So I went to Japan again and returned just yesterday. I had a great time, but I wouldn' t waste your time with it, so instead I' m just going to tell you about this man I met on the plane home.

Note: These aren' t some amazing stories, just airplane smalltalk.

His name was Michaäl and works for Nintendo in both the European base in Frankfurt as well as Japan in the Tokyo offices. The guy works as a translator and translated Twilight Princess to both English and French. He told me that the sometimes critisized opening of Twilight Princess wasn' t the original opening of the game, and that the original opening was changed for the one we know, not until the month before it' s release! And also that it was by the demand of none other than Shigeru Miyamoto himself. I' m trying to remember what he told me the begging was going to be like, but I was really tired at the moment of our discussion, so I can' t really remember.

He also told me that even the staff of Nintendo didn' t know what the fuck Shigeru was going to do with the Revolution, until about 3 minutes before the announcement to the public . And that there where only 11 people in total at all of Nintendo that did. Also he had been sitting next to one of them while working, but apparently at Nintedno, there is a don' t ask, don' t tell policy going on, and people at different departments don' t ask what the others are doing, all in fear of leaks.

He also mentioned some of the difficulties of localising a language from Japanese to any of the western tongues, and that many Japanese don' t understand that different countries need these strange characters, like Ü or Ä. Also that the Japanese often want the translators to make the sentences look as short as they do with the Japanese characters.
I also asked him if he knew why they seldomly include optional language tracks in games, but he didn' t know, but he also thought it was a shame as often the American dubs sucks.

Of course I asked him what he was working on right now, but the little bugger wouldn' t tell me



Edit: Oh! And he also shared an interesting " rumour" ' bout t the new 360, that the rumour ' bout it including an HD-DVD player (which most claim to be fake) most likely is true.