Banana Prince
Jan. 1st, 2021 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanama77 days until the vernal equinox
Well, we begin 2021 with a game worth playing.
This game opens with a brief cutscene.
Imgur wanted me to confirm that I was not a robot. I'll show ye.
This game was only released in Japan, obviously, and Germany, of all places.
I just don't.
In the German version, the Banana Prince is a caveman. In the Japanese version, he’s more princely.
Bell peppers are the trademark hated food of Japan, akin to broccoli and Brussels sprouts in the US.
In fact, in the Japanese dub of Inside Out, the pizza parlor they go to serves pizza with bell peppers instead of broccoli.
Broccoli, which I like, I can understand, because if you cook it wrong, it borders on the inedible. Bell peppers, well, I wouldn’t pick one up and take a bite out of it but they go good in salads or pasta sauce and that’s what bell peppers are for, not for picking up and taking a big bite out of.
We get a world map with a suspicious spot in the northwest corner. I thought that the celery was half of a fish at first.
I never took a picture of this but you can make banana plants appear by pressing down and B. There's also apparently a special ability by holding down+b for three seconds and then pressing up and B immediately. But I've never got it to work and the guide on Gamefaqs doesn't mention it.
Rings are the currency.
For whatever reason, this game has ratchet scrolling. In 1991. It tends to reduce memory usage and improve performance. I remember a video on Mario 3 saying that the ability to scroll the screen horizontally and vertically in an NES platformer was a huge technical accomplishment.
You know, I think the text might display wrong.
So this is what happens. The game gets all meta on us.
I bought an upgrade based on the assumption that the more expensive the axe, the better. Also, I have no idea why you can buy your starting weapon.
You can also gamble.
It costs thirty rings and you guess whether it's going to be high or low.
A five is neither high nor low and counts as a loss.
I'm not sure if those are cucumbers or zucchini.
I don't know if the "it" refers to the wounds or if somewhere down the line, someone was a bit confused on the differences between second person and third person pronouns.
I just noticed the giant grin on his face.
The shops have a sign above them that says “depart,” short for “department store.” The German version misinterprets this and the signs read “adieu.” The English version changes it to “Goodbye.” Proof that you probably shouldn’t base your translations on intermediary translations. See also: Solaris.
He's calling me "melon" when I'm clearly the prince of bananas. I don't get it. Bananas are not melons. Bananas are berries. So are blueberries and cranberries. As are tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants. But not strawberries, blackberries, or raspberries. And definitely not tonberries.
Like in Secret of Mana, all travel is done via cannon.
Welcome to Board Game Land.
Where you answer trivia questions. What he’s saying is that you have a limited time to answer 3 questions correctly, with room for two errors.
The English translation is based on the German version. And not a very good translation either. Take this: Bananenbäume tragen blüten welche Farbe haben sie?
For whatever reason, they interpreted blüt as blut. Probably because whoever did this used Google translate but didn’t know how to use umlauts and didn’t know that diacritics matter. As Albedo could tell you, pêche and péché are two different things.
I just guessed that bananas would bleed yellow. I’ve eaten banana flowers. Trader Joe’s used to have a thing called Sai Tung curry which was delicious even if the microwave instructions were woefully inadequate. I don’t remember what color the flowers are but that’s because color is the first detail I’ll forget. Apparently, they’re a purpley-red or a purpley-brown, but it probably depends on the maturity and the cultivar.
Most of the questions are easy, despite the dodgy translation.
Win and he says this.
I think that was caused by a wrong answer.
Something is definitely displaying wrong.
This is what happens when you lose the board game.
This is the board game boss. Instead of a boss fight, you get even more trivia questions.
Monkeys in real life don't particularly like wild bananas. They're starchy and full of seeds and a bastard to open.
This is where you get the four lost treasures of the Banana Kingdom as well.
Those corn cobs have a really weird and unsettling expression.
The boss is either a green eggplant or a cucumber. Since he's tossing purple eggplants a you and eggplants are an enemy in Adventure Island as well, I'm guessing the former.
