknowledged in-game. It was always found in JPN mooks and arcade magazines (as far as official sources ar concerned), so theJPN have known this stuff for decades that Westerners only found out about many years later. For example, it took until SF6 - released in 2023 - to acknowledge in-game that Guile's wife and Ken's wife are sisters, which has been a fact since 1991! Gouken's backstory has been mainly fleshed out since at least 1995. Note that Gouken = Great Bear and Gouki = Great Ogre. I forget what Goutetsu translates into. SFIV retconned Gouken's death battle with Gouki, and Gouken's daughter (never officially named, merely referred to as "Ojo-san/Little Miss") seems to have been lost to the aether, but otherwise, old lore still exists prior to SFIV. Just that SFIV started revealing that lore to non-JPN speakers.
One that I always thought was interesting was Sodom's win quotes in SFZ and SFZ2... they're all bizarre english phrases like "DIE JOB DEATH CAR" and "DO MORE SWIM A SEND". His gimmick is that he's an American guy obsessed with Japanese culture, but he's getting it all wrong, and mispronouncing everything ("die job death car" = daijoubu desu ka? = Are you okay?). None of that would have made any sense outside of Japan, so they just gave him generic win quotes, and basically all his characterization is lost on a western audience.
Even the kanji on his chest is wrong. He's also another example of a localization name change. His alternate name is "Katana." Apparently this change was only made for the SNES versions of Final Fight and Alpha 2.
@@ShoRyuBarbie I think the change to "Katana" might've been due to Nintendo of America censorship, due to Sodom being too close to Sodomy for their liking.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Ryus win quote from SF2 about beating Sheng Long…because of that bad translation, we all thought there was some secret character that we could unlock
The Joseph win quote I'm fine with because I feel if Joseph lived in modern day he'd be the type of guy to reference internet memes or pop culture in casual conversation.
Speaking of Tatsunoko, it's always surprised me that Speed Racer wasn't in that game. Maybe he's not as popular in Japan, not sure, but Speed is definitely BY FAR the most well-known Tatsunoko character in the US.
@@Mari_Izuconsidering he's more or less a racing James Bond, I figure he could use martial arts and guns as part of his moveset, with the Mach 5 being used for specials and supers
@@Mari_Izu ergo, they found a way to make a non-fighter a fighter thanks to exploring a more creative approach, even if he ends up stinking in the general meta
@@Mari_Izuthey didn't want to pull a Captain Falcon/Jin Saotome either...like, that's really the only option...and have his car in his intro and supers...oh, y'know what I'd've done for his Lv3? I'd have Spritle and Chim-Chim exit the trunk of the Mach 5 and get into some shenanigans which somehow damage the opponent.
Worth noting with Tatsunoko vs Capcom that even though the genie was deleted as a character for international release, multiple new characters were added on the Tatsunoko side like Joe the Condor, Yatterman-2 and Tekkaman Blade.
@@ardidsonriente2223 Plus, he's clearly visually modeled after South American military dictators. Bison just sounds thoroughly wrong for somebody like him.
@@twincast2005 I think he is closer to the chinese-japanese "evil general" concept, with just a bit of south american and south asian dictator style background. The original inspirations for Bison were two japanese military villains from old manga: Washizaki from Riki-Oh an Yasunori Kato from Teito Monogatari (Vega still suits him better than Bison.)
13:50 In Polish, icecream maker or icecream machine is used for girls (or generally people) who provide... mouth-related services for men for money. So Geese's insult game is very on point.
I grew up in Japan, and Akuma sounds a little too simple and lame. Literally just devil or demon (aku = evil, ma = demon), it's very on the nose; there's an existing manga/anime character called Akuma-kun as well. Gouki (gou = great, ki = demon) however, that's a word that you don't hear often in Japan, and it sounds very cool. The kanji (Chinese characters) are a lot cooler too. It was more interesting when things didn't match up, but those days are long gone. You just can't have that air of mystery anymore because of the instantaneous nature of the internet. Overall I think it's better that it matches up since the Street Fighter names are still messed up to this day, we don't need that anymore, especially if they become a global phenomenon.
@lawnbb12372 yup, I'm sure that's why they changed it. It's way easier to say for English speakers too. Nowadays developers will choose a name that sounds good in all regions first so they don't run into this problem.
I couldn’t believe it the first time I heard his name was Gouki as an american kid, it sounds so cutesy to us like a name you give a pet or small child
@@LeonaLeZard to put in into context, a young woman that teases and takes advantage of men by manipulation are called "koakuma" (小悪魔), which literally translates to "little devil." Words like these make it sound less threatening, in addition to TV shows and movies that commonly use the word. Meanwhile "gouki" is never used in any context in daily life, so it's very alien even for native Japanese speakers. But yeah the reverse is true too, Japan uses a lot of English words in their games to make it sound Western, but they're not very cool when brought over. Sol Badguy comes to mind.
You DID miss one in Darkstalkers Missing from Vampire Savior, along with Pyron and Donovan is the aztec robot thing, Huitzil, who gets renames in the US version as Phobos. It gets double points because when they lose a match, the little girl that accompanies them walks over and calls out "stand up, Huitzil!"
@@BBHood217 Oh no... fake fan has been exposed =P I was sure it was this way precisely because of the voice line (since the spoken lines are spoken in Japanese): "Tatte, Huitzil!" But someone mentioned in a different comment that the US names were allegedly the actual original ones this time around and the JP was the changed one so could be part of that? Makes it extra funny, for sure
Even stranger, the voice line mentioning the jiangshi outright says "Lei-Lei" instead of "Hsien-Ko". Why use her JP name but then use Huitzil's US name?
I just found out about this today. Back in the early 2000's, I downloaded a rom for Garou and just assumed that "Kushnood Butt" was a quirk from a hacked rom, and since the game looked normal other than that, I kept the rom and played it for years and years. To hear that this ridiculous name swap was an official action taken by PlaymoreSNK is just bizarre.
To be honest, I can't imagine using Balrog to refer to "Claw", Vega kind of makes more since he's supposed to be Spanish, Vega is a Spanish surname 10:16 I'd also add that Garou: Mark of the Wolves is also a rare instance when the Japanese title was kept for the international release, despite the fact Fatal Fury was the international title, in Japan the series is called Garou Densetsu, which means "Legend of the Hungry Wolves", there's data in the games files which indicates that SNK perhaps wanted to call it Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves and now the latest game in series is called Fatal Fury again. 8:13 I guess it was the rights holders, the Genie Family was a somewhat popular anime which got dubbed into various languages, there was even a reboot that came out some years ago
Balrog is the name of big demonic monster from Lord of the Rings, of course it first for a guy who dresses like horror movie villain more than a guy who looks like Raul Julia being named M. Bison, while guy who looks like M. Tyson being named something else!
If you were Gandalf the Gray and crossing the Bridge of Khazad-dum, which one is closer to being the Balrog of Morgoth: the boxer or the guy with the mask and claw? And both work for... Shadow-loo... they went back to the shadow....
I recall someone saying Marvel didn't want Norimaro in the US version because they were afraid people would think he was a Marvel character. I was always baffled at Capcom changing not one, but three Darkstalkers names to be even harder to pronounce in English. I've never heard any two people say Rikuo, Huitzil or Hsien-Ko the same way.
@@shenglongisback4688 yet he appeared as licensed character in some wrestling games... Real Tyson, I mean, as he was a ref in WWE... at least I THINK he was for real in some older ones, because in modern times they replace him with a generic ref and keep his moves, entrance, winning animation as "boxer"
IIRC, Marco Rodriguez getting his name changed had more to do with them thinking he’d get confused with UFC fighter Ricco Rodriguez. Why they chose to rename him what they did over here in the west…that I don’t have an explanation for.
The first time I played Garou was on emulator decades ago. When I scrolled over and saw a character named BUTT I asbolutely HOWLED WITH LAUGHTER! *WHY IS HIS NAME BUTT?!* I was so tickled.
