The latest episode of Game Boy World contains a huge, glaring, horrible error: I wrote, recorded, and edited the video while working from a faulty translation of the title of the game in question.
That’s… not good.
In fairness, several sources online listed this game’s subtitle as “Meikoushima Kessen” rather than “Meioutou Kessen,” so it’s not like I pulled it out of my butt. I found it written that way at several different sources. I only read some basic kanji, and this game’s title is written in such an odd way that when I ran the symbols through a few different translation apps, it spit out a weird jumble of English and… different kanji. So I took those internet sources at their word. It wasn’t until I had uploaded the video to YouTube that I noticed the title on the box has furigana (the tiny phonetic characters that help parse the proper reading of symbolic kanji) written above it. I do read the phonetic alphabets, so a quick glance was enough to give me the awful sinking feeling that I had just put together a video that was terribly, terribly wrong.
It doesn’t help that I read several volumes of the Sakigake!! Otokojuku manga as research for this episode and noticed that the manga has a tendency to use really elaborate or arcane kanji for its chapter titles, then force grammatically nonsensical readings on them with the furigana. If you’re familiar with the Japanese versions of Contra or Salamander, you’re seen this in action. I should have paid attention!
And this, I’m afraid, is where we get to the Game Boy World conundrum: The series is something I create in my free time, and I only barely have enough of that free time to actually complete each episode. I definitely do not have the time necessary to make significant changes once an episode has processed. It’s the challenge inherent to having a side project that intersects with my career: I can’t create these videos on company time as part of my regular work, because the amount of money and time I sink into their production would never pass muster. The question would be, “Why did you sink 15-20 hours of your work week into making a video that struggles toward the 3,000 view mark?” So, side project it is. But if I pour too much effort and quality into this side project and create some kind of massive success, the question becomes, “Why didn’t you do this during your work week?”
So, please forgive this episode’s glaring issue. It’s the kind of boneheaded mistake you make and fail to correct when you’re working guerrilla-style.
My next video project will concern Super Mario World, whose title I promise to translate correctly.
Pretty sure this is forgivable, it’s more about the game than the name James, sorry, Jeremy ;-).
Super Mario Bros. 4, you mean?
Were it me, I’d probably put an annotation on the video that notes the mistake, and maybe put it on a sort of bucket list for whenever you may have an abundance of spare time that allows you to work on it (if it’s the sort of thing that will keep bugging you in the back of your mind).
I annotated the video thoroughly before setting it live. Thanks for watching!
Even native speakers make mistakes like this sometimes. I enjoyed the video all the same! It’s consistently heartening to see you give every game your all as a matter of historical documentation, no matter how seemingly unremarkable it is.
Thanks!