Presenting: Hidden Things in 1-2-Switch (but keep it under your hat)

April 4th 2017 Nintendo Switch / 1-2-Switch

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership to the contents and media of this article. Text and images belong to Nintendo Co., Ltd.; the original article can be read here: 『1-2-Switch』隠し要素をこっそりご紹介！

1-2-Switch is a game in which you look directly at your opponent, rather than at the screen. Did you notice that there are lots of secrets hidden in the game?

In this article, I’ll reveal some of those secrets. If you haven’t discovered them yet, give it a try!

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Shaving a crew cut? (Shave)

Make use of the HD rumble feature for a clean shave in “Shave”.

Play more than two games in a row, and you can try a game of cutting head hair into a buzz cut. Cut some hair using the Joy-Con as clippers!

The angle is different from shaving a beard, so maybe you can even win against an opponent you can’t beat in beard shaving.

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Accumulating magic power during a duel (Wizard)

Use your Joy-Con as a magic wand, wave it around to accumulate magic power, and let your magic clash against your opponent’s in “Wizard”.

Normally, during a duel, you thrust your magic wand to attack, but if you wave your wand in circles while pointing at your opponent, you can gather magic power and perform a powerful attack.

When you see this kind of wave pattern on the screen, it means that magic power is accumulating! Now you can thrust forward your wand and unleash a powerful magic attack and push back your opponent. But be careful, because you’re leaving yourself open to attacks while charging.

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Don’t be fooled by other ring tones! (Telephone)

Use your Joy-Con as a telephone receiver and be the fastest to pick up in “Telephone”.

If you play two or more games in a row, your own phone’s ring tone will change. 

Enjoy a different kind of gameplay: don’t get fooled by the other sounds, and only pick up when your personal ringtone sounds.

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Get amazing treasures (Safe Crack, Treasure Chest)

Try to be the fastest to open a safe in “Safe Crack”, or get at the contents of a treasure chest wrapped in chains in “Treasure Chest”.

You and your opponent race each other to see who can open a safe or a treasure chest the fastest. Their contents changes depending on the time it takes you to open them.

In both games there are four ranks of treasures. To get the best treasure, you have to finish the challenge very fast. How about you keep trying until you get some amazing loot?

These screenshots show the best kinds of treasure in each game. Try to see them for yourself!

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Try playing in a foreign language (all games)

Finally, a little something extra.

By setting the game console’s language to something besides Japanese, you can change all of the displayed text and the sounds to a foreign language.

These games can be played without looking at the screen. Once you’ve memorized their rules, you can enjoy them without looking at the words. “Boxing Gym” and “Flag Raising” can be played after memorising just a few words. You can enjoy the games in a fresh new way!

Why don’t you give it a try?

©2017 Nintendo

edited by : 編集部 Gami

The Legend of Zelda’s 30th birthday

This is a translation of an article on Nintendo of Japan’s website; part 6 of a 6-part series on The Legend Of Zelda in celebration of the series’ 30th anniversary. Part 5 of this series consists of a number of magazine scans which I will leave untranslated. Translation mine, all other contents, text, images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社. See below for a link to the original article.

In the final instalment of our 6-week The Legend of Zelda nostalgia project, we have a message from the creator of the series, Shigeru Miyamoto, to all of its players.

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Hello! This is Shigeru Miyamoto.
Already 30 years have passed since I created The Legend of Zelda for the Famicom Disk System.

The Disk System was the hardware of my dreams, because it had a large memory, and I could create save games of arbitrary size. Loading data took some time, but hearing the disk drive clang whenever I entered a dungeon made me just as happy as the “puzzle solved” sound did.

What fascinated me about the then popular PC RPGs was that my character became stronger and stronger, until in the end, I could mop the floor with the enemies from the first dungeons. Zelda let the player experience that in an action format, along with solving puzzles. Because of that, rather than calling it an RPG, I called it an “action adventure”. However, the world was experiencing a full-blown RPG boom at the time, and people kept asking me “Is Zelda an RPG, too?” It got so tiresome, I started calling the games RPGs myself about the time Ocarina of Time came out. (laughs)

While we were developing Zelda, we had people play test it. People were used to games with stage-based gameplay, like Super Mario. They said, “I don’t know what to do!”
At that time, Link had a sword right from the start, but then I thought through it again from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know the first thing about the game. I made the change to have him start with no equipment at all, forcing him to get the sword himself, which makes it easier to get into the game.

