When I found out at E3 last year that Rhythm Heaven was actually coming to the US, I couldn't have been happier. Wii Music may have been bland and forgettable, but I could forgive Nintendo for that, because bringing us one of the quirkiest, most non-American rhythm-action games more than makes up for it.
That's how I felt at first. Then I thought about the fact that NoA would have to actually translate the game's lyrics into English, and I got worried. Much of the game's charm comes from its passionately sung, yet wholly ridiculous pop songs, and screwing them up could be almost game-breaking.
Rhythm Heaven's street date has been broken, and videos of the game's newly translated songs are already hitting YouTube. Topher Cantler and I are here to chime in on topic. Hit the jump for our discussion, as well as video of Rhythm Heaven's new English vocals in action.
[Via GoNintendo]
Jonathan Holmes:
When I imported Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Rhythm Heaven's Japanese name) just before E3 08, I felt sort of stupid afterward, knowing that the game would later be available everywhere for about half the price of the import. Now I don't feel stupid.
Topher Cantler:
I don't feel stupid for importing it, either. In fact, I don't feel much of anything at the moment but angry. This dub might be the worst thing I've ever heard.
I will accept this as punishment for the sins of mankind. That's all I can come up with. It's so unfathomably horrid that I don't believe Nintendo could have produced such a perfect form of torture on their own. They've enlisted the help of demons or something.
Jonathan:
I think that's a natural reaction, especially on first listen. After watching the video a few more times, though, I actually don't think the frogs sound too bad. At least they still seem into it. Those female vocals, though -- what the hell happened? They almost sound drugged. How could you sound that bored and dispassionate when singing for a game that will likely be played/heard by millions of people? Are these girls even professional singers? They sound like ass!
When I first heard that Beyoncé was involved with promoting Rhythm Heaven, I was worried that all of the game's English vocals would end up being too showy, too R&B. Now I'm actually wishing they got Beyoncé to sing on this game. At least she's got spunk.
Topher:
Beyoncé would have at least been listenable. Hell, I'd take Bea Arthur's rendition of the Window Girls song over the crap I'm hearing in that video.
Admittedly, the frogs don't trigger instantaneous and explosive vomiting the way the other dubs do. But still, why did that need to be changed? Half of this game's appeal is its quirky Japanese soul, and that's been ripped out of it. I understand that they want to appeal to an American audience with this, but did they really need to change the music? There was a great opportunity here to introduce the broader demographic to something wonderful, and they blew it.
It's like wanting to bring sushi to American foodies for the first time. Sushi is great the way it is, because it's Japanese and the eastern flavors are what make it sushi. This is like removing the yellowtail and avocado and replacing it with bits of hot dog and Twinkie to make it "more suitable" for American taste buds. Lots of people are going to try that and think, "Man, sushi is disgusting," when they might have really liked the "un-fucked-with" fish version in the first place.
Jonathan:
I don't want to get too off-topic, but the points you're making are leading me to angry feelings towards NoA in general. They make so many baffling, irritating moves, like ignoring Fatal Frame IV, ditching Captain Rainbow, giving Kirby angry eyebrows on his American box art -- so may asshat moves.
Honestly, I don't know if it's really NoA or NoJ that's making these decisions; all I know is that someone big at Nintendo doesn't appreciate the universally charming appeal of their own products.
It's a widespread problem that plagues a lot of Japanese localization efforts. Remember how long it took for someone to bring Dragon Ball Z to the states, or for Miyazaki's movies to be brought to American theaters? These are all Japanese properties that have obvious international appeal, but the dudes with the money and power to localize them didn't seem to think so for years.
Back to the point, I just watched the video again; holy fuck! The Fan Club vocalist is AWFUL. She really can't sing. Is she a relative of a bigwig at Nintendo or something? This just doesn't add up.
Topher:
It's like they're not even trying, and you make a great point in saying that Nintendo doesn't appreciate the charm and greatness of its own products. I enjoyed the Japanese version of this game so much that this only feels like a terrible injustice to it. In all honesty, this game's been cheated out of what it deserves.
You know what it sounds like? It sounds like bad karaoke. Like when you walk into a bar and hear familiar background music, but the vocals are done by some paralegal who's had one too many appletinis. It's really shameful and embarassing, especially when the monkeys are still going "hai, hai hai" and there's this bored, uninterested "yeah, yeah, yeah" leading them into it. You know that disgruntled face the other monkeys make at you in that stage when you screw up? They should be making that face at the singer on stage every time she opens her mouth.
For a lot of people, Rhythm Heaven is going to be their first taste of those "wacky Japanese games" they've been hearing so much about, and what they're getting isn't the real thing. And yeah, it is that important when the shitty vocals change the whole feel of the game. It's just not fair to anybody involved.
