We need to talk about SNK's 90s as hell localizations 

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Imagine if it isn't an employee taking the piss but there's someone out there working as a localizer who actually talks like this and thinks that it's the most natural-sounding dialogue.

"You pin-headed son of an ice cream maker!" I don't know what SNK's localization "team" was on, but I'm glad they were on it.

Shiro Amakusa's "*I return after 100 years of slumber to kick some but!!*" in SamSho 1 lives rent free in my head for years. I hope it never decides to move out.

Fatal Fury 3 also had Terry call Geese a rapscallion - an unspeakably bizarre thing to say about a guy who killed your father.

Boobala is also a yiddish word meaning darling, usually used by older people towards a child, which makes its use by snk... more weird?

Still, Dweebenheimer is a classic among insults.

This is pure Saturday Morning dialogue, the kind you would hear on Fox Kids, Kids WB and even CBS Kid TV. All the freakin better. Go for it Matt, make a whole new series out of this high concept subject. Showcase the rest of the wild wide world of SNK's English localizations.

The date of Geese Howard's death is actually based on the BIOS clock which has the Y2K bug, so it loops back to 1900 after 2000. You can see in numerous online recordings of the ending that the date will always correspond to when the video was recorded minus a century.

You should’ve brought up the line Robert say when he goes to fight geese, where he goes “The police? Look officer, I swear she was over 16!” Never change, snk

My favorite one is still Rugal calling you a jerk when you beat him. which almost makes the hell that is fighting him worth it.

The localization was a huge thing for us in Brazil. The portuguese was very weird and sometimes nonsense, but was very cool to understand what characters were saying.

I recall the Fatal Fury ending's date was tied to an optional feature where you can set the date on the Neo Geo MVS's BIOS (I have no idea why this was a feature) and the ending would just use whatever the date the MVS was set to, so in theory it would have the date as whatever day you are currently playing it. I believe the date works correctly in Japanese for the year 2000 and beyond, but for the international version it doesn't, so it'll just have the year set as "19XX" instead of the current year. I think most (commercial) emulators and the like for some reason are set in a way where the game is running on an MVS configured with an incorrect date preset so it'll always show up as 1919 or whatever. If you check out some other Fatal Fury longplays on RU-vid, you can see how a lot of playthroughs seem to have different years like 1906 or 1916 or 1919 or whatever. Anyway this is a lot of words to say that Geese Howard totally died at the end of Fatal Fury.

As a professional translator, I really wish there were more videos on YT discussing the bizarreness that is the pre-2000s localisation world. I can't wait to see what else you can uncover, Mattmuscleman

Congratulations!!! You have completed a great video. And proved that SNK's many localization quirks are the stuff of legends. Now go and rest our hero! (Until the next exciting Matt McMuscles/Flophouse Plays/Triple KO videos, that is)

"Victoly" seems like the classic case of transliteration from Japanese Kana to latin alphabet. Japanese does not have a distinction between "r" and "l" sounds, so if someone that does not know english attempts to transcribe it, they have 50/50 chance of choosing the correct letter.

Simp was short for simpleton, and had been used as such in the English language going back quite a ways. Hell it was used that way in a Calvin and Hobbes strip way back when.

"DIS KYOKUGEN KARATE, WILL YA? NOW SAVOR THE PAIN IT BRINGS!" always stuck to me more than the classic "Wubba wubba! I'm in the pink today, boy"

Of course we need a part 2 on this! Finally someone talked about this!

From now on I'm ending arguments with, "take good rest!"

I enjoyed all those broken translations, throughout the years. It's always hilarious. Even Takuma's "You are AN disgrace." And we'd say it to each other, in school, stressing on the AN.

Doesn't really count as localisation but I always liked how the narrator in Metal Slug says certain things. For example the way he pronounces "Mobile Satellite"

"Wubba, Wubba. I'm in the pink today!" and "Die like your father, you pin-headed son of an icecream maker!" never fail to make me laugh. They're quintessential 90s SNK. Whenever I see Grant's scenes in Garou, I just think of him as some random dude having a midlife crisis; he got up one morning, decided to put on a cape, and started calling himself the Martyr of Might. That "Oh my gaaaaaaaawd" was the result of him stubbing his toe, or perhaps an attempt at a valley girl accent.

