Localizing isn't really the same as cut content.

Tales of Phantasia GBA also cut out the whole theme song. The US and EU versions cut out "Battle Voice" option from the config menu. But perhaps they just realized it's a mostly redundant option with the Volume Settings menu.
The EU version is the only one that allows skill names to be printed during battle. Though I imagine that is due to the multi-language support (it seems the voices were only dubbed in English), and unfortunately necessitating an ugly font.
I'm guessing the Japanese version uses SRAM while the US and EU use Flash, because the Japanese version saves much faster.

Yes, I believe that accurate translations are a good thing. I want to get what Japan gets and get a sense of their culture. With localization, you have one mindset of one culture.

The problem is that localization has been unfairly conflated with bowdlerization for quite some time. There's nothing wrong with taking a few liberties with a story written in Japanese in order to make it shine in English; it's just that the most famous (or infamous) cases tend to be the gruesome Saturday Morning hackjobs 4Kids is known for.

Me, I wouldn't have minded "Joey Wheeler" and whatnot if they could've been trusted to get the damn story right. >_<#

Oh, pffft. 4Kids. Go watch Cardcaptors. :|

(Then there's Woolsey and the effects he's had on the translation scene. I mean...he was awesome for the era, but clinging to his localizations is a bit silly, don't you think?)

I'll take Woolsey's school of thinking over the one that insists that anything that can't be precisely rendered in English should just be left in Japanese. I've mellowed out about honorifics over the years (Persona 4 and FLCL show they can be handled well), but I've seen random untranslated Japanese seeping into published translations. That's a phenomenon I'd like to see nipped in the bud if at all possible.

And another thing: music. I've heard that 4Kids' dub of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's is better than their usual fare, but nothing they could possibly do can make up for the fact that this epic scene won't have its proper soundtrack. (Assuming they make it that far, anyway. I've heard they're just gonna skip over it and start dubbing ZEXAL.)

Maybe it's my dirty mind, but I always thought he meant the D was something you wouldn't want to see, so don't watch it. I didn't know he literally meant the D in "Don't".
(He being the pharaoh in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, referring to Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's).

http://web.archive.org/web/20091026192519/http://geocities.com/tuffydabubba/

Final Fantasy Tactics had awesome visual-novel sidestories/minigames in the Japanese version but they were removed from the English version for some reason.

They were also removed in the PSP remake despite the fact they retranslated everything else, AND they are still missing in the recent iPhone port  :banghead:

There are two works I'd like to cite as "influential" in my attitude towards translation: Tokyopop's release of .hack//Legend of the Twilight, and Dark Horse's release of Trigun.

Basically, both translations were made under the assumption that gratuitous honorific use was a viable substitute for writing quality. .hack was rife with outright mistakes that anyone playing the first game for all of fifteen minutes would've caught, and my personal breaking point with Trigun - beyond things like "sempai" and "Legato-sama" in a sci-fi Wild West setting - was when the translator felt compelled to wedge a paragraph-long dictionary definition of "lolicon" next to a panel in order to excuse its use when "pedo" would have sufficed.

Why do these people inflict such injuries on the English language? Why do they insist that the perfect Japanese translation should read like a schizophrenic See Spot Run? Have they utterly forgotten what good writing sounds like? Do they have no concept that their work is supposed to entertain, not leave violent wounds on the language centers of the brain?

The thing that terrifies me is the vicious cycle that's being perpetuated. Crappy translations breed crappy fans; crappy fans breed crappy translations. I blame needless content editing, the knee-jerk reaction to which has been to throw the baby out with the bathwater: localization has been conflated with bowdlerization to the point that such non-translations are considered some sort of ideal. My recent experiences with Liar Game have done nothing to change my opinion. I can rationalize "Samue," I can rationalize "Gaya," but what I can't rationalize is "Steal-a-Chair Game." WHAT THE HELL KIND OF DEPRIVED EXISTENCE DOES TDX HAVE THAT HE CAN'T @#$%ING RECOGNIZE MUSICAL CHAIRS WHEN HE SEES IT?!? *von Karma facewalls*