The English Steam release features a number of bugs not present in other editions:
• The lights do not dim when Madotsuki sleeps in the spaceship's bed, as the graphical filter is mistakenly set to transparent. • Certain sound effects, such as those for flying on the Witch effect's broom and talking to an FC Priori, do not play due to them being misnamed in the game's files. • If Madotsuki equips the Traffic Light effect, switches to the red light, and talks to the Toriningen that changes the UI's palette, the resulting text box is corrupted. This is because the correct text is displayed on another line that went untranslated.
Curiously, although the Steam release was updated four times to fix various other glitches and mistakes, none of the patches fixed any of these errors.
In the Japanese version, the test battle in the debug room features a proper background and models for the enemies included (borrowed from other enemies), whereas the international version simply pits the party against yellow pyramids in a black void.
Additionally, the very first Japanese release contains an unfinished eleventh section of the debug room, left over from an earlier build of the game. Because the game's code changed significantly since that build, much of the eleventh section is broken: Cloud's model does not show up (though he is still able to move around and interact with the NPCs there), text is corrupted, and the background music is a heavily distorted version of Aeris' theme.
Street Combat was originally released in Japan as Ranma ½: Chounai Gekitou Hen, a tie-in with the anime adaptation of Rumiko Takahashi's 1987 manga Ranma ½. The American release stripped out all references to the source material due to its obscurity in the United States at the time, though the in-game sprites for Street Combat's cast are visibly traced over their Ranma ½ counterparts. Additionally, Happosai and Cologne are merged into a single character, Happy, in Street Combat.
The box arts of Japanese Crash Bandicoot localizations have historically used a redesign for Crash with larger eyes. This has been done for all games except for the "Titans" sub-series, which had its own distinct Crash design, and the Toys for Bob-developed games.
However, the only games that feature the design in-game for the Japanese localizations are the Japanese-developed Crash Boom Bang!, and Crash Tag Team Racing, which had a skin system that allowed Japanese Crash to appear abroad as well. A good chunk of Crash's costumes in Crash Tag Team Racing also got Japanese versions, though these combination costumes were not included in the Western release.
The international logo for the game contains a tiny vectoring error at the bottom of the first "R" of "Riders". This mistake can't be seen on the title screen due to the lower resolution used, but it can barely be seen on the cover art for differing releases of the game.
In the Japanese dub, upon meeting Eiji Mitamura for the first time on the plane, Eiji will tell Ichiban the French phrase "Bon voyage" (usually translated to English as "have a nice trip"). In the English dub, this was changed to the Hawaiian phrase "a hui hou" (translated to English as "until we meet again") to fit with the Hawaiian setting of the game.
There is seemingly an error in the descriptions of the Daidoji Grapple Strike/Grip Breaker moves in both fighting styles. The moves are simple counters for if Kiryu is grabbed, and act as a way for Kiryu to throw the opponent off of him. However, the descriptions for the moves read "When surrounded by enemies", implying a different function for the move.
The hand-operated puppets utilized in Japanese promotional material for the first Star Fox game, as well as the cover of one of its guidebooks, were created by Takashi Yamazaki, a Japanese filmmaker and visual effects supervisor best known internationally for his 2023 film "Godzilla Minus One".
In a 2008 interview with the game's director Katsura Hashino published in the Persona Club P4 book, he credited the game's Japanese voice cast for having "saved us". He went on to explain the casting process for the Japanese version, which only started after a rough draft of the script was finished. The game's scenario writer Yuichiro Tanaka came up with a list of potential candidates and samples of their work; Hashino, character designer Shigenori Soejima, and sound designer Shoji Meguro selected the cast together from that list. Hashino noted that none of them had much knowledge about voice actors and only relied on the given samples to choose who they felt was best for the role.