Fun fact: "Simp" was not only short for simpleton, it's also why in the Simpsons intro, the cloud initially covers the rest of the logo. They were a family of simpletons.

This video should have come with a Parental Advisoly Warning. I remember back when these games were still being made. The weird and inconsistent translations were so prevalent that people would refer to this stuff as "SNKglish".

i remember to laugh a lot when i played Realbout Fatal Fury Special in Brazilian Portuguese, SNK translated Blueberry' quote "Am i the weak sex ?" to "Eu sou fraco em sexo ?" that means "Am i weak in sex ?"

That Geese Howard dies in hospital "inaccuracy" is actually completely accurate. I 1CCd the game for the first time on 08/24/2023. And I was duly informed that Geese died in hospital August 24th, 1923. It uses your MVS clock - and they never accounted for the fact that anyone would be playing the game in a new millennium. I can successfully carbon-date that footage of Max playing the game as being recorded on 10/16/2019...

Please, please, for the love of god, do more of these. Weird SNK quotes swim in my blood ever since Ryo's "dweebenheimer" win quote.😂

The first thing that always comes to my mind is Akuma calling you a “ponce” 🇬🇧 in Snk Vs Capcom

14:00 it's Yiddish, spelled a million different ways but I don't think I've ever seen that one so still somehow misspelled. Roughly translates to "sweetie". Think like a Jewish aunt greeting her niece "Aw come here my little Bubala". Sometimes pronounced Boo-buh-lah or BUH-buh-leh.

I’ll say my favourite localisation quote is Robert’s win quote in 2002UM where he makes a Little Shop of Horror’s reference by saying “Feed me more, Seymour!”

Wubba wubba, I’m in the pink today Boy!

A certified KoF classic line for me is when the boss of KoF2k1 gets all Shakespeare and monologues after his defeat: IS THIS THE END OF LOVABLE IGNIS?

So glad you decided to talk about this. Always loved the line that one of the Jin brothers says about "ruling the entire world, except Oshkosh."

To this day I'm still not sure if Samurai Shodown is missing the W to be stylistic, or if it was just an error but to me that's part of the charm of 90s SNK games.

Whenever I see these localizations I think of that one scene from Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse where Miles intentionally fails the test and the teacher hands it back to him saying "to get all the answers wrong, you must have known the right ones" or something and gives him a 100 on it. Thats how I feel about these localizations and I love it.

Yesterday I laughed about Geese's "DON'T CALL MY A PANSY AGAIN, BIMBO. NOW LEAVE MY TOWN." after fighting against Blue Mary in Fatal Fury 3. And of course it's "PRODUSED BY SNK", you will see it after the credits in many SNK games.

SNK cutscenes were the Fensler Films of the '90s. If Krauser told you "Nice catch there, blanco nino. It's too bad your ass got saaaaaaaaaacked" you would just accept it.

Remember when Terry voice actor said “Jesus?!?!” But the subtitles saying “What the…! Sh-She’s gone…”

Terry telling someone to go back to the kitchen will never not be funny

11:40 "The L isn´t even close to the R on the keyboard." Yes, but I think it´s because in Japanese there isn´t a distinct sound for R and L, but something in between. Which is why this mistake occurs so often.

I get the feeling Booballa is supposed to be the Yiddish term of endearment "Bubbale". Funny video!

"the guy with the big beak" was actually perfect tho and a spoiler

SNK's translations have always and will always be a source of joy.

If you think the english translations in SNK game was silly, you must search for the brazilian-portuguese translations... 😅

After some thought I think the quote about pegging holes must refer to the expression, “square peg in round hole”. So someone that knows how to “peg their holes” means he’s no dummy. 😂

First SNK game I ever played was Art of fighting, followed by fatal fury, and then burning fight. All the SNK fighting games are classics and the majority of them have some of the cheapest bosses in video game history.