Well, in the new title scheduled for next year, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch, Link will start out with nothing on him.

From that point onwards the hero, will awake and follow his own path. Some people say that with its unnoticeable load times and its free exploration of a vast continuous landscape, the game is close to the original The Legend of Zelda.

Mr. Aonuma, the producer, and Mr. Fujibayashi, the director, said jokingly, “How about we go to Ganon totally empty-handed?” There are so many ways to play this game. You can use any kind of weapon, you can even steal weapons from enemies, people are free to find their own style of fighting.

Please look forward to it.

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Did you enjoy our article series over these last six weeks? If you felt just a little nostaliga, we’re happy.
With the Nintendo Classic Mini Family Computer, you can enjoy 30 classic games including the original The Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link. Please go ahead and give it a try!

Also, next year the new The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be released for Wii U and Nintendo Switch. I’m sure you will be able to feel Zelda’s freshness.
Thank you for staying with us to the end.

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edited by: 企画部　ひろＰ (HiroP)

Original article: 『ゼルダの伝説』30周年によせて。

Original text and images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社

List of related articles:

1. A look at the “puzzle solved” sound in the original The Legend of Zelda
2. I started up a Famicom Disk System that was slumbering in the depths of the storehouse
3. Why was The Adventure of Link so unusual?
4. Comparing the Hyrule of the Past and the Present
5. The Legend of Zelda’s 30th birthday

 

Comparing the Hyrule of the Past and the Present

This is a translation of an article on Nintendo of Japan’s website; part 4 of a 6-part series on The Legend Of Zelda in celebration of the series’ 30th anniversary. Translation mine, all other contents, text, images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社. See below for a link to the original article.

Part 4 of our six-week The Legend of Zelda nostalgia project is about “the Hyrule of the past and the present“.

The next addition to the series, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, scheduled for release in 2017, is set in the same Hyrule as the first The Legend of Zelda game from 1986. For this article, I compared these two worlds of Hyrule from differing eras.

Comparison No. 1: The Old Man

Start playing either game and you’ll soon meet the Old Man. In the first game, you will receive the sword from him. How kind he is…

In the new game, he won’t give you any weapons. Instead, you can help yourself to the roasted apples and torches he keeps at his side. In this game, you have to find your own weapons by snatching them away from enemies. Talk about survival skills!

Comparison No. 2: Spectacle Rock

In the first game, there is a place where two boulders are lined up. If you step back a bit, they look like a pair of spectacles. That’s why the place is called “Spectacle Rock”.
And indeed, Spectacle Rock makes an appearance in the new game as well. They’re more mountains than boulders, but they are clearly shaped like spectacles, don’t you think? You’ll have to see for yourself when the game is released.

 

Comparison No. 3: The Raft

The first game had a raft that moved automatically as a means to cross bodies of water. A raft exists in the new game, too.
When you have to cross rivers and can’t swim through them because of the intense cold, the raft is indispensable. If you look closely, you can see that Link seems to be able to make his own wind. That’s right, in the new game, he can cross rivers by creating wind at will and steering the raft in any direction of his choosing.

Comparison No. 4: Skulls

Finally, I compared game objects shaped like skulls. In the first game, the rooms of the last dungeon formed the shape of a skull.

In the new game, there are skull-shaped enemy hideouts. You can make use of their shape, for example by dropping one of the lanterns that can be seen in the eyes, to sweep all of the enemies at once.

What do you think? I heard that there are many more connections like that between the original The Legend of Zelda and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Searching for them seems like a good way to enjoy the games.
See you next time!

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edited by: 企画部　ひろＰ (HiroP)

Original article: ハイラルの今と昔を比べてみた

Original text and images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社

List of related articles:

1. A look at the “puzzle solved” sound in the original The Legend of Zelda
2. I started up a Famicom Disk System that was slumbering in the depths of the storehouse
3. Why was The Adventure of Link so unusual?
4. Comparing the Hyrule of the Past and the Present
5. The Legend of Zelda’s 30th birthday

 

Why was The Adventure of Link so unusual?

