Every other character in the game besides Geese just has win quotes. I'll go over the ones that seem unique, then the generic section.
I'm pretty sure I got all of them, though there's one that just never showed up in Japanese. It never showed up again in English either, and uh...I love doing this, but I don't love sitting around losing in FF1 for hours trying to get one particular quote. If anyone knows how to rip text from a Neo Geo game, contact me.
Richard Mayer
Realises the futility of fighting the main character and sells him hot dogs instead. The smartest character in the entire series?
| My translation | Official translation | SNES/Genesis translation |
|---|---|---|
| Hahaha, have you realised the power of capoeira? | Ha Ha , Did you see the power of Kapoeral? | Ha ha,Did you see the power of Kapoeral? |
| You can't escape from my kicks. This is the end for you! Hahahaha! | You can't get away from me. Your end is near. Ha ha!! | You can't get away from me. Your end is near. Ha ha!! |
Kapoeral.
So I can sort of see how they got that from the katakana. It's literal right up to the 'ral', which...okay, the final kana is a 'ra', but where the hell did the 'l' come from? That's not how you usually handle stuff that ends in an a sound and...I don't know. It wasn't fixed in the SNES version either. At least the rest of the line is okay?
You'll notice that Richard has THE END in English letters in there. Every Japanese game has some English text sprinkled around, it's probably just there to give the line a bit of exotic flavor. Though Fatal Fury doesn't usually put it in lines the characters are supposed to be saying. Anyway he isn't playable after this and Bob doesn't do it so who knows if he would've kept it or not.
He specifies 'legs' in Japanese (which I translated as 'kicks'), but the official translator pulls that down to a generic 'me'. "Your end is near" sounds a lot more threatening than I think was intended...
Incidentally, Richard speaks in a fairly polite, neutral style that Bob later uses as well.
Michael Max
The most forgotten member of the cast!
| My translation | Official translation | Genesis translation | SNES translation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hey man! Sucks for you, but the goddess of victory chose to smile on me instead! Ahahahaha! | Sorry Dude, I guess I have all the luck! | Sorry DUDE. I guess the luck of winning is with me. Ha ha ha. | |
| How'd you like my Tornado Upper?! | How's my tornado upper cut? | Hyu, how's my "Tornado uppercut"! | Hey,how's my tornado upper cut! |
First line is interesting. A "goddess of victory" comes up in Andy's lines in FF2, where it's translated very literally. Considering the general style of FF1's translation I'm surprised to see it localized out here! I was thinking maybe the same person did FF1 and 2, but looking at stuff like this makes me think maybe they were different people after all. (or someone ran through and cleaned FF1 up but didn't make it for FF2)
"Dude" is used much more appropriately here too. Too bad abut the capitalization and the missing comma, but such is life.
Genesis version puts dude in all-caps for some reason, and refines "goddess of victory" into "luck of winning" which is a surprisingly weird rewrite for a version that's generally a cleaned-up version of the Neo Geo script.
Second line is straight; it's entirely differences in phrasing. Genesis version has an awful typo for what I assume is "hey" in there; the SNES version fixes it, but loses the question mark. Let's obsess over minor formatting differences!
I never saw the first line in the SNES version, in English or Japanese. It's possible it got cut for some reason, or I was just very unlucky. I couldn't bring myself to beat my head against the worst port long enough to check.
Tung Fu Rue
Before they put in a ton of retcons to make him Geese's master too.
| My translation | Official translation | SNES/Genesis translation |
|---|---|---|
| Child, your father was much stronger! | Kid, your dad was much stronger than you are. | Kid, your dad was much stronger than you are. |
| Ho ho ho, you can't imitate me. | Ha! You can't do that, can you? | Ha! You can't do that. |
First one is pretty straight, but cute. It doesn't make a lot of sense against Joe but hey, maybe Tung knew Joe's dad too. All the old guys know each other.
I'm not entirely sure the second English matches up to the Japanese, but I haven't found a generic line like it yet and it sounds similar enough that I think they're a match. (I hate randomized quotes I hate them I hate them)
Extra literally he's saying that the player can't (successfully) imitate him, or act like him...that sort of thing. I went for 'keep up with' because this is a weird thing to try and render into English. The official translator decided to just vague it up so much it's hard to tell what Tung is talking about. The SNES version cuts it down a bit but does nothing to reduce the vagueness.
Tung speaks in kind of a generic old man style. It's pretty much how he talks in FFS, though by the time we get to RBS he'll have changed up how he refers to some characters. I'll talk about it more then.
Duck King
The best.
| My translation | Official translation | SNES/Genesis translation |
|---|---|---|
| Boy! You think you can beat me with that kind of punch? Don't take the martial arts so lightly! | Man, Did you think you could beat me with "your" punch! Don't take Marshal Arts so lightly. | Man, did you think you could beat me with "your"punch!? Don't take Martial Arts so lightly. |
| You can dance during the fight too, baby! | I could fight you while dancin', DUDE! | I could fight you while dancin' DUDE! |
Duck throws random English into his lines because he's a cool guy and that's what cool guys do in anime. It gets worse as the series goes on (he takes a break for FFS, but it comes back with a vengeance for Real Bout), so look forward to that I guess. It's the kind of thing that's really annoying to render into English properly, so in keeping with my general attitude towards quality I'm gonna...make note of it down here.
