Joe Higashi
Look, being the Japanese character with no stakes in the story shoved in so players didn't have to play as a foreigner is an ancient and noble calling, okay?
Joe shares fewer lines with Terry than Andy, but there's still a fair bit of overlap. Hit up Terry's page for the full version.
Hurricane Upper
Like Terry and Andy, Joe had some inputs changed for the English release. Hurricane Upper standardizes to the Hadouken movement like Hishouken did.
Tiger Kick
God I hope this is actually called Tiger Kick because I wrote it down as Tiger Knee and forgot about it.
So this also had its motion changed to a charge move for some reason. I don't know why so many moves were changed to charge motions. Come to think of it, they standardized all fireballs to the Power Wave motion...maybe they were standardizing all forward-moving kicks to the Kuuhadan motion.
None of Joe's move change names for the home ports; Bakuretsuken just gets translated to Machine Gun Punch.
After round 1
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Ah, Muay Thai. Looks interesting. | Mummm, Thai Boxing... Looks interesting. |
"Mummm" is a hell of a way to translate that. It's just supposed to be a vague noise of interest, so if you dropped the 'u'...and added an 'h'.
I think this is the one time Muay Thai gets called Thai Boxing instead of Muetai. To me it says that whoever did FF1 had slightly more knowledge of various fighting styles than later translators, but they also gave us the worst fucking mangling of Capoeira in the entire series so who knows. It does seem like FF1 makes greater efforts to describe fighting styles in ways Americans of the time might understand, even if it means saying that Andy uses karate for some reason.
After round 2
| My translation | Official translation | Genesis translation |
|---|---|---|
| He's strong! But that Muay Thai won't keep him winning for long. | He is strong, but he can't win against the next guy even he uses his Thai style boxing. | He is strong, but he can't win against the next guy even if he uses his Thai Boxing. |
Missing word in the Neo Geo release. FF1 in general seems to have fewer general copyediting errors than later titles, at the price of being more stilted overall. I say this knowing what's coming up next and without having actually made a count.
Genesis version updates it to "Thai Boxing" instead of "Thai style boxing", and adds the missing 'if' back in.
After round 4
| My translation | Official translation | Genesis translation | SNES translation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joe Higashi. Hm? By Joe, do you mean Hurricane Upper Joe?! | Joe Higashi? I wonder if Joe is Hurricane upper Joe!! | Joe Higashi? I wonder if Joe is "Hurricane uppercut" Joe!! | Joe Higashi? I wonder if Joe is Hurricane upper cut Joe!! |
Joe also shares post-round 3 with Terry, find it on his page, along with post round 5 and getting kidnapped.
Nice to see that Geese keeps up on the fighting tournament gossip.
Kind of running out of things to say here. 'Upper' should probably be capitalized and a question mark added, but eh.
Genesis version does not fix that, but does rename Joe "Hurricane uppercut Joe", which is a nice touch. SNES version drops the quotes and adds a space.
The translation never really changes, but they fiddle with the formatting every release.
After round 6
| My translation | Official translation | SNES/Genesis translation |
|---|---|---|
| Aaaaaaargh! I won't have it! You interrupted my entertainment! | I will never forgive you!! You disrupt my plan of attack. | I will never forgive you!! you disrupted my plan of attack. |
| Your steady advance ends here! Just wait, I'll send you to hell with my own hands! | Your efforts will end now!! I'll beat you with my bare hands! | Your victories will end now!! I will crush you with my bare hands! |
First line is the same as Terry, but the second line is different since Geese didn't kill Joe's dad.
Geese is still going to try to kill Joe for...winning the tournament Geese put on. I uh, really don't know what Geese expected to happen when he threw a fighting tournament.
More literally Geese says he'll send Joe to the other side or however you want to word it, but 'send you to hell' is a much more common phrase in English so that's what I went with.
Genesis and SNES versions change "efforts" to "victories", which I rather like. "Crush" is also a bit more violent than "beat", but not as much as "destroy".
This is during the victory cutscene in the Genesis version, just like Terry.
Geese pre-fight
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| "Ngh...G-Geese!!!" "How dare you ruin my fun!" |
Holy cow! You disturbed my plan again! |
| Finally the big shot shows up. You might be the strongest guy out there, but starting today it's gonna be me! | He's a big man! You used to be the best fighter in the world,but now I'll be number one! |
| Impudent brat! Then let's have a one-on-one fight to the death. After all, it's not as if I can lose. | Stupid boy! How about a man to man fight to the death! I cannot lose. |
First and last lines the same as Terry, middle is different because of lack of dadmurder.
The word Joe uses for Geese can mean a big thing in terms of size or a big person in terms of importance, so similar to how we in English say 'big man'. So that's what's going on in the official translation. Except that makes it sound like Joe is just commenting on Geese's size, so you know.
The rest is just phrasing differences.
Ending
...is the same as Terry's.
I'm glad I did all the heavy lifting for this game without even realising it.
Win quotes
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| All right! If I can keep going like this, the championship is mine! | All right, I'll be champ if I can keep up this rhythm. Ha ha! |
| Whew, you're strong! Out of all the guys I've beat, you're the strongest! | Hmm....you're strong, the strongest of all the guys I've beaten. |
| I'm gonna win this tournament and become the strongest in the world, just like my dad! | I wanna be the strongest guy in the world like my dad by becoming the winner of this tournament. |
| I won! Now rest there forever! Hahahaha.... | I got you! Sleep forever! Ha,ha! |
These are all pretty straight. In the last one, it's hyper-literally 'sleep there for the rest of your life', which doesn't work in English so the official translator and I both just changed it to 'forever'. Now that I'm thinking about it I'm really tempted to put down "Nap...for a lifetime!" but that's super terrible.
Is this the one time Joe's dad is mentioned? It feels like it. Joe gets a brief sop to dad issues before Terry absorbs them all.
Continue quotes
All the boys share continue quotes. Makes sense.