This is a translation of an article on Nintendo of Japan’s website; part 3 of a 6-part series on The Legend Of Zelda in celebration of the series’ 30th anniversary. Translation mine, all other contents, text, images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社. See below for a link to the original article.

For part 3 of our six-week The Legend of Zelda nostalgia project, I am going to interview one of the developers involved in making The Adventure of Link and find out why this game is so unique among the series’ titles. The person I’m going to talk to is The Adventure of Link‘s director, Tadashi Sugiyama.

◆ Tadashi Sugiyama’s profile

Personality: young at heart!
Hobbies: bicycling, mountain climbing
Favorite food: Ramen

Titles he has worked on include The Adventure of Link (his first), Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, F-Zero X, Wii Fit, and Steel Diver, among many others.

I’m going to ask him some questions I imagine you readers might have. I put them together Q&A style. Enjoy!

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Q1: I think The Adventure of Link is a unique game in the Legend of Zelda series. How did its development get started at the time?

Mr. Sugiyama’s response: We started based on these few words by Mr. [Shigeru] Miyamoto: “I want to make a side-scrolling action game where you can attack and defend both upwards and downwards.“ Actions like attacking while jumping, downwards-stabbing and defending high and low with the shield became the focus. Things you couldn’t do in the first game. Originally, rather than producing a sequel, we worked on a new type of game experience where you’d use a shield and sword and could move them up and down. We didn’t have the game system of the first part in mind. What today is called a „unique entry in the series“ was rather our struggle to create a new play style altogether, more of a side story. We added in the story and a setting with a 16-year old Link, attached „The Legend of Zelda 2“ to the title, and released it as the second part of the series.

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Q2: What was the development environment like at the time?

 

Mr. Sugiyama’s reply: To be honest, I remember very little from what happened 30 years ago… (wry smile) Back then about 10 people worked on developing one title, very few people compared to today. I think the development time for The Adventure of Link was rather long for a title at the time. Data was exchanged in paper form, which seems old-fashioned these days.

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Q3: Why did you decide to call it “The Adventure of Link”?

Mr. Sugiyama’s reply: I’d say because the title “The Adventure of Link” summarizes the game’s content neatly… (I don’t remember.) The first game was “The Legend of Zelda”, and at the time there weren’t many games with epic titles like “The Legend of…” or “The Adventure of…”, so we decided on calling it that, I think.

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Q4: I had a very hard time fighting the enemies in the game. Was this degree of difficulty considered normal by players back then?

Mr. Sugiyama’s reply: Difficult game, isn’t it? (laughs) Basically, all of the action games from that period seem to be difficult. The games weren’t very rich in content, so to lengthen the play time, we made them so hard that it took some time to beat them. We had to do everything ourselves, including the debugging, and so we played the game a lot. We raised the difficulty to a level that felt entertaining to us.

I remember one story. A customer called and asked, “Why can’t I defeat the final boss?” We talked to him and realized he already had all of the equipment. We had to tell him there’s no other way to beat the game but to rely on your own skill. That was a hard thing to tell someone. And he seemed to be playing for his child… We were very sorry.

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Q5: Things like leveling up Link and meeting enemies in random encounters (symbol encounters) are unique to The Adventure of Link. How did it get this way?

Mr. Sugiyama’s reply: While there were various limitations at the time, we added an element of repeatedly fighting enemies to level up Link. About the random encounters, since the field map was so small, we used that method to introduce an element of luck.

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Q6: In your opinion, what elements of The Adventure of Link influenced the later titles in the Legend of Zelda series?

Mr. Sugiyama’s reply: I wasn’t directly involved in the series’ later games, but as an example, the names of the towns in The Adventure of Link were later used as names for characters (the town of Saria, Ruto, and Rauru, among others). Also, swordfighting action elements like attacking with the jump stab and the downwards stab were influenced by The Adventure of Link.

