#analoeba

[zennec-fox]

i never did post my MonMonth drawings to tumblr.  these were my personal favorites and Mushi

[tumblunni]

More of me exploring the dual language script-dump localization file thingie for Azure Dreams GBC! I haven’t ever been able to play the GBC game myself so I’m not sure how close this is to the final version? Its very inconsistant in places, but then again the PS1 version shipped with a fair few mistakes too.

Long pile of random stuff I found interesting!

* The town is Monspire in the intro, Monspire in the internal listing, Monsbaiya in the manual and various other places within dialogue. * The tower was just the Monster Tower in the PS1 version, here it’s called The Tower of Monstrosity, Tower of The Monstrosity and Tower of The Djinn. The intro changes name mid paragraph! * Monsters were just monsters in the PS1 version, here they’re called monsters, creatures and ‘Tamaeons’ interchangeably. Consistancy, plz! I actually like ‘Tamaeons’, its nice for them to have their own unique name cos they are a rather unique kind of monster, with the whole thing where they change back and forth from eggs. In japanese I can’t find a single useage of ‘tamaeons’, they seem to be called ‘mamono’ which is a kinda uncommon word for demons. (For example you’d more often see ‘bakemono’, ‘obake’, ‘yokai’, etc in videogames) * Humans are rather awkwardly called creature-handlers instead of monster tamers. Weird...

* The monster now called ‘catawump’ is indeed the one that was ‘pulunpa’ in the PS1 version. i’m not sure why they decided to actually translate it this time, but left a lot of other monsters with japanese names. (oh, and the new ‘wump’ baby form is called ‘puloon’ in japanese) * Weirdly enough, it turns out that Manoeva is indeed called Manoeva in japanese, so they changed it to Analoeba in this GBC translation for basically no reason?? Also, uhh, good job japan for making a great english pun! * The monster called Unicorn in the PS1 dub is Unicap in GBC dub and japanese. Which makes more sense cos that’s actually what it is, its a completely non horselike dragon shaped like a witch’s hat. Though, honestly it was kinda charming imagining it as a ridiculous misinterpretation of a unicorn! * Huh, that’s... weird and very lacking in explanation. Apparantly the Quack monster was called ‘Ahiru no Gar’ in japanese, so now I’m doubting that the word gar is supposed to mean the fish. Wtf, what else does gar mean in japanese? i can’t find any answers on google! Also it’s odd that this is the only monster that has a full sentence for a name, this is like ‘The Duck of [something]’...?? Also it’s beastiary entry says its actually a toy that came to life, which raises a lot of questions. ILU Quack, u are the strangest!

* Beldo’s name is spelled as Veldt in this version, which kinda sounds even cooler? And for some reason he has this dummied out beastiary entry, which even managed to get translated! TCRF.net says that this definately wasn’t used in the actual game, there’s no monster book update after the final boss. “Veldt’s a mystery, and not the kind you can trust.“ * There’s also unused entries for a lot of the other human npcs, and it seems they have beta translations here. Protagonist is called Koh on PS1, Kou in this GBC version, and ‘Cor’ in this beta entry. And Ghosh is Gauche, and Selfi is Thelfi. (Though that might just be because your little sister is the one reading out the beastiary?) Ghosh’s entry is a bit weird sounding, I guess cos they tried to cram it into character limits? “He does mess with you, but he may be OK.” And then Selfi is just “It’s Selfi!” and Koh is “Its you, the player!” * Skale and Attley (the new characters for this version) have their names rendered as Scale and Atelie sometimes. (Atori is the original japanese, honestly I wouldn’t know how to translate that either!) Interestingly their monster book entries have ‘person’ written on them in the japanese, while Beldo, Ghosh and Selfi are all listed amoung the monsters. I guess its cos they’re boss battles? Though actually I dunno if you still get a fight against Selfi in the GBC version...

* Not really dub related, but its interesting that in the GBC version they added multiplayer functionality similar to pokemon. However you can actually trade a monster for money or an item, instead of just monster for monster. * Back to dub related- its a lil cool that instead of just ‘original trainer’, the stat screen shows the person who hatched the monster AND the latest previous owner(s) it had. This game wasnt super well known though, so I wonder if anyone actually did have a monster they traded often enough to fill up that screen?

* THE SPELLS!!  *

* This is a bit I was really excited to get to, cos Azure Dreams PS1 kinda annoyed me with how badly they were all translated. It was like they all had a 4 or 5 letter limit for some reason?? I’m gonna go pull up a PS1 version guide and try and match the translations as best as I can.

* ‘Breath’ (PS1) is like the only spell that got translated correctly. Though it was F.Breath in japanese which makes a bit more sense. It got a bit of artistic license to become ‘Sunmaker’ in GBC, and that is A VERY COOL NAME * FINALLY. FINALLY I KNOW. FINALLY THE QUESTION IS ANSWERED. What the FUCK was ‘Brid’ supposed to be? Thats like the first spell you get and it confused me forever! The answer is that its the localizers trying to translate something that was already english- it’s ‘bullet’ written out in simplified kana. GBC version goes with Shot instead of bullet, which would have honestly been a logical decision in the PS1 version.. * The other EXTREMELY CONFUSING ONE- why am I throwing a ‘Sled’ at people? And why is this not ice type? Apparantly in japanese it was ‘Fire Thread’! GBC version changed it entirely to ‘Salamand’, like.. Salamander as a verb...? * Rise was Rise in japanese, thus achieving the grand title of Only Correct Spell In All Of Game. Praise be! GBC changed it to Flamenco for no reason, which, again, it sounds cool so I don’t care if it makes no sense. * In the PS1 version all the attacking spells here were exclusively part of the fire element, all the other elemental versions were marked as a modification of it- Nea/Noa [insert name here]. In the GBC version there’s a far increased spellset for every element and its only the Breath spells that keep the Nea/Noa naming scheme. This dub changed them to Sun/Gill/Dune Maker instead, losing the callback. * Other Thread/Sled types: IceNoose, Wildride Other Bullet/Brid types: PaleRain, DrumRoll Other Rise types: Oasis, Tesla In general the GBC dub took a lot more liberties with the names, but it had a great knack for picking stuff that would sound badass in english. Its far preferrable than just a butchering of [insert element here] [awful romanization] crammed into as few letters as possible!

