Shin Megami Tensei IV Has A Translation Problem And The Reason Is Hilarious

Atlus has launched Shin Megami Tensai IV: Apocalypse for the Nintendo 3DS. However, there's a minor translation problem that slipped through the cracks and made it into the game's final code. How and why the slip-up happened is quite hilarious.

Over on the official Atlus website they explained in detail how they managed to miss out on a piece of Japanese text that appears during a dialogue scene during the final battle sequence at the very end of the game. The mishap with the translation occurred because the quality assurance testers were so good at the game that they missed out on the text since it can only be triggered during a certain fail state.

Atlus explained on the site...

To further explain: during the end boss fight sequence players in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse will have some party members along with them for the fight. Players can choose who accompanies them into the final battle, and what sort of abilities they'll dispense during the fight.

The QA testers were so good at beating the final boss and blasting through the battle sequences like the elite, hardcore gamers that they are, they never had a teammate faint during battle and as a result, they never encountered the specific dialogue sequence that would end up being triggered when one of the teammates faints.

In this particular case, being too good for the game made them not so good for the job.

It's a rarity to encounter a translation issue that pops up like this, but it's also kind of funny given that an entire piece of text was missed because the QA team were so proficient at playing the game.

In result, the retail release of Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse will not have the corrected English dialogue for the final battle sequence. Atlus does have plans on fixing the problem but it would have to arrive as a post-launch patch. This means that everyone who bought the game from the local retail shops will have a small section of Japanese text that they get to read through if they manage to lose a teammate during the final battle sequence.

Usually complaints about localization centers around gamers being peeved about memes making their way into the game, or certain kinds of story or character text being censored or changed, but in this rare case, the localization skipped a beat because they were too busy being good at the game. It's not often you can put down on your resume that you're so good at JRPGs that you managed to miss a fail state dialogue sequence in a Shin Megami Tensei game. I remember having to battle some bosses a few times over after losing and going in ill-equipped, so these quality assurance testers are the cream of the crop when to comes to Shin Megami Tensei.

The game is currently available for the Nintendo 3DS.