I love SNK Engrish so much 😂. Also, if you really think about it, Geese is in fact Christian Cage before Christian Cage.

4:30 as for the "1919", Fatal Fury actually picks the date from the Neo Geo internal clock on the dip switches, but the year is represented by only the two final characters with a "19" prefix, thus 1919 (I suppose Max did this run in 2019, so that happened)

“Dwebenheimer” sounds like something you’d say to someone that loved Barbenheimer a little too much.

"A stone in my path is subject to my foot up it's ass" That us the best win quote I've ever heard holy fuck

I love that CONQER is not only in Fatal Fury Special, but in Fatal Fury 2 as well. Keep it as is, no notes.

My first experience with this era of SNK localization was with the SvC game on the Nintendo Switch, and DAMN some of those lines took me off guard. Nothing says "I'm ready to fight!" Like "I hate comedy!" ~Geese~ "M. Bison kicks!" ~Bison~ And of course, Kyo's glorious win quote: "That's it, that's the pepper! Ooooh yeah!"

PLEASE do another vid of classic SNK win quotes! Related-ish: I saw your video for Riding Fight for like one second before playing it myself, and after finishing the first level and "SUCH A GRAVY DAY!" hit my screen I had a goddamn laughter breakdown. This video has given me some of that same joy.

Neo Geo games also released with each localization present on each cartridge. Meaning not only did a few people have to translate all of SNK's games into English, they had to get the English (and sometimes also Spanish) ready for the Japanese arcade release. Grant's cut-off line in Garou also suggests the translators would have to get creative in fitting lines of text in a limited size text box. Japanese characters are quite condensed, so a translator might only get to fit, say, 40 characters in a line.

I believe we, as a society, need to re-embrace the term Dweebenhiemer

I dunno, King calling someone a eunuch still holds up well to me.

Was boobala maybe an attempt to spell the Yiddish "bubbeleh" without ever seeing it written down? (I probably also didn't spell it right)

One of the best things about Terry coming to Smash was I got to learn about these crazy mistranslations.

The term simp has been around since at least the 80s. The translator for that one might have been a fan of hip-hop.

The "rub him off" remark should probably be "erase him". 😅

Can you imagine if they got better translations and made it so the quotes wouldn't disappear as soon as the last letter was typed on screen. SNK's translation was awful. As much as I loved SNK back in the day, the translations always gave it a cheaper feel to me. I can only think that if they would have improved presentation a bit, they could have been even more popular.

I always loved the broken Japanglish of the SNK games of old. I'll never grow tired of reading "Then die you crazy funster!" from SamSho 1

I will never forget when Iori said "Gnarly, let's do it dudes!" In KOF 97 😭

14:23 My brain tells me that's supposed to be "bubbala". Kim Kaphwan: Doting Jewish mother. EDIT: Or skeezy talent agent: "Terry. Baby. Doll-face. Bubbala."

As a Mexican, it still amazes me to hear an American talk so much about SNK games, respect, Matt!

"Dweebenheimer" sounds like another case of two movies releasing the same day.

There are two lines from Fatal Fury 3 that I never forget : - Geese callong Terry "Little frog liveing in a small lagoon." - One of the main villans , pissed at Terry , calling him "moose head".

SNK wasn't the only victim of this trend. Data East, who also occasionally made games for the Neo Geo MVS also had some... Less than stellar translations. Magical Drop 3 is the best example of SNK-isms

Here's one from Fatal Fury 3 that I loved. ""What...? Little brother...? My cute, cherubic little brother... You'll never leave here alive, mousse head!" After you beat Jin Chonshu, assuming you kept your rank high enough and the game doesn't end at him, his older brother Jin Chonrei sees the bloodied, beaten body of his brother and goes apeshit on the victor, leading to the true final boss fight. It's even voiced! And the funny part is, this line is actually fairly accurately translated. All except for the "mousse head" bit.

4:28 If I'm not wrong, the date of Geese's fall is the actual real date the game was being played since the Neo-Geo had a clock/calendar, however Fatal Fury 1 ending screen doesn't count past the year 1999 and just rolls back to 1900, so 1919 = 2019.

