How Pokemon Red & Blue were Changed Around The World - Did You Know Gaming? Ft. Dr. Lava

[Music] did you know hitmonchan is named after jackie chan in the english versions of pokemon but that isn't the case all around the world in japan hitmonchan is named after japanese boxing champion hiroyuki ebihara and in france he's named after mike tyson in total there were six different language versions of pokemon's first generation japanese english french german spanish and italian and they're all different in their own unique ways some deviations were pretty minor like how the tv in palette town is playing the movie stand by me in all six versions except for in france the game's french translator was a huge anime fan so he changed the tv's description to an episode of dragon ball but other changes were more significant like the one that gave birth to bim a poke god exclusive to the german fandom for today's episode we managed to hunt down some of the translators who worked on pokemon red and blue and they spilled the beans on how it all went down back in the 90s so i hope you'll forgive any mispronunciations on my part as we explore how the first generation of pokemon games were changed all around the world pokemon first launched in japan in early 1996 as pokemon red and green these versions feature the original 151 pokemon sprites none of which were ever used internationally about nine months later red and green were followed up with pokemon blue a new and improved version with updated graphics and fewer glitches in pokemon blue all 151 pokemon were given brand new sprites and trees grass signposts stumps and lots more visual details were upgraded as well and there were other small changes like new pokedex entries and a new layout for the unknown dungeon all the international versions were mostly based on japanese blue so the unique details only present in red and green like the original sprites weird glitches and old graphics were never seen outside of japan much to everyone's surprise pokemon became a massive success in japan even game freak was shocked when it climbed to number one on japanese sales charts the games got so unbelievably popular that nintendo decided to export the franchise overseas starting with the largest economy in the world the united states instead of red and green the games would be called red and blue this was a marketing decision as those are the colors of the american flag and could perhaps boost sales in the region but there was more to consider beyond just the game's titles localizing pokemon for the american market was a huge investment and nintendo viewed it as a gamble that was probably going to end up losing them a lot of money in 1999 pokemon company ceo ishihara shed some light on the situation at the time it was widely believed that american kids would never want to play games with a lot of texts so we thought pokemon only had about a 10 chance of success outside japan the first time we showed off some pokemon in the us we were told they were too cute the staff in america submitted their ideas for replacement designs but we just couldn't believe the kind of stuff they were proposing they turned pikachu into something like a tiger with huge breasts it looked like a character from the musical cats when i asked how is this supposed to be pikachu they said well look there's its tail right there seriously that was the kind of stuff being proposed but fortunately gamefreak put their foot down and refused to change the pokemon's designs if they hadn't the results could have been disastrous the pokemon designs were left intact but nintendo did end up changing most of the pokemon's names all the big words the ones in all caps like character and pokemon names cities items and attacks were created by nintendo of america staffer hiro nakamura with some help from nintendo treehouse and an assistant but all the small words comprising about 99 of the game's texts were all translated by just one man a canadian freelancer named nob ogasawara we got a chance to interview nob for this video and he explained to us how exactly it all went down he was working for some gaming magazines as a foreign correspondent in japan until one day he was lucky enough to get poached by nintendo of america to come work freelance as a video game translator a year later nob's bosses invited him into their office to quiz him on his pokemon knowledge fortunately he was already a big fan of the japanese games so he aced their test and they brought him on board but before we get any deeper into this story i'd like to point out that translating as an art form not a science a translator's skill personality and even their hobbies can all affect the way translation comes out in the end in a lot of ways red and blue weren't only shaped by game freak they were also shaped by translators like knob for example in the japanese games when you reach viridian city your progress is blocked by an old man lying on the ground his granddaughter says you have to wait for him to sober up then after you've delivered oak's parcel he's back on his feet and says looks like i was pretty drunk my head hurts knob cut out all the booze talk in the english version instead having the girl say he just hadn't had his morning coffee yet likewise in japanese there's a hiker who laughs maniacally because he's stoned on magic mushrooms but knob changed this text so the hiker just had a bad case of hay fever and in celadon city there's a house with a buddhist shrine inside which nob changed the description of to make it a