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kitsunebi's talking to himself again


kitsunebi

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Yegads...72 issues of Dengeki Nintendo DS finished.

I think Kiwi said it best: "Those Dengeki Nintendo covers make me want to hurl."

How do you think I felt, staring at them for hours on end?

I'm not out of the woods yet, though.  Sadly, the mag didn't actually go away, it just changed its title to Dengeki Nintendo for KIDS.  Except for the logo, the cover designs are more of the same.

Erp..ugkk....oh god.......

giphy.gif
 

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That's Raspberry and DearMy... complete.  I wish I could say my list was growing smaller, but for every mag I finish adding to the database, I discover 5 more.  Looking back through this thread, I see that on Jan.20 I had 110 titles left to add.  Since then I've finished 5 titles and now I've got 131 left to go:lol:

I think the biggest difference between Japanese mags and those of other countries is the diversity of target audiences.  In the West, we (used to) have mags that were mostly differentiated from one another by which systems they covered.  This one covered Nintendo, this one covered Sega, this one covered Sony, this one covered all three, etc. etc.  But all of them were pretty much aimed at the same demographic of player playing the same types of games.  Whereas in Japan, you've got system-specific mags, but you've also got mags aimed specifically at young kids, mags aimed specifically at girls, mags aimed specifically at adults (which doesn't mean adults-only, although they of course have plenty of those, too), and mags that focus their coverage not on specific systems, but on specific genres (the bulk of these are actually focused on genres not present in the West like dating sims and visual novels).

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, I've had an issue of CGW finished for a week now, but it seems that Retromags' recent technical difficulties extend to our download section as well, so any attempt to upload it here results in an error.  It's looking more and more like the entire website needs some sort of reboot to a previous state, since a couple of months ago, everything was working just fine.

Anyway, I'll give the tech troubleshooters a while longer to figure things out but rest assured that I'll have that issue uploaded...somewhere...soon enough.  Since Whiskcat donated it to me for preservation, I'm obligated to him to make it available.

In the meantime, the next mag of his I'll be scanning is one we have yet to add to the database, PSX-Pro (originally titled Sony Pro) from the UK.  There were 13 issues produced, but a quick search has come up empty in regards to usable cover scans.  I've only got the July 96 issue with Fade To Black on the cover, but if any of you folks in the UK have any of the other issues or know of anywhere online with decent pics of them, let me know so we can get those covers added as well.

normal_Sony_Pro_PSX_Pro_complete.jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, I had to break my vacation from image uploads to get the categories for Sony Pro/PSX-Pro set up so I could upload the issue I scanned.  Still haven't found any pics online anywhere, but the issue itself had pics of most of the back issues.  Though scanned at 600dpi, the actual images on the page are quite small, so these will act as temporary covers until someone actually scans a cover and puts it online somewhere.  I'd have the issue I finished uploaded already, but as some of you are aware, the site hasn't been functioning properly for months now, so uploading mags is no longer a simple process and has to be done offsite via FTP and then imported here, which is an extra pain-in-the-ass annoyance that slows things down.  Although I guess I should be happy there's a at least a functioning work-around, unlike the problems with the gallery...

Look for the issue of PSX-Pro later today.

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Oh yeah, and I realize no one replied before when I pleaded for info on these mags, but does anyone have any idea what's up with the issue in the far left?

Is it a special preview issue?  Issue 0?  To its right are Sony Pro issues 1-3, and the middle row begins with the Game Guide Special (the first issue under the PSX-Pro name), followed by issues 4-6, and 7-11 on the bottom row.  I assume the issue in the top left was published before issue 1, but if anyone has any further info, please let me know!

xgy3n547.jpg

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So I was uploading a 1982 ad for an obscure game for the Apple II called "Star Maze" when I noticed the following:

"Original design by Robert Woodhead"

 thinking-face_1f914.png Robert Woodhead...Robert Woodhead...where do I know that name from??

A quick google search later, and - oh yeah!  That's right -

8987.gif

Co-creator and designer on the first 4 Wizardry games.  I guess that's it.  I mean, The only Wizardry game I've ever played was #6, but I suppose I remember his name from reading about the older games on the CRPG Addict blog.

Wait a minute, what's this???

