JABbering Stooge

What can I say? I’m a nerd. And as a confirmation of my inner nerdness, I admit to being a video gamer. And not just your average gamer - I’m what you would consider "old school." My first console? An Atari 2600! My favorite games of all time are old school games. They’re "dated" in the sense that the graphics are not on the par of today’s Final Fantasys or Xenosagas. However, because of hardware limitations, game developers in those days had to be much more creative with the backstory for their games in order to draw in gamers.  My enjoyment of one such game, the classic 4X space opera by which all successors have come to be judged - Master of Orion - continues to this day. Incidentally, there was a fan-made remake of the original underway - a more or less solo operation that ended after the author got too bogged down in bug fixes and real life concerns. There is also an open-source game inspired by the MOO series under development called FreeOrion, about three-tenths of the way through their planned roadmap, that grew out of the disappointment of many fans with the rather lackluster Master of Orion 3.

My other favorite game of all time is SNK’s action-RPG Crystalis. Released in 1990 for the NES, the game features a post-apocalyptic world, a unique combat system (your primary weapons - four elemental swords - can be "charged up" for more effective ranged attacks against enemies), various logic puzzles - most notorious of which is the one that results in an NPC giving you an item allowing access to the cave where you find the third elemental sword, an engaging plot (which is more or less summarized in the Wikipedia link above) and an extremely well-done (for an 8-bit console) musical score. For these reasons, the game managed to garner a cult following among American gamers.

This is one game that I would love to see remade for modern consoles (though hopefully not by the same POS team that did the GameBoy Color remake). Ideally, this would be a trilogy of games: the remake, a prequel dealing with the time leading up to the apocalyptic disaster, and a sequel dealing with the immediate and short-term aftermath of the events of the game.

However, until last year, I was unaware of the original Japanese version of the game, released a year prior to the U.S. version, which is known as ゴッド・スレイヤー: はるか天空のソナタ (GodSlayer: Haruka Tenkuu no Sonata - GodSlayer: Sonata of the Distant Sky). Being an anime fan, that added a whole new layer of ultra-coolness to the experience.

Incidentally, a fan of the game took it upon himself to attempt to "translate" the intro to the Japanese version. I say "translate" because his intuitive method of translation (i.e., word-by-word) generally stumbles in the right direction. Allow me to demonstrate. The link above opens in a new window so that you can compare my translation with his.

This is the intro text as it appears in the game:

199X ねん　10 がつ
THE END DAY

ごうまんなじんるいはみずから
ぶんめいをほうかいさせた。

だいちはいかりじんるいにおおいなる
ばつをあたえた。
ちじくもしぜんもいきものたちも
すべてのものがくるいかわりはてた。

ひとびとはそのあやまちをつぐない
くりかえすことのないように
てんくうたかくにとうをつくった。

ふたたびこころをあくまに
とらわれないように。。。

And here’s how it would look on a modern console system that has plenty of hardware to spare for kanji use.

199X 年　10 月
THE END DAY

傲慢な人類は自ら
文明を崩壊させた。

大地は怒り人類に多いなる
罰を与えた。
地軸も自然も生き物たちも
全ての物が狂い変わり果てた。

人々はその過ちを償い
繰り返す事のないように
天空高くに塔を作った。

再び心を悪魔に
捕らわれないように。。。

So let’s look at this, shall we?

199X 年　10 月
THE END DAY

Some unspecified day in October, sometime in the 1990s: THE END DAY (Gotta love an opening line like that, eh? )

傲慢な人類は自ら
文明を崩壊させた。

傲慢 - gouman (na-type adjective modifying 人類) - pride, haughtiness, arrogance, insolence
人類 - jinrui (noun) - humanity, mankind
は - ha ("wa" in this case) (particle) - topic marker
自ら - mizukara (adverb) - for one’s self, personally
文明 - bunmei (noun) - civilization
を - wo (particle) - object marker
崩壊させた - houkai saseta (verb - causative form) - collapse, decay (in causative form, to cause to collapse)

大地は怒り人類に多いなる
罰を与えた。
地軸も自然も生き物たちも
全ての物が狂い変わり果てた。

大地 - daichi (noun) - ground, the Earth, earth
怒り - ikari (noun - intended to be in adverbial form, supplied by context) - anger, hatred
多いなる - ooi naru (adjective + なる = to become X) - become numerous/many
罰 - batsu (noun) - punishment
与えた - ataeta (verb - informal past form) - to give, to present: combined with 罰 as a verb phrase, means "to mete out punishment"
地軸 - chijiku (noun) - Earth’s axis
も - mo (particle) - exhaustive listing
自然 - shizen (noun) - Nature
生き物たち - ikimono-tachi (plural noun) - living things
全て - subete (adjective when combined with の, adverb otherwise) - all, the whole, entirely
の - no (particle) - possesive connective
物 - mono (noun) - thing; combined with 全ての, means "everything"
が - ga (particle) - subordinate clause topic marker (は and が kinda have a similar use in Japanese; there are differences, but they’re VERY subtle)
狂い - kurui (noun) - deviation, confusion, disorder; combined with a verb stem, implies the verb was done chaotically or in a state of disorder
変わり - kawari (verb - stem) - change, alteration, difference, strangeness
果てた - hateta (verb - informal past form) - to end, to be finished, to die, to perish

人々はその過ちを償い
繰り返す事のないように
天空高くに塔を作った。

人々 - hitobito (noun) - each person, people, men, human, everybody
その - sono (conjunctive phrase) - that thing (closer to audience than to speaker)
過ち - ayamachi (noun) - fault, error, indiscretion, faux pas; combined with その, means "that fault (for which)"
償い - tsugunai (verb - stem) - to make up for, to redeem, to atone for
繰り返す - kurikaesu (verb - informal present form) - to repeat, to do something over agian (NOTE: the informal present form is what you see in the dicionary, so this form is also known as the "dictionary form")
事 - koto (noun) - thing, matter, fact; in this case, refers to 過ちを償い, and is modified by 繰り返す
ない - nai (adjective) - there isn’t, doesn’t have, with の, modifies preceding phrase
ように - you ni (expression) - so that, in order to; combined with のない, means "in order for X not to be so"; in context, "in order to not repeat the thing (error, fault)"
天空 - tenkuu (noun) - sky, air (NOTE: this is the same 天空 as in the title)
高くに - takaku ni (adjective - stem, plus location marker particle) - high, tall; expensive; in context, "high in the sky"
塔 - tou (noun) - tower, pagoda
作った - tsukutta (verb - informal past form) - to make, to create, to manufacture

再び心を悪魔に
捕らわれないように

再び - futatabi (adverb) - again, once more, a second time
心 - kokoro (noun) - heart, soul, mind, spirit
悪魔 - akuma (noun) - devil, demon, fiend, Satan, evil spirit
捕らわれない - torawarenai (verb - informal present negative form) - to be captured, to be apprehended, to be seized with; in context, "so that X might not be captured"

Putting it all together, I came up with this:

October, 199X
THE END DAY

Out of pride, mankind itself
caused civilization to collapse.

The earth in anger punished mankind
for becoming (too) numerous.
The earth’s axis, nature (itself), living things,
everything catastrophically changed.

People built a tower high in the sky
so that they might not repeat the error
for which they had atoned,

So that evil might not capture their hearts once again…..

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s a damn sight better than the other guy’s.

*With apologies to Monty Python.