@5:25 An MMA fighter named Ricco Rodriguez, actually. Regarding Darkstalkers, IIRC, the western character names are actually the originals. @11:51 Can't imagine any interpretation of how this would be fortunate.
2:33 It was because naming "M.Bison" as a "Boxer" may offend "Mike Tyson" the Real Boxer Champion, but yes, Switching names instead of Re-naming is a stupid idea that caused confusion through decades that the players on forums have chosen to call them by their Visual Outfits (Boxer/Claw/Dictator(Warlord) rather than their JP/EN names.
Martial Champion had an Egyptian character named Titi (short for Nefertiti, the first female pharaoh), but whomever at Konami didn't get the memo that it means... uh... something else, so she swapped names with the jiangshi character Chaos in the American release
Old SNK translations are unhinged, and I''m all for it lol. It's a gold mine of great lines. Story is, that it was a rush job on the cheap and nobody even proof read it after, so they went with whatever the translators came up with, and boy did they ever came up with some bangers :D
Yes, there was a whole carefree vibe in american localizations back then. Everything was so new in the industry and there was a mix of "lacking professional standards" with actually "not take the work seriously", probably because of the status of videogames at that time. And if we went outside the fg genre, even some genres that put much more importance to the words like RPGs, many had issues in translation or localization. Sometimes the translation was toned down on purpose, reflecting the values of the 90s American culture and the general view about the games being "kids hobby". And we know that japanese entertainment "for kids" is much more hardcore than whatever was made in the US (like DBZ is officially rated for young teens in Japan).
Cammy's special moves in Japan were consistently Cannon Spike and Spiral Arrow, but only in the Japanese version of “X-Men vs SF” was Spiral Arrow changed to Cannon Drill, which was very strange to the Japanese why it was changed. deepL was used.
What was up with this being made private and re-appearing? Anyway, AFAIK the issue with Hakushon Daimaou is that his show (The Genie Family, 1969-1970 with a remake in 2020) actually had a short run in Italy of all places, but during that run they had sold the "international Rights" to the Italian company since...I mean, it wasn't exactly a major show with much potential outside of Japan, right? But thing is, the Italian company still holds the rights to him outside of Japan and they wanted WAY more money than Tatsunoko/Capcom was willing to pay for his appearance in the game, so they removed him.
Something I found cool about the bison/vega/balrog swap is in Street Fighter 6 where M.Bison's spraypaint icon, unlike the other characters being their names, is just the Shadaloo logo. Cool way of bypassing localisation and making it represent the character regardless of which name he goes by
Yeah, I'm baffled why they couldn't simply have renamed the Boxer to something like "Buffalo Bill" in the English version and left Claw and Dictator alone. This was the Wubba-wubba era though, so I guess it was really just a free for all in terms of text.
My only guess is that their names that appear on screen during matches were sprites rather than dynamically created with text and a font, so it was easier to just switch the graphics around rather than create a new one.
I remember reading somewhere that they weren't worried about legal action from Mike Tyson specifically, but from Nintendo of America who had a deal with him to use his name. I think that was just speculation, but since we don't know either way...
15:37 I prefer the weird localization differences. To be more specific, the changes to character names. It feels more personalized when different regions use different names. In fact, for some reason I find joy in knowing that I call Dictator “M. Bison”, whereas others call him “Vega”.
That specific case is very hard to defend though, it's one of the worst ones because it makes everything more confusing for no good reason. Even today we can find some new players confused about the names when they get to see any japanese source about SF, which is easier to happen thanks to social media, TH-cam, and translation tools. Like, sometimes a Japanese video will have an English title (full or partially), that automatically makes it more accessible for a curious western viewer to click, meanwhile that same video would probably be ignored if it was the old internet and japanese content was strictly written in japanese.
@ Fine. I’ll give you three different cases for my own amusement. Akuma sounds cooler than Gouki. Hsien-Ko sounds cooler than Lei-Lei, and Khushnood Butt is way more funny than Marco Rodrigues. Edit: Plus, not only has the SF community already come up with a workaround (Boxer, Claw, Dictator), but Capcom acknowledged this in a potential lore drop. These two facts combined leads to this localisation anomaly having enough interesting history behind it that I alone am perfectly content with it. Edit 2: I love how @‘ing people doesn’t work anymore. ☺️
Actually, since Darkstalkers was a collaboration between the American and Japanese branches of Capcom, the english character names were actually the originals and they were changed for the Japanese market.
Fyi... Marco Rodriguez doesn't sound Brazilian either (our language is Portugese, not Spanish). But yeah, Butt is a lot worse lol And you are 100% correct, the simple change from Rodriguez to Rodrigues DOES make it sound more Brazilian. Congratulations on having such a specific type of knowledge I am impressed!
The weird thing is i'm Dutch and I didn't knew a single TVC character from the Tatsunoko side. However I'm a 90's kid and I knew Hakushon because we had a cartoon on Fox Kids named Bob in the bottle. yet they removed him =(
Couldn't they have changed him to Kushnood Rodrigues? It's so strange from an SNK outsider's perspective. I also feel like I remember hearing that the Darkstalker character names were picked in English first by the Japanese team and then they made the Japanese version names. I've really come to appreciate localization recently(despite the Yugioh TCG taking MⱯLICE away from us which is an actual crime). While some localizations are completely unrelated to the original context or jokes the don't land or age, a lot of them are quite impressive for the idea that the team is trying to get across. Specifically that Dan win quote is a great example. "My dad could beat you, and he's dead." is such a perfect line for creating the personality of Dan Hibiki that we know today. He's jokey, he passes his patheticness onto you by saying his dead dad could beat you, and it also shows his reverence for his dad as well as that his dad is dead which makes you wonder what happened. I really hope that localization doesn't get thrown out for entirely direct translations. Aside from jokes in Japanese that just don't translate to English, if it fits perfectly into our cultural mind you won't know there was a change. Yokai Watch 1 and 2 are obviously set in Japan if you look at the environment but they did such a good job at localization that you could absolutely believe that it is a sort of America. 10-Cent Gum just hits so much harder than 10-Yen Gum would. When Yokai Watch 3 changed it to Humdrum Gum because Springdale(Japan) used American $ dollars but BBQ(the actual America that you move to) has BBQ Bucks, it just added to the other problems I had with the game. Theoretically backing yourself into a corner and not doubling down with your localization, making changes to disrupt what you have set up is worse than just leaving it unchanged.
To be fair, translating Japanese directly to English produces a lot of weird sounding stilted and sometimes nonsensical phrases, as was seen in some of those win quotes. When your translating something like that you really have to try and find the essence of what is being said and then re-word it in an way and person speaking English would say it, and sometimes it's not really clear what is trying to be said in Japanese to start with so your just making guesses. You also gotta remember that just like English the Japanese have a lot of slang and puns and meme jokes that don't make any sense outside that culture so when your translating that stuff a lot of time they end up just putting in their own jokes instead.
Some of the SF2 changes worked. Balrog sounds it denotes a massive, hulking sort of fighter, and Vega is an actual Spanish surname. I can't really defend M. Bison for a serious master villain, though.
13:30 the quote is Ryu acknowledging Elena's energetic aura in both the english and japanese. If you know about the lore, Elena is a character who is in tune with nature whenever she fights which the quote Ryu says is in reference to that, theres nothing sexual there.
the genie character was popular in Italy when they aired the anime in the '80s. I always found strange how the USA fet far less anime than the rest of the world.
