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Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection includes a opening disclaimer about its insensitive cultural depictions.
- Thread starter Jawmuncher
- Start date
- Capcom
I'm actually wondering if these are more on the localization team taking liberties like they can do sometimes or if it's actually the same or similar in japanese
Listen I get not wanting to retranslate the script but you couldn't at least alter the very minuscule bits that shit on black people or women?
I think it's because it's a stereotype that black people rap. (Although I think it's really the speech mannerisms that people should be looking at.)
At least the Warner Bros cartoon case, one could see the arguments for leaving in something that was made decades ago.
But this was 2002. Like, come on now. Y'all knew it was wrong then. No excuses.
That's not cool. Big L for Capcom.Nothing would be lost with changing this
The thing with the truly banned WB cartoons is that they were ten toes down in racism. You can't censor them meaningfully without essentially cutting them down to seconds. But there were plenty of WB, Hanna-Barbara, and Disney cartoons that had shots you could cut out; in particular if you watched Tom and Jerry on CN back in the day, there were always cutaways from Blackface and Yellowface gags, usually after an explosion or a cymbal crash respectively. No need to even pretend that shit was of some cultural or educational value even back in the 90s. CN just edited it out without a disclaimer.
Lol. What the hell.
This isn't like Looney Tunes where this is a very old and culturally significant item on film that can't be altered without making it obvious. This is goddamned Mega Man Battle Network, and editing the dialog in the rom dumps they're using for this collection shouldn't be all that much work.
There's a meaningful conversation to be had concerning older problematic media that video games by their very nature makes it easy to actually fix instead. It's silly that Capcom thought a disclaimer was sufficient.
This isn't like Looney Tunes where this is a very old and culturally significant item on film that can't be altered without making it obvious. This is goddamned Mega Man Battle Network, and editing the dialog in the rom dumps they're using for this collection shouldn't be all that much work.
There's a meaningful conversation to be had concerning older problematic media that video games by their very nature makes it easy to actually fix instead. It's silly that Capcom thought a disclaimer was sufficient.
This is the objectively correct way to handle inappropriate content.
Editing it out just creates a "Streisand Effect" where everyone now seeks out the "uncensored version" because its suddenly more collectible.
Also, you gotta own your L's and burying your head in the sand over bad past choices does nothing but make your company look like a bunch of clowns.
Editing it out just creates a "Streisand Effect" where everyone now seeks out the "uncensored version" because its suddenly more collectible.
Also, you gotta own your L's and burying your head in the sand over bad past choices does nothing but make your company look like a bunch of clowns.
there's also "netfrica" in bn4 where they all live in huts and worship an irrigation computer as their god
but nobody in their right mind plays bn4 to begin with
and no even in the early 2000s this content was fucking insane, the "product of its time" excuse is a big ???????
but nobody in their right mind plays bn4 to begin with
and no even in the early 2000s this content was fucking insane, the "product of its time" excuse is a big ???????
Hard disagree. The Yakuza team took feedback about how they handled trans and gay characters and changed how they handled those characters going forward as well as how they were handled in remakes and remasters of past titles that came out last generation. That isn't burying your head in the sand, that's actually holding and acknowledging that L and doing better.
Mods exist to restore that content for the Y3-5 remasters, but based on download counts on Nexus mods, it's a few thousand chuds at best that have gone ahead and modded that experience back in.
I have no idea how they had enough of a translation budget to localize some of the formerly cut content into English for the first time, but not enough to do a pass on the scripts to weed out this stuff in general, especially not when it's all very well known and they'd just have to track down the examples that have been all over the internet since these originally came out.
no this is literally just laziness lmao
they didn't want to bother touching any of the original scripts or revising any of the localizations resulting in bn4 still being a trainwreck in general along with the other oddities the rest of the series has. ON TOP OF THE FONT ISSUES!!!!
can you even imagine not fixing "Leg's go, Lan!"
The entirety of Netfrica in BN4 was a yikes approximately the size of Africa itself, to the point that the Rockman.EXE Stream anime jsut straight up ignored it.
It would've been more efficient for Capcom to just have deleted Red Sun and Blue Moon from the collection and pretend it never happened. Don't worry, we wouldn't have lost that much.
It would've been more efficient for Capcom to just have deleted Red Sun and Blue Moon from the collection and pretend it never happened. Don't worry, we wouldn't have lost that much.
Once it was confirmed they didn't even fix the typos 4 was infamous for, it was pretty much confirmed 2 & 4 were still gonna be 2 & 4.
No it's not.
Racism is not something that is all that disagreeable to the gaming community. People spend money on bigoted shit regardless of if it's rare or not. This is about a moral argument of whether or not we need to keep peddling fried chicken jokes and blackface to remind ourselves that Black people are, indeed, largely hated by society. If you need the reminder, you're just not paying attention...to anything.