He's literally saying "boy" in the first one and I think he's addressing the player. "Dude" would be a good equivalent if I was doing this for real. The official translator goes for "man", which tilts the phrase more to a general interjection.
I have no idea what the scare quotes around "your" are for, and Marshal Arts is...not a mistake I have seen before. It's the kind of homonym mistake I usually associate with native speakers, but everything else in the game is so incredibly stilted... I dunno man. Either way the Genesis version fixes it.
The second line is more of a departure than I usually associate with FF1. The Japanese is Duck encouraging the player to dance, the English is him bragging about his dance fighting skills. I keep going back over this one because I'm not used to FF1 being this different, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. Since it's so rare for FF1, I wonder if the translator misread the line or something. If this was a later game I'd chalk it up to the line getting punched up so high it got a different meaning, but that just doesn't happen a lot in FF1.
Baby gets changed to dude, which makes a surprising amount of sense. Duck is even the sort of character I can buy saying dude. What the heck is going on?
Genesis and SNES versions cut a comma, presumably because of screen size and character limit considerations.
Raiden
His lines are bugged in the arcade version I swear to god.
| My translation | Official translation | Genesis translation |
|---|---|---|
| This was the first clean fight I've had in a long time! Ahahahahaha! | Today's match was a clean fight, but not for long !! Ha ha ha!! | Today's match was a clean fight, but not for long!! Ha ha ha. |
| I can't resist the sound of cracking bones! Heeheehee! Frustrated? You can have another go if you want! Gahahahaha! | I enjoy the sound of cracking bones. | I enjoy the sound of bones cracking... Are you scared? I will fight you again! Ghea, ha ha. |
The second quote took forever to show up. I was almost convinced it didn't exist.
I'm unsure on the first quote, which is why it gets the picture. I think the joke is that fighting game fights are basically forced to be clean (by wrestling standards) and therefore it really was a clean fight, but it's hard to tell. The official English translation just doesn't make a lot of sense. By the time Raiden says the line the fight is over, so how can it stop being a clean fight then? SNES and Genesis versions make some minor changes for character limits and drop some exclamation marks.
Second quote just got chopped way, way down. It's a common thing for video game translations, but they had plenty of space so it really doesn't feel like they had to chop off the second line. Then again, the second line is weird and a pain to translate, so. The Genesis version expands it again, in a translation that sounds like they went back to the source. It's pretty solid, probably more than mine.
That line's not in the SNES version in either language, being replaced with something completely different.
Incidentally, Raiden is a pain in the ass to understand, with lots of rough, casual speech and a variety of insane laughs. I wanted to give up....
Hwa Jai
I keep having to remind myself he's in this game.
| My translation | Official translation | SNES translation |
|---|---|---|
| I need more booze! One move isn't working out! | I need to loosen up. | |
| On the off chance you don't know me, I'll help you remember. I'm Dragon Kick Hwa Jai! | Remember me? 'Dragon Kick' Hwa Jai. | I wonder if you remember me, "Dragon Kick" Hwa Jai. |
I'm pretty unsure about Hwa Jai's lines because he has some major slurring/accent, which is always hard for dumbass amateurs to handle.
First line is the one I'm unsure about (again) and the one that has the biggest difference between Japanese and English. They dropped the alcohol reference completely (deference to American cultural mores?) and changed the second part to sort of being about not being at the top of his form. It feels a little obscure to me, but I can see where it came from. Eventually.
He's making sure you remember him in the future in the second line, not saying the player has met him before. That was just lost entirely. I'm starting to think the official translator had trouble understanding Hwa Jai and Raiden, since they both get cut down so badly. It feels like they got a couple key words out and made the rest up. The SNES version does not fix this, instead expanding the Neo Geo line.
Hwa Jai and his booze made me wonder how it was handled over on the SNES, so I checked the manual. ...the manuals are another rabbit hole entirely.
Billy Kane
I will never pronounce his last name correctly without having to think about it first.
| My translation | Official translation | SNES version |
|---|---|---|
| You sure are weak. If you beat me you'd be the champ, but that's not happening. | You are weak! But beat me and you're the champ! | You are weak! But if you beat me, you'll be the champ. Too bad,you can't win. |
| No one can beat my bojutsu! The only possible person would be Mr. Geese! | No one can beat me with the skills I know! If anyone can, it's Geese Howard! |
The first line got edited so hard it sounds like Billy is being encouraging. He's not.
I'm not sure why it got hit like that, because as you can see, they had plenty of room. The SNES version fixes it, at least. Given Hwa Jai's line, I feel this was someone looking at the script and making a judgment call that happened to be right instead of going back to source.
The second line is pretty straight. They clearly haven't decided how to handle 'Geese-sama' yet. I like the full name in this context, it's more formal while sounding fairly natural. I'll keep my eye out for what they settle on.
