This Be Bad Translation #06, Hana no Star Kaidō!

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Hana no Star Kaidō is a Famicom game that never saw a release outside of Japan. Because the game centers around the entertainment industry and getting a music contract with an American company, the game’s text is almost entirely in English – most of which results in bad translation gold.

As we can see above, this game offers a great example of a common problem when writing English words into Japanese and back into English: As sometimes turn into Us, and vice versa. This can lead to very unintended results!

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5 Comments
  1. I see you decided to not take my suggestion to skip translation #6.
    No comment on how poorly designed the game is. I can’t even remember how to use the stairs. It was something like B+Down+direction a specific distance from the stairs. Because a simple command like Up near the stairs would’ve been asking too much. Why is Down at all a part of the command? (that much I recall) 😛

    1. Translation 6 has “The N.Y. Madison House.” That makes it awesome all by itself. 🙂

  2. It seems like after you finished this game those two center sprites of the guys at the mics would remain burned into your TV.

  3. I’m still not convinced anyone has successfully beaten that game…

  4. The Colonel Sanders statues are a thing in Japan, or at least they used to be. American KFCs generally just have signs with his face on them.