[raehik]

The other day I tweeted with one of the localisers behind Half Minute Hero / 勇者30 , a silly RPG-esque game. They did this with one of the stages: it was a sepia level, harkening back to the NES (and slightly before) era. In Japanese, the bad guy spoke in spaced katakana, like the old Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Pokemon games. The reference was immediately understandable and cute.

You can easily do the same in English by using ALL CAPS, AND SILLY PHRASING WITH LOTS OF PUNCTUATION!!! In my opinion (native English, but not alive in the NES era), that would work great. But they didn't: they instead replaced all his dialog with various lines from the classic "all your base" meme/translation. It's a departure from the original - still works well, still funny, though in a different way.

Different translators think differently. I love seeing how that impacts things. (Also shoutouts to Square Enix's localisation team, they are usually INCREDIBLE. I have even more love for Crisis Core after playing it in Japanese.)