Geese Howard
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You bastard! Forget about leaving here alive! | You will die before I let you win! |
| Revenge for your father, you say? You think you're capable of such a thing?! Go ahead and try! | Revenge for your Father!? Beat me if you can! |
| I'll crush you like a bug, just like your father. | I will smash you like a small fly as I did your father. |
| Do you really believe you can escape from here, boy?! | You think you can escape? Ha! |
Kishi helped out here, and then years later Rage Quitter 87 found the other three quotes. Thank you both!
You get these lines if you continue after losing to Geese. It's a nice touch that's only in the arcade version.
These are mostly the same as the rest of FF1: technically correct, but obviously done by a non-native. The editor wouldn't get hired until Special.
From the top, then. The first line...wow, that's a really goofy translation. It technically makes sense, but no one would ever say that. It doesn't even look like they grabbed a few key words and made something up around them, the original is something like "you won't go back/return alive", no winning mentioned. Weird!
The second line is super cut down, to the point where it starts sounding goofy. I'm not even sure they needed to cut it down so far, it looks like they had plenty of room. But cutting out the middle sentence turns it from a typical villain line to two tangentially-related villain lines.
The third line is correct, but "smash you like a small fly" is a bizarre thing to say and definitely feels like a non-native wrote it. It's close, but it's not something you say in English.
The last one is pretty solid, I like it. The idea of the player trying to escape before putting another quarter in is kind of cute.
According to Rage Quitter 87, the second and third lines (the ones about fathers) never showed up for Joe. It would make sense if they didn't. I also wouldn't be surprised if the RNG just hadn't come up with those numbers and there's not really a check to make sure Joe doesn't get those lines. I don't know, I didn't get these.
Geese is playable in the SNES and Genesis versions, but he only has generic quotes. Those are handled below.
Generic pool
Kill me.
I'm going to divide this up into sections of two each, plus an extra at the end, for ease of reading and writing. The order is more or less the order I captured them in.
One slightly interesting thing to note is that since these lines are generic, the speech style in Japanese is a sort of generic 'rough and tumble male' sort of style. That's fine for most of the cast, but is very jarring for characters like Richard or Tung, who don't speak that way at all. Most of the differences are lost in English, but it's really noticeable in Japanese.
I saw some of these in the Genesis version, but not often and not very consistently. I'm sticking with the SNES version for the home ports.
| My translation | Official translation | SNES translation |
|---|---|---|
| Go home! You can't do it! | Go home! You're a wimp! | Go home! you're a wimp. |
| All right, I'll fight you again since you look so sad. | I'll give you one more chance because you are a wimp. | I'll give you one more chance because you are a wimp. |
Section theme: wimps.
Does this mean "wimp" is the first SNKglish insult? It's not incredibly out of place in these lines, but it fits right in with weenie and dweeb, doesn't it?
These are both...pretty good, actually. Second line could use another contraction, but they both work pretty well in English. Did someone go over bits of FF1? Huh...
SNES version is the same, except for losing a capital in the first one. The port has a few issues like that, which makes me wonder if some poor sod had to type everything in manually.
| My translation | Official translation | SNES translation |
|---|---|---|
| You're 100 years too early to beat me! | You need more experience to beat me. | Go practice if you want to beat me. |
| Seems Geese assassinated Jeff Bogard, the former champ, 10 years back. | I heard GEESE killed the champ of this match, Jeff Bogard ten years ago... | I heard GEESE killed the champ of this match, Jeff Bogard ten years ago... |
Another good rewriting to smooth over an anime cliche in the first line. It's the kind of line I don't even blink at anymore, but it would probably sound really weird in an arcade in 1991.
...well, considering the other games around, maybe not. Would sound weird on TV, sure. Let's say that.
The SNES version cleans it up even more, with an injunction to practice. It's interesting how this brings it even further from the original line. Also, in the Japanese version, the "100 years" was changed to "1000 years" for whatever reason. It got switched back for the Megadrive.
The second line's interesting for story reasons. This is about the only time Jeff gets brought up by name, and the only time anyone not directly involved in the soap opera mentions him in the series. It also establishes that there was a previous King of Fighters tournament, which somewhat goes against later canon that it's just a thing Geese put on whenever he got bored. Weird and cool.
I don't know why Geese gets the all-caps. I really don't. Andy does it too. It even stays in the SNES!
This is also the line that made me realise there was a generic pool instead of each fighter having a set of randomized lines. Billy dropping Geese's honorific was the clue, Richard using the exact same line in a different run was the proof.
| My translation | Official translation | SNES translation |
|---|---|---|
| I've seen all your techniques! The championship is mine! | Now I know your tricks! I can beat you! | Now I know your tricks! |
| Go back and try again. | Retrain and come back. | Come back after you retrain. |
The part of the first line is solid, but the second shifts from being about winning the tournament to just beating the player. Wonder why that happened. I guess it does make more sense. The SNES version cuts the second sentence entirely.
Second line is pretty straight.
And I just never saw this one again in English or Japanese in the arcade, but it showed up in the Genesis!