So I finally got a Play Station 2. It sucks saving money for stuff like this, but since it can play DVD's and CD's, I figure it's worth the money since I don't have either of those. Actually thus far I am very happy with the PS2. Thinking ahead, I bought some games beforehand too. So now I have 3 games. Rival Schools (for the PS1), Kengo, and Dead or Alive 2 (DOA2). I haven't gotten around to playing Rival Schools, or Kengo much yet, most of my time has been spent on DOA2.
I have to say, I'm very impressed by DOA2. I'm one of those people that was a big Street Fighter 2 fan (despite the fact that I got my ass kicked in the arcade on a regular basis ¬_¬, although as one friend I had from DC (a korean guy) said: before: "no way you can beat me, I'm like a master at this game". after I (barely) beat him "DAAAAMN... you're pretty good for a North Dakota boy" ) =P ... Anyway, after that I moved on to Tekken 3 which is also a cool game, but I think I eventually burned out on. So enter DOA2. The moves in this game are totally awesome. I mean just about all the moves you see, you think to yourself "damn that's gotta hurt!". Not only the moves, but the fact that you can move around in 3d. You can interact with the environment, like making your opponent slip in water, kick people through walls, and chuck them off rooftops. That along with TONS of different outfits you can choose for each character (once you unlock them) makes DOA2 a very cool game.
The first thing I did when I played the game, was went into the options menu. First option I set: Voice = Japanese. I didn't even think about it really, I mean I'm an anime fan that likes subtitles - this is a no brainer. So I played for quite some time with the Japanese voices, Somewhere along the lines I ended up back in the options menu. Hmm... lets try Voice = English. Now before I get into this, let me say that even REGULAR people that don't even watch subtitles, or even ANIME tend to prefer the Japanese voices, and that tells you something. By chance I happened to be playing Lei Fang. When the round starts, she says in Japanese "Yorishiku ne" which means something like "Hello" ('ne' on the end of that has a subtle connotation to it that's hard to explain). In the English version it is indeed "hello" but the airhead girl voice that says it is horrible! So picture this. It's round 1. Lei Fang says "hello" like she just stepped off the valley girl bus. On the screen she gets the crap beat out of her, meanwhile I fell off the couch after hearing for this for the first time in English, and I'm laughing my ass off on the floor to the point where I can't even play the game. Ooohh.. but it gets better. I mean half of these voices sound like they must have been recruited off of a redneck trailer park. The other half sound like they found the people at the leftover high school drama club. I mean this stuff makes fan dubbing look professional.
It didn't take too long and I had to change the language back. Just as bad, is that the character taunts you can do in-game were also dubbed. My favorite (also Lei Fang) is when she does two cute forward hops and says "dame dame desu ne". In english this is a 13 year old sounding "no no no no no". GEH!! Every now and then I turn the English back on for a laugh, but I just can't take it large doses. It really is that bad. Seriously, how can this game which Tecmo KNEW was going to be a huge seller have such horrible dubbing? Like they couldn't have asked some other Japanese company "hey, you guys have any decent voice actors in the U.S.? Of course I've seen other poorly done dubbed games too, but I think DOA2 takes the cake. Every time I hear people say that when anime gets more popular that dubbing will improve, I tend to think of this stuff. Look at U.S Manga Corps. They're dubbing has always been pretty decent, even years ago when most people hadn't heard of anime. No, what it comes down to is sloppy companies that pass off crappy dubbing because they CAN. For me I guess I'd have the Japanese voice turned on no matter what anyway, so this is all moot to the point, but I still find it annoying.
Ho ho ho! That cute innocent schoolgirl
look aint helping you now!
Now is it Kasumi?!