The localization of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
Gamasutra has an excellent interview up with Tim O'Leary, the man who heads Nintendo's North American localization team, and who helped prepare Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for the U.S. market.
O'Leary reveals how feedback from western gamers was a major influence on the new direction taken by Days of Ruin, and describes the various thought processes behind the game's art direction and characters. This leads into a wider discussion regarding the art of localizing games to match different cultural sensibilities, with O'Leary using the likes of Animal Crossing on the GameCube and the Pokémon games as examples.
Finally, there's also quite a lot of talk about the inner workings of the Treehouse, the name given to the Nintendo U.S. localization division. Turns out that the localization of Nintendo games is one hell of an intricate process, with every last pixel scrutinized so that it makes perfect cultural sense. All in all, it's a fascinating read, so hit the link below!