Editing out racism in a live service world where shit gets buffed and nerfed and fixed before release makes you look like a clown, but keeping the racism in is real shit?
What???
I remember some days ago a video about how the posible real reason is due to so many musical references in the game which can not be easily changed
hey look fixing the prismtree glitch in pvp is ok but even trying to tone down this stuff was just too much i guess
Only through Capcom's infinite wisdom can we get one of the most positive depictions of Native-Aboriginal characters ever seen in video games - let alone Japanese media - in Dingo, and then have one of the most offensive depictions of black characters ever in the ENTIRETY of Netfrica.
They didn't even bother giving 4 a proper translation, something many (including myself) was all but confirmed, so so this doesn't surprise me one bit.
Lol what? Have you seen what the chuds have been saying, even despite not changing the dialogue they are still bitching, the result is the same
At that point is better to change the dialogue since the same morons will complain about "Capcom bending the knee" or some shit regardless
Erm. I guess there is some merit to the disclaimer but i don't think it sustains the idea that these bits of text merit preservation when this isn't really a matter of maintaining the product, it's a matter of selling it, and profiting from its existence. I guess there is some merit to this being an item that "preserves" these games but in actual practice this entry preserves the games little more than the original release did. This is not a museum piece, it's not presented with critical or historical context, it's just being sold like any other game is. The disclaimer seems to hand wave all of this, and imo becomes little more than a convenience. It would have been better (and perhaps fairer to the truth) to reveal the reasons why they chose not to change these things, which probably amounted to how much more work it would be and the viability of the project (internally or in the market).
But i don't think this is at a case where this kind of disclaimer works or lessens the impact of the actual content, because they are still selling and profiting from the actual content that they deem improper, and doing zero work to be critical of it.
But i don't think this is at a case where this kind of disclaimer works or lessens the impact of the actual content, because they are still selling and profiting from the actual content that they deem improper, and doing zero work to be critical of it.
Would you apply this logic to not fixing typos.
I was excited at thought of this getting a new localization when it was announced. I wasn't even thinking about the racism because I never played 2 and 4 growing up.
These games were made on a pretty ridiculous schedule with quick localization turnaround. 4 was so rushed after changing the art style, the wrong character portraits are assigned to wrong dialogue at times.
Not exactly something to stand by. I mean, I was gonna get the collection either way, but "objectively correct" is a reach.
Not saying they shouldn't have re-translated all of the problematic sections and moments though. They absolutely should have. I appreciate the disclaimer when you launch the collections, but it would've been better if they had just... made those parts not shit.
If people want to see what the games were originally like, the original versions still exist, and they aren't hard to come by or view on YouTube or something. Capcom could have and should have done better for these collections, considering they're how the series is going to live on for a long time and will be how most people play it going forward.
LMAO LOL at least they didn't write fried chicken and watermelon.Nothing would be lost with changing this
I'm playing them in Japanese this time, but I'm well aware that won't save me from the rap scene on the airplane. Looked that up in Japanese the other month and wow... I haven't played these since elementary school and forgot about a lot of this shit. So far in 6 where I'm at, things are fine, luckily. It feels like it's mostly 1 and 2 with all the racism...?
Clearly from reading these replies there really isn't a right answer.
If Capcom said nothing and released the games as is, people would be upset.
If Capcom removed the content from the games, people would be upset.
Capcom includes a statement acknowledging the bad content; people are upset.
Personally I don't feel like the chosen solution handles everything perfectly. But, like, whatever? Capcom has shown going forward with games like Street Fighter 6 and RE4 Remake that they can learn from mistakes and be inclusive, diverse, and more sympathetic.
If Capcom said nothing and released the games as is, people would be upset.
If Capcom removed the content from the games, people would be upset.
Capcom includes a statement acknowledging the bad content; people are upset.
Personally I don't feel like the chosen solution handles everything perfectly. But, like, whatever? Capcom has shown going forward with games like Street Fighter 6 and RE4 Remake that they can learn from mistakes and be inclusive, diverse, and more sympathetic.
2 and 4, did 1 have anything? that one was basically just in japan but maybe i'm forgetting something
The group that does are chuds that have a vested interest in keeping bigoted depictions alive and weird purists upset by this but will insist on emulators or real hardware as they always have done.
So no.
It was mostly 2 and 4. Not sure about 1 as I never played that.
2 was basically the Netopia and airplane scenarios (which happen one right after the other during the second half of the game), and 4 had you briefly traveling across the world, with countries named NetFrica (Africa), Yumland (India), and you go to Netopia again (America/Europe). Though 4 didn't have any overtly bad dialogue compared to 2 that I remember, it was mostly their depiction of the other nations that was questionable.