I just like the scenery.
And back to Board Game Land.
You can also win items. I think it's a health powerup.
I think this guy might be a daikon radish.
This one is: Q8: Was nehmen leute am meisten? Dein?
The answer is “name”
I honestly don’t know.
It could be rain. It probably is in Germany, Japan, and Massachusetts, given the climates. I don't know why hound and alps are answers, unless this is one of those questions they ask in Al Bhed to see if you have enough primers or just memorized the answers or got lucky.
You have to answer "Alps" for whatever reason. It was like this in the German version as well.
The next boss is a pumpkin who clomps like Lana Kane.
They’re called shuttlecocks (or Federball in German), not badmintons. Like many things in this translation, I have no idea what happened.
The question after this is also about badminton.
I don't know how you're supposed to get the rings on the bottom of the platforms.
The boss is a tomato that splits into five parts occasionally.
and also floats around spewing seeds at you. So I'm still using the King Axe, which might prove problematic but I assumed that there were only four weapons in the game and you go back to the stone axe when you die.
Tomatoes, apparently, are made in a factory.
Yes, they called it the Inclined Tower of Pisa. I don't know what's going with this translation.
I've read other reviews of this and it suggests that if you don't get all the sacred treasures of the banana kingdom, you have to beat the final boss at a quiz as well as a standard boss fight. But they're all from the same pool of questions about bananas and geography.
I have no idea how you're supposed to know this (the answer is carrots)
German is an easier language to translate than Japanese. Seems that they never got the memo. Many Germans are bilingual but they are, you know, Germans. And I find that it helps if the translators are translating things into their native language.
And, with that, we have all the treasures of the Banana Kingdom.
He tells you to come again later but you really can't.
Ladders in this game are an utter bastard.
I really think the boss of this world was switched with the boss of the second world. For one, this is a tomato factory, not a dark forest.
Also, the parsley witch, or whatever this is, is much easier than the tomato.
By now, I learned that there are more weapons available in later worlds.
Erasmus Bedragon is probably the least fun boss fight ever. You can’t damage him when he comes down to eat you. And you never know when he’s going to swoop down to eat you or just swoop down to take damage. And you jump over him all the time even though sometimes he swoops down to take damage and then flies back up and you get hit. Some guides say to use the spin attack but it never works.
Supposedly there’s a door in every world that allows you to bypass the boss fight for the cost of 100 rings, although I’d have to fight him anyway for the screenshot.
Okay, yeah, Lilly definitely likes carrots.
She knocks you off the tower.
Carrots are also considered gross in Japan. Not as much as bell peppers, though.
I will once again remind you that this is a fan translation, which are held to a higher standard than official translations up until and even including the Playstation era, which were most likely done by people with deadlines who are up at 3 AM with not enough caffeine.
On the third attempt, we take a different route.
It's time for...
Well, not a boss fight, but more trivia! I didn't find anything interesting enough to screenshot. In fact, I'm pretty sure I cycled through all the questions and she asked me questions about the blood of bananas and where they can be found in a grocery store.
It’s all there in the manual but the manual is a) not on the internet and b) even if it was, it’s in German or Japanese, so, no, I have no idea who Lily is.
This boss is really sad. The water world is rather tough though. There's a segment in which you have to spawn banana plants and use them to leap over walls of spikes, and it's hard because he jumps around like Sonic on amphetamines.
The swimming is awkward too. You need rapid fire controls to even stay afloat and jumping out of the water is annoying.
The pepper flickers so I took five screenshots just to make sure.
I’m not sure what any of the power-ups that enemies drop do.
The Kingship is the most powerful axe.
The final boss is also very sad.
I don't know who Peach is either.
I don't know if the German translation is a trainwreck and he's trying to replicate that, or if he just used Google Translate to do this.
Ah, to be young again. And also a robot.
I have no idea why she said that. The game's over and there's no sequel.
It's not a bad game, really. In fact, it's actually quite enjoyable.
No wonder some of that music sounded like it belonged in Low G Man.
burning question: Did they hire Liz and Ard from Wild Arms 2 to translate this?
