Final Fantasy VI – Ted Woolsey Uncensored Edition
romhacking.net
romhacking.net
The original release: http://tomato.fobby.net/ff6-t-edition/
Which now directs interested folks to: http://ngplus.net/index.php?/forums/topic/1249-matos-transla...
The Mother 3 English translation is unbelievably good, it kinda makes Mother 2's localization look like a hack job by comparison. Now I've almost got a reason to go back and give FFVI another pass...
You'll need a copy of the rom to patch. Also I'm pretty sure you can play it on an actual GBA if you have a flash cart. If you play it on an emulator make sure frame skipping is off because the rhythm aspect of combat is almost impossible otherwise.
If you're up for the challenge I'd recommend it. As I understand it, the pixel remaster, although interesting looking, lacks some of the bonus content added to other versions of the game. This has that, and much more. It felt polished to me. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Hope this helps
This is a situation unlike FF IV, where there really is no "perfect" localization (the SNES translation is pretty rough, the PS and GBA translations have some inaccuracies and out-of-place jokes, and the DS translation is high quality but very stylized, plus the game is fundamentally different). It's also unlike Chrono Trigger, where the Woolsey translation is similarly riddled with inaccuracies, but the accurate DS translation is pretty boring.
Sounds like something a spoony bard would say.
And for other Super Nintendo greats: Super Metroid Turbo! http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4778/ Chrono Trigger + http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3691/ Zelda Randomizer https://alttpr.com/en
Not to mention the mindblowing Super Metroid / A Link to the Past Crossover Randomizer [1], which had a race at SGDQ 2019 [2].
but how many people are in this romhacking variant community?
I wanted to enjoy FF6 again, and am enticed by a better even more coherent story and stuff, but I know I dont have the patience for that turn based format anymore. when i played it originally - on emulator 20 years ago - I still held the fast forward key most of the time, but now I can only do action RPG. The Mana series and Tales series is fine though.
While the gameplay changes are overall interesting, fun and welcome (save for not being able to steal from animals), the script is not for me (purely subjective but IMO too much fourth-wall-breaking and lame meme references, and the vibe is more of a loose having-fun-fanslation with lack of depth). While I'm fairly picky with tone and dialogue I still have some nostalgia for the TW translation.
Still, I'm super impressed with the work and care that's gone into it overall, which is immediately apparent just from reading the readme. I think it's more targeted for those who have already played through the original at least once fairly recently, not for properly experiencing the original story in isolation.
Reading about the T edition it seems it's also something best experienced after having completed vanilla first.
There is nothing wrong with turn based combat, but structured encounters with meaning always beat infuriating RNG encounters that are there just to run out the clock so they can claim a "40h experience".
Did I mention I hate random battles?
https://reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/rwq466/crt_master_ra...
The answer has been becoming clear to more users in the past few years: shaders. With a bright, high resolution OLED that has black frame insertion plus a good shader you can do a pretty decent approximation of the look and feel of a CRT. The de facto standard is CRT Royale but others have done good work in recent years.
Also, FFVI is the only game (to my knowledge) officially released on 8 different platforms across four console generations: SNES, Playstation, Wii Virtual Console, GameBoy Advance, iOS, Android, Steam, and SNES Classic Edition.
The story is so good, I've thought they should make a movie or TV series from it (though such FF movies have had a bad track record).
One of his recent projects is finding the original instrument samples that Nobuo Uematsu used before they were compressed into the game and using those to make high-def "restored" versions of the songs. It sounds easy but there's quite a lot of work behind it and the result is fantastic.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JJBlHHDc65fhZmKUGLrD...
Only first episode released yet, but there is a previous series on the SNES system as a whole, first ep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57ibhDU2SAI
Edit: https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Censorship#Final_Fantas...
Looks like the level of censorship is way below my threshold of what is "news", but a nice clean-up job nonetheless.
Back when Final Fantasy VI (Final Fantasy III US) was released the game was heavily toned down, censoring graphics and the like. When it was re-released for the Playstation, the graphics were uncensored but toned down script remained. Then came Final Fantasy VI Advance with a newer (though some consider drier) translation, but the color palette and music were altered for the handheld console. Others have made re-translations, such as the great work by RPGOne, Lina Darkstar, and Kwhazit.
Now this is Final Fantasy VI: Ted Woolsey Uncensored Edition. The goal was to make the SNES version uncut and to clean up the script but keep the nuance used by Woolsey in the original game’s release. Using the original Woolsey script as a basis to analyze, the entire game was looked through, line by line, using FFVI Advance, RPGOne, and Lina Darkstar to accomplish this. Recently, the game’s script was also heavily analyzed by Kwhazit and Mato (Legends of Localization). With these newer and more heavily detailed looks into the game, the script was again updated to provide a much more accurate version while still remaining true to the original game’s release.