2016-03-01-105-logo.jpg

Yes, it turns out he's also the co-founder of Animeigo.  Anyone who was around for the first wave of anime to hit America on VHS is familiar with this company.  After Streamline (which I believe only released dubs), Animeigo was the first company to release subtitled anime in America, and is responsible for releasing my favorite anime ever and starting me on the path that has led me to call Japan my home for the past ten years (even if I haven't actually had any interest in anime since the 90s).  Doncha just love it when everything is connected?

BUBBLEGUMCRISIS6.jpg

 

 

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Holy crap.  Just uploaded the ad for Time Zone, an early graphic adventure for the Apple II from Roberta Williams (King's Quest).

large.5abad3d1180b2_TimeZone.jpg

What's interesting is in the fine print.  At the top, we can see that the game filled 6 double-sided disks.  This, in a time when most games only needed a single side of a disk.  Furthermore, there are "over 1,300 Hi-Res color graphics," which is another way of saying there are over 1300 screens - a frankly mindboggling number, even if the graphics are quite crude.

Of course, it came at a price.  $99.95 to be exact, as can be seen at the bottom of the ad.  What's $100 in 1982/83 money adjusted for inflation in 2018?  OVER $250.

TZ.jpg

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So I'm editing the NOVEMBER 1995 issue of Ultimate Gamer when I see their news coverage of the N64 say this:

"Perhaps the most exciting news is a near-definite launch date, at least for Japan.  Ultra 64 is due to hit Tokyo stores early in February '96."

Then later in the same article:

"...no one has seen any of the games yet..."

Yes, apparently, they were under the impression that the system would be launching in a few months even though nary a screenshot had been released from a single game.  Were people really that naiive?  Did they honestly believe Nintendo could keep everything completely under wraps until just before launch? (spoiler: the N64 didn't actually launch until late June 96).

Also amusing:

"...Japanese insiders are convinced it will take the market with relative ease, thanks to the simultaneous release of a 64-bit Final Fantasy game on Day One."

 

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OK, so here's an update on what I'll be doing/not doing in the foreseeable future:

The size limits for gallery images is 1920px high and 2500px wide.  A few months ago, Retromags crashed and something went wrong in the recovery process.  From that point forward, all images uploaded to the gallery that approached the maximum allowed width would cause an error and fail to upload.  This affected the uploading of wide images, such as a fold-out cover or two-page advertisement, making the uploading of these images impossible.

As of a few days ago, the problem has gotten worse, and now even single page images larger than 1450-1500px or so cannot be uploaded.  This essentially means that only low-quality, low res images are allowed to be uploaded to the gallery.  Luckily, this hasn't retroactively affected the thousands of images already in the gallery that exceed the new size restrictions, but considering that hours upon hours of tech support over a period of months has done nothing to repair the situation, and indeed, it has only gotten worse, I feel that it might be unrealistic to expect any fixes are swiftly forthcoming.

The gallery has always been My Project.  In the past two years I uploaded about 55% of the 18,555 images currently in our gallery.  This situation is so frustrating it caused me to rage-quit a few weeks back (a retirement that lasted about 3 days :lol:).  But at that time, I could at least upload regular, single-page covers.  Now I can't even do that.

So here's the deal.  I won't promise that I'll never upload anything to Retromags again.  It's likely a promise I couldn't keep.  But I'm not willing to compromise the quality of uploads just to satisfy the broken size limits.  So if the best image available just happens to be small enough to be allowed, I'll probably upload it.  For example, lately I've been uploading Sonic the Hedgehog comic covers - they come from old scans and are only around 1024px high to begin with, so they can be uploaded successfully.  Once I get to newer Sonic comics (or other comics, or magazines, or advertisements, etc.) I'll have access to bigger images - bigger images that can't be uploaded to Retromags - and so I will not upload them, since I will not purposefully shrink an image to be smaller than our "supposed" limits of 1920x2500.

In other words, you'll probably be seeing a lot less being uploaded by me.

Also, since I can't upload magazine covers anymore, I'm not really sure what to do about magazine scans.  For example, I recently finished a scan, but before uploading it, I want to add the new cover scan to the listing.  Unfortunately, that isn't possible.  The magazine in question was a donation, so I'm obligated to release it, so I guess I have two options for any further magazines I scan:

1. Upload a reduced-size cover to our gallery and use that for the magazine listing.  I know I said I'd never purposefully compromise the quality of an image just to have it be accepted by our broken gallery, but in order to honor my obligation to scan and release mags that were donated to me, I may have no choice (for those issues only)

2. Upload the scans somewhere else like archive.org.  I haven't discussed this with the people who donated the mags, but I'm fairly certain they don't really care so long as the mags are made available.

