Japanese Classics Being Localized for Virtual Console?
A job listing at Nintendo hints at the possibility.
by Robert Hiskey, Ali Shehzad
June 5, 2006 - A job posting at Nintendo of America hints at the possibility of Japanese games for older Nintendo systems being localized for release on Wii's Virtual Console service. The job listing for a "Japanese Translator," a temporary contract position, indicates that the "translator will focus on the Virtual Console project." The job's main duty is translating "documents from Japanese to English and vise versa."
Why would translation be necessary for games that had already been released in both Japan and North America? Certainly, Nintendo has all of the code from the original North American versions of their games, and can easily make them available on the Virtual Console without having to relocalize anything. The fact that a Japanese translator is needed for the Virtual Console project indicates that Nintendo has some type of document or product that is currently available in only one language, Japanese or English. Hopefully this means that we will see some classic Japanese-only games released in America on the Virtual Console; the demand is certainly there for some of Nintendo's Japanese classics, such as the older Fire Emblem games.
We'll keep our fingers crossed, but please remember that this is certainly not any sort of confirmation from Nintendo. It's simply a very interesting job posting that indicates that something might be going on.
Source: Nintendo of America
w00t!
While it could just be a translator for original Virtual Console titles, it would be awesome of Nintendo was releasing Japanese-only games in the States.
Prozac the Robert wrote:Perhaps they plan to update some of the engrish translations so they end up in real english.
That was my first thought, too. It'd be very nice if a few Japan-only games got a western rerelease, but considering how big the library already is, I somehow doubt Nintendo would do the effort.
Archaic` wrote:I'd be very surprised if they didn't at least translate Fire Emblem 3 (With Roy and Marthe), given this opportunity, not to mention the Mother games.
