The history of LucasArts/Sierra-style graphic adventures in Japan has always kinda baffled me. Their releases overseas have been sporadic - I've seen that the SCI release of Quest for Glory was ported to the PC-88, as well as Space Quest IV, of all things, and it's kinda incredible that LucasArts made a version of Zak McKracken that has vastly improved graphics and released specifically for Japan. (Although I kinda assumed they intended to release it in the US at some point, it just never happened.) The differing computers standards is probably one of the reasons why the PC versions themselves were never releases, but as the 32-bit systems start taking off, there were a number of Western PC games that were ported to the Playstation and Saturn in Japan, but never released in their home territories. This is odd in itself, although it's fascinating to see how Western properties have been redubbed or reinterpreted into Japanese.
Below are some recordings I've made of these games. They are mostly just to demonstrate how the dubbing is different, or just to marvel how these games exist.
Beavis and Butthead in Virtual Stupidity:
Released only for the PSOne. It's more or less exactly the same as the PC version, except for the dubbing. The awful lip synching is present in the emulator, I'm not sure if it's part of the actual game. I'm curious to what Beavis says to Daria when he talks - in the English version, he's doing that whole "Diarreah chachacha" thing. The subtitle rendered in Japanese is Virtual Aho Shoukougun, which, super literally, means "Virtual Idiot Syndrome" although the English name Virtual Stupidity is still used in video sequences. I can't imagine that "Virtual Stif-" joke would make any sense.
Discworld:
Discworld was released in the US for the Playstation, so the only difference here is the dubbing. I guess the guy they got for Rincewind is maybe the Japanese equivalent to Eric Idle? I actually picked this one up at the NYC Book Off awhile back, since they added some dirt cheap PSOne imports to their stock. Most of it is trash, but this one looked interesting. The artwork have a slightly more super deformed version of Rincewind, although it's not a huge stretch since his design was already pretty cartoony.
Phantasmagoria:
Shortened and renamed to "Phantasm", this Sierra title was only released on the Saturn. Why there? The system's FMV capabilities were dreadful without the MPEG add-on that barely any games supported. Since Phantasmagoria is almost entirely FMV, it looks pretty bad. The only other real draw of the game was the SVGA computer rendered graphics, whose attractiveness are lost with the lowered resolution. Anyway, the game is once again dubbed into Japanese here, which is awkward given the live actors. I think it's one of the largest CD releases for the console, given that it came on 8 CDs, one more than the PC version, probably due to video compression issues. The tarot card save/load interface is kinda neat though.
Return to Zork:
I've already covered the PSOne version of Zork I earlier on, but this multimedia sequel also has lots of FMV. Again, it's dubbed into Japanese. This one got released on several platforms, including the PSOne and PC-FX. The PC-FX version has terrible, terrible sound. The PSOne version also comes on two CDs, as opposed to one for the CD release. The load times seem really sluggish on the emulator. I played up until the infamous "WANT SOME RYE COURSE YOU DO" part. I'm also PRETTY sure that there wasn't any narration voiceover in the intro movie, which parallels the opening moments of the original Zork.
Prisoner of Ice:
This is a rather obscure followup to Shadow of the Comet, a Call of Cthulhu game. I didn't grab any videos of it because the voices were left in English, with only the text being changed into Japanese. It was released by Xing for both the PSOne and Saturn.
I'm sure there are numerous other PC releases that were ported to the PSOne/Saturn in Japan but left unreleased in its home territory. Other than the numerous Wizardry spinoffs, I know Ultima Underworld hit the PSOne in Japan, though I haven't played it.
Showing posts with label zork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zork. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Zork in Japanese on the PSOne
Why did I buy this? I don't even know. It was a few bucks on eBay, and I figured it'd be interesting. Out of curiosity, I wondered how the developers would make a text adventure work on a console, much less in Japanese.
I tried looking into the history of Zork in Japan, and it seems like it was only translated into Japanese for the PC9801, where it had a sparse graphical interface along with the text. Strangely, it seems that only the first chapter was ever brought over to Japan - a bit of a gyp, considering it's really just 1/3 of the original mainframe Zork experience.
The PSOne (and Saturn) version of Zork looks a lot like other visual novels for the 32-bit systems, like The Silver Case and Baroque Syndrome, with a faded, barely visible background, with bright white text superimposed over it. It's really only graphical in the vaguest sense of the worse, because you can barely make out much of anything. At least the borders change depending on your location.
At any rate, you have four primary commands - Object, Action, Inventory, and Move. You can use manual text entry with the Action command, but it really kinda sucks without a keyboard, obviously. There's an option for English characters but I'm not sure what it does - it doesn't understand English commands nor does it understand Japanese written in romaji. The Object command will let you highlight a noun in the text, which then brings up a particle menu ("wo", "ni", "de", functioning as "to", "at" and "with" in various circumstances.) This is where the Action command comes in handy - based on the item you've selected, it'll automatically pick all suitable verbs. The Move command allows easy access in any direction, and even shows all available exits. There's an ingame map, as well as a foldout one included in the manual.
It's actually not all that hard to play with a bit of Japanese knowledge. Zork didn't exactly have complicated writing in English, and it's still pretty simple in Japanese. As long as you're familiar with the original game and have a kanji dictionary nearby, you should be set.
Not that there's really anything else to it besides the novelty. It does have a very nice CD audio soundtrack though, which consists mostly of atmospheric noises and various other electronic music. I didn't realize it at the time, but this soundtrack was actually composed by Yuzo Koshiro (along with Motohiro Kawashima, who worked besides Koshiro on other projects.) Since I've never seen it anywhere else, I ripped it and uploaded it for your listening pleasure.
On a side note, the graphical adventure, Return to Zork, was actually ported to the PC-FX, Saturn and Playstation in Japan, yet none of these were released in the US. Given that the standard IBM PC didn't have any foothold in the Japanese market at the time, it seems some publishers would port Western games to the consoles specifically for the Japanese audience, yet never bring it out in their homeland. This also happened with The Neverhood for the PSOne, and Phantasmagoria (known as Phantasm) and Dark Seed for the Saturn.
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