The Ys series and the Metroid series have really similar songs when getting a new item. A magazine interview from the 90s holds the key to explaining it.
The Origin of Final Fantasy’s Onion Knight [Translated Interview]
Final Fantasy’s Onion Knight has a perplexing name. There’s a lot of theories about where it came from, but a 2020 interview full of interesting FF3 anecdotes spells it out.
Does Zelda II Lie About Where the Candle Is?
We all know it’s in the east! Did this NPC’s brains get scrambled when they transformed from a grown man to a child?
How to Read Yakuza Zero’s Perplexing Pager Codes (Part 2)
Return to 1980’s Japan for one final, optional battle with super-hard Japanese numeric wordplay (goroawase) to understand the last three pager codes in Yakuza 0!
How to Read Yakuza Zero’s Perplexing Pager Codes
Find out how Kiryū and Majima look at a string of seemingly-random numbers on their pager and somehow extract meaning from them.
Did Soul Hackers 2’s Localization Take an L?
The first boss of Soul Hackers 2 is dismissed with a meme. How did it go in Japanese?
What’s Wrong with Wrestling?!
In a Friends of Mineral Town scene that’s been written and localized twice each, Karen bristles at the memory of wrestling with Rick when they were kids. But why?
Did Xenogears Really Fear a Lawsuit from “Star Trech?”
An explanation of the untranslatable joke from the Japanese version of Xenogears that led to an infamous fourth-wall breaking joke in the English release.
Westerners Won’t Get This Soul Hackers 2 Easter Egg
The first area of Soul Hackers 2 features myriad references to other Atlus titles. But one in particular seems impossible for non-Japanese players to figure out.
Soul Hackers Didn’t Lose Its “Launch”
It’s commonly-held that the hacker Lunch’s name should be Launch, but is that the case?