Saria

Ruto

Rauru

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Q7: Lastly, how about a message for the fans for whom The Adventure of Link is their favourite among the Legend of Zelda games?

Mr. Sugiyama’s reply: People like that exist!? (laughs) I’m just kidding. I’m very grateful to hear people say that. As a creator, it makes me so happy that you are so much into it. Thank you. It’s been 30 years since its release; please continue giving The Adventure of Link your love!

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And with that, Mr. Sugiyama has dragged up memories from 30 years ago and answered, one by one, very politely, all of this youngster’s ignorant questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Sugiyama, that was very kind of you.

I bet this cleared up some of the questions you guys might have had.

See you all next time.

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edited by: 企画部　ひろＰ (HiroP) 

Original article: なぜ『リンクの冒険』は当たり前にならなかったのか？

Original text and images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社

List of related articles:

1. A look at the “puzzle solved” sound in the original The Legend of Zelda
2. I started up a Famicom Disk System that was slumbering in the depths of the storehouse
3. Why was The Adventure of Link so unusual?
4. Comparing the Hyrule of the Past and the Present
5. The Legend of Zelda’s 30th birthday

 

I started up a Famicom Disk System that was slumbering in the depths of the storehouse

This is a translation of an article on Nintendo of Japan’s website; part 2 of a 6-part series on The Legend Of Zelda in celebration of the series’ 30th anniversary. Translation mine, all other contents, text, images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社. See below for a link to the original article.

For part 2 of our six-week The Legend of Zelda nostalgia project, I’d like to try and start up the hardware and software that were used to run The Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link at the time of their release.

At the time the titles were released (1986 to 1987), I wasn’t born yet, and so I’ve never laid hands on an actual Famicom Disk System.

First of all, I went to look for the Famicoms and a Disk Systems that are slumbering in the company storehouse.

There they were, more than I expected. I took one of the Famicoms and Disk Systems each. Then I opened the Famicom box.

Oh, so that’s what the original Famicom was like. It was smaller than I expected.

Also, look at the third picture. What on earth is that Y-shaped connector…?

This was the contents of the Disk System box. This one was larger than I expected.

If we combine this with the Famicom we get…

I like the way those two look like when being put together. The final step was hooking them up to the TV. After struggling a bit without success, I asked some of my more experienced coworkers in the office. It seems like I needed to use a CRT TV…

You hardly see those around anymore lately. I went back into the storehouse, looking for a CRT TV.  Eventually I found one.

With help from my coworkers and after fiddling with the Famicom and the Disk System and the TV for about 30 minutes, I successfully connected the devices. At last… power ON!

While I didn’t feel any nostalgia myself, turning the power on made coworkers and bosses gather round the TV. At last I inserted a disk!

A chorus of „Oooh!”s could be heard, and the office seemed to become all warm and fuzzy. Satisfied with the reaction, I packed up again and started to carry everything back to the storehouse, when something caught my eye.

This is a machine that was used to write on the disks, called a “Disk Writer”. Back then, it was possible to overwrite a disk with other software titles. These devices used to be placed in game shops.

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edited by: 企画部　ひろＰ

Original article: 倉庫の奥に眠ってた「ファミリーコンピュータ ディスクシステム」を起動してみた

Original text and images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社

List of related articles:

1. A look at the “puzzle solved” sound in the original The Legend of Zelda
2. I started up a Famicom Disk System that was slumbering in the depths of the storehouse
3. Why was The Adventure of Link so unusual?
4. Comparing the Hyrule of the Past and the Present
5. The Legend of Zelda’s 30th birthday

A look at the “puzzle solved” sound in the original The Legend of Zelda

This is a translation of an article on Nintendo of Japan’s website; part 1 of a 6-part series on The Legend Of Zelda in celebration of the series’ 30th anniversary. Translation mine, all other contents, text, images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社. See below for a link to the original article.

Hello everybody, this is HiroP. I’m in charge of advertisement for The Legend Of Zelda.

Last week, the Nintendo Classic Family Computer has been announced. It will feature a compilation of 30 classic titles, including The Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link.

