Mike's Toybox

I just finished compiling highlights of my localization rewrites of Resident Evil 1 for the Playstation.

Localization is when you touch up writing that has been translated from another language. It’s commonplace in video games imported from other countries.

Even when it was released, Resident Evil was notorious for its terrible voice acting, but that was only half the problem: it doesn’t get as much credit for its terrible localization. Even if they’d had a cast of award-winning actors, they would still all talk like half-retarded robots.

As an example, when Chris meets Rebecca for the first time, he enters the room in which she’s hiding, where she promptly maces him before realizing he’s not a zombie. Chris’s reaction to getting maced is the line, “Whoa! What is it?” In Japanese (the game’s original language) he would’ve said something like “Nanda?!” which generally means “What the–?!” but literally translates to something like “What is it?” Hence the nonsensical line. Basically all the in-game text and dialogue was literally translated, resulting in batshit lines like “survival horror” and “master of unlocking” and other memes that came out of RE.

Here’s an exchange between Jill and Barry. They’re reunited in the lobby after running around in the house for a while, fighting zombie dogs and other terrible shit: