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Mega Man X Legacy Collection Changes One Of The Series' Oddest Localization Choices
Eighteen years ago, when Capcom was preparing to release Mega Man X5 on the PlayStation in America, the task of localization fell to third-party localization company Genazea. At the time, Genazea was headed by Erik Suzuki, the editorial supervisor for Resident Evil 2 before he founded a separate company to work with multiple companies. When Mega Man X5 rolled in, Suzuki asked his wife Alyson Court, also known as the English voice for Claire Redfield, to name the Maverick bosses in the game. Before X5, they were all usually named with a descriptive word and then an animal name – Chill Penguin, Crystal Snail, Cyber Peacock, etc. Court, knowing her husband was a Guns N' Roses fan, suggested that they name the bosses after Guns N' Roses references. This meant names like Duff McWhalen, Axle the Red (who has a rose on his head), and Squid Adler. They both liked the idea.
In the years since, fans made it clear that they weren't fans of the changed boss names, and no Mega Man title has taken that kind of liberty with the names again. The full story about it was told by Alyson Court in a now-deleted Twitter post from 2011, but Capcom themselves have never really commented on it.
In yesterday's trailer for Mega Man X Legacy Collection's X Challenge mode, we noticed that some boss names were changed, like Dark Dizzy from the original localization being renamed Dark Necrobat. We reached out to Capcom to confirm if this was indeed the case.
"In our mission to make these collections an authentic Mega Man X experience," a Capcom spokesperson told us, "we took the opportunity to better align the naming of the Mega Man X5 Mavericks across all regions for better narrative cohesion across the series, making the names more aligned with the original Japanese version release. We hope that fans appreciate our intent to unify the Mega Man X Maverick-naming convention all these years later."
So that's that, the 18-year-old Guns N' Roses references are no more. It isn't known whether other translation errors found in the later X games are still in, or if the voice acted boss name announcements of X5 are being redone, but I imagine we'll find out when Mega Man X Legacy Collection comes out on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch on July 24.
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