Well, we begin 2021 with a game worth playing.
This game opens with a brief cutscene.
Imgur wanted me to confirm that I was not a robot. I'll show ye.
This game was only released in Japan, obviously, and Germany, of all places.
I just don't.
In the German version, the Banana Prince is a caveman. In the Japanese version, he’s more princely.
Bell peppers are the trademark hated food of Japan, akin to broccoli and Brussels sprouts in the US.
In fact, in the Japanese dub of Inside Out, the pizza parlor they go to serves pizza with bell peppers instead of broccoli.
Broccoli, which I like, I can understand, because if you cook it wrong, it borders on the inedible. Bell peppers, well, I wouldn’t pick one up and take a bite out of it but they go good in salads or pasta sauce and that’s what bell peppers are for, not for picking up and taking a big bite out of.
We get a world map with a suspicious spot in the northwest corner. I thought that the celery was half of a fish at first.
I never took a picture of this but you can make banana plants appear by pressing down and B. There's also apparently a special ability by holding down+b for three seconds and then pressing up and B immediately. But I've never got it to work and the guide on Gamefaqs doesn't mention it.
Rings are the currency.
For whatever reason, this game has ratchet scrolling. In 1991. It tends to reduce memory usage and improve performance. I remember a video on Mario 3 saying that the ability to scroll the screen horizontally and vertically in an NES platformer was a huge technical accomplishment.
You know, I think the text might display wrong.
So this is what happens. The game gets all meta on us.
I bought an upgrade based on the assumption that the more expensive the axe, the better. Also, I have no idea why you can buy your starting weapon.
You can also gamble.
It costs thirty rings and you guess whether it's going to be high or low.
A five is neither high nor low and counts as a loss.
I'm not sure if those are cucumbers or zucchini.
I don't know if the "it" refers to the wounds or if somewhere down the line, someone was a bit confused on the differences between second person and third person pronouns.
I just noticed the giant grin on his face.
The shops have a sign above them that says “depart,” short for “department store.” The German version misinterprets this and the signs read “adieu.” The English version changes it to “Goodbye.” Proof that you probably shouldn’t base your translations on intermediary translations. See also: Solaris.
He's calling me "melon" when I'm clearly the prince of bananas. I don't get it. Bananas are not melons. Bananas are berries. So are blueberries and cranberries. As are tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants. But not strawberries, blackberries, or raspberries. And definitely not tonberries.
Like in Secret of Mana, all travel is done via cannon.
Welcome to Board Game Land.
Where you answer trivia questions. What he’s saying is that you have a limited time to answer 3 questions correctly, with room for two errors.
The English translation is based on the German version. And not a very good translation either. Take this: Bananenbäume tragen blüten welche Farbe haben sie?
For whatever reason, they interpreted blüt as blut. Probably because whoever did this used Google translate but didn’t know how to use umlauts and didn’t know that diacritics matter. As Albedo could tell you, pêche and péché are two different things.
I just guessed that bananas would bleed yellow. I’ve eaten banana flowers. Trader Joe’s used to have a thing called Sai Tung curry which was delicious even if the microwave instructions were woefully inadequate. I don’t remember what color the flowers are but that’s because color is the first detail I’ll forget. Apparently, they’re a purpley-red or a purpley-brown, but it probably depends on the maturity and the cultivar.
Most of the questions are easy, despite the dodgy translation.
Win and he says this.
I think that was caused by a wrong answer.
Something is definitely displaying wrong.
This is what happens when you lose the board game.
This is the board game boss. Instead of a boss fight, you get even more trivia questions.
Monkeys in real life don't particularly like wild bananas. They're starchy and full of seeds and a bastard to open.
This is where you get the four lost treasures of the Banana Kingdom as well.
Those corn cobs have a really weird and unsettling expression.
The boss is either a green eggplant or a cucumber. Since he's tossing purple eggplants a you and eggplants are an enemy in Adventure Island as well, I'm guessing the former.
I just like the scenery.
And back to Board Game Land.
