Procrastination rewarded: I recently discovered a seemingly unimportant change between the English and Japanese versions of the video game
Chrono Trigger that I find rather baffling. The game opens with the hero, Crono — that is, not
Chrono or even
Krono but
Crono, sans an “H” — being awakened by his mother. As with every other character in the game, her every line begins with her name and a colon, screenplay style, to identify her as the one talking. In the U.S. version, she’s simply
Mom. According to
this site, however, the Japanese version assigns her a proper name, just as every other character in the game gets:
Jina, which I suppose could have been rendered in English as
Gina.
This minor character having a proper name helps to reinforce parallels between
Chrono Trigger and it’s sequel,
Chrono Cross. Both open with the main character waking up and being greeted by their respective mother. But unlike her counterpart in the American translation of
Chrono Trigger, the mother in
Chrono Cross has a name:
Marge.
I wonder what impulse prompted whoever translated the first game for English-speaking audiences to simply call the mother
Mom. Did they think American players wouldn’t get who this strange woman traipsing into a young man’s bedroom would be? Did they think we couldn’t wrap our heads around the notion of a mother having a name other than
Mom? It’s an odd choice that presumably was made for some reason. Otherwise why make it?
In most video games with a mute protagonist, said protagonist is intended to be (at least somewhat) a player avatar.
ReplyDeleteMost people think of their parents as "Mom" and "Dad" or some variant thereof, rather than by their given names.
Thus, the character representative of the in-game player's in-game mother is appropriately named "Mom."
I suppose this is true, since Earthbound's mother is also just "Mom" but isn't it the case that Mother 3's main character is also silent protagonist but his mom has a full name? In any case, the mother in Chrono Cross has a proper name, so perhaps it's an idea that gets abandoned as series progress and become more complex.
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ReplyDeleteMother 3 does have a named mom, but the player chooses the name. It makes a particular late-game scene hit a lot harder if you do, also.
ReplyDeleteIt makes it harder? In what way?
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