Good Localization: Nintendo Pocket Football Club [Featured Content]

Localization often gets a bad reputation even though it occurs for several good reasons. It’s often compared to censorship, even though most of the time…it isn’t. Today, I thought I would highlight a case of good localization that you might not be familiar with.

A lot of gamers may have never played Nintendo Pocket Football Club (3DS), but it’s transition from Japan to the West is a pretty interesting case. It comes from NintenDaan (Follow him on Twitter!) and was written for Nintendo World Report. He’s appearing in the upcoming SourceCast, so submit your questions! I’ve quoted a little bit of the article below. I strongly suggest to read the full thing as the changes are pretty interesting!

…The names are not the only major difference between players however. The original Japanese version featured anime-style faces for the characters, but for Nintendo Pocket Football Club they went with pixelated faces, which I quite approve of. The anime style was really in sync with the Japanese way of approaching it, while pixelated NPCs and players actually come together in a way that is lovely to look at. It is also in line with the smaller pixel characters walking about on the playing field and that makes the whole experience feel more coherent.

The characters that will support you throughout the football journey have also been changed. The coach and secretary have a friendlier look about them, and in particular the coach has changed a lot. In Calciobit, it used to be more of a typical facial expression, but here it has the former-player look written all over it….

To read the full article, click here.

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