Jonathan:
I'm still holding out hope that some of the other new vocals will be better. There is that kick-ass song that plays while the karate guy attacks defenseless boulders in the snow, and of course, there's "SCRATCH-O." Maybe those won't be screwed up, but at this point, I'm prepared for the worst.
Rhythm Heaven won't be the triumph that it could have been, and instead will be just another thing for longtime Nintendo fans like myself to bitch about. At least Nintendo didn't make the DS region-locked, so people who want the real
Rhythm Heaven experience won't have to work too hard to get it. Still, they shouldn't have to go that far. The fact that they didn't include English and Japanese versions of
Rhythm Heaven's songs makes me a sad panda.
Speaking of region-locking, the original
Rhythm Tengoku is
on sale at Play-Asia until the end of March.
But yeah ... next time, Nintendo, save the money that you spent on getting Beyoncé to pretend she likes your games and put it towards getting real English vocalists.
Rhythm Heaven Wii is pretty much a sure thing at this point, and if you spend all your locilazation budget on getting Hannah Montanah to pitch it, while giving the actual in-game songs to your lawyer's daughter to sing, I'll poop on my Wii and send it you in the mail.
Or maybe I'll just send the poop.
Topher:
The only hope I'm holding onto is that there aren't any other new vocals. But, as is the case with a lot of Nintendo's recent activity, hope is probably not a wise thing to bring into the equation at all. This is why I started importing games all those years ago. "All your base are belong to us" was probably something really dramatic and intimidating in its original form, instead of the legendary joke it's turned into after being badly translated. Same goes for too many games. Once again, western gamers are ending up with a much shittier version of something that used to be great, and most of them won't even know what an awesome thing they missed out on.
You know, it really doesn't help that I was in the middle of flossing my teeth when you sent me that link. I was already feeling irritable. Why'd they mess with one of the best things they had going for them this year? Maybe I'll send Nintendo some poop, too. They sure as hell send us enough of it here in the states.
Jonathan:
We are two bitchy men CONFIRMED.
As for hope, I can always remind myself that in the future, all games will be accessible to everyone all the time. Digital distribution has already been successful in giving me
Sin and Punishment on the Wii VC and a translated version of
Mother 3 on my my Wii Homebrew channel. Hopefully, it will make all international boundaries a thing of the past.
Until then, though, we have to deal with crappy localization efforts like this one.
*Sigh*.
Contest:
6:00 PM on 03.28.2009
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Great discussion, guys. I had no idea the English dubs were going to be so bad! :'(
Nintendo, I thought you were doing something really awesome for the North American crowd giving us Rhythm Heaven, but I see you've just fucked it up like usual.
That dub sounds like a waitress obligatorily singing happy birthday to a customer at TGIFriday's.
What the fuck is NOA doing? They are not fucking Capcom to have horrible voice acting. well I gotta say the dubbed WarioWare songs were also terrible (except for Mona Pizza which is pretty addictive)
The songs need a lot more emotion too, especially the Fan Club, it is almost as she was not even feeling like singing at all.
I think games that are made with japanese material, should be kept with japanese material. I mean look at Elite Beat Agents, it was redesigned for the western audience, which was great! And we still play Ouendan to play the wacky japanese side of it as well.
I think they should have kept the original voices and if not much simply adding subtitles.
Best analogy ever.
I also think that everyone is overreacting a bit. I enjoy cheesy vocals for cheesy lyrics and frog section was very good. Besides if this does not sell, NOA will think that their rhythm games are not bringing Stateside which would be a great loss for those who don't import.
Just UGH.
The worst part is that those dubs aren't "so bad they're kind of good" dubs, they're just horrendous buttfucking failures.
Well, the frogs weren't so bad I guess...
What I really disagree with, though, is the notion that Americans would totally have preferred a game with a more Japanese feel to it. This is another case of the vocal minority making you think something that isn't true. I know how this is, being a long time Earthbound fan. You hear the Internet cry out and bitch and moan about how Earthbound isn't coming to the VC, and how Nintendo of America still has no plans to bring Mother 3 over here, but the actual majority of gamers don't give a damn about the series, and I'm pretty convinced that while Mother 3 would sell better than Earthbound did, it would still not be a commercial success like the vocal minority would have you believe.
And so, back on topic, you think that people would really like the original Japanesey feel of RTG, but I can say from experience that this is not the case. Back in college, I had several roommates, and they hated games that were too much like this, including gems like Magic Pengel and Katamari friggin' Damacy. I will concede that some people are into stuff like this (e.g. you and me), but if Nintendo really wanted to appeal to the mainstream, and especially to the new casual market that dominates the DS ownership, then they are almost required to make things easier to swallow for the American audience.
Your sushi analogy is especially bad, because while I have personally gotten a few people into eating chunks of raw fish with me, you know that most Americans who say they like sushi go out and order California rolls and they are totally happy with it. There isn't anything inherently wrong with this, but there's a huge difference between fake crab meat in rice and raw tuna. The fact is, many Americans are not into it, and they never will be.
