We’re hearing from multiple sources that some interesting language laws may keep Nintendo fans in Quebec from getting their hands on a Super NES Classic Edition. A law that went into effect in 2009 requires that games sold in Quebec contain a French translation, and since the roms contained in the SNES Classic are not translated, it cannot be sold there.
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It may sound like the government is being unreasonable, but the law was part of an effort to preserve Quรฉbรฉcois French and culture. That effort has largely been well-received, even though it’s caused considerable hassle for businesses.
It would seem like an easy fix, right? I several of these games were released in French at one time, so why not just swap in some translations and call it a day? Well it’s a little more complicated than that.
When Everything Goes Rom
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NeoGAF member “AuthenticM” actually broke it down in a really easy to understand way. I’m happy to quote him here:
“Back in ’08, the Liberal government and the ESA signed a contract that stipulated that games sold in Quรฉbec would be available in French, if a French translation was available. If there wasn’t, selling the game in English only was fine. This was great because a lot of games were translated in French in France, so now Quรฉbec would finally get these translations.
“But in this particular case, we are dealing with roms. I guess it would have been too much work for Nintendo to reverse engineer the French PAL roms, copy the French translation, and put them in the NTSC roms. They couldn’t just put the PAL roms in the console, as the games would run in slow-motion because of the whole PAL 50mhz thing. Sad. I guess neither party could have foreseen this situation happening.”
Sad indeed. That thread is full of French-speaking gamers expressing their disappointment over the whole situation. It’s already hard enough getting your hands on one of these things — a government ban pretty much seals the deal.
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