Topic: Past Generation Retrospective - Questionable Choices in Dubbing

[VladCT]

Remember Megaman X4, where X sounded like a girl for some reason? I was thinking that maybe they were going for the young, androgynous-ish kind of voice we occasionally hear in anime  so I tried comparing it to the original Japanese version. To my mild surprise, X unmistakably sounded like a dude here. So out of curiosity, I tried looking up X's JPN VA in this particular game, and... It was sodding Yun from Street Fighter. How did they go from him to... Well, what we got? Anyway, know any other dubbing choices that aren't simply bad, but outright confusing?

[X]

Mega Man 8?

[Crying Freeman]

Remember Megaman X4, where X sounded like a girl for some reason? I was thinking that maybe they were going for the young, androgynous-ish kind of voice we occasionally hear in anime  so I tried comparing it to the original Japanese version. To my mild surprise, X unmistakably sounded like a dude here. So out of curiosity, I tried looking up X's JPN VA in this particular game, and... It was sodding Yun from Street Fighter. How did they go from him to... Well, what we got? Anyway, know any other dubbing choices that aren't simply bad, but outright confusing?

Dubbing for anything back in the day, for the most part with some exceptions, was bad as we all know, but some games it didn't even seem like they tried XD. I just looked at X's VO in X4 and... wow... the words "don't" and "match" come to mind. I'm it was all down to audience. A game like X4 wouldn't appeal to most mid to late teens because of it's colorful anime style. If you have the idea that tons of kids'll buyt your game,  I guess they wanted to appeal to younger male players who may have sounded like that, kinda get them to relate more to X. Megaman 8 took the same route for the same reason I believe.

I know this isn't 5th gen, but a lot of PCE and Sega CD games were the bigger beginning of game dubbing, and I feel like once voice acting became a more common practice in the 5th gen, more companies had to get dubs done quickly, like SOTN's, which TBH I love for it's corniness and the voices themselves! (The PSP re-dub wasn't charming at all, and just felt like anime dub VA. I love that they took the time and money to do it, but I'd choose the original english VA any day)

[VladCT]

Speaking of MM8, I looked into the EN VA, and heyoo, same lady. Anyway, like I said earlier, I'm not looking for the ones that are simply bad, but rather the ones where it seems like they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. By the way, looks like I might have to expand the topic overall, just in case there's still more WTF dubbing in more recent gens.

[Crying Freeman]

Speaking of MM8, I looked into the EN VA, and heyoo, same lady. Anyway, like I said earlier, I'm not looking for the ones that are simply bad, but rather the ones where it seems like they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. By the way, looks like I might have to expand the topic overall, just in case there's still more WTF dubbing in more recent gens.

Oh I see. I personally can't think of many examples, but I'm not as versed in the 5th gen of consoles as a lot of other people. This isn't even a game at all, but skip to 1:40 in this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI49nc34V1g
Yes, that's actually what it sounds like in the show, I own it on DVD and it's the same fucking thing  Falls under the category "What were they thinking??". Not trying to change the topic into all anime, just came to mind and it's hilarious XD.

BTW, her voice sounded familiar when I heard her in X4, but I didn't think it was the same actress

[Abnormal Freak]

I don't mind that gal's voice acting in MM8 and X4 but what always made me cringe was her pronouncing Bass' name like the fish. Whoever directed the voice recordings clearly didn't get the "Bass and Treble" connection.

[Aceearly1993]

Someone said that it may be an attempt to try to catch the inner "Female" characteristics of X so they changed the image in overseas version

Maybe it's an attempt to create "Impact" or just pure fun but actually very hard to accept the "changed" character image according to Asian audience' feedback of overseas VA and how it's different from Japanese VA

[Claimh Solais]

Well, on the topic of Mega Man, there's Zero in X7. I don't know what they were thinking in making Zero sound like the gruff, deep-voiced tough-guy type.