Since it’s also Zelda’s 30th anniversary, we are going to release six weekly articles between today and the release of the Nintendo Classic Family Computer. They’re going to be full of nostaliga for these two classic games. You’re welcome to spend the time until the release with us.

This week’s article is about the original The Legend of Zelda.

I’m sure many people have fond memories of solving puzzles in The Legend of Zelda, and the “puzzle solved” sound that plays at those times.

Click to play audio

Most of you probably know the “puzzle solved” sound in the original The Legend of Zelda game from 30 years ago. Now, here is our question.

@ZeldaOfficialJP (Official Zelda Twitter account)
Surprise quiz!
Q: If you play through the original The Legend of Zelda game from beginning to end, how often will you hear the “puzzle solved” sound?
2016-10-4 09:12
14% 55 times
33% 75 times
36% 95 times
17% 115 times
final result: 16,836 replies
1,874 1,874 retweets – 1,066 likes

(snapshot of the tweet at the time of writing, 2016-11-23)

Send your answers to the official The Legend of Zelda Twitter account. Please understand that there will be no prizes for correct answers. We will announce the result of our research on October 6th (Thu).

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* 2016-10-06 Update

Despite the short time limit, 16,836 people have submitted their answer. Thank you all for replying. Now we will announce the correct answer.

Since not even the developers knew the answer, I had to actually play through the game to check. Have a look at this short video that I’ve compiled.

Checking everywhere without any hints using the bomb and candle wasn’t easy, but somehow I made it to the end…

And the correct answer is: 75 times! (result by HiroP)

Congratulations to everyone who got it right. I can feel how much love you have for Zelda.

To those who didn’t get it right, I can feel your ambition to learn more about Zelda.

By the way, I also checked the “puzzle solved” sounds in The Adventure of Link.

Well, I was surprised myself to learn that in The Adventure of Link the familiar “puzzle solved” doesn’t make an appearance! (result by HiroP)

That game feels totally different from Legend of Zelda in the first place. Why in the world is it so different from the other games in the series…?

See you all next time!

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edited by: 企画部　ひろＰ (HiroP)

original article: 初代『ゼルダの伝説』の謎解き音の回数を調べてみた

Original text and images are copyright by 任天堂株式会社

List of related articles:

1. A look at the “puzzle solved” sound in the original The Legend of Zelda
2. I started up a Famicom Disk System that was slumbering in the depths of the storehouse
3. Why was The Adventure of Link so unusual?
4. Comparing the Hyrule of the Past and the Present
5. The Legend of Zelda’s 30th birthday

Get in da cabin!

In 2014 I became a member of the Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love translation project. The project is about localizing a game called いろづきチンクルの恋のバルーントリップ, Ripening Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love (tentative English title) into English. It’s the successor to Freshly Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupee Land, an adventure game starring Tingle from the The Legend of Zelda games.

There’s lots of text to translate for that game, and lots of characters speaking in many different styles and dialects. This means there’s always something I’m not familiar with that I have to look up, ask people about, and search the internet for. Today I’d like to talk about an interesting sentence construction that appears in the game’s dialogue.

Don’t spoil this for me!

There is this old man who sits around waiting to hand out hints to people who are stuck in the game. I call him the Spoiler Hermit. It’s a really neat system, you just go to a save point anywhere in the game, and there he’ll sit and give you a hint if you talk to him.

Sweet ride, huh?

In one scene of the game, Tingle and his friends are trying to get inside a log cabin. The door seems to be locked from the inside. The Spoiler Hermit gives Tingle this hint:

ログハウスの ドア ・・・　おぬしが あけなければ　だれが あけるのじゃ !　いくら カカシくんが こやのなかに　はいれるからといって ・・・　なんでも たにんの ちからに　たよるのは かんしんせんぞ。

“The door of the log cabin… If you won’t open it, who will? ???”

The first attempt to analyze

The bold sentence didn’t make any sense to me at all. Read my first naive analysis (this will be super wrong, don’t be mad!):

Kana	English
いくら	how much
カカシくん	Kakashi (a name)
こや	hut; cabin
なか	inside
はいれる	to be able to enter
から	because
…といって	quotation mark
なんでも	by all means; anything; everything
たにん	another person; other people
ちから	strength
たよる	to rely on
かんしんせんぞ	I have no idea

How does “Because how much Kakashi can enter the cabin you say… By all means relying on other people’s strength かんしんせんぞ” sound? No. That doesn’t make sense in any language.

