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For Retro Gamers, GlitterBerri's Game Translations Offers Some Amazing Japanese Only Interviews

GlitterBerri's Game Translations: Deleted Scenes, Developer Interviews and More From All Your Favorite Games.

In the mid-19080s when Atari was partially sold off and delayed the release of the 7800 it inevitably caused a video game cataclysm for console games. Nintendo stepped in and offered a solid base (the Nintendo Entertainment System) to build a new game industry on.

Because Nintendo was Japanese and because so many developers for the NES were in Japan, thousands of interviews with game developers have been lost to english speaking residents.

Enter Glitterberri, a piano playing, guitar strumming, writer and translator living in Canada. In 2005, she began translating Zelda-related material for Zelda fans. While that website is now closed, her current project is translating old interviews with Japanese game creators.

What sort of material does she have?

There is a large amount of translated work on her site. It ranges from magazine interviews from the 1980s to translations of old guide books that never made it to the states.

The work has quite a range. Take this translation of the Japanese guide book for Panzer Dragoon Saga as an example. Here, she translates pages of the guide book that explain some story elements that were not explained in game. The game could finally make sense!

Or, this translation of various pages from the Japanese release of the Super Mario Brothers 25th Anniversary Collection. She notes that the pages she translated from the the Japanese Collection do not appear in the English Language release. Who knew that Mario was originally supposed to be a screen-by-screen scroller?

In her Miscellaneous Developer Interviews, she has translated developer interviews from the R-Type team in 1987 who explain how they had to adjust to NES limitations.

She has also translated a 1989 discussion between Shigeru Miyamoto and Yuji Horii who met to talk about developing Dragon Quest IV and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. During this discussion they begin discussing how cruel they would seem if they made an RPG where you play a bully of a Mother-in-Law.

More recently, GlitterBerri has translated an interview with the Developers of Shadow of the Colossus. Considering the difference between the original trailer and the game that was released, there were a tremendous number of changes. This interview sheds light on why a lot of those changes were made.

So, if you love retro-game discussions or if find yourself wanting to know a little more about Japanese Game Development, head on over to Glitterberri's Game Translations.


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Staff article by Nick LaLone (September 07, 2012)

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zippdementia posted September 07, 2012:

Thanks for bringing this up! I never knew this was out there. Never heard of GlitterBeri.
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Putty posted September 07, 2012:

Me either! Am glad someone else shared my appreciation of that work

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