diglett sculpture to be clear none of these changes were ordered by nintendo knob changed them all on his own and he even made some minor changes to series canon in japan there's a scientist in the silphco building who says there's another selfco branch along the pacomanaya tangasuka river in russia but in english the scientist says the other silth branch is actually antixi in russian no man's land which is located about a thousand miles distance from the river why did nob change the canonical location of silfco's russian branch he says it's because pakamanaya tangaska river was just too long and tixi's much shorter at just five letters but in hindsight he now says he actually regrets making this revision some of nob's favorite music movies and tv shows made their way into red and blue as well a rocket grunt who wants you to join his gang on nugget bridge says he's going to make you an offer you can't refuse an iconic line from the godfather and a hiker in the rock tunnel says hit me with your best shot then after you defeat him he says fire it away two lines from the chorus of pat banitar's hit song hit me with your best shot initiating a battle a pokemaniac shouts pokemon fight ready go referencing the 90s anime mobile fighter g gundam where mobile suit battles always begin with the fighters yelling gundam fight ready go but for all the changes knob did make there were also some changes he wanted to make but nintendo didn't allow for one knob wanted to change mr mime's name because he anticipated that pokemon genders would be introduced in future generations which of course is exactly what happened in gen 2 awkwardly resulting in lots of female mr mime in viridian city there's a girl whose nickname raspiro in japanese is called onichon to better fit with american culture nob changed spero's nickname to brittany named after britney spears so it was something like britney spearow however the higher ups didn't like this joke one bit and changed spero's nickname to spiri and told knob that any more of these sorts of shenanigans would end in instant termination there's a lot of knob in gen 1 but as a freelancer it wasn't until gen 3 that he finally got enough clout to start making the big decisions knobs english translation was later used as a base and localized for the german french spanish and italian markets each language was handled by one or two translators a piece all working side by side at nintendo of europe hq in germany of the seven translators the most famous and historically significant is julian bartikov of france according to julian nintendo originally wanted to use the japanese pokemon names in europe because they thought it would be too complicated to trademark hundreds of names across different countries but julian explained to nintendo that the japanese names weren't going to play too well in france he told them squirtle's japanese name zenigami sounds like the french word for stoner and charmander's japanese name sounds like the french slang word for feces nintendo didn't seem to fully trust julian but ultimately they gave in and they let him give all the pokemon new french names and thanks to julian france may have ended up the best name localizations of any region better even than the english games we interviewed julian and he told us that he implemented as many legends and fairy tales into pokemon names as possible for example he named the legendary bird trio after the nordic gods odin and thor as well as ra the egyptian sun god the french name for beedrill drew inspiration from the three musketeers dartanian and he named gyarados after leviathan the bible's gigantic sea serpent he named far-fetched can articho which means duck artichoke this confused a lot of fans because farfetch'd actually holds a leak not an artichoke but julian says this was actually his idea of a prank a way to trick fans into thinking that farfetch had an evolved forum that wields an artichoke knob almost got fired for nicknaming a sphero after britney spears but julian had a lot more freedom to make his mark on kanto in english versions there's a far-fetched nickname ducks but julian changed his nickname to julio named after himself of course and he nicknamed a few more pokemon after some of his best friends and just like knob julian injected many of his own interests into the games as well one of koga's lackeys in the fuchsia city gym references a japanese show that was popular in france at the time space sheriff gavin he says i want to be a ninja and jump from tree to tree like on tv like ex-hog the space pig and in french the attack minimize was renamed lilliput because in the 18th century book golfer's travels gulliver was taken prisoner by a town of tiny people on an island called lilliput there are many more details that make the french localization truly unique probably too many to count but suffice it to say julian had a huge impact on the pokemon franchise in france thanks to julian germany ended up getting unique pokemon names as well like how geodude was renamed kleinstein after the famous german physicist albert einstein but the name kleinstein works on another level as well because in german kleinstein means small stone most english speakers are familiar with the magic incantation abracadabra alakazam but in germany magicians say abracadabra sim saw a bin so the germans changed alkazan's name to simsala but the final word of the incantation bin was missing so german kids were convinced there was a secret fourth evolution called bin american playgrounds were rampant with rumors