Hakushon Daimao (The Genie Family) was also dubbed into Latin American Spansih twice and we even got the recent remake. Though interestingly, the only Tatsunoko character featured in the game that never had an official release in the U.S. was Ippatsuman, series like Gatchaman, Tekkaman were dubbed, or at least had other anime projects licensed like Casshern Sins and Karas. Even Gold Lightan had their toys officially licensed in the U.S. But yeah, the U.S. missed a lot of anime from the 1960s to the early 1990s, unlike what was shown in Europe and Latin America. Perhaps it was due to cultural differences, content or didn't want foreign shows to compete against domestic productions
I think his Japanese name is a reference to the popular wrestling anime, Tiger Mask. Though I think Tizoc is also called just "The Griffon" in Japanese
@@Jackrost01 I remember watching a video about Mark of the Wolves made by the YT channel, Gamer Cultr, and they mentioned that Tizoc's name changes was done because the American branch of SNK thought noone outside of Japan would get the Tiger Mask reference and they decided to change his name in reference to an Aztec Emperor named Tízoc. Kind of similar to what happened with Phobos/Huitzil from Darkstalkers
Changing japanese names in the japanese version to another japanese word in the english version was always weird to me. Even worse when the japanese name is english and was changed to japanese for the english edition. In yu-gi-oh theres a monster called cyclops in japanese. One of the first cards ever made. In english they changed it to hitotsu-me giant which basically means one eyed giant.
Unfortunately there are a lot of woke activists who are for whatever reason in charge of a lot of media localization, and as is to be expected, they have purposefully made massive unwarranted changes to original source material, for no other reason than to push an agenda. Multiple have publicly admitted to doing this. These people are the reason why audiences will have very little sympathy if/when localizers are replaced with *AI.* They deserve unemployment.
I think Gouki -> Akuma was actually a pretty smart move. Gouki when reading the meaning of its kanji (豪鬼) literally means Great Demon but keeping the same name would lose that idea of a clearly demonic name. Akuma makes the reference much clearer for the rest of the world.
Khushnud butt is a Pakistani name, Butt is actually a caste of people usually from Kashmir region, i don't know what connection it made with a latino fighter though 😅
About the licensing. From my experience Japan has two modes: Japan and other. So I wouldnt be surprised if a lot of the national companies dont even have a licensing system set up for overseas so everyone just shrugged their shoulders and moved on.
13:31 the Japanese version is also suggestive. “Bad girls who kick aren’t liked” sounds like someone saying “guys don’t like it when girls fight back” (if you know what I mean)
No that's just your interprentation. At worst you could interpret it as "Go back to the kitchen". But to me it sounds like a very typical anime "No one will want to marry you if you keep acting like a tomboy" line. Not great but not really suggestive.
Its not saying kick. Its talking about bad manners/womanly "mindfulness" of her legs. So basically Alex thinks she shows off her no-no square too much. (Like how shes posed in the defear screen)
As a brazilian I can confirm there are a lot of weird names here, from all nationalities, but never in my life I've met someone named Butt, lmao. My only guess is that the localizers knew about the anual carnival events in Brazil, where women dance on the streets with very revealing clothing, and they went "Oh look, brazilians like butts! Lets name this character Butt!", so stupid, lol. It never offended me or anything, it's just that it's so silly, how do you even react to that?
Though other Brazilian characters in SNK have names that doesn't sound very portuguese, like Richard Meyer and Bob Wilson. I mean, it wouldn't be uncommon to have a Brazilian character with a more English sounding name, but at least they could have called them Ricardo and Roberto. Same thing with Sean in Street Fighter III, though in SFV the rest of his family have more Brazilian sounding names. Then there's Eddy Gordo in Tekken Also, I remember that in August of last year a Japanese Light Novel writer got into a bit of controversy when he named a Native Brazilian character Latina as a given name, he admitted he used AI to name the character
For the Boxer/Claw/Dictator switch, I remember seeing somewhere that they felt "Vega" would not sound intimidating enough to American audiences to fit the dictator.
I heard that too but only after the Mike Tyson worries. Supposedly what happened was they had already recorded all voicelines, and they wern't gonne send a guy back to the booth to say 3 names. Remember Street Fighter 2 wasn't /Street Fighter 2/ yet. So they decided switching the names was the cheap easy alternative. Personally I think it'd have been easier to just change Boxers name to whatever and then not play any of the bosses names as the have special status. Have like a horror stinger play. You know in case the game becomes a runaway global hit.
@@Mari_Izu Huh. You know what I went back and checked and there aren't even any voice clips for any character names in that game at all, it appears. You are correct.
One thing I learned recently is how frequently character-specific winquotes in Capcom games weren't translated, including in games like 3rd Strike. Thankfully there's people who have translated them nowadays, but it's a shame they're not in the game proper.
I've heard from Thougi's Street Fighter Retrospective that the Capcom American Localization Team heard the name "Gouki" and thought that it was a weak name for such a powerful fighter, so they chose "Akuma" instead.
Localization change back then are weird and most of the time I don't like them, it seems like they just change for the sake of change just because they can instead of having real reason. I'm fine with them when they have proper reasons behind it, but if not I'm really against them. Happened in so many cases I can't even count, Digimon and Yugioh are among the worst of these.
Additional fuel for the Tyson theory: In CvS1's Japanese version, the announcer says the characters' names as you select them. What does he say for the boxer, you ask? MIKE BISON! Concrete proof the M always stood for Mike.
But that's actually known for a long time. It was Mike Bison, and Capcom US was afraid of keeping that name. That feeling might be fair, but the questionable part in my opinion was the decision of the name shuffling, that only resulted in making things confusing whenever someone checks the original game.
Call me insane, but I think at points localization today can be worse than it used to. Because back then bad localization was a result of poor communication between parties, and localizers not familiar with Japanese. Today you have dedicated professionals who are very knowlegeable of Japanese and have access to the people who make the product they're localizing, but make questionable decisions on purpose because they either don't like what's in the source material, or feel their vision is better than the original.
Wow, we actually had the Daimaō TV show on German TV when I was little. Didn't know he's in a fighting game too. (Also, thanks for opening that Darkstalkers wound again.^^)
8:30 Another game where a voiceline got removed: CvS 2. In the NA versions, Rugal doesn't call out "Genocide Cutter!" when using that move, he just grunts or something. I guess they were playing it safe with the word "genocide" but it's kind of a bummer. 12:03 There's an extra option: canonize both sets of names. Not always easy but I like this option. It happened to Charlie Nash from SF. His original name was Nash, but in America it was changed to Charlie because Nash wasn't "American-sounding" or something. Eventually they kept Charlie as his first name and Nash as his last name. Also, another fun localization story (take with a grain of salt, I forgot the source): the reason Ken has a last name is because Capcom USA had to make one up. They wanted to license Street Fighter toys, but of course, there was already another company making toys of a blond guy named Ken. They gave SF Ken the last name "Masters" just to distinguish him.
I'll never understand why they chose to swap THREE characters around in SFII to make it EXTRA confusing. They could have gave him a new name entirely like with Akuma/Gouki.
The Akuma rename kinda ended up hitting them in the butt when they later added Gouken to the game and named his and Akumas master Goutetsu. So Gouki, Gouken, Goutetsu, there's a theme to the names that just exist in the english version.
Not all modern games keep universal names for characters. For instance, in Granblue Fantasy Versus, if you have japanese voicelines and english texts, you'll get confused by the announcer calling Ladiva as "Festiva", or Seox as "Sheesh" xd
It's very obvious that boxer was named Mike Bison... It's like naming a football player C. Bonaldo.... I guess they didn't want to rename him to Vega for whatever reason, so did the three-way swap. Balrog is a name of a monster from Lord of the Rings, so it made sense for masked claw guy.
M. Bison also was originally Mike from Street Fighter 1 as well. With the name change in 2, they also became 2 different characters. All to avoid a lawsuit. Balrog and Mike even meet each other in the SFV arcade endings.
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m=master
they've gotta be paying you the big bucks for this one
Another fact about Marco Rodrigues, after changed to Marco Rodrigues he was RodrigueZ..but here in Brazil, nornally was with S...then recente Marco RodrigueS with S.
Don’t forget hutzuil/ Phobos from darkstalkers
My fav little thing to point out to people who don't know about the Boxer/Claw/Dictator switch around is that boxer being M. Bison is also why all his moves are buffalo themed.
lol, i never noticed his moves were like that.
And the key point of his moveset are fast dashing attacks and a headbutt (throw). In the beginning he only had the dash attacks.