I'll be waiting a while longer before making that decision.  Hopefully the gallery can at least be reset to the broken state it was in last week, when at least single page images were allowed.  I also expect to be unusually busy with work in the coming weeks, so I probably won't have much time to worry about any of this anyway.  Just wanted to set the record straight on what's going on here.

TLDR: I probably won't be uploading images very much anymore (unless the site gets fixed), but any mags I was sent as donations will still eventually be scanned and released, be it at Retromags or elsewhere.

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Hiya mate,

If there is a problem regarding donated mags feel free to give me a link if you want them on my website while you get things sorted out over here. I'll put the relevant acknowledgements to the donator and yourself as the scanner etc and when/if Retromags gets sorted I am happy enough to take it down again or link within the page back to Retromags. I can provide separate links for CBR & PDF versions easily enough.

Happy to help out if required........

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, I took a brief break from editing an issue of Game Player's PC Strategy Guide so that I could edit an issue of Game Player's PC Strategy Guide.:lol:  Actually, all I did was take one of marktrade's scans from archive.org and fix it up so we could add it to our collection.  I tried to reach out to him for approval but never heard back.  Nevertheless, marktrade used to be one of us before he retired to the old scanner's home in Tahiti, and there is a precedent for taking marktrade's stuff from archive.org and adding it to our site (I edited one of his PC Gamer scans and released it here, for example), so I suspect he is OK with it.  If not, all he has to do is say the word and I'll take it down.  And you can get marktrade's original 600dpi version HERE. (warning - 700MB file.)

This isn't something I would normally bother doing, but Game Player's PC Strategy Guide is such an important magazine to me, I want to see every possible issue hosted here.

BTW, If any of you lurkers out there have any issues we're still missing, I'd gladly give you E-Day's left nut for them.:P

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/24/2018 at 11:25 AM, kitsunebi77 said:

Actually, all I did was take one of marktrade's scans from archive.org and fix it up so we could add it to our collection.

I don't know if you noticed, but there are three more PC Strategy Guide scanned by marktrade at Internet Archive :

https://archive.org/details/GPGMSDOSCGVol1No2

https://archive.org/details/GPPCSGVol2No2

https://archive.org/details/GPPCSGVol3No2

As well as more obscure magazines like PC Ace, PC Simulations...

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I'm aware - they've been there for ages.  He's still got unedited raw scans there as well.  I'll get to the GP issues eventually.

I'm content to leave those other titles there.  The only reason I bring over the Game Player's PC mags is because it's one of the handful of game magazines I can actually READ as an adult and still enjoy.  They mean a lot to me.  As such, I go through each page individually making small adjustments as needed.  I don't know if it was the scanner used or the condition of the mags themselves, but those 600dpi issues at archive look...not so good to me.  The pages are really dark.  Also very brown/yellow, as if the mags were stored outside in a shed in Florida for 30 years.  If you carefully compare the one I uploaded to the 600dpi version, you'll see a few minor adjustments, which to me are marked improvements.  (Hopefully not in a Star Wars Special Edition kind of way.)  As such, I won't be rushing through the others just to get them up here.  Anyone who wants them now can get them at archive.

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This post is sponsored by Hitachino Nest's Ancient Nipponia beer.   Well, it was written under its influence, anyway.  Two thumbs up! Parental guidance is suggested! :blink::w00t: https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/hitachino-nest-ancient-nipponia-bottom-fermented/154550/

So I've realized the reason why I use this thread instead of posting a new topic is that I don't really expect anyone to pay attention to a personal thread with my name attached to it, so it's neither a surprise nor a disappointment when no one replies.  But it's so dead around here most of the time that I feel like posting a new thread that gets zero replies would be a little bit depressing...so instead I post here.:)  And besides, this thread's title is "random stuff," so maybe I'm posting in the right place after all...

I had thought there was a previous thread about game songs that I had posted in (not just game music, but rather songs with actual singing), but after doing a search, it turns out that I had simply hi-jacked a post about underappreciated game music to post some game songs I wanted to give a shout-out to.  (There I go again, posting random things that should have been posted here instead.)

Rather than resurrect a thread that didn't really have anything to do with game songs in the first place, I'll just leave this here, this time.

This isn't a good song.  Oh god no.  But it's a song that you only have to listen to once or twice, and then days later, you'll catch yourself singing it to yourself, accent and all, and cursing the day you ever heard it in the first place.  Such was the case with me when I first heard it some 25 years ago or so.  Thankfully, at some point, it eventually faded from memory.  And then as luck would have it, I recently came across it again.  So now I share my pain with you.  (Interestingly enough, I was surprised to find that the part of the song that would constantly cycle through my head against my will was only the first line, which is never actually repeated in the song itself.  Weird! "I wanna marry an archaeologist and keep his artifact warm.")

 

RANDOM STUFF PART II:

As long as I'm just posting random bits of nonsense for no one to read in my random thread, I thought I'd comment on the latest mag I'm adding to the database: Comptiq.  Launched in 1983 and continuing to this day, it's a magazine that covers PC games in Japan.  What this means is that it used to cover PC games with some of its coverage focusing on adult titles, and over time, that focus has shifted almost exclusively to adult titles as a reflection of the Japanese PC game market itself.  I think it's a bit sad that Japan is pretty much the only game-producing country in the world that doesn't have a thriving PC game development market outside of an army of virtually identical visual novels, and I believe that this has hurt their vitality as a innovative force on the console side of things as well, but that's a rant for another day.

For now, I just want to say:

The 80s were awesome!

 Seriously. 

Porno game mags are a dime a dozen in Japan these days - I think they release about 200 adult PC games per week in this fucked up country.  But what are they really?  Anime girls.  Nothing but anime girls, as far as the eye can see.  On the magazine covers as well, anything published in the past 25 years covering adult games has anime girls on the cover.  But not in the 80s.  Hell no.  Nothing but obnoxiously dated clothes and embarrassing hairstyles on real live walking and talking human beings of the female persuasion.  Because believe it or not, there was a time in this country when putting an ACTUAL girl on the cover of a magazine was a better way to attract male readers than putting a drawing of a girl in its place.  The fact that this is no longer true can no doubt help explain Japan's current population crisis due to the declining birth rate.

But forget all that for now.  Just look at those covers. 

large.5af62cbf1bb28_ComptiqIssue007(January-February1985).jpglarge.5af64c3ab5e92_ComptiqIssue017(May1986).jpglarge.5af671aec8eab_ComptiqIssue020(August1986).jpglarge.5af6d71a7dca6_ComptiqIssue024(December1986).jpg

SO CHEESY.  SO 80s!!  It's glorious.  As I said, at this point in its history, the mag was covering mostly normal PC games, although every issue also covered some adult material.  I don't really get into modern eroge (adult games).  It's just more (you guessed it) anime girl nonsense.  But even though the 80s porn games were anime girls as well (you quickly realize after living in Japan that there really isn't any other art style in the entire country), there's something charming about the crude graphics that simply doesn't exist anymore in more modern hi-res affairs.  Plus, out of necessity due to the need to be able to depict complicated chinese text characters on screen, early Japanese computers had much higher screen resolutions than western counterparts.  So while 9-year-old me was playing THIS on a computer in 1986:

Space_Quest_-_The_Sarien_Encounter_2.png

Some kid in Japan was playing THIS (from Comptiq, 1986):

01270001471.jpg

Well, OK, hopefully it wasn't being played by a 9-year-old.  But you get my point.  Despite being much more high-res than western games at the time, these graphics are way too primitive to be erotic, even if cartoon girls ARE your thing, but I think that's why I find them more appealing than more modern stuff.  There can't possibly be anyone out there getting off on it, so that makes it automatically less disturbing/creepy.

 

Anyway, here's a test:

You get to choose one girl to be with.  Do you pick the one from the 80s, or the one from the '10s?

80s: large.5af6af44e7898_ComptiqIssue022(October1986).jpg   '10s:Comptiq Issue 468 (March 2017).jpg

If you picked the girl from the 80s, we'll assume for the sake of this test that you can time travel in order to hook up with her in the 80s, since otherwise she's probably pushing 50 now.  Remember to be respectful and stop talking about yourself long enough to take a genuine interest in what she has to say once in a while, you egomaniac.  Fingers crossed you'll find true love.

If you picked the girl from the '10s, congratulations.  You are a modern Japanese man.  Your... drawing...erm, has very large breasts.  You can...I don't know.  Stare at it, I guess.  Caress the smoothness of its...paper.  Talk to it and pretend it can hear you.  Or something.  I don't know. (What the fuck is WRONG with you?)

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:lol:

I saw the cheesy covers on the Twitter account, and the "Comp" in the title suggested it was a computer game magazine, but I wouldn't have guessed it covered adult games. It looks like it's impossible to guess if a Japanese game magazine is for adults or not just with the cover. Unless there is Mario or Pikachu on it. Well, I suppose. Hopefully.

Comptiq still exists today, but its Wikipedia page does not mention any penchant for adult games. Maybe it's so common it's not worth mentioning.

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5 hours ago, Hoagie said:

:lol:

I saw the cheesy covers on the Twitter account, and the "Comp" in the title suggested it was a computer game magazine, but I wouldn't have guessed it covered adult games. It looks like it's impossible to guess if a Japanese game magazine is for adults or not just with the cover. Unless there is Mario or Pikachu on it. Well, I suppose. Hopefully.

Comptiq still exists today, but its Wikipedia page does not mention any penchant for adult games. Maybe it's so common it's not worth mentioning.

Well, if you thought I was suggesting that its coverage centered on adult games, I misrepresented it.  Adult game coverage was always just one part of the magazine. 

By default, any magazine covering computer gaming printed in the 80s was marketed exclusively towards adults, at least in Japan and the USA, since unlike Europe, home computers were too expensive to be substitutes as gaming machines for kids.  Kids=consoles.  Grown-ups=computers.  So if you picked up a Computer Gaming World during the 80s you got a lot of complicated text-heavy articles about wargames, simulations and strategy games made for adults, since that was the lionshare of what was being published at the time.  If you pick up a Japanese computer game mag from the 80s, you get some of that, as well as RPGs and menu-driven adventure games, in addition to (some) coverage of adult games. 

Japanese game developers found out early on how successful they could be using their computers' higher resolutions to render (unanimated) images of naked anime girls that would appeal to the same market that drives Japan's enormously successful adult manga industry.   Still, although all PC games in Japan at the time (and for the most part, in America, as well) were marketed towards adults (the kids were busy with their Nintendo), that's not to say that the majority of titles were adult games.  Adult games were just a portion of the Japanese computer gaming market, and as such, only a portion of the magazine coverage focused on adult games.

Eventually, that would change, though.  By the late 90s, magazines exclusively covering adult PC games outnumbered those covering regular games, and as of 2018, there's actually not even a single magazine being published in Japan that covers regular PC games.  Presumably not wanting to be another in a long line of adult PC Game mags, Comptiq switched gears as the industry changed and focused less and less on games (since there were less and less non-adult computer games being published), and more and more on anime and manga.  Their coverage of adult titles tapered off as well, since there were other mags coming from the same publisher that covered those exclusively.  Current issues have relatively little game coverage, actually, and the games that ARE covered are usually of the PS Vita/mobile visual novel/non-adult-bishoujo variety.

 

Also, MY GOODNESS!  Someone uses our Twitter account!  I'm not a Twitter user myself, but I've always wondered about people who get their Retromags updates via Twitter or Facebook.  I'll sometimes upload 20 or more files in a day, but our Twitter/Facebook has a max limit per day of...I don't know, 5 or 10 posts at most, so a lot of stuff that gets posted never makes it over there.  Hell, sometimes even new release magazine scans don't get posted there unless I remember to schedule a delayed post for after the daily limit is reset. (EDIT: Yep. looks like only 8 of the 24 images I posted yesterday made their way to Twitter/Facebook)

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I think if you look at the database pages for the issues I've included the table of contents for (beginning with issue 31 and continuing for the forseeable future:)) you get a better idea of how different Comptiq was at the time compared to how it is now (indicative of the industry itself).  In the 80s it was nearly cover to cover game coverage, with monthly sections devoted to RPGs (20 pgs), adventure games (16 pgs), simulation games (16 pgs), console/arcade games (23 pgs), and adult games (8 pgs).  There was also a monthly section with idol interviews (presumably including the cover model), which was something even kids' mags like Famitsu included at the time as well.

