Novia
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- Feb 23, 2021
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I don’t see early obscure fan translations like these being discussed widely, so I thought I’d make a post about it. I used to have a couple of multicarts for the GBC as a kid, and one of them contained the Vida Translations (or Vida Trans) Pokémon Silver, as well as the ‘Pokemon World’ Pokémon Gold.
I found some videos of them here:
Vida Translations Silver:
https://youtu.be/eWBCNf4kGoY
Pokémon World Gold:
These early fan translations were based on the Japanese roms, and some features include Pokémon having only 5 characters in their names, and in the case of Vida Trans Silver, quite a number of garbage text in dialogue and menus.
In Vida Trans Silver, I remembered that the translators totally made up a lot of the stuff, and it was as if they didn’t understand Japanese at all, and just came up with whatever sounded suitable for the occasion.
Some other points I remember:
Man, how I wish I could talk to one of the translators from the Vida Translations team someday, and tell them all about how their work made my childhood, even if most the translation is just made-up stuff. They used to have a site, but it’s been down since a long time ago.
I found some videos of them here:
Vida Translations Silver:
https://youtu.be/eWBCNf4kGoY
Pokémon World Gold:
Pokemon Gold unique translation bootleg (GBC) Longplay
Gameplay of the pokemon gold translated by much more competent team than the infamous vietnamese translation folks. This one has unique, slightly altered int...
youtu.be
In Vida Trans Silver, I remembered that the translators totally made up a lot of the stuff, and it was as if they didn’t understand Japanese at all, and just came up with whatever sounded suitable for the occasion.
Some other points I remember:
- Oak and Elm mentioning Ash at the start (and by extent, Blue is called ‘Gary’, and Red, ‘Ash’ when you go to Kanto later)
- The girl living in one of the houses in New Bark Town calls Silver her brother.
- The free Shuckle in Cianwood City has garbage text in its name, which started with an ‘X’.
- Whitney refuses to give you the badge at first because she thought you cheated, and as you try to leave, the girl who stops you tells you to talk to her again to convince her you didn’t cheat. (However, Pokémon World Gold got it right - Whitney cries and forgets to give you the badge in that version.)
- If you try to use any Key Item where you shouldn’t, it says ‘No cycling allowed indoors’ regardless of what item you used.
- Mareep’s Pokédex entry says that it was so called because it sounds just like Mary, who had a little lamb.
- Pokémon which English names weren’t revealed at that time were given their Japanese names. For instance, Unown was called ‘ANNON’.
- Pokémon move names were shortened, too, like how Quick Attack was ‘QUATTCK’ or something.
- The girl in National Park gives you the Quick Claw because her Meowth is stubborn.
Reddit - Dive into anything
www.reddit.com
Help me identify this odd version of Pokémon Silver
Got this odd version of Pokémon Silver some years ago. The cartridge is missing the front, so have never seen the label. The title screen is different, along...
m.youtube.com
anyone got pokemon gold/silver with weird english?
anyone got play these oddly translated pokemon gold/silver before? it seems fully translated into english, but there is a five letter limit on pokemon names (HOOTH for Hoothoot for example) and the towns/cities uses romanized japanese names (wakaba town for new bark town for example).if so, do...
forum.lowyat.net
Man, how I wish I could talk to one of the translators from the Vida Translations team someday, and tell them all about how their work made my childhood, even if most the translation is just made-up stuff. They used to have a site, but it’s been down since a long time ago.