Yea he's American, where Bison roam, changing his name made no sense, even Mike Tyson just learnt about the character being based on him quite recently and he was fine with it.
Vega(Dictator) is not American, he's from an unknown region but he's always based in Thailand so he's likely Thai or Asian.
...shit
My theory with Kushnood Butt is the localization team liked the name Marco Rodriguez but couldn't argue with the higher ups, so they came up with the worst name they could think of, believing the higher ups would stick with Marco when they saw how horrible the alternative was. But, like a typical executive who fails upwards, they liked the horrible alternative that was never intended to actually be used.
My dumb theory, that doesn't contradict yours, is the localization team went as far as making a drinking game out of his renaming process.
This is so stupid that must be the real reason.
Also these kind of localization decisions were even worse in the 90s overall, because there were not solid standards. And in the case of SNK, their level was below the average of that time... If we remember that all SNK games had bad translation in the arcades.
@@carlosaugusto9821there was a man who got involved in the troubles
I heard they just read the name backwards in Japanese but that makes no sense. There should be an alternate character mode in the new game where you can unlock The Butt, like Mr. karate.
In the case of Talbain, Rikuo and Raptor, it's the other way round: they were named by Capcom USA first and then had their names changed for the Japanese release. Talbain is probably a reference to the Wolfman's surname Talbot, and Rikuo was named after Ricuo Browning, one of the actors who played the Creature From the Black Lagoon.
What I wanna know is what's the deal with Cammy's special move names? Why all the flip-flopping between Spiral Arrow/Cannon Drill and Cannon Spike/Thrust Kick?
This makes the Huitzilopochtli -> Phobos change make much more sense
I think capcom just likes to give moves multiple names. Guile in sf6 will interchangably say flash kick and somersault.
@@megapussi It's not random. He has a mechanic where he gets better versions of his charge moves if he presses the last direction and the button at the exact same time. He says "somersault" when it's not a perfect input, and "flash kick" when it is. The same goes for Sonic Boom: he'll say "sonic boom" if it isn't a perfect input, and "perfect" if it is.
@@TaimMeichI think you both are right, it changed a bit in previous games for seemingly no reason. But by SF6 he uses both names, SSK for the generic one, and Flash Kick for the perfect timed one.
It's likely why Sonic Boom has no different name but he just says "Perfect" since it was perfectly timed Sonic Boom and it always went by that name when Guile uses the move.
@Lucy2Juicy In other games it depended on the language. Japanese Guile said somersault and English Guile said flash kick.
Let's be honest: US Dan's win quote referencing his dead dad is pretty goated.
Really gives him that cliché fighter vibe people love.
In Gem Figher He uses his father as a weapon, OYAJIIII!!!
But also out of character.
It's interesting that Capcom always just rolled with the SFII name change and didn't change it back. The big comparable 90's situations, Sega with the Robotnik name in Sonic, Nintendo with the Princess Toadstool name in Mario, both had the company change it back, *technically* canonizing the American rename but only rarely actually utilizing them. Capcom meanwhile chose to just shrug their shoulders and let it rock forever.
Princess toadstool is a heinous name
Capcom at least had Nash, where they mixed the American Charlie and Japanese Nash and made it his full name.
@Mari_Izu whenever I refer to Charlie, I actually say his full name! I can't unsee both names so i just say Charlie Nash.
I feel like if they had switched back with boxer, claw, and dictator, they'd be obligated to do it with their other games, and there's no way in hell I'm calling Protoman "Blues".
@@nicksrandomreviews and I personally think Rockman is a terrible name.
I prefer Capcom's US names.
Especially:
Bionic Commando > Hitler's Resurrection: Top Secret
"Wubba, wubba, I'm in the pink today boy!" Terry Bogard Fatal Fury 2
I'm fully on board to call him Marco, but no one can stop me from calling him Marco "THE ASSMAN" Rodrigues
that would be soooo hilarious
"Marco Rodrigues, Doctor of Proctology." **points at ASSMAN license plate**
butt in portuguese is "bunda" so you can always use that instead, also could use "bundão" which is big ass but often used like asshole
Booty Rodrigues
he likes to flick em
Kyo and Athena interaction in SvC is wild
Kyo: "A battle with a babe? I must be in Heaven!
Athena: "Don't let your hormones go wild. You don't want to peak too soon, right?
Kyo: "When it comes to battle, I last a long time."
Sounds like a Benimaru vs Shermie interaction to me
khushnood butt is a pakistani name. what i've heard from people is that back in the 90s the biggest importer of neo geo in pakistan was a guy called khushnood butt who was apparently buddies with the higher ups at snk.
@@qazifaran really? I know SNK games were popular in the Middle East and places adjacent to it, so it could make sense. I mean, Kim Kaphwan got his name from the president of a South Korean company called Viccom which distributed SNK games in South Korea, and it seems Kim's sons, Jae Hoon and Dong Hwan, were named after the real Kim Kaphwan's brothers
@@pablocasas5906 art of fighting 1, 2, samsho 2,4 kof 94 to 2003, puzzle bobble and other snk games were extremely popular in pakistan. we used to have local tournaments back in the day.
Khusnood Butt was a Neo Geo promoter and importer in Pakistan back in 90s, Actually there are two guys Khusnood and Babar Iqbal there were the Big Shot promoters of arcade games, one can see Babar Iqbal name written on a wall of one of the stages in KOF 99
Bhai purany chaawal lagty ho, thanks for sharing this valueable piece of information!
Wow that is some trivia. I'm impressed, thanks.
Ah, the Slifer way of localizing the characters
So that explains it
Good stuff thanks for the info
6:20 hats off to jmcrofts for knowing that in Brazil we speak Portuguese 😅
Yo seriously dude I was one of those guys that thought you guys spoke Spanish in Brazil until I came across this song called Zona de perigo by Leo Santana I was trying to learn the lyrics and pronunciation cause I thought it sounded smooth as fuck 😄🤟🏽
@Pizone81 glad you found a song you liked. To be honest I do not know this artist, had to Google it haha. If you want a recommendation, take a look at Águas de Março by Tom Jobim :)
I watch all UFC. Spanish is Rodriguez. Port is Rodrigues. also, DDP will beat up Strickland, again :)
Gotta give credit to SVC Chaos for having unique intro dialogue for literally every possible matchup
That's one of the few innovation highlights of the game. That kind of personalized dialogue system didn't exist back then. The some old Samurai Showdown games and Art of Fighting have dialogues but they are simpler and only in arcade mode.
@@carlosaugusto9821 BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MONKEY??!!
Ah, the one where everyone calls Zero a "robot toy". lol
I’m so sad Krauser from Fatal Fury Special isn’t in here. When you challenge him in arcade mode: “Challenge me, ya hot, spunky kid? I hate spunk.”
All SNK arcade games have bad translation, so it's tough going through all their issues and pick the best cases to show in a video. Not to mention some controversial cases like the English version of Samurai Showdown 4 writing the "k.o" screen as "Victoly", that must have some racist tone.
@@carlosaugusto9821 at least some of the English translations are kind of creative, SNK also included Spanish and Portuguese translations in various of their Neo Geo games but they obviously read like direct translations of the English ones, like if Google Translate existed back in the day. The worst example is in Art of Fighting 3 where sometimes Spanish and Portuguese get mixed into nonsensical phrases
Its awkward but at least it makes sense. Even back when spunky means at best courageous. At worse its a euphemism for bodily fuilds. I still don't know what Dweebenheimer means though. (Kyo win Quote KOF98)
@@carlosaugusto9821 Sounds more like the translator was Japanese and didn't notice the difference since R and L are interchangeable in Japanese. The demo version of Mario Kart on the DS has a truck on one of the courses written with "Flesh" on the side and the full release has "Fresh" written instead.
My favorite go-to translation issue was taking the Norse goddess Verthandi and Japan translating it to "Belldandy" in Ah! MY Goddess.
Exactly.
"Engrish" was incredibly common back in the days when the budget for a localization was basically; "You have a cousin who took that language in High School, right?"