The latest issue of Comptiq (June 2018) doesn't appear to cover any computer games from what I can see, but does feature coverage of some mobile app games as well as coverage of popular "virtual Youtuber" characters in addition to lots of anime, manga, and light novel coverage.  The times, they have a-changed.

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I understood the coverage of "adult" (a very misleading word) games was marginal, I was just troubled by the contrast between the quite explicit game pics and the innocent-looking-yet-completely-irrelevant covers. But after all, French mags were saucy more than once when it came to erotic games. :P

I'm perfectly aware of the difference of the computer markets between USA and Europe. However, I don't have a clue about the demographics of this computer market in Japan. I know some of the computers out there (PC-88, PC-98, FM Towns), but don't know how many units they sold, how it evolved, how it was perceived, what kind of games were common or popular on each platform... With so few vintage Japanese gaming magazines on the web and my brain struggling to memorize hiragana/katakana, I guess it will take time to learn.

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You're right, the word "adult" can be misleading.  Luckily, they don't use it in Japan, so things are a bit clearer.  Still, you're correct in saying that it might be hard to tell from the cover photo whether or not there will be graphic pictures inside.  However, nudity isn't shocking here like it is in my home country (USA), so if a magazine intended for adult male readers has nudity in it, no one would bat an eye.  That said, computer games and nudity have always gone hand in hand in Japan, so I'm pretty sure that most people buying a computer game mag would expect at least some coverage of H games/eroge (the terminology has changed over time).

I do, however, feel that a Japanese consumer would not have been confused as to who the target audience was from the covers.  Yes, those 80s covers of Comptiq are very innocent-looking, but the simple fact that it was photos of women on the cover should have been enough to attract the correct demographic (adult males), and completely lose the interest of children (if the fact that the mag was about computer games wasn't already enough to do that - since again, computer games weren't marketed for kids back then.)

In more recent years, it probably becomes a bit easier to tell things apart.

Here's a modern example of a tech magazine, clearly trying to appeal to adult readers (but not with "adult" content):

Untitled-1.jpg

And here's a magazine aimed strictly at kids:

Untitled-2.jpg

And for comparison, here's a (manga) magazine aimed strictly at adult males (with some nudity, but not anything explicit):

Untitled-3.jpg

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emp145q0a.jpg

So this is something I deal with on a daily basis.  And it just makes no sense to me.  English is hard, and Japanese is a very different language, so unless someone is fluently bilingual, mistakes are bound to happen in abundance when translating text.  Machine translation simply isn't yet up to the task of handling Japanese/English, and for anything more complicated than translating the most basic of sentence structures, often results in completely indecipherable jibberish. 

But simple spelling errors like this happen when a Japanese person tries to write a word in English off the top of their head based on how it's pronounced with a Japanese accent.  And when it happens in a magazine like this, I just chalk it up to laziness on the part of whoever was responsible - they were probably in a rush to meet deadline, and most of the readership won't notice or care anyway.

But I see this same sort of thing all the time in places where you'd think someone would maybe check the spelling before shelling out big bucks to advertise their mistake for all the world to see.  Places like giant billboards, street signs, and even names of businesses.  How insane is that?  You're starting up a business, you choose a hip-sounding English name, you pay god-knows-how-much money to have that name emblazoned all over the building, the employee uniforms, the company stationery, etc...but you couldn't be bothered to take a peek in a dictionary first?  My mind. Boggled.

Mind you, I guess that's not any worse than those idiots that get a kanji tattoo without first being 100% certain they know what it means. 

 

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In France, we use the word "franponais" ("français" + "japonais") to make fun of the use of the French words in signs and shop names in Japan. It looks like some French words have been assembled randomly - with typos, usually - to look "chic". :lol:

http://lefranponais.fr

http://www.topito.com/top-10-des-exemples-de-franponais-petit-francais-revisite-par-nos-amis-nippons

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Alas, since I don't understand French, I can't appreciate the no doubt amusing mistakes in the links you posted.  I guess you could at least be flattered that France is so highly thought of as a paragon of class and culture in Japan that it's fashionable to try to use it despite their ignorance (90% of all high schools don't offer any foreign languages other than English, so the average person's knowledge isn't any better than mine).  And they love your cakes/sweets.  Every year when asked what they want to be when they grow up, a popular response amongst the girls in the elementary schools I work at is "pâtissier," which is one French word in everyone's vocabulary here.

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