Thatās neat. I learned that the FFVIII soundtrack actually sold pretty well, nearly 300k units in Japan alone.
Wonder how many of those were for The Man with the Machine Gun alone.
Still one of my absolute favourite track in the entire series! Itās so good Dissidia didnāt even remix it lol
Itās great but there are so many amazing tracks that I struggle to single out one of them. I donāt really listen to videogame OST as a rule but from time to time Iāll put the FF7 or FF8 OSTs in the background while Iām working. Theyāre so varied and creative.
Oooh I want this one! 
Clyde Mandelin / tomato, the legendary fan translator and author of Legends of Localization blog & books is doing a playthrough of FFIV which specifically compares translations:
Here is the original blog post comparing different localizations of FFIV: Final Fantasy IV Translation Comparison Ā« Legends of Localization.
And here is his personal opinion: Which Final Fantasy IV Translation Should You Play? Ā« Legends of Localization.
Maybe something fun to investigate while playing FFIV ourselves?
Nice of him to prepare it ahead of the club
I just read his Zelda book, and my favorite part is how baffled he is when several monsters are described as āmeanā in the english translation. Obviously, the original Japanese doesnāt use āmeanā. I assume what he forgot is that the word mean was used for EVERYTHING in the 80s. It was one of those slang terms that meant really strong, tough, cool, or just āa lotā, and was in kidās cartoons and advertising constantly. He brings it up like three times in the book. Must not have watched ninja turtles when he was a kid.
I stumbled upon this āArchive Ultimaniaā on archive.org which contains a lot of info about FF from 1 to 12: https://dn721800.ca.archive.org/0/items/final-fantasy-20th-anniversary-ultimania-vol-1_202404/Final%20Fantasy%2020th%20Anniversary%20Ultimania%20Vol%201.pdf
Itās spoiler-heavy of course.
Thereās some cool artwork:
Iām jealous. Funny that they kept the katakana for authenticity, I presume.
When you said that, I thoughtā¦ huh, is it out of printā¦ quick searchā¦ oh its only 23 bucks. Oh. No. Thatās the kindle version. Amazonās selling it for $140 for a used copy from a third party. Well.
Yeah I briefly went searching for copies of the Japanese version but itās prohibitively expensive. Iām sure Squeenix will reedit them, or something like it eventually.
Iām happy that FFVIII Ultimania was quite cheap in comparison, I think I paid something like 40 euros total with shipping and taxes.
I think even these ultimanias were rereleases or compilations, now theyāre out of print too. Guess Iād better treat them well.
The book is really cool, nice find. Iām not sure those words from Josef are that impressive, though.
Thereās not a lot of English in those books but what little of it there is is almost always off:
ZAć»CONPURÄŖTOć»OBUć»KÄDO
Also I noticed that all the chapter names are in English, but always singular. The bestiary chapter is called āMONSTERā, the one with the list of all items is āITEMā.
Yikes. Well by the time we get to it, maybe itāll be fixed and worked on by modders.
I donāt even see my original version of FF7. I only see the new oneā¦errrr Seems to run just fine. Battle speed is fast but overworld is normal.
The funniest part Iāve seen a few people now say is in the first couple hours when it released they forgot the game executable file so it just couldnāt launch.