You can also win items. I think it's a health powerup.
I think this guy might be a daikon radish.
This one is: Q8: Was nehmen leute am meisten? Dein?
The answer is “name”
I honestly don’t know.
It could be rain. It probably is in Germany, Japan, and Massachusetts, given the climates. I don't know why hound and alps are answers, unless this is one of those questions they ask in Al Bhed to see if you have enough primers or just memorized the answers or got lucky.
You have to answer "Alps" for whatever reason. It was like this in the German version as well.
The next boss is a pumpkin who clomps like Lana Kane.
They’re called shuttlecocks (or Federball in German), not badmintons. Like many things in this translation, I have no idea what happened.
The question after this is also about badminton.
I don't know how you're supposed to get the rings on the bottom of the platforms.
The boss is a tomato that splits into five parts occasionally.
and also floats around spewing seeds at you. So I'm still using the King Axe, which might prove problematic but I assumed that there were only four weapons in the game and you go back to the stone axe when you die.
Tomatoes, apparently, are made in a factory.
Yes, they called it the Inclined Tower of Pisa. I don't know what's going with this translation.
I've read other reviews of this and it suggests that if you don't get all the sacred treasures of the banana kingdom, you have to beat the final boss at a quiz as well as a standard boss fight. But they're all from the same pool of questions about bananas and geography.
I have no idea how you're supposed to know this (the answer is carrots)
German is an easier language to translate than Japanese. Seems that they never got the memo. Many Germans are bilingual but they are, you know, Germans. And I find that it helps if the translators are translating things into their native language.
And, with that, we have all the treasures of the Banana Kingdom.
He tells you to come again later but you really can't.
Ladders in this game are an utter bastard.
I really think the boss of this world was switched with the boss of the second world. For one, this is a tomato factory, not a dark forest.
Also, the parsley witch, or whatever this is, is much easier than the tomato.
By now, I learned that there are more weapons available in later worlds.
Erasmus Bedragon is probably the least fun boss fight ever. You can’t damage him when he comes down to eat you. And you never know when he’s going to swoop down to eat you or just swoop down to take damage. And you jump over him all the time even though sometimes he swoops down to take damage and then flies back up and you get hit. Some guides say to use the spin attack but it never works.
Supposedly there’s a door in every world that allows you to bypass the boss fight for the cost of 100 rings, although I’d have to fight him anyway for the screenshot.
Okay, yeah, Lilly definitely likes carrots.
She knocks you off the tower.
Carrots are also considered gross in Japan. Not as much as bell peppers, though.
I will once again remind you that this is a fan translation, which are held to a higher standard than official translations up until and even including the Playstation era, which were most likely done by people with deadlines who are up at 3 AM with not enough caffeine.
On the third attempt, we take a different route.
It's time for...
Well, not a boss fight, but more trivia! I didn't find anything interesting enough to screenshot. In fact, I'm pretty sure I cycled through all the questions and she asked me questions about the blood of bananas and where they can be found in a grocery store.
It’s all there in the manual but the manual is a) not on the internet and b) even if it was, it’s in German or Japanese, so, no, I have no idea who Lily is.
This boss is really sad. The water world is rather tough though. There's a segment in which you have to spawn banana plants and use them to leap over walls of spikes, and it's hard because he jumps around like Sonic on amphetamines.
The swimming is awkward too. You need rapid fire controls to even stay afloat and jumping out of the water is annoying.
The pepper flickers so I took five screenshots just to make sure.
I’m not sure what any of the power-ups that enemies drop do.
The Kingship is the most powerful axe.
The final boss is also very sad.
I don't know who Peach is either.
I don't know if the German translation is a trainwreck and he's trying to replicate that, or if he just used Google Translate to do this.
Ah, to be young again. And also a robot.
I have no idea why she said that. The game's over and there's no sequel.
It's not a bad game, really. In fact, it's actually quite enjoyable.
No wonder some of that music sounded like it belonged in Low G Man.
burning question: Did they hire Liz and Ard from Wild Arms 2 to translate this?
