From Zeroes to Heroes: The Story of Mario Kart Zero

 Introduction

In our current era, there are only three video game series that I can confidently say have the status of being legit household titles: Super Smash Brothers, Pokémon, and Mario Kart. Since its debut in 1992, the latter series has remained a perennial favorite, appealing to audiences in both competitive and casual play. Despite that, within the Mario Kart community lies a slightly more obscure subset of fans—the hacking community. Right now, Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart Wii boast some of the largest modding communities, with Mario Kart Wii, in particular, featuring thousands of custom tracks, additional game modes, and even third-party online servers, a decade after the official one shut down. However, this article aims to shine a spotlight on a lesser-known hacking community, the Mario Kart DS hacking community. In addition, I wanted to talk about the history and coverage of one of its most influential hacks from 2012. So, rev your engines, buckle up, and join me as I explore one of my favorite ROM hacks growing up—Mario Kart Zero.

A Reconditioned Classic - A Look at FE11's Localization

 Introduction

When I love a game, I try to learn as much about it as I possibly can. One of the things I find most fascinating about many of the games I play is how they change in their respective localizations. I really enjoy examining the text, graphics, and minute details in the Japanese versions and comparing them to their English counterparts. I love seeing how the localization team attempts to adapt a piece of media and judging how well they manage to transfer the original message. I also enjoy trying to get into the developers' and localization teams' heads to understand why and how something was changed. That's why I've always been a big fan of Clyde Mandelin's Legends of Localization website and have even bought some of his books.

One of my favorite games is Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, and up until recently, it was the only Archanean FE game to be localized into English. Naturally, I wanted to learn more about how different FE11 was in English compared to its Japanese counterpart and other languages. While there are some wiki pages and sites like The Cutting Room Floor that list localization changes, there were no dedicated articles that compiled everything and discussed these changes in depth. That’s why I’m here today to share this blog post where I list and discuss many of the localization changes in FE11, in the same style as Clyde Mandelin's Legends of Localization series