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I received a couple questions about some English lines in the recently-released Project X Zone 2 for the 3DS. I haven’t played any of the games in the series (for some reason I thought they were a fighting game crossover), but the questions were straightforward enough that I could answer them. So let’s take a look!

Question #1: M. Bison and the Animals

This first question comes from Darien, who asks:

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Project X Zone games — they’re the later Namco x Capcom games, after more companies got involved. Kind of Disgaea-esque comedy SRPGs, but these are huge silly mashups of characters from lots of different games. […] At the beginning of chapter five, there’s a scene featuring M. Bison and a few of the game’s original characters discussing their evil plan. One of them, Sheath, is presented as an American girl who learned her Japanese on the internet, so she speaks in a very strange fashion, and wears Toriyama-like bunny ears. When Bison leaves, she says (referring to herself and two other villains, who are anthropomorphic animals) “we also have rabbit, cow, horse! Mr. Bison fit right in!” I’m curious about this line in the Japanese, since, of course, his Japanese name is Vega, which ruins the whole setup. Is there a joke in there at all? Is it anything similar?

Darien kindly provided YouTube links to the Japanese and English scenes, and here’s the line in question:

And here’s a look at the text:

Japanese Version (basic translation) English Version We have a rabbit and a cow and a horse, Mr. Vega. Are you really going to go? We have also rabbit, cow, horse! Mr. Bison fit right in! Why you leave?

First, an important note: in Japan, the final boss of Street Fighter II was known as “Vega” rather than “M. Bison”.

Because his name isn’t “Bison” in the Japanese Street Fighter series, it makes sense that this Japanese line doesn’t have a joke about his name being an animal’s name. Instead, it was likely an English localizer who picked up on that logical connection and added the clever little mention to the line. This new joke feels so natural that I’m almost inclined to think the English text was written first, but something tells me that that probably wasn’t the case. It does happen sometimes, though.

Question #2: Shadowgate & More?

John R. asked on Twitter about a line from the game’s ending. In the English release, a character references three classic point-and-click NES games. He wanted to know what the Japanese line was like, so I dug that up too:

And here’s the text side-by-side:

Japanese Version (basic translation) English Version Yeah, Demitri gave us a devil’s invitation. So with an “Open sesame-sesame!” we passed through the door to get here. Yup. For a moment I thought we were uninvited, but then the shadow-gate swung right open. Gave me the weirdest déjà vu.

For reference, the three games mentioned in the English line are: Uninvited , Shadowgate , and Deja Vu .

The Japanese line doesn’t seem to mention any of them at first, but it turns out that “Devil’s Invitation” was the Japanese name for Uninvited :

And the “Open Sesame-Sesame” part is a reference to a spell in the same game. In the English NES release, the spell was known as “O Sesame”.

So it looks like the Japanese line did indeed include a reference to the old point-and-click games. It only references Uninvited , but at the very least we can see that the English line didn’t come out of nowhere. Again, this line almost feels like it could’ve been written in English first, although that probably wasn’t the case. I guess that’s one of the highest praises a localization can get!

If you liked this write-up and know someone else who's a Project X Zone / Street Fighter fan, I hope you'll share it online. Thanks for the support!