"GNARLY! LET'S DO IT, DUDES!" - Iori Yagami, 1997
One thing that gets lost in translation with Akuma's name change is his actual and thematic relation to Gouken, as the two are brothers and have similar sounding names, which I always took as a nod to how they represent two opposing philosophies of martial arts
Thing about this is that his name has always been Gouki in Japanese... Capcom didn't really start adding to the lore until SF4 I'd say. So you're correct but I highly doubt they had it planned this way from the beginning. A lot of what they have done has been in response to the fans. Same with Netherrealm and MK.
@@neah2k11 Just cuz he wasnt playable in a game until sf4 doesnt mean thats where his backstory started. Their relationship is directly referenced in akumas sf alpha ending. There are plenty of other comics/ movies/ etc that explore it. Like no, Gouki Gouken and Goutetsu isnt a random coincidence lol
Yeah, SF4 when Gouken became playable is when they should've done the switch to Gouki, but they didn't for whatever reason. I wish you could switch his name in options or something.
@@neah2k11More like Capcom didn't start acknowledging lore in-game until SF4. SF has _always_ had tons of lore that was never acknowledged in-game. It was always found in JPN mooks and arcade magazines (as far as official sources ar concerned), so theJPN have known this stuff for decades that Westerners only found out about many years later.
For example, it took until SF6 - released in 2023 - to acknowledge in-game that Guile's wife and Ken's wife are sisters, which has been a fact since 1991!
Gouken's backstory has been mainly fleshed out since at least 1995. Note that Gouken = Great Bear and Gouki = Great Ogre. I forget what Goutetsu translates into. SFIV retconned Gouken's death battle with Gouki, and Gouken's daughter (never officially named, merely referred to as "Ojo-san/Little Miss") seems to have been lost to the aether, but otherwise, old lore still exists prior to SFIV. Just that SFIV started revealing that lore to non-JPN speakers.
My headcanon was always: Gouki is his real name, while Akuma is a title he bestows upon himself
One that I always thought was interesting was Sodom's win quotes in SFZ and SFZ2... they're all bizarre english phrases like "DIE JOB DEATH CAR" and "DO MORE SWIM A SEND". His gimmick is that he's an American guy obsessed with Japanese culture, but he's getting it all wrong, and mispronouncing everything ("die job death car" = daijoubu desu ka? = Are you okay?). None of that would have made any sense outside of Japan, so they just gave him generic win quotes, and basically all his characterization is lost on a western audience.
This was reclaimed in Alpha 3. We are all dogs in pain, indeed.
Even the kanji on his chest is wrong.
He's also another example of a localization name change. His alternate name is "Katana." Apparently this change was only made for the SNES versions of Final Fight and Alpha 2.
Is "do more swim a send" him screwing up "domo, sumimasen"?
@@biohazard724 Correct.
@@ShoRyuBarbie I think the change to "Katana" might've been due to Nintendo of America censorship, due to Sodom being too close to Sodomy for their liking.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Ryus win quote from SF2 about beating Sheng Long…because of that bad translation, we all thought there was some secret character that we could unlock
The Joseph win quote I'm fine with because I feel if Joseph lived in modern day he'd be the type of guy to reference internet memes or pop culture in casual conversation.
And basically every character name is a reference to a song or a band, so why not put in movie references too.
You think Joseph is the type of guy who would fall with the Skibidi toilet craze? Scary thought.
Khushnood Butt is a very common Punjabi name. I initially thought he was Punjabi when I first learned about him
Speaking of Tatsunoko, it's always surprised me that Speed Racer wasn't in that game. Maybe he's not as popular in Japan, not sure, but Speed is definitely BY FAR the most well-known Tatsunoko character in the US.
He is popular, Niishida said he lacked a moveset potential and implementing the car would be hard.
@@Mari_Izuconsidering he's more or less a racing James Bond, I figure he could use martial arts and guns as part of his moveset, with the Mach 5 being used for specials and supers
@@angelriverasantana7755 And then they made Pheonix Wright playable in MvC3U xD
@@Mari_Izu ergo, they found a way to make a non-fighter a fighter thanks to exploring a more creative approach, even if he ends up stinking in the general meta
@@Mari_Izuthey didn't want to pull a Captain Falcon/Jin Saotome either...like, that's really the only option...and have his car in his intro and supers...oh, y'know what I'd've done for his Lv3?
I'd have Spritle and Chim-Chim exit the trunk of the Mach 5 and get into some shenanigans which somehow damage the opponent.
Worth noting with Tatsunoko vs Capcom that even though the genie was deleted as a character for international release, multiple new characters were added on the Tatsunoko side like Joe the Condor, Yatterman-2 and Tekkaman Blade.
UAS is the UMVC of TVC also released in Japan.
3:20 Apparently it's because the American team said "Vega" didn't sound menacing enough for the final boss.
Yup, the spanish names don't sound menacing. Is not like the conquerors of south america or the spanish inquisition were terrifying, at all.
@@ardidsonriente2223 Mia Wallace *in a deeper voice* Vincent Vega.
@@ardidsonriente2223 Plus, he's clearly visually modeled after South American military dictators. Bison just sounds thoroughly wrong for somebody like him.
@@twincast2005 I think he is closer to the chinese-japanese "evil general" concept, with just a bit of south american and south asian dictator style background. The original inspirations for Bison were two japanese military villains from old manga: Washizaki from Riki-Oh an Yasunori Kato from Teito Monogatari (Vega still suits him better than Bison.)
I don't think he's called Vega because of South America.
I think it's because of the star. Named stars like Algol and Betelguese just sound cool.
The jump from Marco Rodrigues to Kooshnood Butt will continue to baffle me.
Its like when you've been typing a few words but you realise your initial finger placement was off, so you've just typed wordsalad lol.
A big investor in the Punjabi market, apparently.
13:50 In Polish, icecream maker or icecream machine is used for girls (or generally people) who provide... mouth-related services for men for money. So Geese's insult game is very on point.
Knowing that makes that quote SOOO outta pocket.
He is Polish-Japanese 😂😂😂😂 damn he basically called his momma a thot!!! 😅😅😅😅
Wow
I grew up in Japan, and Akuma sounds a little too simple and lame. Literally just devil or demon (aku = evil, ma = demon), it's very on the nose; there's an existing manga/anime character called Akuma-kun as well.
Gouki (gou = great, ki = demon) however, that's a word that you don't hear often in Japan, and it sounds very cool. The kanji (Chinese characters) are a lot cooler too.
It was more interesting when things didn't match up, but those days are long gone. You just can't have that air of mystery anymore because of the instantaneous nature of the internet. Overall I think it's better that it matches up since the Street Fighter names are still messed up to this day, we don't need that anymore, especially if they become a global phenomenon.
It's kinda funny, I feel like it's the opposite in the US. Akuma sounds cooler, while Gouki sounds really silly.
@lawnbb12372 yup, I'm sure that's why they changed it. It's way easier to say for English speakers too. Nowadays developers will choose a name that sounds good in all regions first so they don't run into this problem.
I couldn’t believe it the first time I heard his name was Gouki as an american kid, it sounds so cutesy to us like a name you give a pet or small child
@@LeonaLeZard to put in into context, a young woman that teases and takes advantage of men by manipulation are called "koakuma" (小悪魔), which literally translates to "little devil." Words like these make it sound less threatening, in addition to TV shows and movies that commonly use the word.
Meanwhile "gouki" is never used in any context in daily life, so it's very alien even for native Japanese speakers.
But yeah the reverse is true too, Japan uses a lot of English words in their games to make it sound Western, but they're not very cool when brought over. Sol Badguy comes to mind.
@palody_en-ja "Way easier to say", yet English speakers never say it right...
You DID miss one in Darkstalkers
Missing from Vampire Savior, along with Pyron and Donovan is the aztec robot thing, Huitzil, who gets renames in the US version as Phobos. It gets double points because when they lose a match, the little girl that accompanies them walks over and calls out "stand up, Huitzil!"