I'd guess the censoring didn't materially impact the story, so while an excellent enhancement, it doesn't feel important enough to make it so high on HN.
>In the original North American SNES version the spell Holy was renamed "Pearl", the summon "Jihad" was renamed to "Crusader", and Hell's Rider to "Rider". Many sprites were also censored. Overly revealing sprites, such as Siren, Lakshmi (Starlet), Alluring Rider (Critic), Chadarnook (woman), Goddess, Power (Hit), Magic, Lady (Girl), and another untargettable part on the final boss, were censored. The smoke for Misty and her palette-swaps was removed. Pub signs were changed to cafe signs.
>During the scene where Locke sees Celes imprisoned in South Figaro, she is no longer being beaten by the guards in the GBA version, and they merely taunt her. The censoring of Celes's beating isn't from the localization; this is also present in the Japanese GBA version. The scene where Celes is being tortured by the Gestahlian Empire was removed because the original Final Fantasy VI was created before the Japanese ratings board, CERO, existed.
>The conversation between Edgar and Relm during their first meeting in Thamasa was changed. In the Japanese version, after Edgar learned about Relm's age (10), he said to himself: "I need to get a hold of myself... or it's going to be a crime". In the English versions, Edgar says: "Not even a lady yet. Here's hoping you're still around in eight years, kid". In the Japanese versions, Relm used harsh language, especially for someone her age. The overseas versions toned down the dialogue so that, while still biting, her words are overall clean.
>When climbing the Tower of Kefka, in the original version, members of the cult of Kefka are said to be "praying" to him. In the SNES version, this was changed to "thinking" about him.
[1] https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Censorship#Final_Fantas...
This isn't enough to stop it from happening, because when you don't do it your entire release gets banned in other countries (UK and Australia are known for this.)
Allow creators to express themselves as they see fit, and to quote the late great Paul Mooney, "It offends people, but good... they should be offended."
To me this example is much more closely aligned with bad localization than actual censorship.
More to the point, when you rewrite a romance game for women because what Japanese people think is sexy reads like being molested to Americans it does serve the creators' desires, which is for people to actually buy their products.
(The games getting blocked entirely are censoring the original creators, but also the original creators are pedophiles, so that's their problem.)
humor can be legitimately difficult to translate. I don't complain about them and I don't expect them left as literal translations + editor's notes to explain them in games (although that's a great option for other mediums). The goal should always be to stay as true to the original as possible.
> it does serve the creators' desires, which is for people to actually buy their products.
That might be one of the most cynical views of art I've read in a good while. I think most creative people want their works to be seen and understood and are doing it for much more than just a paycheck. Ultimately, everyone does hope their games are successful and they want to be able to make a living, but I don't think many writers and artists would put money as their top priority. If all you want is to be rich, there are a million better career choices.
This is a tricky one. If you translate it literally, it's really not that harsh at all as Japanese doesn't really use curse words in a similar way as English. The words are overall clean. So a translator always has to make a judgement call of "in which sense is this supposed to be true to the original" and how much of the language-associated-culture to bring into it.
There's many ways to skin a cat.
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Censorship#Final_Fantas...
>Kefka's line when the party flees from him on chocobos was changed. In the Japanese version he says "ヒーーーー くっそ！ このかりは必ず返しますよ！", literally translated to "Arggg.... you scums! I will definitely pay you back for this!". In the overseas release, depending on the version, he either says "Son of a submariner! They'll pay for this..." (SNES/PSX version) or "Son of a sandworm! You'll pay for this..." (GBA/PC/iOS).
Wow, yeah. I don't care about that level of "censorship," especially from a "news" point of view.
The uncensored images are pretty tame, too, as in a woman in a sheet having her hips and butt partially uncovered vs. covered.
So, I'm glad people put in the effort to clean up little things like this. I'm still confused why this got upvoted.
One of my favorites from the same game... When Figaro Castle is set on fire, one of the imperial guards says "Fire! Fire! Heh heh heh..." implying that he is Beavis.
Intent of the original writers should take priority over the translator wanting to put their attempts at jokes in.
In this case, kuso (lit. “shit”) is like “damn” in English. I think the bowdlerized versions of “SOB” are actually appropriate
I don't think any of it is sinister, but I remember finding out about changes that watered down the game and being sad about them. It's neat that people are trying to fuse together what most people consider the good translation with more of the original intent.
