The big list of mis-translated PC Engine games!

[sunteam_paul]

Looking through old adverts for 'Engine software, it's amusing what some of the games are listed as. Some are obvious, others aren't. See if you can work them out and if there are any legit names in there let me know!

Barumbo Man
Gamola Speed
W-Wing
Gunhead
Beliaborman
Super Foolish Man
Walcule Story
Zipanc
Arrow Blaster
Image Fights
Barumbo Man
Energy Man
Overhauled Man
Japan Warrior
Poorstory
Sweet Meeting
Gomala Speed
Rabid Lepus
Taito Motorbike Racing (they were obviously too lazy to even attempt to translate this)
Barumba
Natex Open
Tatsunko Fighter
Belabarman
Varius II
Varius III
Motorbike Kid
Son and Son II
Vieige


Post if you have more!

[esteban]

Rabid Lepus is my fave

[Keranu]

Nice thread! I've always been attracted to the name "Gomola Speed".

[Black Tiger]

The king will always be "The Incredible Ziria II" from the so-called Die-Hard Gamefan ads.

Not only was this game "the biggest video game ever!", it was so huge and so long that it was "over 550 Megs!"

[GUTS]

Haha I loved back when mags use to tell you the meg count in Genesis/SNES games.  When I was a broke ass kid I would use that to judge whether the game was worth buying since more megs usually equalled better graphics and longer games.

[Michael Helgeson]

Lol,the meg count thing ehh?
Strider for Genesis: 8meg
Fatal Fury Snes,12 meg I think.
Street Fighter 2 Snes:16 meg.
SF 2 Turbo: 20 Megs.
These games didnt help the meg count thing any.You see a few quality titles with "high meg count" for back then,and it gets you into thinking everything with a high meg count was great.

[TR0N]

Rabid Lepus is my fave

Trivia it's also know as Rabbit Punch in the U.S arcades

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=R&game_id=9223

Of corse i'm sure every 'body knows that, but it's fun to mention that.

[Kaminari]

I'm curious to learn under which name Yōkai Dōchū Ki (Shadow Land) was known in English-speaking countries. In France, it was distributed under the badly translated title "Tales of Monster Path" -- which always sounded utterly silly to me since 1) I've never seen this title outside France and 2) we don't speak English

[sunteam_paul]

In the UK it was 'Tales of the Monster Path'

[GUTS]

On the meg count thing it was just cause when you're young you think whatever is bigger=better, you know 16bit is better than 8bit, 16 megs must be WAY than 8megs, etc.  It wasn't until I got older that I realized the truth behind the numbers!

[Black Tiger]

On the meg count thing it was just cause when you're young you think whatever is bigger=better, you know 16bit is better than 8bit, 16 megs must be WAY than 8megs, etc.  It wasn't until I got older that I realized the truth behind the numbers!

I still appreciated that Gamepro listed the Meg counts of Turbo CD games for a long time, because although I realized that it wasn't all gameplay related, seeing that Addams Family only had 80 megs cemented my suspicions that it was another crap rush job.

Sure enough, the game has like 3 'bgm' tracks and a handful of voice sections. Which would be fine if it was a quality game, but its not.

I still like it for what it is, since I bought it and played it to death back when the Duo was still around. But take away the CD sound and even with the full screen digital shots from the film it'd be a budget HuCard.

[GUTS]

Good point Ninja Spirit, it's a shame that most mags didn't do that with CD games though.  I remember most mags just listed cd game meg counts as "CD ROM" instead of actually letting you know how much space was actually used.  That used to piss me off since that told you nothing, for example shit like Wonderdog used barely any of the CDs space and could have easily been done on a tiny cartridge since the graphics were total ass.

[esteban]

Good point Ninja Spirit, it's a shame that most mags didn't do that with CD games though.  I remember most mags just listed cd game meg counts as "CD ROM" instead of actually letting you know how much space was actually used.  That used to piss me off since that told you nothing, for example shit like Wonderdog used barely any of the CDs space and could have easily been done on a tiny cartridge since the graphics were total ass.

yeah, I remember reading a "letters to the editor" in EGM or something and a person asked why the size of the CD-ROM games wasn't listed. The answer didn't make any sense: "there's no need to, since size affects the price of cart production but not CD production. plus the game should be judged by good gameplay and how fun it is"

This was total crap, since "ROM size" was never the sole factor in determing the price of a game. Also, most reviews hyped style over substance at the time, so the "good gameplay is all that matters" response rang hollow... many kool NES games (with great gameplay) were getting little, if any coverage, while crap SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, etc. games were getting plenty of exposure.

Of course, if ISO sizes were listed, I'm sure developers would simply add a bunch of high-resolution images (or FMV footage!) to artificially inflate the size . BASTARDS!

[esteban]

On the meg count thing it was just cause when you're young you think whatever is bigger=better, you know 16bit is better than 8bit, 16 megs must be WAY than 8megs, etc.  It wasn't until I got older that I realized the truth behind the numbers!

I still appreciated that Gamepro listed the Meg counts of Turbo CD games for a long time, because although I realized that it wasn't all gameplay related, seeing that Addams Family only had 80 megs cemented my suspicions that it was another crap rush job.

Sure enough, the game has like 3 'bgm' tracks and a handful of voice sections. Which would be fine if it was a quality game, but its not.

I still like it for what it is, since I bought it and played it to death back when the Duo was still around. But take away the CD sound and even with the full screen digital shots from the film it'd be a budget HuCard.

I finally got this game a few months ago. It never looked good to me, but I decided I had to finally find out what it was like . There's no Red Book audio at all. Is it all PSG-generated music? I remember Keranu menitioning that there were ambient noises (like soundscapes) in the game. I've yet to play the game.

[Black Tiger]

Good point Ninja Spirit, it's a shame that most mags didn't do that with CD games though.  I remember most mags just listed cd game meg counts as "CD ROM" instead of actually letting you know how much space was actually used.  That used to piss me off since that told you nothing, for example shit like Wonderdog used barely any of the CDs space and could have easily been done on a tiny cartridge since the graphics were total ass.

yeah, I remember reading a "letters to the editor" in EGM or something and a person asked why the size of the CD-ROM games wasn't listed. The answer didn't make any sense: "there's no need to, since size affects the price of cart production but not CD production. plus the game should be judged by good gameplay and how fun it is"

This was total crap, since "ROM size" was never the sole factor in determing the price of a game. Also, most reviews hyped style over substance at the time, so the "good gameplay is all that matters" response rang hollow... many kool NES games (with great gameplay) were getting little, if any coverage, while crap SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, etc. games were getting plenty of exposure.

Of course, if ISO sizes were listed, I'm sure developers would simply add a bunch of high-resolution images (or FMV footage!) to artificially inflate the size . BASTARDS!

The scammer who ran the sole video game store in the town I grew up in charged at least 30% more for any SMS or NES games with battery back up because of the "cost of the battery".