Probably what made gaming suck the most for me, besides being poor, was the fact that my native tongue is not English. Being raised in Puerto Rico we were taught English in school, and I knew pretty much for my age when I was a kid, but it was not enough, really.
Here’s an example from my early childhood: Super Mario Bros 3. I loved the game, and there wasn’t much (or any) reading to be done at all. But when we finally beat the game, when the princess shows up, she would say “Thank you. But our Princess is in another castle! …Just kidding! Ha ha ha! Bye bye.” It was at this moment when my brothers and I started cursing at the TV. “What the hell do you mean in another castle? WE’VE LOOKED IN EVERY CASTLE!! NOOOOO!!” We would reset the NES and try again, this time making sure we checked everywhere. How were we supposed to know what “Just kidding” meant?
Later in life I was cursed with the suckage of having no friends that would play any games with “reading” on them. Sure I could handle adventure and even *gasp* Role Playing Games, but my peers would only play action games where the action was intuitive. I would find it most annoying how they would repeatedly stab the “start” button as soon as they turned on the console (even when the game was straight-out-of-the-box new) to skip the intro scenes, because they couldn’t understand all the scrolling text, anyway. Also, my main method for acquiring games was through trading. So how can I get good games if my peeps would avoid Zelda like the plague?
As games got more complex, even action games would require some reading at some point. And you couldn’t help feeling you would at some point miss an important clue. Even a few days ago I had a friend who was having problems with a game because he couldn’t solve a puzzle, only because he didn’t understand the riddle.
If movies are made, then translated into every language possible, why couldn’t they do this with games? Most games were made in Japan then translated to English, why not localize for other languages?
Anyway, the other day I was messing around with my DS and set the console’s language to Spanish. I was surprised and overjoyed when I discovered 2 out of the 4 games I owned would also change to Spanish, including The legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Publishers should include this in the list of features in the back of the game box. I’m holding three DS game boxes right now and they all have the same warning: “FOR SALE, RENTAL AND USE ONLY IN USA, CANADA, MEXICO AND LATIN AMERICA”. So the game developer went through the effort of enabling the game in Spanish… I’m pretty sure having this clearly stated in the box would help sell the game to our amigos in that other half of the Western Hemisphere.
Unrelated fact: It’s a weird coincidence that my children are watching Dora the Explorer as I type this. Man, Dora sure speaks some crappy Spanish! Anyway, that’s all for now! ¡Muchas gracias!