Within the Nintendo Switch firmware prior to Version 4.0.0 (for Japanese, US and European systems only), there is a hidden NES emulator stub called "flog" that can only be unlocked on the Home Screen and when the console's internal clock is set to July 11th (if the date is changed in System Settings, but the console is connected to the internet and can see the actual date, this method will not work). The method to unlock it involves detaching the Joy-Cons from the console, holding them pointing forwards/downwards, then moving them to a vertical position and holding it for a few seconds. This gesture may take time to hone due to it being a specific movement tracked by the Joy-Cons, but when it is matched, the system will check to see if flog is installed. When checked, an audio clip of a man saying "chokusetsu" ("直接"), the Japanese word for "direct", will play and the screen will cut to black and launch the 1984 NES title Golf. This emulator is unique in that it includes instructions in English and Japanese on how to play depending on how the Joy-Cons are held, and has a more simplistic appearance than the emulators that would be used for Nintendo Switch Online. Pressing the Home button while playing Golf will return you to the Home Screen without any visible software running there.
With Version 4.0.0, Nintendo removed all of the code required to launch flog and play Golf, but the company seemed unusually hesitant to even acknowledge its existence when asked by news outlets. One month before its removal, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Amie released two statements regarding it when asked by Kotaku:
"So, two comments on this. It was identified by folks playing around in the firmware. We've got nothing officially to announce for that content or what the plans are for that content. So that's that. Certainly anything that pays respect to my friend Mr. Iwata is something that is near and dear to me personally, but in terms of that execution and what it was meant to do or what the plans are, we've got nothing to announce."
"I'm struck whenever I go back to Kyoto and spend time in our headquarters and spend time in the offices where Mr. Iwata, myself and others would be meeting. It's always personally touching. And so, again, no comment on that particular execution."
While this seems to allude that the secret emulator and Golf's inclusion were not authorized, this all but confirms that their purpose was to act as a tribute to Nintendo's late CEO Satoru Iwata. Iwata, who programmed Golf and previously hosted the Nintendo Direct showcase series, passed away on July 11th, 2015, with the method to unlock the emulator mimicking a gesture he used during Nintendo Directs. Japanese fans on social media referred to the Easter egg as an "omamori", amulets that if kept close are said to protect the bearer and bring good luck, speculating that Golf was included by Iwata as a secret charm to watch over every Nintendo Switch unit after his death.
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When Criminal Girls was released in the West, the "Motivation" minigame was censored by adding a pink cloud of smoke over the girl's body and having them be silent during the minigame, whereas in the original Japanese release, the girl would moan and make comments towards the player.
The title card for the Underworld stage contains a typo as the word "Summoning" is instead spelled as "Summning". This typo is only present in the USA and PAL versions.
Mecarobot Golf is a partial reskin of Birdie Try, a generic, non-robot-themed golf game starring Japanese professional golfer Nobuo Serizawa. Only the characters were changed, and the only sci-fi element in the US version is Eagle, the titular Mecarobot. Otherwise, the game remains a generic golf game, and the other three introduced characters are two white women and one white man, replacing the Japanese version's three Asian men.
In PAL releases of the PlayStation 2 version, the player is normally only able to access the tutorial in English, French, Italian, Castilian, and Dutch. Despite this, versions in the other supported languages (German, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, and Portuguese) are present in the game's data and can be accessed either through hacking the game or selecting a supported language and switching to an unsupported one with debug features just before the screen fades to black. It is unknown why these six variants of the tutorial were made inaccessible in the final game, given that they are fully translated.
During the final battle in the Japanese version, Spoiler:a voiceover from Zelda states that the monstrous form that Calamity Ganon assumes is due to his obsession with maintaining his longevity. However, in the English localization, Spoiler:Zelda claims that this form is the result of him abandoning his ambitions for reincarnation and giving into his primal rage, which directly contrasts the Japanese script.
This also opens up a plot hole with Spoiler:Zelda's dialogue in the game's ending, where she says that "Ganon is gone for now" (emphasis added), implying that he will reincarnate anyway (as is the case in other entries, including the game's sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom); in the Japanese version, she simply says that "the threat of calamity has passed."
The North American arcade release of Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone is believed to be the first game to incorporate microtransactions, allowing players to purchase extra lives, characters, energy and moves by putting more quarters into the arcade cabinet. This would be removed for the Japanese release, and replaced with a conventional character select screen that lets you play as the previously paywalled extra characters, and the game's difficulty was rebalanced to be easier to adjust.