12:23 Your delivery was perfect 😂

Personal favorite has always been Magician Lord if for no other reason because it actually had English voice acting for them. "What Imprudence, you human being! Face your trail by god!!" "You persistent guy. But your life ends right now." and who can forget "Come on, nice guy! But your life is mine very soon." Classic.

Fun Fact: In original arcade release, the year is 19XX, where XX is the number of credits the player used to beat the game. If the player finish the game without using continue (a.k.a. "1cc"), the ending will display the "chronological year". Fun Fact #2: The special move commands will change if Fatal Fury 1 is played in a japanese system or a US/EUR system.

And its not just the fighters either. In Magician Lord we have the main bad guy taunting the player before each boss fight with jewels such as "What imprudence, you human being! Face your trial by God!", "I'm destined just to die.", "You are very dangerous. Be dead down here." and "Come on nice guy! But your life is mine very soon."

The Brazilian's localizations also had some mistakes. In the Women Fighters' ending in KoF 96, there a misspelling that changes King's saying to Mai to "stop laughing of her face", to "stop c*umming on her face". Not joking.

14:12 As far as "simp" goes: as a derogatory term for someone who fawns over another, that definition has been around since the 2000s, at least. So, yes, there is a non-zero chance an SNK translator knew

Syrup is thicker? How about King and Mai Shiranui, Wolfgang? Would they be thicker than syrup?

The localizations are bizarre, weird, insane and I love them

“Boobala” is a strange transliteration, but it’s actually Yiddish (remember, Morticia and Gomez often use terms of endearment from various languages). You’ll more commonly see “bubbeleh” or the like, as it’s a diminutive form of “bubbe,” meaning “grandmother.” It’s used a lot for close loved ones and children.

11:40 Thought you would know this but Japanese doesn't have the sounds for R and L as separate sounds, and instead has one half way between the two, resulting in all the 'Conglaturations'

Gonna need that What Happened Series over Maximo, was supposed to have a third game that was cancelled and haven’t had anything close to it in recent years except for ghost and goblins remake.

Isn't it obvious? SNK was prototyping what we would all eventually call Google Translate!

an snk game without janky english is like a day without sunshine

This video had me rolling on the ground, I had forgotten about a lot of these, and not heard of even more of them. PLEASE do more stuff like this

One of my favorite quote from KOF 2002 Unlimited Match is when Chang said “Scooby Dooby Doo Wop. Doo Wop, Ah Doo Doo.”

A Fan translation of the Samurai Shodown RPG just dropped Mr. McMuscles. (Haven't had the time to watch the vid yet so I don't know if he himself mentioned it)

This was hilarious lmfao. We need a part two of this please Matt.

Part 2 has to include the World Heroes games. WH2 win quotes not only has the SNK asf translation but most of them get cut off before they finish due to the screen transition and how overly long the quotes are.

Holy fuck this is hysterical. The "Blood is thick, but syrup's thicker" line sounds like something Coach would say in Home Movies.

"I hate spunk" never thought I'd hear a Mary Tyler Moore reference in something fighting game related. Really glad for that.

Personal favorite, Samurai Showdown, "Don't worry! Believe you!"

My headcanon´s that everyone has brain damage after so many fights. (That would explain a lot).

This was GOLD ... you've no idea how badly I needed the laugh...please do a Volume II

14:14 There was also that time in Team Ikari’s Ending KOF 99 where it’s supposed to be an emotional scene with Whip and a dying Krizalid, but then she says “I’m not your Sister, Puke!” and then she says “Then answer me this, Loon!” and finally she calls him “a simp” and after she says all that, at the very end of the Ending after the credits it shows her crying, and you’re like wait what?

Wubba wubba, I need a part 2, boy! Early SNK translation is freaking gold!

The localisations will never be as funny as the reactions to ssid localisations!😂

Dweebenheimer is peak name calling though

I hadn't thought of it in a while, but I saw Samurai Shodown 2's intro, my heart was filled with joy. Thank you, Matt! =)

Snk English has a charm that won't be forgotten just like their arcade games and aes system