Game Identification

[Jabra]

What are the official names of the following 18 games ? Is any of them not officialy released for the famicom ?

1)



2)



3)



4)



5)



6)



7)



8 )



9)



10)



11)



12)



13)




14)



15)




16)



17)




18 )

[JC]

I don't have time to list names, but most of the top ones are special editions (ultra-rare) and the ones at the bottom with the women appear to be unlicensed porn games.

[Switchstance]

2) Legend of Kage
3) MUSCLE
6) J-League
7) Goal 2

that was my first quick observation cause I own those games too.

[UglyJoe]

1) Obake no Q Tarou: Wan Wan Panic (Chubby Cherub...looks like a special edition)
3) Kinnikuman: Muscle Tag Match (although it is called MUSCLE on the NES)
4) Yasusa Fire and Marine Safety Rally
8) Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryu to Hikari no Tsurugi
9) Final Fantasy II (looks like a Chinese hack based on the kanji in the menus)
13) Metal Max (also a hack.  the title screen should be in English, and the game was released in 1991)
15) San Goku Shi II: Nakahara no Hasha

[CStar]

It looks like some of the games with Chinese characters are released by Taiwan companies back in the days. I think I have seen them in Taiwan before.

[satoshi_matrix]

I'm looking for two things:

First, could one of you guys attempt to provide a rough english trasnlation for:

hino tori: hou ou hen gaou no hou ken

As well, I want to double check my katakana is correct for the following:

Famicom Disk System RAM Adaptor
Boulder Dash
Lucky Seven Lines

please provide the names of these in katakana.

[manuel]

Hi no Tori is a famous manga series by Tezuka Osamu as you might know.
Roughly translated it would be a "firebird". In our western territory we'd refer to it as "phoenix" I guess.
hououhen -> hen means "part" or "chapter". So the title refers to the part of the story about the "houou". This houou is often erroneously referred to as phoenix, too, but the real origin is in Chinese mythology, where it is known as "fenghuang"; feng is the male and huang the female version of the divine birds.
Try google if you want to know more.

Gaou no bouken (!not! "hou ken"). I don't know much about the hinotori story, so I don't know who Gaou is, maybe a character from the story. It would translate to "Gaou's adventure".

Famicom Disk System RAM Adaptor
ファミコンディスクシステムRAMアダプター

Boulder Dash
I'm not sure about that... might be ボウルダーダッシュ

Lucky Seven Lines
ラッキーセブンライン

[satoshi_matrix]

wonderful work manuel. I sure do appricate all your hard work you put into your posts. So just out of ceriosity, can you write back to me the hino tori game's title? I think I put spaces whereI shouldn't have and I want to ensure it's correct.

As you may know, I am endevouring to make cover artwork for my ever growing Famicom collection, In doing so I want a standaized system to name the games. Unfortuntely when it comes to what's provided on the carts,  Famicom games are all over the map and anything but standard. Some games with English titles are written entirely in katakana (ex Super Mario Brothers FDS), most seem to have the katakana directly above it (Clu Clu Land, Super Mario Brothers 3 etc) and some are entirely in Engish and have no katakana anywhere on the cart (like Boulder Dash). So taking all these systems into account, I use a system for the spines where I provide three lines of information:

1: The title of the game in English (small text) [ex. Super Mario Brothers]
2: The title of the game in Japanese hiragana/katakana as applies (large text) [ex スーパーマリオブラザーズ]
3: The title of the game in Japanese romanji (smallest text) [ex. Sūpā Mario Burazāzu]

As well since I can neither read kanji nor duplicate it with a reasonablly sized font, any titles with kanji characters get replaced with hiragana. This is why I so often come to you to try to sort out the traslations.

[kite200]

火の鳥：鳳凰編がおうの冒険
ひのとり：ほうおうへんがおうのぼうけん
Hi no tori: houou-hen gaou no bouken

or

Phoenix: Houou-Chatper Gaou's Adventure

substitute phoenix with firebird if you want, it's a bit more....of the original context

[manuel]

Kite200 was a bit faster again.
Only one thing: gaou is written in kanji on the original cart. 
火の鳥 鳳凰編 我王の冒険
Hino Tori Houou-Chapter Gaou's Adventure
http://www.famicom.biz/all/htmls/6800000068246.html

Hi no tori doesn't mean "phoenix" at all, by the way. Hi no tori plain and simply means fire-bird. The phoenix (the bird that rises from the ashes after it burned) is "fushichou" 不死鳥　("immortal bird") in Japanese. Just on a side note.  These are times when I can use the knowledge I acquired in university.


I also checked Boulder Dash and I found out that on the original cart it says バルダーダッシュ　(barudādasshu)
http://www.famicom.biz/all/htmls/6800000003889.html

It's really hard to make standardized titles for Famicom stuff, because virtually every other cart is different in its naming.
Good luck.

[satoshi_matrix]

thanks kite and manuel. I'm glad to know the boulder dash story because as you can see from the pic, the actual game cart has no katakana written on it at all.

[manuel]

The katakana is there on the cart (in very small letters though) directly under the title.
It's good to see on the box of the game, on the yellow helmet.
http://www.famicom.biz/all/htmls/6800000003889.html

[kite200]

I know it doesn't mean phoenix, but the official american title of the show/manga was phoenix, so I decided it would be good to use it in the english translation

case and point (manga scan) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/40/Hi_no_tori_english_6.jpg

also when I went to the Osamu Tezuka exhibit at the San Francisco Asian Art Musuem it used that title as well, so considering that exhibit was mainly donated by the Tezuka estate I assume it's "official" enough

[manuel]

Then it's ok I guess.
I didn't know that the manga was translated with "Phoenix".
You learn something new every day. 

[kite200]

I guess so