Other way around, Phobos is the JP name.
@@BBHood217 Oh no... fake fan has been exposed =P
I was sure it was this way precisely because of the voice line (since the spoken lines are spoken in Japanese): "Tatte, Huitzil!"
But someone mentioned in a different comment that the US names were allegedly the actual original ones this time around and the JP was the changed one so could be part of that? Makes it extra funny, for sure
Even stranger, the voice line mentioning the jiangshi outright says "Lei-Lei" instead of "Hsien-Ko". Why use her JP name but then use Huitzil's US name?
Macro's localized name was always super weird and confusing to me, I really want to know how the heck he ended up with the weird name lol.
I just found out about this today. Back in the early 2000's, I downloaded a rom for Garou and just assumed that "Kushnood Butt" was a quirk from a hacked rom, and since the game looked normal other than that, I kept the rom and played it for years and years. To hear that this ridiculous name swap was an official action taken by PlaymoreSNK is just bizarre.
To be honest, I can't imagine using Balrog to refer to "Claw", Vega kind of makes more since he's supposed to be Spanish, Vega is a Spanish surname
10:16 I'd also add that Garou: Mark of the Wolves is also a rare instance when the Japanese title was kept for the international release, despite the fact Fatal Fury was the international title, in Japan the series is called Garou Densetsu, which means "Legend of the Hungry Wolves", there's data in the games files which indicates that SNK perhaps wanted to call it Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves and now the latest game in series is called Fatal Fury again.
8:13 I guess it was the rights holders, the Genie Family was a somewhat popular anime which got dubbed into various languages, there was even a reboot that came out some years ago
Yeah I thought the Vega change was a nice touch from the localizers. Still cool if it was a happy accident lol
Balrog is the name of big demonic monster from Lord of the Rings, of course it first for a guy who dresses like horror movie villain more than a guy who looks like Raul Julia being named M. Bison, while guy who looks like M. Tyson being named something else!
i think the boxers nickname is something with bull so him being named M. _Bison_ would just make more sense@@KasumiRINA
If you were Gandalf the Gray and crossing the Bridge of Khazad-dum, which one is closer to being the Balrog of Morgoth: the boxer or the guy with the mask and claw?
And both work for... Shadow-loo... they went back to the shadow....
vega is also the name of a constellation
I recall someone saying Marvel didn't want Norimaro in the US version because they were afraid people would think he was a Marvel character.
I was always baffled at Capcom changing not one, but three Darkstalkers names to be even harder to pronounce in English. I've never heard any two people say Rikuo, Huitzil or Hsien-Ko the same way.
Allegedly the English Darkstalkers names came first.
As I recall, Mike Tyson said he had no idea there was a Street Fighter character named after him, but the he liked it
Yup no clue at all.
He didn't even know what Street Fighter was.
@@shenglongisback4688 yet he appeared as licensed character in some wrestling games... Real Tyson, I mean, as he was a ref in WWE... at least I THINK he was for real in some older ones, because in modern times they replace him with a generic ref and keep his moves, entrance, winning animation as "boxer"
@@shenglongisback4688 street fighter 87
IIRC, Marco Rodriguez getting his name changed had more to do with them thinking he’d get confused with UFC fighter Ricco Rodriguez. Why they chose to rename him what they did over here in the west…that I don’t have an explanation for.
I like to think they made a drinking game out of alternative names. 😅😅😅
The first time I played Garou was on emulator decades ago. When I scrolled over and saw a character named BUTT I asbolutely HOWLED WITH LAUGHTER! *WHY IS HIS NAME BUTT?!* I was so tickled.
@5:25 An MMA fighter named Ricco Rodriguez, actually.
Regarding Darkstalkers, IIRC, the western character names are actually the originals.
@11:51 Can't imagine any interpretation of how this would be fortunate.
Apparently Mike Tyson was able to put 2 and 2 together and was flattered by the homage
2:33 It was because naming "M.Bison" as a "Boxer" may offend "Mike Tyson" the Real Boxer Champion, but yes, Switching names instead of Re-naming is a stupid idea that caused confusion through decades that the players on forums have chosen to call them by their Visual Outfits (Boxer/Claw/Dictator(Warlord) rather than their JP/EN names.
M. Bison being an inspired offshoot of M. Tyson has blown my mind. 🤯
Martial Champion had an Egyptian character named Titi (short for Nefertiti, the first female pharaoh), but whomever at Konami didn't get the memo that it means... uh... something else, so she swapped names with the jiangshi character Chaos in the American release
Old SNK translations are unhinged, and I''m all for it lol. It's a gold mine of great lines.
Story is, that it was a rush job on the cheap and nobody even proof read it after, so they went with whatever the translators came up with, and boy did they ever came up with some bangers :D
Yes, there was a whole carefree vibe in american localizations back then. Everything was so new in the industry and there was a mix of "lacking professional standards" with actually "not take the work seriously", probably because of the status of videogames at that time.
And if we went outside the fg genre, even some genres that put much more importance to the words like RPGs, many had issues in translation or localization. Sometimes the translation was toned down on purpose, reflecting the values of the 90s American culture and the general view about the games being "kids hobby". And we know that japanese entertainment "for kids" is much more hardcore than whatever was made in the US (like DBZ is officially rated for young teens in Japan).
Cammy's special moves in Japan were consistently Cannon Spike and Spiral Arrow, but only in the Japanese version of “X-Men vs SF” was Spiral Arrow changed to Cannon Drill, which was very strange to the Japanese why it was changed. deepL was used.
I wonder if Mike Tyson would genuinely be mad for being in such a legendary game.
don king would have been mad that his property tyson was being used in a legendary game
Someone, I think IGN, finally interviewed him about the M. Bison thing and he had no idea about any of it and seemed fine with it.
@@daltimond cool
@@daltimond He had real problems at the time.
Mike was heading to prison he had no clue till a couple of years ago about Street Fighter.
6:24 - It makes *all* the difference. "Rodriguez" is Spanish, "Rodrigues" is Portuguese. No last name in Portuguese ends in "z".
What was up with this being made private and re-appearing?
Anyway, AFAIK the issue with Hakushon Daimaou is that his show (The Genie Family, 1969-1970 with a remake in 2020) actually had a short run in Italy of all places, but during that run they had sold the "international Rights" to the Italian company since...I mean, it wasn't exactly a major show with much potential outside of Japan, right? But thing is, the Italian company still holds the rights to him outside of Japan and they wanted WAY more money than Tatsunoko/Capcom was willing to pay for his appearance in the game, so they removed him.
Probably had a mistake they corrected.
As far I know, a Brazilian fan managed to contact with SNK to make Marco Rodigues (with a "S" at the end) his canon name.
Something I found cool about the bison/vega/balrog swap is in Street Fighter 6 where M.Bison's spraypaint icon, unlike the other characters being their names, is just the Shadaloo logo. Cool way of bypassing localisation and making it represent the character regardless of which name he goes by
Norimaro was cut from the American release for, among other things, Marvel did not want a comedy joke character beating up their characters.
Let’s be honest though, Jon Talbain is waaaaaay better of a name for a werewolf than Gallon.
"Gallon" just seems like a mistranslation of "garou" and I wonder if that was actually intentional.
Yeah, I'm baffled why they couldn't simply have renamed the Boxer to something like "Buffalo Bill" in the English version and left Claw and Dictator alone. This was the Wubba-wubba era though, so I guess it was really just a free for all in terms of text.
My only guess is that their names that appear on screen during matches were sprites rather than dynamically created with text and a font, so it was easier to just switch the graphics around rather than create a new one.
I remember reading somewhere that they weren't worried about legal action from Mike Tyson specifically, but from Nintendo of America who had a deal with him to use his name. I think that was just speculation, but since we don't know either way...
Huh yeah possibly from Punch-Out.
15:37 I prefer the weird localization differences. To be more specific, the changes to character names. It feels more personalized when different regions use different names. In fact, for some reason I find joy in knowing that I call Dictator “M. Bison”, whereas others call him “Vega”.
