Why are English localisations for Compile games so wack?

[Ajora]

I'm curious to know if anyone knows the reason for this. There are many English localisations for Compile games that either make bafflingly stupid and unnecessary changes to the story or just remove chunks of it altogether. Gun-Nac, Musha Aleste, and Super Aleste all being fine examples. Why is this? What's the point?

[BulletMagnet]

I'm tempted to chalk it up to the prevailing (and probably at least partially justified) localization attitude of the era, namely that anything "too Japanese" wouldn't sell in the West. Compile's stuff would hardly be the only games affected, and at least in their case the gameplay content was (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) left mostly intact.

[BrianC]

It sucks that they were blocked in the first place, but at least the blocked cutscene images in Gun Nac can still be viewed with a code (no Game Genie or similar device needed). There's also a translation hack available for the JP version.

[WelshMegalodon]

Man, is it startling seeing icycalm's avatar here again. Even though it's just a picture of Guts and anyone is allowed to use it, including this longtime lurker.

[bigbadboaz]

LOL, let's not go down that road.

As Magnet said, product of the times. You had 1) marketing departments who thought they knew so damn much (not that that's changed, but back then there was really no penetration of pure Japanese pop-culture influence at all) and 2) far smaller budgets and resources. Even if a company was interested in being true to the source material, you probably ended up with one guy trying to translate with less-than-perfect knowledge of either the Japanese or English side.

If you lived through the era it was almost a hobby in itself to sift through all the Engrish in games as a whole.