Incidentally, when you go to Netopia in 4, that scenario begins with your character being mugged, kidnapped and locked away in someone's apartment immediately after arriving, with you having to hack your way through an electronic lock from what I remember.
So uh, these games are basically best summed up as the modern world, but everything connected to the internet. The writing frames it as a net positive to society at large, except the actual scenarios immediately veer into total absurdist territory with a half dozen or more examples of how this enables actual domestic and international terrorism in every single game. And the games just kind of handwave all of these incidents as something normal that happens, because even local elementary school children have been empowered by the same technology to resolve these situations themselves.
Note: These games came out in 2001-2006, and were supposed to be a game series for children. Completely stupid writing or unintentionally brilliant commentary? Like you could literally just go into the OT for the collection right now and find a bunch of people going all like 'holy shit the shit that happens in these games is actually WTF tier and we didn't think much of it as kids'.
2 is probably the most absurd of all of them. Especially with how utterly unfortunate its release timing was - the rapping scene was actually part of a scenario involving an airplane hijacking, and it was released 3 months after 9/11 in Japan (and June 2002 in NA/Europe from what I remember). It was so absurd that I remember everyone around the time when the MMBN series was active was absolutely aware that 2 got a lot of shit past the censors at the time.
So that scenario starts off with the main character and Megaman boarding a flight home after being invited to go overseas to attend what is essentially an Interpol meeting aimed at investigating recent net terrorism incidents around the world (that's a whole other story in itself, and also where the whole slums/chicken screenshots come from). While talking to people on the plane, you run into the whiskey guy in 1st class, along with a doctor, a super rich electricity CEO, and a biologist specializing in spiders (along with a bunch of other NPCs). Said biologist actually brought a super venomous spider on board as part of his cargo, and it somehow escapes, causing everyone on the plane to freak out.
So the main character decides to try to catch the spider. For this, he obtains some loose string from someone's pants, the airplane pilot's hat to act as a box, and finally gets challenged to that rap battle for some whiskey since the spider is apparently attracted to alcohol or something. The plan somehow works and they recapture the spider.
AND THEN the super rich electricity CEO hijacks the plane by hacking into it, and you spend the rest of the scenario hacking control of the plane back. At the very least, he did not have plans to crash it, considering he was on board himself - he was attempting to steal some super secret government program that for some reason was hidden in the plane (???), and he succeeds in handing it off to his superiors before you regain control of the plane and he gets arrested upon landing.
So the main character decides to try to catch the spider. For this, he obtains some loose string from someone's pants, the airplane pilot's hat to act as a box, and finally gets challenged to that rap battle for some whiskey since the spider is apparently attracted to alcohol or something. The plan somehow works and they recapture the spider.
AND THEN the super rich electricity CEO hijacks the plane by hacking into it, and you spend the rest of the scenario hacking control of the plane back. At the very least, he did not have plans to crash it, considering he was on board himself - he was attempting to steal some super secret government program that for some reason was hidden in the plane (???), and he succeeds in handing it off to his superiors before you regain control of the plane and he gets arrested upon landing.
If they had the ability to fix typos, they had the ability to rewrite the dialogue. Absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so. It's not like the originals aren't already preserved for all time considering how easy it would be to find a ROM of any of them.
Don't do the "people are gonna be upset no matter what they do" bit. It's just a conversation acknowledging the issues, that's all.
Typos are still there hilariously.
Thought this would be about Some of the robot master designs like tomahawk man, as I've only ever beaten 5, but seeing what's been posted in this thread…kind of upset that I've bought the games now. Capcom really should have gone and changed that dialogue.
I'm shocked they didn't. They go all out on the marketing for this game but couldn't put even a little money towards updating the translation errors? I didn't even think it needed to be asked, but I guess Capcom really didn't care.
Really bizarre to hide behind the WB approach for this. Changing text in a video game (especially if it's not voiced) is a lot easier than straight up changing animation in a racist Bugs Bunny cartoon. It's not like it would be some gargantuan effort, and I have a hard time believing it just wouldn't be possible. I just don't see how leaving this in has any value at all. It brings absolutely nothing to the game. Hell the rapping bit could literally be replaced with a quiz or something.
Something I am not entirely clear on about it though: was the racism added in the localization or did the original Japanese version have the same meaning as how it was localized?
Something I am not entirely clear on about it though: was the racism added in the localization or did the original Japanese version have the same meaning as how it was localized?
But I also think it is a valid part of the conversation. Acknowledging that there isn't one clear answer here I think is telling of the situation.
Like I said initially; scrolling through the replies in this thread show that.