Inspiration strikes

After reading and re-reading this sentence over and over, at some point my idiom sense started to tingle! Yes, there is such a thing. And I think I’m finally beginning to develop one for Japanese. It’s the feeling you get when you read a string of seemingly non-related words that don’t make sense in combination. In this case, I got the impression that 「いくら…からといって」might be a Japanese idiom, not to be taken literally but as a set phrase with a fixed meaning.

When I suspect an idiom at play, the first thing I do is rush over to weblio to try my luck. As it turns out, …からといって is the actual idiom here, and it means “while it may be true that…” or “just because…”

With this knowledge, a new translation attempt for the first half of the sentence might be, “Just because how much Kakashi can enter the cabin…” Still a bit iffy, and at the time I didn’t have any idea how this sentence might fit in with the others surrounding it, or how its meaning might make sense within the context of the game.

Unwieldy words

Another thing that had me stumped was the meaning of かんしんせんぞ. If you put that into jisho, it throws up its arms and goes IDKLOL. One of the problems language learners have with games that are completely in kana, no kanji, is that it can be incredibly hard to parse sentences, break them down into words. My best guess was that かんしん was one word; one of 感心, 関心, or a few other homonyms. The ぞ is probably the sentence ending particle ぞ used by males to express emphasis. This leaves us with the せん. No idea what this could mean here or how it connects to the surrounding kana.

Putting it in the hand of fate

After struggling with this by myself for quite some time, asking fellow language learners for help, and struggling by myself some more, I followed the advice of a fellow learner and posted the entire block of text on hinative.com, asking for a translation by native speakers of Japanese. I didn’t have high hopes, because there wasn’t a lot of context, and no kanji, and much desolation all around. Imagine my surprise when just a few minutes later, a kind Japanese person provided me with a translation and a bit of explanation.

Who will open the door of the log house, if you won’t do it !
I don’t think it’s not good that you depend everything on someone, even though Kakashi-kun can enter in it !
だと思います…^^;

My thanks go out to this kind person, and also to hinative, which I assumed couldn’t help me, but did!

Second attempt, armed with knowledge

So let’s tear into it! Apparently, my latest attempt at the first half of the Japanese sentence (which has become the second half of the English sentence) was already pretty close to the mark, although here we see no mention of “how much”. Well, it makes more sense without it anyway, so let’s not worry about that now. The  からといって has been translated as “even though”. Also, there is “depend everything on someone”, aka, “relying on other people’s strength”, so far, so good. But where on earth does “I don’t think it’s not good…” (I’m assuming an accidental double negation here) come from? By process of elimination, this should be the translation of かんしんせんぞ. To get some more insight, I asked the same person a follow-up question:

Me:I have a question: what does かんしんせん mean in this context?

Kind stranger:かんしんせん＝かんしんしない（感心しない）
It means like “I think it’s not good of? you” in this case.
（あなたが〜するのは）いいことだと思わない。

So, first of all, かんしんせん is 感心せん, which in turn is 感心しない, which means, “I think it’s not good (that you do that)”, or I guess, “I don’t appreciate (that you do that)”. Wow. Now I’m really glad I asked a native speaker, because I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that on my own. Even now, looking up 感心, 感心する, or 感心しない, just gives me the result of 感心する: to admire. That the negation to not admire/don’t admire could mean to think it’s not good is not immediately obvious to me, so that’s where the advantage of a native speaker comes into play. Of course, this may be easier for native speakers of English, or some other language; maybe it’s just my German mind that can’t make the connection.

Loose ends

Finally, re-reading the sentences while writing this article today, the how much (いくら) still bothered me, so I looked it up on jisho. Turns out the word also means even; even if, which is precisely what it means in this sentence. Had I looked it up earlier, maybe understanding would’ve hit sooner. The lesson here is: Don’t be a snob! If you have trouble with a piece of text, look up each and every word of it, even if you’re certain you know their meaning. Often there are secondary meanings and sneaky usages that you don’t know yet.