That specific case is very hard to defend though, it's one of the worst ones because it makes everything more confusing for no good reason.
Even today we can find some new players confused about the names when they get to see any japanese source about SF, which is easier to happen thanks to social media, TH-cam, and translation tools.
Like, sometimes a Japanese video will have an English title (full or partially), that automatically makes it more accessible for a curious western viewer to click, meanwhile that same video would probably be ignored if it was the old internet and japanese content was strictly written in japanese.
@ Fine. I’ll give you three different cases for my own amusement. Akuma sounds cooler than Gouki. Hsien-Ko sounds cooler than Lei-Lei, and Khushnood Butt is way more funny than Marco Rodrigues.
Edit: Plus, not only has the SF community already come up with a workaround (Boxer, Claw, Dictator), but Capcom acknowledged this in a potential lore drop. These two facts combined leads to this localisation anomaly having enough interesting history behind it that I alone am perfectly content with it.
Edit 2: I love how @‘ing people doesn’t work anymore. ☺️
Actually, since Darkstalkers was a collaboration between the American and Japanese branches of Capcom, the english character names were actually the originals and they were changed for the Japanese market.
Hsien-Ko also had a voice line got removed at the start of a fight.
Him calling boxxer that he looks like
"A balrog"
Gave me LTG whiplash.
Fyi... Marco Rodriguez doesn't sound Brazilian either (our language is Portugese, not Spanish). But yeah, Butt is a lot worse lol
And you are 100% correct, the simple change from Rodriguez to Rodrigues DOES make it sound more Brazilian. Congratulations on having such a specific type of knowledge I am impressed!
The weird thing is i'm Dutch and I didn't knew a single TVC character from the Tatsunoko side.
However I'm a 90's kid and I knew Hakushon because we had a cartoon on Fox Kids named Bob in the bottle. yet they removed him =(
Couldn't they have changed him to Kushnood Rodrigues? It's so strange from an SNK outsider's perspective. I also feel like I remember hearing that the Darkstalker character names were picked in English first by the Japanese team and then they made the Japanese version names.
I've really come to appreciate localization recently(despite the Yugioh TCG taking MⱯLICE away from us which is an actual crime). While some localizations are completely unrelated to the original context or jokes the don't land or age, a lot of them are quite impressive for the idea that the team is trying to get across.
Specifically that Dan win quote is a great example. "My dad could beat you, and he's dead." is such a perfect line for creating the personality of Dan Hibiki that we know today. He's jokey, he passes his patheticness onto you by saying his dead dad could beat you, and it also shows his reverence for his dad as well as that his dad is dead which makes you wonder what happened.
I really hope that localization doesn't get thrown out for entirely direct translations. Aside from jokes in Japanese that just don't translate to English, if it fits perfectly into our cultural mind you won't know there was a change.
Yokai Watch 1 and 2 are obviously set in Japan if you look at the environment but they did such a good job at localization that you could absolutely believe that it is a sort of America. 10-Cent Gum just hits so much harder than 10-Yen Gum would. When Yokai Watch 3 changed it to Humdrum Gum because Springdale(Japan) used American $ dollars but BBQ(the actual America that you move to) has BBQ Bucks, it just added to the other problems I had with the game. Theoretically backing yourself into a corner and not doubling down with your localization, making changes to disrupt what you have set up is worse than just leaving it unchanged.
As wild as a Brazilian name may get some times... I think Khushnood's a bit too much. Saying as a local.
Kushnood Rodrigues
Marco Butt
To be fair, translating Japanese directly to English produces a lot of weird sounding stilted and sometimes nonsensical phrases, as was seen in some of those win quotes. When your translating something like that you really have to try and find the essence of what is being said and then re-word it in an way and person speaking English would say it, and sometimes it's not really clear what is trying to be said in Japanese to start with so your just making guesses. You also gotta remember that just like English the Japanese have a lot of slang and puns and meme jokes that don't make any sense outside that culture so when your translating that stuff a lot of time they end up just putting in their own jokes instead.
I'm pretty sure 'Vampire Savior' got renamed 'Darkstalkers 3' for the U.S. PlayStation release.
Vampire savior is Darkstalkers 3 in the US when it was released in us arcades and ps1 in the 90’s
Vampire, Vampire Hunter and Vampire Savior. Speaking of the trilogy only, it is the western version that uses numbers for the sequels.
Vampire, Vampire Hunter and Vampire Savior. Speaking of the trilogy only, it is the western version that uses numbers for the sequels.
It’s weird since Vega is perfect for a Spanish fighter, and Balrog seems to fit for a scary boxer, too.
Back in 2000-2001, I got an Indian school mate named Angkash Butt. So Butt as a last name doesn't seem weird to me at least. 🙃
Some of the SF2 changes worked. Balrog sounds it denotes a massive, hulking sort of fighter, and Vega is an actual Spanish surname.
I can't really defend M. Bison for a serious master villain, though.
13:30 the quote is Ryu acknowledging Elena's energetic aura in both the english and japanese. If you know about the lore, Elena is a character who is in tune with nature whenever she fights which the quote Ryu says is in reference to that, theres nothing sexual there.
the genie character was popular in Italy when they aired the anime in the '80s.
I always found strange how the USA fet far less anime than the rest of the world.
America hates things that reminds them they're not the only country in the world.
Hakushon Daimao (The Genie Family) was also dubbed into Latin American Spansih twice and we even got the recent remake. Though interestingly, the only Tatsunoko character featured in the game that never had an official release in the U.S. was Ippatsuman, series like Gatchaman, Tekkaman were dubbed, or at least had other anime projects licensed like Casshern Sins and Karas. Even Gold Lightan had their toys officially licensed in the U.S.
But yeah, the U.S. missed a lot of anime from the 1960s to the early 1990s, unlike what was shown in Europe and Latin America. Perhaps it was due to cultural differences, content or didn't want foreign shows to compete against domestic productions
Hey, my school had a janitor named Mr Butts. He was the man.
In Garou Griffon Mask name was changed into Tizoc
I think his Japanese name is a reference to the popular wrestling anime, Tiger Mask. Though I think Tizoc is also called just "The Griffon" in Japanese
@@pablocasas5906 Obviously, yes. But why it was changed?
@@Jackrost01 I remember watching a video about Mark of the Wolves made by the YT channel, Gamer Cultr, and they mentioned that Tizoc's name changes was done because the American branch of SNK thought noone outside of Japan would get the Tiger Mask reference and they decided to change his name in reference to an Aztec Emperor named Tízoc. Kind of similar to what happened with Phobos/Huitzil from Darkstalkers
Changing japanese names in the japanese version to another japanese word in the english version was always weird to me. Even worse when the japanese name is english and was changed to japanese for the english edition. In yu-gi-oh theres a monster called cyclops in japanese. One of the first cards ever made. In english they changed it to hitotsu-me giant which basically means one eyed giant.
How could you forget the classic Terry win quote, “Wubba wubba, I’m in the pink today!” ?
lore wise, I think Gouki (Akuma) is supposed to be a relative of Gouken, right? They're brothers and Gouken is Ryu's mentor?
Yes, Gouki is Gouken's brother and their master is Goutetsu, hinting a naming theme.
Unfortunately there are a lot of woke activists who are for whatever reason in charge of a lot of media localization, and as is to be expected, they have purposefully made massive unwarranted changes to original source material, for no other reason than to push an agenda. Multiple have publicly admitted to doing this. These people are the reason why audiences will have very little sympathy if/when localizers are replaced with *AI.* They deserve unemployment.
This is a Wendy's
@gc3k This is Sparta.
I’m surprised the “son of an ice cream maker” didn’t get this video demonetized instantly.
I think Gouki -> Akuma was actually a pretty smart move. Gouki when reading the meaning of its kanji (豪鬼) literally means Great Demon but keeping the same name would lose that idea of a clearly demonic name. Akuma makes the reference much clearer for the rest of the world.
Why?
