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hey folks!
in this thread, I'm going to be playing through pokemon emerald. keen observers might realize that the title screen is a bit... off. well, the gimmick to the thread is that I'm playing a version of the game that was apparently part of some chinese multicart. the translation is predictably pretty wonky, and that's what I'm going to try and showcase. to that end, I'm probably going to skim over a lot of the base game and just focus on weird dialogue and flavor text that I come across. I'm considering trying to fill out the full pokedex (or "mon map" in-game) for the sake of seeing what all the pokedex entries are in the translation, but that's obviously a huge time commitment, so there might be some super rare ones I skip out on.
anyway, thread rules:
1) spoiling the base game is fine. it's like 13 years old at this point
2) if you happen to have played through this thing yourself or watched someone else do so, don't spoil aspects of the translation. I'd prefer it to be a surprise when something dumb happens.
3) standard LP forum rules apply, as always
contents:
part 1: brain games for brain people!
brain games for brain people!
hoo-kayyy, let's get this train wreck started.
advancing past the start menu yields these dialogue boxes:
oh thank god! I was worried I'd need to talk to someone to play this game.
anyway, professor birch appears from the void and spins us a yarn about how awesome pokemon are. only...
...in this game, his name is dr. aode. also, nobody ever calls him "dr. mon." I don't think anyone calls him "aode" either, but that's beside the point.
in general, proper nouns are romanized versions of chinese words, the exceptions being pokemon names and at least one town.
I'm going with the male protagonist. I kind of hate may's hair... not that this kid's weird jotaro hat is especially less weird.
names can only be five characters long. I guess that would work okay in chinese, but it's super inconvenient in english.
the keyboards are kind of weird. there's a bunch of japanese punctuation thrown in with the roman alphanumerics. the other two keyboards will show up later on.
I'm just naming this kid after myself, because I'm uncreative.
and we're off! the mystical world of wonky hoenn awaits us.
I hope they poked some airholes in there.
our starting town is "tianyuan town" now. mom lets us out of the truck and shows us to our room.
brain kid has brain fun playing brain games!! if only I was half as brain as him.
irritatingly, the game tends to be written so that there are a lot of messages that don't fit into one box, so there's like one word hanging out alone. this one is supposed to say "is a pride display of noetr!"
pokemon are called "mons" in this game. not as dumb as "elfs" in the vietcrystal game, but it's still a bit odd.
the computer ui is quite mysterious. apparently the translators mixed up "store" the verb with "store" the noun, and item storage is a shop now.
unfortunately, we cannot drive the war rig across the outback. maybe once we're old enough to get a license.
as usual, there's a potion in the computer.
the "chang" option in the first menu leads here. "the chosen things" sounds simultaneously really grandiose and really stupid
damn it! I like having things 
anyway, once we go back downstairs, mom lets us know that "dr. odd" is in town. this is what everyone calls professor birch in-game. no wonder he's pushing the whole "dr. mon" thing!
if we visit birch and may's house, we can talk to may's younger sibling of ambiguous gender. I think they had a coughing fit in the middle of that line or something
may also plays the brain games!! lotsa brainy people in this town, I guess.
er... that looks more like you're just shitposting.
after we're done in there, we gotta go talk to birch again
that girl has good ears, I guess
birch is getting harassed by the local wildlife. I guess we should save him.
oh hey, the ui is finally using his actual name.
we get a choice between frog, fbird, and wmon, the thornmons, birdmons, and fishmons, respectively. fbird is gonna be our starter for this playthrough.
I-I mean, I think it is...
let's test out our fresh mon against this erat. I guess erat is a rat you use in your computer or something.
all of the attack names are shuffled around like crazy and poorly translated to begin with. here, "scratch" is "confu."
we confu'd the poor thing until it couldn't go anymore. now I feel bad.
$$$mons only appreciate in value! invest now!$$$
as a reward for being a big damned hero, birch gives us our starter. I was going with a sound effect naming scheme for a while, then I started naming stuff after some internet friends I was talking to while I was playing, but once I run through the backlog I have, feel free to suggest names. can't guarantee I'll use them, but you folks are probably more clever than I am anyway. brain games!! like this are wayy over my head :P
even the sign outside the lab calls him dr. odd! what did he do to deserve that title, I wonder...
anyway, that's it for this update. next time, we'll go check out the next town over and check up on may.