Nintendo discuss challenges, design issues with Mario and Luigi series localization
Coming from an IGN interview with Nintendo's Senior Localization Manager Nate Bildorf...
On working on Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga
“[Back then] we would actually get final Japanese code and be able to play it and understand how it works and look over the final text. The way things work now is a lot more scattershot.”
On redesigning elements to make sense for NA/EU audiences
“Conceptually, all the characters are generally just one tweak away from being awesome. It’s a matter of making it fit better. We ended up making them have these crazy meathead Russian accents. They certainly weren’t Russian in the Japanese. It was actually born out of the fact that there are scenarios involving them flexing their muscles and screaming out these massive punchlines that are giant letters, maybe four Japanese characters wide.
The text was so big that these punch lines had to be really short. I ended up landing on that accent because the Russian accent can truncate sentences so much just by removing articles and entire sections of normal English. As it turned out, with their mustaches, they kind of looked like classic Russian strongmen anyways, so it fit naturally. They were already meatheads in the Japanese [version]. We just changed them a little bit to fit our language.”
On big challenges
“With an RPG, you have so many ancillary characters. You have to get a unique personality in them with five messages. They have a message when you first meet them, a message when you complete chapter two, a message when some other event happens, an end of game message, and that’s it. That’s their whole personality. Keeping them interesting enough that people will want to go up and talk to them – especially the modern gamer who maybe doesn’t feel like they have time to talk to everyone – 'Send me to the next dungeon, man, I don’t have time for this' – keeping dialogue appealing for that guy is a constant challenge in localization.”
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On working on Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga
“[Back then] we would actually get final Japanese code and be able to play it and understand how it works and look over the final text. The way things work now is a lot more scattershot.”
On redesigning elements to make sense for NA/EU audiences
“Conceptually, all the characters are generally just one tweak away from being awesome. It’s a matter of making it fit better. We ended up making them have these crazy meathead Russian accents. They certainly weren’t Russian in the Japanese. It was actually born out of the fact that there are scenarios involving them flexing their muscles and screaming out these massive punchlines that are giant letters, maybe four Japanese characters wide.
The text was so big that these punch lines had to be really short. I ended up landing on that accent because the Russian accent can truncate sentences so much just by removing articles and entire sections of normal English. As it turned out, with their mustaches, they kind of looked like classic Russian strongmen anyways, so it fit naturally. They were already meatheads in the Japanese [version]. We just changed them a little bit to fit our language.”
On big challenges
“With an RPG, you have so many ancillary characters. You have to get a unique personality in them with five messages. They have a message when you first meet them, a message when you complete chapter two, a message when some other event happens, an end of game message, and that’s it. That’s their whole personality. Keeping them interesting enough that people will want to go up and talk to them – especially the modern gamer who maybe doesn’t feel like they have time to talk to everyone – 'Send me to the next dungeon, man, I don’t have time for this' – keeping dialogue appealing for that guy is a constant challenge in localization.”
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