Japanese Video Games: A Model for International Popular Medias?

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Assimilation of Japanese 'Otherness' into the U.S. Market

Since the introduction of Japanese video games in the U.S., there have been countless attempts to erase the 'Japaneseness' from the games in order to make them blend more smoothly into American culture. During the 1980's and early 1990's, it was common practice to replace manga-style cover art featured in Japanese releases with a more American-looking comic or airbrush style for the North American and European release versions, because it was feared that the manga-style art would make the games appear too childish and 'cartoony' to the western consumer. During the late 1990's, when the "anime boom" reached full swing in North America, it became much more common to see the original Japanese cover art left intact in hopes that the game would attract anime and manga fans. Nevertheless, the replacement of Japanese manga-style cover art is still practiced in some cases today, as in the case of "Gigantic Drive," which was released in 2002 as "Robot Alchemic Drive" in North America.

Japanese cover art for "Gigantic Drive" (left), and its American interpretation "Robot Alchemic Drive" (right)

This type of change is not restricted to outer packaging, but oftentimes continues into the game program itself. In "Magical Chase" for the Turbo Grafx 16, a game in which you play a witch on a broom, the witch character was redrawn to look less cute and more mature in the U.S. version. A more extreme example is in the Super Famicom game "Ranma 1/2¹: Chounai Gekitouhen," which was released as "Street Combat" on the Super NES. In this case, all of the graphics in the game were literally 'drawn over' to make the "Ranma 1/2" characters in the game into generic street punk-type characters while the game play system remained intact. This was probably done because the non-Japanese audience probably wouldn't have been familiar with "Ranma 1/2." Curiously, the game's sequel, "Ranma 1/2: Bakuretsu Rantouhen" was released shortly after in the U.S. as "Ranma 1/2" with the original graphics intact, very likely because the English translated version of the "Ranma 1/2" manga had begun to gain some recognition in the U.S. by the time it was released. Nevertheless, for most American gamers this was almost certainly their first exposure to the "Ranma 1/2" series. These visual changes can allow a game that would have been otherwise considered 'too Japanese' for Westerners to be released outside Japan.²

"Ranma 1/2: Chounai Gekitouhen" (left) compared alongside its American counterpart "Street Combat" (right).

These types of changes aren't restricted to the visual either. Whenever a game features a song sung in Japanese, the Japanese lyrics will almost always be removed. In most cases they don't even bother to re-record an English version of the song, and the song is left as an instrumental track instead. Spoken dialogue is sometimes removed entirely as well. In the later days of the Turbo Duo system, the company that was marketing the system in the U.S. had a very tight budget and didn't have funding to hire English voice actors and record dialogue for games like "Cotton" and "Riot Zone," so they had to settle for on-screen text instead. This is ironic because the Japanese version of "Cotton" already had an English mode which allowed you to hear the Japanese dialogue with English subtitles, and the voices were still taken out for the U.S. version despite this. Apparently marketers think that American game players would rather hear no language at all than have to listen to a language other than English.

Any inclusion of the Japanese language in the U.S. releases would remind the players that what they are playing is originally a Japanese product made for Japanese consumers, and the game companies generally don't want that. However, there seems to be a more recent trend of leaving Japanese song lyrics intact in U.S. releases of Japanese RPG's. This is probably because of the genre's recent appeal as a "Japanese" product,³ and thus the genre now often carries the same image of "Japaneseness" that anime frequently does. The Japanese RPG genre now has a cult following similar to that for anime, and this group does not mind being reminded of the product's local origins. The U.S. game companies are increasingly attempting to appeal to this group of "Japanese RPG fans" in order to market their games.

There are also more recent games in which the problem of translated dialogue is handled in a better way. For instance, in the Nintendo 64 game "Goemon's Great Adventure,"⁴ the dialogue is completely in Japanese with English subtitles, and this is suitable to a game series like "Goemon" which most players would certainly consider to have a very "Japanese" theme. Unfortunately, this happened only after the game's predecessor, "Mystical Ninja starring Goemon" had all of its Japanese dialogue removed in the U.S. version. It took the U.S. branch of Konami two tries to make this adjustment.

Even better than having only Japanese dialogue with English subtitles is giving the players the choice between English dialogue or Japanese with English subtitles, as in the case of "Sonic Adventure 2." This option is commonplace in anime DVDs released in America, but it is usually not seen as an important feature in Japanese video games released in the same country, and is still very uncommon among video games. In cases like "Sonic Adventure 2" it is the original Japanese version that determines which language options are available in the U.S. version as well. Because Japanese consumers are generally more accustomed to reading subtitles than Americans, thanks to the popularity of foreign material such as American movies in Japan, bilingual video games and the option to play in English with Japanese subtitles is often a desirable feature.⁵ Aside from the fact that the U.S. version uses the English mode as a default, the two different countries' versions of "Sonic Adventure 2" are identical. In the U.S. version the dual language options carry over only because the option was available in the Japanese version.

Click one of the following links to continue to the other sections of this editorial:

1. Introduction: A Brief History of the U.S. Video Game Market

2. Japanese vs. American Video Games - Do Cultural Differences Exist in Game Production?

4. Orientalism: When Exotic or Japanese-looking Imagery is Used to Sell Games in the U.S.

5. American Games in Japan: The Other Side

6. The Asian Video Game Market: Not Profitable Enough?

7. Conclusion

¹"Ranma 1/2" is a long-running anime and manga series in Japan. The themes and characters of this particular series would probably seem quite foreign to an American who is unfamiliar with it.
²Of course, the vast majority of games based on an anime or manga series never get the chance to be marketed in the U.S. at all.
³See the earlier section, "Japanese vs. American Video Games: Do Cultural Differences Exist in Game Production?"
⁴"Goemon" is a long-running popular Japanese game series by Konami. It involves a protagonist in a red samurai-like suit who attacks enemies with a pipe and by throwing gold coins. The game takes place in a fictionalized version of medieval Japan. Installments in the series were released only in Japan before the third installment was released on the American Super NES as "Legend of the Mystical Ninja." Several U.S. releases of subsequent installments followed. This is one case where I believe sheer game quality managed to overcome cultural barriers, because although the protagonist is labeled in the U.S. as a "ninja," he does not fit the typical image that is associated with ninjas in the U.S.
⁵English dialogue with Japanese subtitles in Japanese entertainment mediums tends to carry a connotation of being 'cinematic' to the Japanese consumer. One extreme example of this is the movie "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." This is a computer animated movie that was produced primarily in Japan, but the voices in the movie were originally made to be in English; even in the Japanese version. Although it could certainly be called a Japanese movie, the primary audio for the movie (even in Japan) was recorded in the U.S. A Japanese-dubbed version was made later only for younger audiences who can't read. There are also video games like "Devil May Cry" which only have English dialogue in the Japanese version with no option to switch to Japanese dialogue. In cases like "Final Fantasy X International," the original version was released with Japanese language only, and an "international" version featuring English dialogue with Japanese subtitles was released after the English version was completed.