Conclusion

Taking all this into consideration, I’ll settle on this translation:

Who will open the door, if not you? Just because Kakashi can get in there, doesn’t mean you should rely on him for everything.

This doesn’t correspond completely to the original for a number of reasons, including fitting the sentences into the surrounding context, character limitations, and trying to make it sound more English. I think this fits well into the speech the Spoiler Hermit gives at this point of the game. If you should ever play it, you’ll find these exact words if you get stumped while trying to get into the log cabin and ask the Spoiler Hermit for guidance, and you’ll remember this day and the story of how those words were found.

いろづきチンクルの恋のバルーントリップ and もぎたてチンクルのばら色ルッピーランド are trademarks of Vanpool, inc. Tingle and チンクル are trademarks of Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Say what!?

Here’s a thing I had to look up while playing Danganronpa. This is one more of those phrases that zoom by the reader or listener before they know it. Its meaning is hard to figure out if you don’t know it beforehand.

In the first chapter of the game, the protagonist Makoto Naegi has a serious conversation with a distressed girl, Sayaka Maizono. It’s very serious and about various delicate subjects. … Yes, I have forgotten what this particular conversation was about, and I didn’t make notes like I promised myself I would. 😓

Anyway, during this conversation, Makoto is thinking to himself,

正直、聞きたいけど…　聞きたくないって言うか…

The first sentence, 「正直、聞きたいけど…」 seems pretty straightforward, “Frankly, I want to ask (her)…” So far, so good, he’s curious about that complex emotional issue she’s facing that I forgot all about.

The meaning of the next sentence, 「聞きたくないっ言うか」, is not immediately obvious to me. The first half, 「聞きたくない」, simply means, “I don’t want to ask”. But「って言うか」- what the heck? A question marker at the end of quoting something, that’s just… So, let’s just try to look this whole phrase up!

Turns out information about this can be found both at weblio and in a blog post of Tae Kim’s. (These are usually two of the first things I check for grammar question like this.) According to these sources, 「〜と言うか」or its equivalent 「〜って言うか」 mean, or perhaps I should say ~, or rather ~.

Applying this to the above sentence, my attempt at a translation would be,

Honestly, I want to ask her about it… Or rather, I don’t.

While this sounds a little clumsy, and might better be rephrased to sound better in English, I think the meaning is clear: Makoto is curious and wants to ask Sayaka about her horrifying (?) secret, but at the same time he’s afraid of what she might tell him.

Mystery solved! Or I got it all wrong! Anyway, thanks for reading, see you next head-scratcher!

Danganronpa and all its characters are trademarks of and copyrighted by Spike Chunsoft.

This guy is unbearable!

The next game on my list is ダンガンロンパ 希望の学園と絶望の高校生 (Danganronpa: Kibō no Gakuen to Zetsubō no Kōkōsei). It’s a visual novel style game that’s supposed to be very, very good. So let’s begin!

First of all, let me give you some exposition real quick. As always, no spoilers. Everything I write about here is happening in the intro and tutorial part of the game. 安心してください。

The premise of this game is that there is this prestigious high school in Japan, and only the most excellent students are invited to study there. They invite the best baseball player, the best writer, the best swimmer… You get the picture. And then they invite one random dude, chosen purely by chance, making him or her the student with the best luck. The part of this “lucky” student, a boy named 苗木誠 (なえぎ　まこと), goes to the player. Now comes the twist: When the students arrive at their new high school, they find themselves locked inside. They are greeted by a creepy remote-controlled bear doll that calls itself  モノクマ and has something horrifying planned for the students…

The first thing I noticed about the writing in this game is that it uses plenty of slang. Slang like I never seen, crazy, mind-bending stuff. Actually, I bet it’s a pretty normal mix of slang and dialects, I’m just not used to things like that yet. The reason for the large amounts of slang expressions is of course that all of the protagonists are high school students. Darn those teenagers forcing foreigners to learn their weird way of talking!

Now here’s the line I’m going to look at today. The students are gathered in the auditorium, where モノクマ gives them a welcome speech and lays out its plans for them. It says some pretty gruesome stuff, and one of the students snaps and takes a swing at it. The doll goes flying into the room and explodes.

