This message is to all the Dragonball Z fans or those who just pondered this question. If any of you have played the Australian Version of the game you would have noticed that the characters speak in Japanese. I recently witnessed the American Version and was shocked when the characters blurted out english words. I would just like to know why us in Australia get the Japanese version withe the tiny white subtitles while the people in America get the English version.
well you see, as far as I'm aware Australians get the same version UK/Europe gets, since we both use PAL (rather than NTSC, the american/japanese format). and as you probably know translating games for Europe requires translation for many languages, such as German, French and Spanish. Recording speech for all those languages would not only be expensive and time consuming, but I'd like to see them fit it all on one disc(I'm no expert on sound compression and what not, so it might be easily done?).
So it's obvious that it's too much trouble to translate all those languages especially for such a budget game, so they simply leave the Japanese dialog as it is... of course, this doesn't explain why they couldn't just dump the American voices into the game and leave all the other languages out... so I'm stumped :)
This waste of time has been a Scrow production.
The reason fo this is becasue the average American market responds badly to voice acting that isn't done in English and with an American accent, as to why this is the case is anyones guess.
The reason I know this is because, before I got into games, I used to a lot of acting including voice work. One time I was doing some voice work for an american cartoon pitch and everyone was told at the start that they had to at least eliminate their accents and at most use American ones, otherwise the product just wont sell.
Pantmonger
I doubt changing the language to English or Animerican would double/triple sales.
Is PAL used in Japan as well as UK, Aus?
If it is I think it would make sense to only do the one version for PAL and one for NTSC, imagine the pain testing 3 different builds instead of 2?!
BTW Americans aren't stupid, they are just ignorant. [:P]
I could be wrong, but I think that Japan is NTSC. Thats why there has always been three stages of delivery from Japan.
Stage 1. Japan (some times the gamenever leaves)
Stage 2. Translate, but still NTSC, ship to USA.
Stage 3. If they can be bothered convert to PAL for Europe(and Australia).
Whee, this is why we miss out on a chunk of stuff from Japan. We are not part of a large enough cash pool to make it worth while for some games.
Pantmonger
Malus, I know you wrote that you doubt it would double or triple profits but if you think about it, it is true. Every person at my school said that (and I took a survey) that they would buy the game ifit was in English, even those who have already have the game in Japanese. And it is not only Dragonball Z Budokai, all the Dragonball Z games that have been released in America and Australia the Australian Versions have been in Japanese and the American have been in English. That sucks that we dont get all the games that America gets those, cheap asses! (My appologies to any American people out there, no offence)
Yes, Japan uses NTSC.
And Cloud, what people say, and what people do, are two different things :) Using the "english" version would (if at all) only increase profits in english speaking areas. Australia is insignificant, so they would only be looking at the english market. They would probably be weighing up whether english people would prefer to read english subtitles, or hear horrible american accents.
CYer, Blitz
Cloud: Profits would increase but like Blitz said Australia is a small market so what we want won't generally matter, even if it quadrupled here it still wouldn't make much dent on the sales in general.
As for just adding all the languages in etc, well its not just a case of cut and paste, it takes many hours of labourous sweat and V drinking to get even the most basic things into a game and if its not going to be a huge profit why would they bother.
Yeah I thought it might be NTSC, just couldn't be bothered turning around and asking a coder. Lazy bugger. [:P]
I don't even like Dragonball Z, so I wouldn't care if shipped with italian voices, but if I did like it then the language wouldn't deter me from buying it, I buy films with subtitles, but some people need to hear bad dubbed voice acting I guess.
if you want to buy the american version, try www.burn.com.au , they usually stock imports of most games
quote:Originally posted by Cloud
no more on what is considered a minor, I hate being called that!
You are what you are[:p].
As for the US version of Dragonball Z Budokai it's NTSC version, if you own an Australian spec PS2 it will be PAL. I haven't imported any games since my PSone but i'm pretty sure an NTSC version game will play Black & White on a PAL system, unless you have a conveter of some sort.
Also imported games cost an arm and a leg, especially if they're hard to get or in high demand. Except in the case of pirate games but i'll assume your buying legit.
Whoa Cloud, take a chill pill,
Yes your not a minor so everyone please stop harping on about that as it obviously irritates him.
As for were to find a copy, well I'm guessing no one here knows if your not getting response, maybe try looking yourself, ring some suppliers, go to ebay, google it?
I don't know where to get it myself, sorry I can't help but getting angry isn't likely to get you much assistance.
Sorry Cloud i was just teasing.
Isn't there a new Dragonball game coming out anyway?
If you get real desprite maybe you could ask somewhere like Electronics Botique to order it in for you, i ask them to order me in a digital camera once but thats a little different because it wasn't imported and they had advertised it. My point is sometimes shops are willing to order stuff for you and since EB is American owned with an American web site that sells American games maybe it would be easier for them to get a copy.
Hope you find it man, I tried googling it for you but got nothing. Maybe EB is a good idea.
Try emailing these guys:
[url="game-info@gameswarehouse.com.au"]gameswarehouse[/url]
They may have it in stock or be able to get it.
americans are stupid