I’m not 100% sure since I don’t have my Japanese copy anymore, but I was under the impression that the Japanese version of Super Metroid is THE exact same as the English version, with every single bit and byte the exact same in both versions. As a result, the Japanese word for “Metroid” was probably among the first few dozen Japanese words I learned 😛Īnyway, to briefly recap, Super Metroid has an English language option and a Japanese language option:

I had juuust started to get into studying Japanese, but with so little Japanese stuff available where I lived I took whatever scraps I could find. I was actually pleasantly surprised when I first realized that Super Metroid had a Japanese text option. Were there any other games of the time given this sort of treatment? If I didn’t know better, I would have guessed Super Metroid was developed by an American team, then hastily given a Japanese once-over. I was surprised when I found literally all of the UI and gameplay text was still in English, with a little (but not all) of the story and announcement text subtitled in Japanese. On a whim (and after reading your site), I turned on “Japanese text” mode for the first time, expecting it to replace everything with Japanese localization. I recently dusted off Super Metroid and played through it (beating it in a little over 5 hours - I think it took me the better part of a year when I was a kid). As long as you are on a Metroid streak with your last few posts, I thought I’d bring this up. A reader named Ryan sent me a question a while back that I’ve had on my mind for a while, so I’ll share it with everyone!

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