I’ve always been a big fan of the Angry Video Game Nerd/James Rolfe, partly because I remember the frustration and confusion of playing crappy games back in the day, and partly because his experiences growing up so closely mirror mine. Plus, as bad as a lot of old games were, we kept coming back to them for a reason – and I think behind all the obscenities and anger on the surface, James’ videos actually give a lot of insight on what it was like to be a gamer in the 80s and 90s.
From the very beginning, whenever I would watch his AVGN videos he’d always be like, “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?” or “WTF IS THIS SHIT?”, but with my own background in games and Japanese game translation the answers were often clear to me. I always considered sending him e-mails or messages to explain things, but I never did for whatever reason. One time, my wife and I even sent him one of the games he reviewed… but I STILL never got around to writing him anything. So now, after all these years, I’m finally gonna share some of my own info and insight here on Legends of Localization, not just for him, but for all his fans. I hope you enjoy it!
Tentatively, I plan to do one page per AVGN video, and I’ll add a new page every so often when I’m feeling inspired. These won’t be full-sized write-ups like my Legend of Zelda comparison or my EarthBound localization comparison – instead, they’ll be more bite-sized articles that answer questions the Nerd brings up in his videos or that shed more light on the Japanese side of things. It’ll be an interesting read, I promise!
Just for reference, I’m a professional translator who also does a lot of fan translation work. You can see an outdated list of my past projects here. Do note that this site and these write-ups aren’t affiliated with Cinemassacre or James in any way, I’m just some crazy fan doing this on my own 😛
Anyway, check back every so often for new updates! You can also keep up with me on Twitter and Tumblr!