* Oddly enough, the poison spell was also expanded into an elemental changer in the GBC version! So you have Poison, Noa Poison and Nea Poison in japanese. But the dub seems to have really messed up on this one- regular poison is ‘L Borgia’ which makes absolutely no sense, and then the others are Quarantine 1 and 2, which sounds like the opposite of what they actually do!

* All the Wall and Mirror spells became -dra spells for some reason? Except the earth one which stays as Thor Wall. What. * Good save, dubbers! fire/water/rock Rock was changed to more of a description of what it actually is, which is good cos it would have been a bit confusing how only one of them is a rock and its not even the earth type one. Seriously, how is a tornado an ‘earth rock’? i guess maybe it could have been ‘earth lock’ instead cos its various types of pathway-blocking attacks? * I do like how they add a lil justification for the elemental heals in the flavour text. ‘Comforting warmth restores HP’/ ’Refreshing breeze restores HP’ /'Popping cute bubbles restores HP’. They’re called Zephyr, Nasim and Wellfall now, instead of just Heal. (what’s a nasim...?) * What was up with the level 2 heal being called Forth in the PS1 version? Actually supposed to be Force! Its at this point the GBC artistic license starts to stop being a good thing though, who would think of changing something as simple as Fire Force/Air Force/etc to ‘Imblat’ and ‘Absolution’..???? You ARE trying to sell to kids, right? The flavour text is also cute on these ones. The earth element one is just ‘a charged up breeze’ but fire is ‘sunny weather’ and water is ‘holy water’. I like how that actually gives you an image of how it progressed from before! Also its sweet to imagine you and your monsters taking a break to have a pleasant picnic or something.

* The status spells are a bit confusing now, ironically. It seems to say that you cold actually gain a player-useable version of Confusion? But no its a mistranslation of Blind for some reason. Only the earth version was translated correctly, and had the wildly different name ‘Adnoctum’ instead of [element] Mist like the others. What’s really stupid is that the spell is literally named Blind in japanese! Its another case of ‘whoops, tried to translate an english into english’. How did they even manage such a wild result? * All the Bind spells got changed to Lock for seemingly no reason. i would say maybe it was to make them more distinct from Blind, but yeah they turned Blind into Confusion Mist... * I find it kind cute that F.Sleep is now Siesta. +1 point again to artistic license! Just stick to this and less ‘Imblat’! * okay wtf, now the LoDown spells are Emberin, Waterloo and Chinook. What does that even mean... I think those ones really needed a name change, too! They’re one of the few multi elemental statuses that wildly changes based on element, but they were just LoDown and LaDown on the PS1 and now they’re... this. I mean couldn’t it have been AtkDown, DefDown, LvlDown?

* Now there’s a whole bunch of spells that’re either GBC exclusive, or they’re stuff that was enemy only in the PS1 version or something? Cos I can’t find them anywhere in the PS1 guide to do a comparison. But still WOW its interesting how different the dub names are! [element] Glaive moves all got names that sound like spaceships for some reason. Helix 13! Why! What! And there was a line of punch attacks named Frey Finger, Ice Finger and Eleckfinger, which became ‘Voltpaw’ and seriously that sounds even weirder... * Out of the Mixture Magics, it seems like they were all (for once!) completely correctly translated in the PS1 version. But this version changed Flame Sword to Red Saber and Wind Cutter to Airfoil. And then the Blade upgrades got to be the badass-as-fuck MetalCry, Pulsecut and Sharkjaw. SHARKJAW! Water Blade to SHARKJAW! give that translator a raise! I forgive the Imblat!! Huh, I’m a little sad that [Element} Shoot is gone, but their new names are pretty neat, referencing three of the four cardinal direction deities in japanese myth. Firebird, Blue Dragon and Pale One (but its called White Tiger instead in the flavour text) And [Element] Wave is now Boltar, Wintros and Pyralai. I severely improve of the unnecessarily cool changes, hell yeah!

* OH MY GODDD The secret dark type attacks on the postgame Kewne upgrade have the stupidest names in japanese! I’m kinda glad we only got Dark Shoot in the PS1 version! Now its joined by Wo La Wola, Wash Ashido and literally Wow! Death.

WOW! DEATH.

The GBC dubber changed them to Darkling, Baelen, Vitrios and Necro, which are all kinda cliche sounding evil names but at least they’re not “Wow! Death.” Man, I wonder if we english folks sound just as stupid when we try and use random asian words to look cool? is there someone out there whose terrible fake-japanese tattoo says Wow! Death? Wow! Death. I cannot get over that...

* ....man this post got long and probably nobody even cares XD If you take anything away from this, let it be Wow! Death.