Mere seconds after the モノクマ doll is destroyed, a new one enters the room! This prompts one of the students – the baseball player 桑田レオン（くわた　レオン） – to say the following line:

うぉっ！　別のが出てきやがった•••

I have no idea what the やがった-suffix there means. It shows up quite a lot in the students’ speech. Disregarding the suffix for a second, the sentence appears to mean, “What the-! Another one appeared …”

My first instinct is to look やがった up in Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese, and it’s an immediate hit in the section titled Casual Patterns and Slang:

「やがる」 is a verb suffix used to indicate hatred or contempt for the person doing the action. … In order to use 「やがる」, you simply attach it to the stem of the verb. After that, 「やがる」 is conjugated just like a regular u-verb.

This comes with a warning that this is an extreme form of slang that should not be used in regular conversation. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! So, “hatred or contempt” – it makes a lot of sense in this context, because the students are pretty much terrified of this creepy robotic doll, so of course they wouldn’t approve of its actions.

How to translate this, then? I guess it would be fine to just go with “What the-! Another one appeared …”, relying on context and the exclamation to make it clear that レオン is not pleased with the fact that a new doll showed up. If you want to bring out the contempt, the やがるness a little more in the English version, and also boost the tough-guy slanginess a bit, I guess you could try something like,

What the-! Another one of those damned things showed up!

Substitute your favorite flavor of f-word for the damn. 😜

That’s about it for my first piece of grammar from ダンガンロンパ. With the exposition out of the way now, next time I’ll get to the meat of the article a lot quicker.

Thanks for stoppying by, and remember to be afraid of small fuzzy bears! Happy Halloween! 👹

Danganronpa and all its characters are trademarks of and copyrighted by Spike Chunsoft.

Get it out, man!

While I have at long last finished 逆転裁判３(Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations) and moved on to the next game after 136 hours of reading, looking stuff up, and scratching my head, I still have a few lines of dialogue left that I want to discuss.

Today I’ll have a look at another of イトノコ刑事 lines (he’s Dick Gumshoe, if you remember). He has some troubling news for the attorney, regarding one of their friends. Before actually telling the attorney what’s the matter, he says the following:

••••アンタには言いにくいッス。

でも、あえて言っちまうッス。

The part I’m going to have a closer look at today is the 「あえて…」part. I’ll briefly go over all the other bits of grammar first, so don’t worry about missing anything.

Let’s take apart the first sentence, アンタには言いにくいッス. アンタには = to you, 言いにくい = hard to say. ッス is a colloquial, semi-polite version of です, as far as I can tell. So, literally,  “It’s hard to say this to you”, while I’d go for “It’s hard to break this to you”, to make it sound more tough-guy cop-like, the way I imagine イトノコ刑事 talks.

Side note: I’ve always wondered why some of イトノコ刑事’s words are printed in katakana, like アンタ here. Is it possibly supposed to indicate that he talks with an accent? Can’t remember his origin story, maybe he comes from an exotic place or something; might be worth looking up.

As for the second sentence, でも、…言っちまうッス by itself would mean something like, “Nevertheless, … I’ll tell you.” 言っちまう is a contraction of 言ってしまう. In this case, I think it means he regrets having to say what he is about to say (see A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, p. 403).

That leaves us with the unknown あえて. The dictionary gives us daringly; intentionally as translations, but they’re not really a literal fit here. As luck would have it, I recently came across the kanji used in 敢えて during my kanji studies. 敢 means daring; bold. So maybe the best translation here would be boldly: “I’ll boldly say it.” As in, “I regret having to say this, so I’ll just get it over with and get it out.”

Putting it all together, my attempt to translate this in a natural- and cop-sounding way would be,

It’s hard to break this to you.

I’ll just go ahead and say it…

Let me know what you think of it, I’m still learning and need the info. Don’t be mad if I messed up – ain’t none of us perfect 🙃

 

逆転裁判, Phoenix Wright, and Ace Attorney are trademarks of Capcom Co., Ltd.
I claim no copyright on any of this, yo!