for the so-called polka gods like mew3 and peek-a-blue but in germany ben was one of the most sought-after poke gods of them all lance the dragon trainer was renamed siegfried after germanic mythology siegfried the dragon slayer who killed the cursed dragonfafnir and bathed in his blood just like most everything made in germany their localization was efficient and accurate a pretty straightforward german translation of knobs english translation it didn't contain too many errors but also maybe didn't employ as much imagination as the french version unlike the other four languages italy and spain didn't get their own unique pokemon names they simply reused the english names we'd always wondered why so we got in touch with italian localizer elena fogozzaro who explained that nintendo already had an organized structure in place for translating french and german but not for italian and spanish in fact elena and her partner leonardo were the first italian translators that nintendo hired for any game ever translating red and blue into italian and spanish at all was an experiment for nintendo an experiment they didn't think would pay off but nintendo's lack of confidence ended up having consequences that echoed into the future to this day italy and spain still don't have unique pokemon names after passing on gen 1 it would have been weird to start in gen 2 so recycling english names just became the norm every localization has some mistakes but the italian and spanish versions have a particularly bad reputation for containing lots of translation errors for example in spanish when you hook a pokemon with a fishing rod like a magikarp for example instead of the game telling you the hook magikarp attacked it says el malvado magikarp attacko which means the evil magikarp attacked the attack slam was translated as portazzo which instead of something like a body slam actually means to slam a door as a result spanish kids grew up thinking that fish pokemon were evil and the pokemon routinely slammed doors on each other in italy the attack pound was translated as libra the form of pound used for weight measurements or for describing british currency glare was translated as bagliori which instead of a fierce gaze is the definition of glare that refers to a harsh light reflection like when sunlight shines on a tv screen spanish and italian fans have long wondered exactly how the translators made so many obvious mistakes when we asked elena she painted a picture of a translation process mired by disorganization and a lack of information starting from day one elena and her partner were actually hired to translate red and blue from german into italian and traveled the nintendo of europe headquarters to do just that but when they arrived they discovered the games weren't in german they were actually in english luckily they could speak english as well so they told nintendo they could do the translations anyway despite them essentially being hired for the wrong job elena told us everything was very badly organized for translation at that time we barely had a computer just one pc for two translators after waiting for two days we were given several lists of words to translate without any information zero context and with space limitations the lists were very long but due to secrecy reasons nobody told us what they were for nobody told us these were attacks or items or stats everything was mixed up and really difficult to understand in other words there were a handed list of words like slam and pound out of context and were only given a few weeks to complete the job so it's really no surprise that the spanish and italian versions turned out the way that they did the european localizations were all based on nob's english translation so a lot of the changes knob made were repeated around the world including some mistakes the most famous mistake can be found on cinnabar island in japanese red and green there's an npc who trades you an electrode for your raichu in japanese blue this was changed to trading your kadabra for his graveler and afterwards he'd say your cadabra evolved because of course cadabra evolves into alakazam when traded the english version of red used the original raichu electro trade from japanese red but the devs used the text from japanese blue where the npc says your kadabra evolved they swapped out kadabra's name with raichu in the dialogue but failed to realize this resulted in an impossibility with the npc now saying the raichu you traded to me wouldn't evolved two decades later game freak revealed that raichu originally had an evolution named gorachu that was cut from gen 1 due to a lack of cartridge space this led some fans to believe the dialogue about raichu evolving was a reference to gorochu that the developers accidentally left in the game but in reality it was just a coincidental translation error did you also know that there's an actual prehistoric creature named after bulbasaur for more facts about pokemon and prehistory check out the video on screen don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoyed this video click the like button thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: DidYouKnowGaming?

Views: 451,960

Keywords: pokemon, pokemon region differences, pokemon regional differences, how pokemon changed, how pokemon was changed aorund the world, nintendo, pocket monsters, dr lava, dr. lava, drlava, did you know gaming, didyouknowgaming, dykgaming, dykg, gaming, pokemon facts

Id: yheM8RqvqFQ

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020