Japanese Super Metroid in English?

[cbmeeks]

I recently bought a Super Famicom.  I have an SNES but I really like the look of the SF and I collect consoles.  Plus, I got it pretty cheap.  Even free shipping from Japan.

So, I thought I need at least one game to play on it.  That game is my favorite SNES game, Super Metroid.  Which I also got super cheap.

 

Anyway, everything finally arrived and I hook it all up.  The game works great.  However, I noticed everything was in English.  So for fun, I noticed you could switch to Japanese text.  I did that, but it made no difference.  The intro was in English and the voice over was also English.

 

I don't speak or read Japanese, so no harm done.  But I am curious to know if what I have is legit or not.  I assumed I would see Japanese title screens at least.  But other than that one option (English or Japanese), everything else seems identical to my US version of the game.

 

I opened up the cart and it appears to be from Nintendo.  All of the chips are branded Nintendo, the board, etc. 

 

Am I missing something?

 

Thanks.

[CatPix]

It wasn't uncommon for games of this era to be in English. Neither the Famicom or Super Famicom include a built-in set of ideograms so if you wanted text in Japanese in a game, you had to include them in the cart.

On the other hand, English only require you to have 26 character (plus signs, and ramp that up to 52 if you want uppercase and lowercase). And even better, the Latin alphabet can easily be made very compact unlike Japanese ideagrams due to being simpler to draw.

 

So in fact, NES games fully in Japanese (outside of RPGs) and early SuFami games were in English due to ROM size constraints.

I can't tell about Super Metroid specifically tho.

I know that I have "Where in the World in Carmen Sandiego" and the game come in English and Japanese. I haven't tried Japanese (for I assume being on a CD game they had ample place to store all the text they want) but the English side is mostly in English.

I suppose it was kinda educational.

 

If you were playing on a Super Nintendo, I would suggestthat it detect the language and override to English, but if you have a SuFami, it shouldn't be the case. Maybe if you look in game, some item description in English.

 

Edit :

 

Well for such things, The Cutting Room Floor usually helps :

https://tcrf.net/Super_Metroid#Regional_Differences

"The Japanese and North American versions give you the option to select English or Japanese for the opening cutscene text "

So apparently, only the opening cutscene should be in Japanese, everything else would be in English.

Also, it's possible that you have to start a fresh save for the language change to happen, as I've seen that happening for Zelda Majora's Mask.

Edited November 12, 2019 by CatPix

[Tanooki]

A bit late to the party but yes the SFC/SNES version of Metroid are one in the same.  So little of the game is actual printed text and not graphical that there was room on the cart to fit both with a basic software switch.  You can set it in the menu when you get beyond the title screen and a simple press of a button on an existing or new game will swap the text over.  For a time it was a choice way to go for people to buy the game when Super Metroid started getting stupid priced high on SNES a few years when it started to creep towards its peak.  It has fell off some dumb values I saw since that point so it's less popular to do it, but it's a choice.

[DragonGrafx-16]

16 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

A bit late to the party but yes the SFC/SNES version of Metroid are one in the same.  So little of the game is actual printed text and not graphical that there was room on the cart to fit both with a basic software switch.  You can set it in the menu when you get beyond the title screen and a simple press of a button on an existing or new game will swap the text over.  For a time it was a choice way to go for people to buy the game when Super Metroid started getting stupid priced high on SNES a few years when it started to creep towards its peak.  It has fell off some dumb values I saw since that point so it's less popular to do it, but it's a choice.

I bought Super Metroid like way back in 2008 when it was $30. Not a bad price then and even better now. I did what you explained when I bought Kirby's Dreamland 3 and Space Megaforce (Super Aleste on SFC).

[Tanooki]

I wouldn't blame you.  I saw what those 3 shot up to at their worst and that's just out of control.  Kirby I'd almost understand it being the last US released 1st party game as they canned Kirby's Star Stacker's SNES port so there just weren't that many made, but Space Megaforce (Aleste) seems to be just going after shooter fans with a vengeance, same with the case of R-Type 3 if you look that one up.

[NE146]

My old story is this.. when Super Metroid was released, I was in Japan that very summer a few months later and I kid you not,  it was TOTALLY in clearance bins on sale for ~9-12 bucks! Literally a large bucket full of Super Metroid boxes dumped in it in most every store I went to... I guess no one in Japan liked it then.   Anyway I wasn't exactly super interested either since I did enjoy, but wasn't exactly enthralled with NES Metroid. But at that price I couldn't refuse. So I picked one up. 

 

Anyway when I eventually got home trying out my goods from the trip, I fully expected a Japanese language experience (which I was used to with Mario Kart, Link's Awakening, etc. etc.) as usual but much to my surprise it was fully in english and you could choose the languages of the menu. So yeah.. that rocked.

 

 

 

 

[Austin]

31 minutes ago, NE146 said:

My old story is this.. when Super Metroid was released, I was in Japan that very summer a few months later and I kid you not,  it was TOTALLY in clearance bins on sale for ~9-12 bucks! Literally a large bucket full of Super Metroid boxes dumped in it in most every store I went to... I guess no one in Japan liked it then.   Anyway I wasn't exactly super interested either since I did enjoy, but wasn't exactly enthralled with NES Metroid. But at that price I couldn't refuse. So I picked one up. 

 

Anyway when I eventually got home trying out my goods from the trip, I fully expected a Japanese language experience (which I was used to with Mario Kart, Link's Awakening, etc. etc.) as usual but much to my surprise it was fully in english and you could choose the languages of the menu. So yeah.. that rocked.

I want to say that traditionally Metroid has always been more popular in Western markets, so I suppose the line of thinking for the SNES one was to just translate it immediately and have both options on the cart instead pumping out multiple different versions of the ROM. It's not like there was a lot of text in-game anyway. 

 

Man, what a great game. I need to fire it up and do another run of it, it's been years since I've played through it.

[cbmeeks]

UPDATE:

 

Thanks guys for the comments.  I figured it out.  Yes, all of the in-game text is in English not matter what.  However, I didn't notice that the settings pages were in Japanese when I switched it over. 

 

 

[Tanooki]

Austin is right with his guess.  Metroid has always traditionally sold like garbage in Japan and it's the NA market above all that helped keep the franchise alive and not dead after the first couple of them.  It's partly a good reason why along with just the hardware itself you didn't see that pop up on the N64, and the GBC got skipped entirely too, yet even after that on GBA they just remastered the NES game for the device after Fusion did decently enough.  If you look at those charting sites that break it down, look at the Prime franchise between here and there, the disparity is obvious.  Nintendo in even such an early era decided that the US did matter and they kept that IP around when they probably would have otherwise killed it because the non-locals loved it so much.