So in summary, this is not nearly as bad as you're making it out to be. We're all in the vocal minority, and while we can dig this wacky Japanese stuff, the majority of American gamers cannot.
Also, you're a bunch of weeaboos.
Just think about how horrendous a scene in a game would be with terrible voice acting. Sure it doesn't change the fun factor of the game, but it definitely ruin the moment.
it was really bad but i couldn't stop watching it
maybe if I'd played the original i would feel your pain but its not that bad
As a super fan of Rhythm Tengoku, even though I'm real bad at it, this is extremely disappointing.
You should write a book about how the Kansai regional dialect will never ever be properly localized into English. I will pay double the asking price to get a copy to my brother overnight.
God damn. I haven't played Rhythm Tengoku, but holy crap -- that female singer sounds like a barely-competent [i}American Idol [/i]contestant who doesn't even make it to Hollywood from the auditions. Jesus. I could do a better job than that.
http://www.destructoid.com/gdc-09-the-lowdown-on-rhythm-heaven-s-english-song-lyrics-126469.phtml
It's all because it isn't "~Kawaii desu ne ~d(^_^)b~ ** Supaa Nihongo XD :3 right?
Shitty voicework is shitty voicework, and it's even worse now that I've listened to the other songs in the US version and they've got it in there to replace stuff that wasn't even Japanese in the first place. There's stuff that was gibbersih or animal sounds that's now been replaced with this kind of public access children's programming quality voiceover. There's no need for it.
So, yes, it's every bit as bad as I'm making it out to be. People who don't like this sort of thing are going to skip it either way. Other people who might be interested to see what it's about are going to miss out on the great music that made it awesome to begin with, and get a low-quality substitute from people who didn't care enough to hire a few decent singers.
~聴いてありがとう, off to go pretend my bathrobe is a kimono and watch Lucky Star while I chow on some pocky desu desu desu. :3 *^__^*
Even if they did bring Mother 3 to N/A on the DS or something, it would still sell a substantial amount of copies. The hardcore gamer demographic still exists, 12 and 13 year old kids still read Nintendo Power and buy all the games hyped up by them. Just because the DS has a new demographic, I think that Mother 3 would still sell very well. I know tones of Dtoiders who would drop $45 for that in an instant.
And even if it didn't sell a lot of copies, Nintendo would still make money some off of it. And it would shut us up.
Then again, experience tells me that a good part of them will never know the difference because they may never look into the regional differences. I have to keep telling people I meet that the Japanese version is better. I have a personal rule that states "Give all dubs a chance", so when I say it's better, I know what I'm talking about. There are English dubs I prefer over the original products, but they're more rare than I would like them to be.
In this case, I only needed to watch the English dub for Remix-10 to make my decision.
What did they do; Bring in the kids of developers to sing this?
The music is alright, but the dub is SHIT.
Yes, it's still very playable, even if there's a little more challenge in working out exactly what to do the first time, you'll soon fall into it.
I think the two girl pop songs are the absolute worst of the redubbing, most of the rest has been untouched. The remaining that have been changed aren't so bad and are only kind of jarring to those who know how it was before.
That is all.
Anyway, definitely agree they should've/should include both versions. I may not wholly like Japanese vocals, but at least "Ashley's Theme" in SSBB sounded, you know, appropriate (and cool, in the echoey effects and Ashley's ghostly feel), compared to that jarring and off-putting English sample on the ofikal site.
Hrm... I don't like the frog voices, no matter how appropriate they might be.
But I suppose that can also be a good thing--a lot of people who pick this up wouldn't've heard the originals, either, so it might not sound as bad to them.
The Fan Club singer kind of made me think of the woman who did the vocals for Tomorrow Hill on Wario Ware Smooth Moves. Considering Rhythm Tengoku's made by the same people, maybe NOA decided to use the same person...
The interview stated that doing so would have pushed the game's size past a reasonable limit. The game is big enough as it is and I think that the cost of such large cartridges for an admittedly niche game like this wouldn't have been justified.
Then again, this is Nintendo we're talking bout, so...
Nevertheless, I'd like to play the devil's advocate and say that this is intentionally a different animal. Remember, the point of the localization wasn't to make it good or better for people that might enjoy the game when there's no Japanese involved. Outside of core gamer/otaku circles many people do feel intimidated/turned-off by J-pop.
That said, having off-key singing is a turn off to EVERYBODY. That's my only real complaint about Rhythm Heaven. The lyrics are fine, the frogs are fine, but off-key girl singing is really not OK in a music game.
Unless of course, the game in question is Um Jammer Lammy, and the off-key singing is by Katy Kat.
Then it's OK.
We wanted to get the rage on the shelf when it was still fresh. I doubt either of us is as angry as we were this afternoon.