English spoken games

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

Hmmm… your name is going to give bad vibes around here.

Most of the people who play bishoujo games games don’t speak Japanese. The games are made in Japanese, so that’s the language that you hear. The audio track is a very important part of the game. If it were cut out and replaced with English diolauge you’d almost be playing a different game. Really, you wouldn’t want that. Now, there are some people here who are creating their own games. They will be in English from the beginning so you might want to check it out. I’m not sure if there will be any spoken English, though. The Japanese game “Casual Romance Club” has a spoken Japanese and Engrish track. This probably isn’t what you’re looking for but if I didn’t mention it someone else would.

#2

Not planning on having voice at this point in time, no. If English voicing is desired, it can be added onto the list of “things to put in when/if we raise enough money for them” - but far down below “good art”.

(Although it’s far more tempting to hire girls to babble randomly in Japanese and call that the voice track! After all, most of us can’t understand it anyway… If I had the cash.)

#3
quote:

(Although it's far more tempting to hire girls to babble randomly in Japanese and call that the voice track! After all, most of us can't understand it anyway... If I had the cash.)[/B]

Call the chinesse food folks, ask them to send u a chinese girl (tell them you are gonna pay extra for it) and just save her voice XD (after that, just edit the voice over and over again so it's not the same dialogue XD), NOW YOU HAVE YOUR OWN "SOMETHINK" languaje b-game!!
(remember, most of us dont understand A WORD of japanese, so, chinese and jap might be exactly the same thing XD)

#4
quote:
Originally posted by The Unholy Avenger:
Call the chinesse food folks, ask them to send u a chinese girl (tell them you are gonna pay extra for it) and just save her voice XD (after that, just edit the voice over and over again so it's not the same dialogue XD), NOW YOU HAVE YOUR OWN "SOMETHINK" languaje b-game!!
(remember, most of us dont understand A WORD of japanese, so, chinese and jap might be exactly the same thing XD)

I don't understand much Japanese...but I do have a feel for the rhythm and cadence. They once showed a movie at anime club that was in Korean...something about it felt wrong from the beginning. It felt so...unfamiliar. If I hadn't been expecting it to be in Japanese, I probably could have spotted the difference immediately. I also like to think that I could tell the difference between "real" Japanese and random Japanese babbling. It might take me a while, but I think I could do it. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img]

@downloader1: No, bishoujo games aren't typically dubbed, and they don't usually make them outside of Japan. I remember a couple of exceptions: Graduation (old dubbed game for Win95) and Sprung (new, originally American game for the Nintendo DS).

[This message has been edited by Dark_Shiki (edited 03-25-2005).]

#5

Casual Romance Club has an English voice option. However the accents are so thick that it takes effort to comprehend the spoken dialect as English. Engrish is far more applicable. I believe I heard somewhere that the reason the English was so difficult to understand was because the seiyuus did not actually speak English but rather pronounced the words phonetically which really distorted the normal pronunciations and rhythm.

#6

Seen that most games are set in Japan or a japanese setting, it wouldn’t make much sense having them speak in english (except for some gaijin interaction). Graduation 2000 was dubbed in English by whatever company released it on the USA, but they used accents so strong (of which I recall the Texan(?) accent best… shivers omg, someone kill that voice actor).
Most voice actors available in Japan aren’t that proficient in english, it would likely make games more expensive and japanese game makers would eventually run into some fan backlash. Besides, listening to people say those ridiculous things in japanese is a lot better than listening to those things said in a language you understand. You’d either fall off your chair laughing or close the game in shame, and whichever happened, it would ruin your game experience.

#7

Here is what i think:

Japanese company:
Why would a company that makes games for japan (they dont care if leter those games gt translated) would put some english voices?

English company
1¬∞)Why would they dub the voices? It’s already hard enough just translate the texts, not to mention that most fans would choose japanese voices

2¬∞) Why would they spend the money (that obvioulsy they dont have) to make awful dub to voices? (c’mon! you know better than me that english NEVER is good, they lack… (how to tell you?)… Feelings.)


I think that if they were to dub voices (which i reeeeeeaaaally doubt), it would be much wiser to to spend the money (and time) brainwashing japanese companies that bringing their really good stuff to USA IS GOOD…

[This message has been edited by The Unholy Avenger (edited 03-26-2005).]

#8

Ouch, I’d forgotten Graduation even had english voices… they annoyed me enough that I turned them off.

#9
quote:
Originally posted by The Unholy Avenger:
2°) Why would they spend the money (that obvioulsy they dont have) to make awful dub to voices? (c'mon! you know better than me that english NEVER is good, they lack... (how to tell you?)... Feelings.)

You suggest that it's impossible to convey true feeling in English. That's not true at all. If voice acting was big here as it is in Japan, I'm sure we'd see a lot of quality dubs. As it is, it's not, and we don't. Have you seen the Inuyasha dub? I've seen a few subtitled episodes of the series, and I actually prefer the dub *shrugs*.

#10

Yeah, I’m gonna have to say that I much prefer my b-games with japanese voice and english text. I am used to associating Japanese with these games, and to have it change to english would feel weird, I think.

#11
quote:
Originally posted by Dark_Shiki:
You suggest that it's impossible to convey true feeling in English. That's not true at all. If voice acting was big here as it is in Japan, I'm sure we'd see a lot of quality dubs. As it is, it's not, and we don't. Have you seen the Inuyasha dub? I've seen a few subtitled episodes of the series, and I actually prefer the dub *shrugs*.

Yes, i suggest exactly that...

#12

The very first release of Giniro has an English voice option.
It was ok. The English VA was pretty much the same person for all the girls.
It was removed from The DVD release.

[This message has been edited by H-Gurl (edited 03-27-2005).]

#13