What? Why would non Japanese speakers know what Akuma means but not Gouki? Wouldn't it make more sense that they wouldn't understand either?
I didn't get it
Is Akuma a known word outside Japan?
@@Mari_Izu considering we're talking about it being in a world-renowned franchise, well, yes lol.
Khushnud butt is a Pakistani name, Butt is actually a caste of people usually from Kashmir region, i don't know what connection it made with a latino fighter though 😅
About the licensing. From my experience Japan has two modes: Japan and other. So I wouldnt be surprised if a lot of the national companies dont even have a licensing system set up for overseas so everyone just shrugged their shoulders and moved on.
Specifically where Tatsunoko properties are concerned, I wouldn't be surprised if the big licensing issue was Harmony Fn Gold...
13:31 the Japanese version is also suggestive. “Bad girls who kick aren’t liked” sounds like someone saying “guys don’t like it when girls fight back” (if you know what I mean)
No that's just your interprentation. At worst you could interpret it as "Go back to the kitchen". But to me it sounds like a very typical anime "No one will want to marry you if you keep acting like a tomboy" line. Not great but not really suggestive.
Its not saying kick. Its talking about bad manners/womanly "mindfulness" of her legs. So basically Alex thinks she shows off her no-no square too much. (Like how shes posed in the defear screen)
Localization is not thankless is beyond entitled and localization still sucks since it's handled by people like Jelloapocalypse
I like the differences. They were like Easter eggs and knowing them was a knowledge flex. They were silly and fun.
As a brazilian I can confirm there are a lot of weird names here, from all nationalities, but never in my life I've met someone named Butt, lmao. My only guess is that the localizers knew about the anual carnival events in Brazil, where women dance on the streets with very revealing clothing, and they went "Oh look, brazilians like butts! Lets name this character Butt!", so stupid, lol. It never offended me or anything, it's just that it's so silly, how do you even react to that?
That's not a guess, that's fanfic lol
@Mari_Izu Never underestimate the stupidity of a localizer.
Though other Brazilian characters in SNK have names that doesn't sound very portuguese, like Richard Meyer and Bob Wilson. I mean, it wouldn't be uncommon to have a Brazilian character with a more English sounding name, but at least they could have called them Ricardo and Roberto. Same thing with Sean in Street Fighter III, though in SFV the rest of his family have more Brazilian sounding names. Then there's Eddy Gordo in Tekken
Also, I remember that in August of last year a Japanese Light Novel writer got into a bit of controversy when he named a Native Brazilian character Latina as a given name, he admitted he used AI to name the character
Congrats on getting a sponsorship with The Hidden Ones, JM! That game looks like it's gonna be GOATed!
i have played it and i can confirm it's heat
️🔥
For the Boxer/Claw/Dictator switch, I remember seeing somewhere that they felt "Vega" would not sound intimidating enough to American audiences to fit the dictator.
Vega suena a español, encaja con el metrosexual con máscara
I heard that too but only after the Mike Tyson worries. Supposedly what happened was they had already recorded all voicelines, and they wern't gonne send a guy back to the booth to say 3 names. Remember Street Fighter 2 wasn't /Street Fighter 2/ yet. So they decided switching the names was the cheap easy alternative.
Personally I think it'd have been easier to just change Boxers name to whatever and then not play any of the bosses names as the have special status. Have like a horror stinger play. You know in case the game becomes a runaway global hit.
Also, Vega is a Spanish surname, which is fitting.
@@BATCHARRO I don't think there's voice lines calling the bosses names in vanilla SFII.
@@Mari_Izu Huh. You know what I went back and checked and there aren't even any voice clips for any character names in that game at all, it appears. You are correct.
One thing I learned recently is how frequently character-specific winquotes in Capcom games weren't translated, including in games like 3rd Strike. Thankfully there's people who have translated them nowadays, but it's a shame they're not in the game proper.
I've heard from Thougi's Street Fighter Retrospective that the Capcom American Localization Team heard the name "Gouki" and thought that it was a weak name for such a powerful fighter, so they chose "Akuma" instead.
Localization change back then are weird and most of the time I don't like them, it seems like they just change for the sake of change just because they can instead of having real reason. I'm fine with them when they have proper reasons behind it, but if not I'm really against them. Happened in so many cases I can't even count, Digimon and Yugioh are among the worst of these.
Gouki is superior. His brother is Gouken
Gouki meaning something like Great Spirit/Demon/Energy vs Gouken; Great Fist....I prefer that too.
Additional fuel for the Tyson theory: In CvS1's Japanese version, the announcer says the characters' names as you select them. What does he say for the boxer, you ask? MIKE BISON! Concrete proof the M always stood for Mike.
But that's actually known for a long time. It was Mike Bison, and Capcom US was afraid of keeping that name.
That feeling might be fair, but the questionable part in my opinion was the decision of the name shuffling, that only resulted in making things confusing whenever someone checks the original game.
Call me insane, but I think at points localization today can be worse than it used to. Because back then bad localization was a result of poor communication between parties, and localizers not familiar with Japanese. Today you have dedicated professionals who are very knowlegeable of Japanese and have access to the people who make the product they're localizing, but make questionable decisions on purpose because they either don't like what's in the source material, or feel their vision is better than the original.
Wow, we actually had the Daimaō TV show on German TV when I was little. Didn't know he's in a fighting game too. (Also, thanks for opening that Darkstalkers wound again.^^)
That Geese quote had me tearing up in laughter 😂😂
8:30 Another game where a voiceline got removed: CvS 2. In the NA versions, Rugal doesn't call out "Genocide Cutter!" when using that move, he just grunts or something. I guess they were playing it safe with the word "genocide" but it's kind of a bummer.
12:03 There's an extra option: canonize both sets of names. Not always easy but I like this option. It happened to Charlie Nash from SF. His original name was Nash, but in America it was changed to Charlie because Nash wasn't "American-sounding" or something. Eventually they kept Charlie as his first name and Nash as his last name.
Also, another fun localization story (take with a grain of salt, I forgot the source): the reason Ken has a last name is because Capcom USA had to make one up. They wanted to license Street Fighter toys, but of course, there was already another company making toys of a blond guy named Ken. They gave SF Ken the last name "Masters" just to distinguish him.
I'll never understand why they chose to swap THREE characters around in SFII to make it EXTRA confusing. They could have gave him a new name entirely like with Akuma/Gouki.
Vega sounds spanish (Las Vegas) and they said M Bison was a better name for a villain
Swapping is faster and easier than making a new name.
Spossedly they'd already recorded the voices it was too late to record one new name.
The Akuma rename kinda ended up hitting them in the butt when they later added Gouken to the game and named his and Akumas master Goutetsu. So Gouki, Gouken, Goutetsu, there's a theme to the names that just exist in the english version.
Khushnood Butt is straight up Punjabi name, boys. As to why they decided that he suddenly hails from Punjab is beyond me.
I'M ON THAT GOOD KHUSH AND ALCOHOL
- from a Marco main 💪
I always headcanoned that Gouki is his name but Akuma is a title
Not all modern games keep universal names for characters. For instance, in Granblue Fantasy Versus, if you have japanese voicelines and english texts, you'll get confused by the announcer calling Ladiva as "Festiva", or Seox as "Sheesh" xd
Alex's quote to Elena is close to :
"Not a fan of rough girls that only use kicks."
No, sorry. That's not accurate at all.
I like how the Gouki/Akuma was taken into the lore, with Gouki being his og name and Akuma the name after the Satsui no hado
It's very obvious that boxer was named Mike Bison... It's like naming a football player C. Bonaldo.... I guess they didn't want to rename him to Vega for whatever reason, so did the three-way swap. Balrog is a name of a monster from Lord of the Rings, so it made sense for masked claw guy.
M. Bison also was originally Mike from Street Fighter 1 as well. With the name change in 2, they also became 2 different characters. All to avoid a lawsuit. Balrog and Mike even meet each other in the SFV arcade endings.
As a Marco Rodriguez, I am glad Butt is no more and Marco is here to stay