Confusion over having both Japanese and English names

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Oh, in that case some of our Japanese members might be able to help you out.

[grittykitty]

i've never seen japanese saturn games with their english side facing out in japan. they always showed the japanese side. does this make sense?

the only reason i can think of why they would put english on one side of the cd inlay is because of the game being 1) purchased by foreigners in japan 2) exported to china, taiwan, korea, or other asian nations. i know my friends from taiwan imported japanese games, claiming they could read "most of what it says".

[jfrost]

If you can understand Japanese, translate the characters to romaji and there you go.

[Inazuma]

Found some examples of titles that would give me a hard time when putting on my shelf in alphabetical order:




For the above Magical Girl Pretty Sammy Playstation game, it only has one name on the spine which says 魔法少女プリティーサミー. If I open it up and look at the manual and game CDs, the manual looks the same as the front cover, and the game CDs only use the English name with no Japanese in sight.

http://www.wolfgames.com/mkrle.jpg
This one has the English name (Magic Knight) larger on the front cover and game disc, but it only has the Japanese 魔法騎士 on the left spine and Magic Knight on the right spine. Also, in the actual game/anime itself, the characters say "Magic Knight".


This one has the English title much larger than the Japanese one for the front cover and disc, Japanese title on the left spine and English title on the right spine. So confusing!

[fingersmaloy]

It's not really that common for a game in Japan to have both a Japanese title and a completely different English title, both on the box. Usually the English title is added when the game goes overseas.

OR the game has only an English title to begin with but is also written in katakana.

OR occasionally you may see the Japanese title and then a literal English translation of its meaning, which usually makes for a pretty lame English title and is generally not used when the game actually goes overseas.

If there is a Japanese title, that's the title the Japanese use. In regards to your example, they would call the game 楽しいゲーム２.

::EDIT:: Oh, I just saw all those examples you posted. Yeah, the answer is they would use the Japanese title.

[Inazuma]

It's not really that common for a game in Japan to have both a Japanese title and a completely different English title, both on the box. Usually the English title is added when the game goes overseas.

OR the game has only an English title to begin with but is also written in katakana.

OR occasionally you may see the Japanese title and then a literal English translation of its meaning, which usually makes for a pretty lame English title and is generally not used when the game actually goes overseas.

If there is a Japanese title, that's the title the Japanese use. In regards to your example, they would call the game 楽しいゲーム２.

::EDIT:: Oh, I just saw all those examples you posted. Yeah, the answer is they would use the Japanese title.

So the Japanese title is always the correct one. That makes things a lot easier. Thanks.