Wednesday, March 18, 2009

On the proper naming of certain game titles.

The reason for the lack of updates is due to slow developments.
The reason for -this- update is also due to slow developments. This is a small little rant about the naming conventions of key Satellaview titles - how a few of these have confusing titles, and a few had been mis-named for a while due to to the emulation scene not having quite fact-checked.

On "Kodai no Sekiban", "Kodai no Ishiiban", and "Inishie no Sekiban"

The proper title of this specific BS Zelda is apparently a ridiculously confusing play on words that is difficult to properly romanize because how you -read- the title is not the same as how you pronounce it. Here's a few quotes from the BS Zelda forums to help with this.

"Going back to something a bit earlier, I've looked into matters with the Inishie no Sekiban vs Kodai no Sekiban issue. From what I gather, "Kodai" and "Inishie" are synonyms meaning "ancient."

Apparently just as Ishi (石) and Ban (盤) together counterintuitively make Sekiban (石盤), Ko (古) alone can be counterintuitively pronounced "Inishie". This is why the recent PS3 RPG, "白騎士物語 -古の鼓動-", translates to "Shirokishi Monogatari -Inishie no Kodō-" or "White Knight Story -Ancient Heartbeat-" instead of "Shirokishi Monogatari -Ko no Kodō-".

So even thought "古の鼓動" literally breaks down to:
古 - Ko
の - No
鼓 - Tsudumi
動 - Dou
when taken together it becomes Inishie (古) no (の) Kodō (鼓動).

What this means is that "Inishie no Sekiban" (BSゼルダの伝説 古の石盤) seems to have been an alternate name for "Kodai no Sekiban" (BSゼルダの伝説 古代の石盤). The only difference being the character Dai (代). Under this theory I ran a Google search on "BSゼルダの伝説 古の石盤" and lo and behold, the Berriblue blog and one other site both refer to it by this name. It's not a perfect explanation, but I for one feel comfortable letting it go at that."

I myself go by the theory that the game should be romanized based on how it's pronounced, because while Japan can be confusing with it's writing, it's pronunciation doesn't change that much.

(BTW, "BS Zelda REMIX" doesn't really exist as a Satellaview broadcast - it was a misnaming for the MAP 1 Dai-3-wa ROM which has since taken on a life of it's own.)

On "BS Tantei Club".

The proper title for the game is BS 探偵倶楽部 雪に消えた過去 (BS Tantei Kurabu Yuki ni Kieta Kako)

Some ROM download sites refer to it as "BS Tantei Club Saihousou" or something like that. I do not know where this name came from. Any help figuring that out would be helpful.

On the "BS" Prefix.

Although ROM sites will put the "BS" prefix in front of every game title, whether or not they were on the actual game title is much less consistent.
For example, "BS F-Zero Grand Prix", and "BS Super Mario USA" both have the "BS" prefix - note how they're both special soundlink versions of a standard release... but there's no "BS" in "Tamori's Picross", "All Japan Super Bombliss Cup 95", or "Kodomo Chousadan Mighty Pockets", or most "plain" SFC rereleases.
This can be a bit of confusion in and of itself.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

has someone translated bs tantei club?
by the way, the game works on SNES GT

Anonymous said...

"BSゼルダの伝説 古代の石盤 第1話" = "BS ZELDA no Densetsu Inishie no Sekiban Dai 1 wa"

"CartName : 再BS探偵倶楽部前" is a re-broadcasting version.

I cannot also sympathize with putting the "BS" prefix in front of every the game titles.
It is necessary to write a correct title.
BS is not needed to "BS The Legend of Zelda Triforce of the Gods".

Kiddo said...

Anon: I tend to sometimes think I'm the first to know that, considering how many times I get asked myself. Nice to know people are catching on. :)

Seed: I recently did a system restore on my comp so I can' read the Japanese until I reboot, but your info will surely be helpful.
Although "CartName"? For Satellaview downloads, that doesn't seem like a very appropriate wording, either. Hrm...

Anonymous said...

quote: "The proper title of this specific BS Zelda is apparently a ridiculously confusing play on words..."

This isn't a wordplay of any sorts. It's just the way japanese works. Kanji read different depending on the words they represent. Usually, there are two readings for a Kanji, namely kunyomi(japanese reading) and onyomi(chinese reading). As a general rule, single kanji are read as kunyomi, composita (words consisting of two or more kanji) are read as onyomi. As with everything else, there are lots of exceptions to this rule, but that's the general idea. The correct reading of the title is kodai no sekiban. period.

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