Some bits of it are a bummer: Relm used a tone of speaking that was not appropriate for kids in Japan. Choosing to "clean up" her language too much alters the story.
If you play the fan translation of Mother 3, there's similar effort that goes into preserving Kumatora's crass vocabulary that I really appreciated. She swears somewhat infrequently and makes a number of offhand comments that don't necessarily feel unnatural, but certainly wouldn't get approved in a first-party North American release. It's a great little touch of flavor that helps contrast her character more from the more timid Lucas and duty-bound Duster, plus a generally enjoyable curveball for a game that's earlier hours are dominated with less personable, stoic villagers.
I honestly don't see how one could in good faith mistake a translation for a re-interpretation. What's next - because translation is somewhat subjective, that means anything goes?
It's almost hard to draw an analogy to other art forms, because they're considered legitimate and no one tries to do this to them. When Cien años de soledad became 100 Years of Solitude, its depiction of sexuality and themes of incest weren't excised to appeal to more conservative anglo sensibilities. When Parasite caused a sensation in the west a couple of years ago, the version we saw didn't somehow try to pretend it was set in New York or rename Kim Ki-taek to Fred Jones or something. Even genre fiction usually gets treated better than this - something like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo lost its somewhat unwieldy original Swedish title (Män som hatar kvinnor, "Men Who Hate Women") but otherwise remained defiantly Scandinavian.
Now, I agree that nothing in FFVI specifically is all that bad (the translation has plenty of other issues though), and I agree that some people get unnecessarily bent out of shape about it; changing "pubs" to "cafes", or covering up nude statues or whatever is stupid but doesn't fundamentally change the game. But it's still stupid, and disrespectful to the original work.
I suppose you might interpret "Faust" as possibly referring to the general legend of Faust, but OP was almost certainly referring to Goethe's Faust, "considered by many to be...the greatest work of German literature" [3]. Likewise, as proof by existence, here's the original (in two parts) [4], [5].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad
[2] https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/%CE%99%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%AC%CF%8...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe%27s_Faust
[4] https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Faust_-_Der_Trag%C3%B6die_ers...
[5] https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Faust_-_Der_Trag%C3%B6die_zwe...
This conversation is about whether it's "sinister" or not, as you put it, to make "all sorts of minor changes in the text and images to better fit regional tastes and cultural norms", and whether to call those changes "censorship". jevoten believed that these changes were, in fact, sinister, and explained why - arguing by analogy that making similar changes to works in other artforms to satisfy prudish sensibilities would be viewed as heretical. You then, seemingly, played inexplicably ignorant and focused on the fact that the particular works that they chose as examples were based on mythologies that have inspired other, independent works. The only way your confusion here makes any sense whatsoever would be if you were literally unaware of the specific works they were referring to, particularly when you said that there was "nothing resembling" an original Iliad or Faust, so, taking you at face value, I demonstrated their existence.
As for the question of what constitutes "censorship" - maybe that's what you perceived as the significant part of your comment? I suppose that'd help explain some of your frustration, not that it'd justify your bad faith argumentation or personal slights. Censorship doesn't need to be handed down by official government censors or something - it can be self-imposed, or imposed by copyright holders against the wishes of the original creator, due to political, social, or economic pressure, which is clearly the case here.
That said, most of the censorship in this game had little to do with "cultural norms" and a lot to do with Nintendo of America applying extremely strict standards to games, which itself had as much to do with politics and market maneuvering as it did American culture:
https://www.filfre.net/2021/04/the-ratings-game-part-2-the-h...
> Senator Lieberman: So, people actually complain that they can’t have the more violent game on the Nintendo system? > Howard Lincoln: That’s correct. Letters and phone calls say, “Leave in the violence! You’re censoring!”
Good old Brock and his homemade jelly donuts
IMO this hack is only partly about censorship, and largely about fixing mistakes and limitations.
I love Woolsey's localizations and would rather have his than a fully accurate translation that loses its charm. But the FF6 translation was also done by a single person with limited information about the game, so there's a fair number of errors. So, I like the approach they took there where they fixed mistakes without losing the flavor.
On top of that, they fixed limitations in string length, allowing for more accurate names for spells, items, enemies, etc.
I was an extremely advanced reader for my age, thanks to obsessively playing these games growing up. They had me re-take the standardized tests because of it.
This is one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7AF9etxVig
EDIT: I'm serious
It's incredibly petty, but I wouldn't play this translation for this single reason alone.
But you should really play it, I mean just that intro act alone! On a Super Nintendo!? Peak Squaresoft. There was a time when they really pushed hardware and did it really well as a cohesive score, this is one of them.