First of all, thank you Team17 for a great game. AB:E is what I always wanted Dual-Stick-Shooters to be.

But, I am also terribly sorry that Japanese translation of AB:E is very bad even in contrast with other XBLA games which had bad Japanese translation. To be more precise, the Japanese translation of AB:E is not completely broken, at least, grammatically. Just, about a half of Chinese letters(aka "Kanji") used in the sentences are replaced with other letters which are slightly look like the correct ones. It is like "TO BE CONTINUED" is written "YQ BE GQNYINVEO". VERY ANNOYING and spoils the game's dignified atmosphere: from the translated sentences, that spaceship is driven by "ghost energy" not electricity. Reading the logs scattered throughout the ship is like deciphering heavily encoded messages.

Isn't there a way to fix it? (Alternatively, adding a language selection menu will make it far better. English is easier than encoded Japanese, at least for me.)

And, can't you use better translation company for the rest of the series? It seems that you left AB:E episode1 to one of the worst.

Sucks to hear that.

On another note, though, I find it amazing to see a game like Alien Breed released in Japan at all. That's surely a first for the series.

Yes, it is the first Alien Breed released in Japan, I think.
But there must be considerable number of Japanese gamers who would love this game if its localization weren't messed up. A top-down-shooter "Alien Syndrome" which was developed by SEGA in 1987 has a lot in common with Alien Breed and it still has so many fans in Japan.

Japanese gamers are sometimes infamous with their taste for Anime-like games and their ignorance for the games developed outside Japan. But even for them, good games are surely good games. In fact, they have praised many foreign (for us, of course) XBLA games like Trials HD, Shadow Complex, Braid, Geometry Wars, etc.

AB:E was rated very low (about 2/5) in Xbox Live Rating System in Japanese region because of this idiotic translation. I wish the developers don't think badly of it.

Hi PKA,

Thanks for swinging by the forum to give us a heads up on issues with the Japanese translation. I'm really sorry to hear that there are so many problems with it.

We outsource all of our translation requirements to an external company, so we'll be having a look as to what went wrong. It may be a failure on their part or a problem with the font we used. Unfortunately none of the dev team speaks or reads Japanese, so we had no idea that there were such issues (it's a real shame, because the Japanese characters look really cool in game - it adds a lot of character to it).

If it is any help to you, you can play the game in English by changing the language settings of the console. To do this, go to My Xbox in the Dashboard and scroll across to System Settings. From there select Console Settings > Language and Locale > English. This will change the default language of the console and you will be able to launch Alien Breed in English. Bear in mind however that this will change will also affect the dashboard and the language that other games are launched in. However, you can change the language back following the steps above.

I'm glad to hear that you really enjoyed the game. Thanks for taking the time to provide us with the feedback. Once again, I'm sorry for the problems with the translation.

-Woody @ Teamsters.

Thank You, Woodbar. I really appreciate your sincerity.

Of course I know it is not Team17's fault. It is not the first time that an XBLA game suffer from a bad translation. Ninja Bee - the developer of "A Kingdom of Keflings" which also had very bad Japanese - told the same reason: They couldn't notice that it had a bad translation. Some translation companies seem to promote themselves as if they can properly translate to some languages which they can't handle.

I think Microsoft should have a system to protect developers like you from slipshod jobs done by irresponsible outside companies. As I previously wrote, AB:E was rated very low in Japan because of the sloppy translation which could have been prevented if a native Japanese in Microsoft Japan gave it a glance. I will give them a piece of advice on the matter.

Anyway, please do something about this issue. At least, prevent recurrence in sequels. I myself WILL buy them anyway, but many of Japanese potential customer can cancel if they were badly translated. Japanese gamers are a bit nervous about localization because they regard a game's atmosphere as important, especially in games like AB:E.

Lastly, thanks for the tip about playing AB:E in English. It costs a little time but very useful.

Hi Woody @ Teamsters,

I just saw another user play this game play live on XBox360 and have decided to buy it when its released on PSN.
It looks really fun!
But I also noticed a lot of translation errors too.
Some translation errors make it hard to go through the game.

I'll give an example. (The example use Japanese fonts.)

In the key config menu, there is a button which lets you run(dash).
Which is translated to the Kanji "起こる".
"起こる", means "wake up" which is a totally different meaning then "running".
I think the translator should of used the Kanji "走る", which means "run".
I know the Kanji, "起" and "走" looks similar, (Add "走" and "己" and you get "起".)
but they both have completely different meanings.

I saw similar errors like this a lot.
I think the translator is picking Kanji's on how they look, rather than focusing on their meanings.
I don't know how much you paid them, but if I were you I would want some money back. (not all, because they partly did their job)
Next time, you should really try to use "real" translators.

I hope this gets fixed until the PSN version gets released.

Best Regards

If it is any help to you, you can play the game in English by changing the language settings of the console. To do this, go to My Xbox in the Dashboard and scroll across to System Settings. From there select Console Settings > Language and Locale > English. This will change the default language of the console and you will be able to launch Alien Breed in English. Bear in mind however that this will change will also affect the dashboard and the language that other games are launched in. However, you can change the language back following the steps above.


While on the subject: why is it that most developers do things this way? What's wrong with having the option within the game to choose the game language? -.-

It's something that has deeply annoyed me since I got a 360.

While on the subject: why is it that most developers do things this way? What's wrong with having the option within the game to choose the game language? -.-

It's something that has deeply annoyed me since I got a 360.

Worms 2: Armageddon on 360 lets you change language from within the game. I guess Team17 just didn't think of it in Alienbreed.