From what I've read, Atlus USA is really embarrassed that the whole Persona localization fiasco ever happened. I would bet large sums of money on a brand new translation if the PSP port ever happens.

Then there will be raaaaaaaaaage.

It's funny, I always thought "attack while the tail is up" was intentionally bad advice. So you would do so, get punished for it, and not to it again. I figured it was a way to bring attention to the fact that you're not supposed to do so, and at the same time, be feindish. Never thought it was engrish. So, is it actually mistranslated?

In regards to obscure or outright false information in video games, I think there are a couple of reasons for it. Back in the eight bit era, most of the people working on a game where programmers, not writers, not game designers, not artists, but long hairs who can literally dream in code. Of course, they did write, they did do game design, and they did art, so in a way, they where. (And some of them brilliantly so.) But if the dialog isn't exactly Shakespeare, is it any wonder?

The other reason is that games used to be hard. Nowadays, there's a split between the casual market and the hardcore market, but that's relatively new. And even games for "hardcore" gamers and as hard as they used to be. I think there are several reasons for this, but I'm not entirely sure what they all are.

One factor is that the first video games where coin-op arcade machines. The goal in the arcade is to make money. The game design is a delicate balance of letting you get far enough to enjoy yourself and want to play again, and killing you off so that you (or the next guy) has to pay up. So the early game programmers learned to make feindishly hard games. And this carried over to consoles. Somehow, even generas, like RPGs, that'd never be made as arcade games, where still really difficult.

Sometimes I think it's pretty silly how far things have gone the other way. I think the dificulty level of modern games gets pretty low at times. Of course, nothing is more frustrating than getting locked to a standstill by a hard game, so too hard can be really bad. But I mostly play RPGs and other non-twitch games and they seem to mostly be pretty easy. It's like you breaze through all the gameplay just to get on with the storyline. Ah, maybe I'm just jaded.

Anyway, you know what's a simple and obvious improvement (although not text realated) to a classic game. The &$*&^ing beeping in various Zelda games.

"Yes, I know, I'm about to die."
"No, you don't need to annoy me about it."

It's especially obnoxious when you have a bunch of hearts, so the beeping zone is like three hearts or so. I know, some really nasty bad guys will do that much. But at the start of the game, that was full health. Now it beeps?!

I'm sure someone has already hacked that, but I have a cool idea. I think it'd be neat to replace the beeping with a much more modern technique that serves the same function, a music change. This is kinda an in thing these days, but I'm sure it could be done on old school tech. Whether a simple tempo increase, or whole different track, I think it'd be cool. Besides, the beepin's already in the sound code, so it would be a relatively easy hack. Any takers?

Freaking yes! I always thought that it would have been a good idea to have the music kinda change. Like when your hearts got low something akin to the 'end of the world' music from Majora's Mask would play.

“don’t” works, but the literal text of what went AWOL can be thought of as “..., and ....” or more accurately, “if ..., ....”

And the PC version does fix a lot of things. I never noticed all the things gone terribly awry because I never played the PSX version in English!

yeah that's pretty close. "Attack while the tail's up, and it'll counterattack with a laser!" here, the implication that you SHOULDN'T attack while the tail is up is pretty clear.

i have no idea how this line got mistranslated. at first i thought maybe the translator had no context and thought it was saying "While the tail's up, attack and counterattack with your laser!", as unlikely as that is. except 1) it says COUNTERattack (反撃 rather than the usual 攻撃), and it would be odd to use it here, and 2) it even says 反撃してくる. as if the whole COUNTERattack thing wasn't obvious enough that the above translation is totally wrong.

that or the translator accidentally just happened not to notice half the sentence: "尻尾を上げている間に攻撃するとレーザーで反撃してくるぞ！" OPPS

all this, of course, assuming the posted line is accurate or at least decently close enough.

as i understand it, it's sort of a helper verb in this context, indicating a sense of "coming" (no, not like THAT). in this case, that the boss will "come and counterattack with his laser", sort of. it can be spatial, or it can be temporal as well. in any case it indicates some sort of directionality towards the speaker, which is why it would be silly to conclude that anyone other than the enemy might be the one counterattacking (assuming that you assume that cloud or barret is the speaker).

I got a good feeling.