For the game's English dub, Spike Chunsoft requested that NIS America keep Monokuma's name intact. He would end up becoming the team's favorite character to localize, working to keep him both funny and threatening like in the Japanese version. This, however, led to difficulties finding a suitable voice actor for the character, as they wanted somebody that could embody Monokuma's "hyperactive psychopathic nature", not helped by how beloved the original Japanese voice actress was. When asked what Monokuma was like in the English version, script editor Phoenix Spaulding stated:
"We like to think he’s not all that different from the Japanese version – which is to say, kind of all over the place. He’s bossy, condescending, smarmy, goofy, quick to anger, quick to forgive, quick to anger again, devious, and totally lovable."
After Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's announcement in 2003, some Mario fans incorrectly believed that the character of Madame Flurrie was going to be the ghost of Bowser's wife, based off of her character design and Japanese name. This is due to Flurrie's Japanese name, "Cloudia", sounding a lot like "Clawdia", a popular urban legend name for the Koopalings' mother supposedly created by the Mario fan website "Lemmy's Land", as well as Flurrie sharing a hair style with Ludwig and lip-shape with Wendy, who were at the time considered Bowser's children by Nintendo.
X was originally pitched under the name Eclipse and was developed under the title Lunar Chase. The single-letter rename came at the request of Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, who contacted director Yoshio Sakamoto early in the morning after playing the game.
The Lunar Chase name was retained for a planned English localization of the game, which was ultimately scrapped due to fears from Nintendo of America that international players would find the game's presentation and design too complex for a handheld title. Creator and programmer Dylan Cuthbert additionally blamed the cancellation on a presumed lack of interest from retailers in the United States. A prototype of the English version would eventually surface in 2020 as part of the Gigaleak, a massive leak of internal server data from Nintendo. The Eclipse pitch, meanwhile, was released to the public by the Video Game History foundation three years later.
According to art director Ikeno "Daigo Ikeno" Metaka, Dragon's Dogma's cover artwork was inspired by the Japanese covers of Dragon Quest, and also Dragon Quest II, because of the pawn placement on that cover. Both covers were illustrated by Akira Toriyama, and this information was revealed after his death was announced in March 2024.
The English Steam release features a number of bugs not present in other editions:
In the Japanese version, the test battle in the debug room features a proper background and models for the enemies included (borrowed from other enemies), whereas the international version simply pits the party against yellow pyramids in a black void.
Street Combat was originally released in Japan as Ranma ½: Chounai Gekitou Hen, a tie-in with the anime adaptation of Rumiko Takahashi's 1987 manga Ranma ½. The American release stripped out all references to the source material due to its obscurity in the United States at the time, though the in-game sprites for Street Combat's cast are visibly traced over their Ranma ½ counterparts. Additionally, Happosai and Cologne are merged into a single character, Happy, in Street Combat.
The box arts of Japanese Crash Bandicoot localizations have historically used a redesign for Crash with larger eyes. This has been done for all games except for the "Titans" sub-series, which had its own distinct Crash design, and the Toys for Bob-developed games.
The international logo for the game contains a tiny vectoring error at the bottom of the first "R" of "Riders". This mistake can't be seen on the title screen due to the lower resolution used, but it can barely be seen on the cover art for differing releases of the game.
The hand-operated puppets utilized in Japanese promotional material for the first Star Fox game, as well as the cover of one of its guidebooks, were created by Takashi Yamazaki, a Japanese filmmaker and visual effects supervisor best known internationally for his 2023 film "Godzilla Minus One".
The title card for the Underworld stage contains a typo as the word "Summoning" is instead spelled as "Summning". This typo is only present in the USA and PAL versions.
The North American arcade release of Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone is believed to be the first game to incorporate microtransactions, allowing players to purchase extra lives, characters, energy and moves by putting more quarters into the arcade cabinet. This would be removed for the Japanese release, and replaced with a conventional character select screen that lets you play as the previously paywalled extra characters, and the game's difficulty was rebalanced to be easier to adjust.
X was originally pitched under the name Eclipse and was developed under the title Lunar Chase. The single-letter rename came at the request of Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, who contacted director Yoshio Sakamoto early in the morning after playing the game.
According to art director Ikeno "Daigo Ikeno" Metaka, Dragon's Dogma's cover artwork was inspired by the Japanese covers of Dragon Quest, and also Dragon Quest II, because of the pawn placement on that cover. Both covers were illustrated by Akira Toriyama, and this information was revealed after his death was announced in March 2024.