Selective Localisation

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Typically, if a game is localised for the European market, it uses American English because that saves effort translating an American English product which is 99.9% compatible with British English. This might apply to other categories.

Of course, on occasion, the American English version can't be used for the European release because something wouldn't just look like a spelling error, it genuinely wouldn't be compatible. Perhaps it contains a claim which is only true Stateside, or uses American measurements which are different to those used by, or are rarely used by, Europeans. That's where Selective Localisation can help: By translating part of the media, you save yourself the time and effort of translating the whole thing.

Examples of Selective Localisation include:

• Most games which are localised for the European market have American English as the 'English' option, even if the language is identified by the Union Flag on the language selection screen.
• The PSP Sega Mega Drive Collection referred to Sega's 16-bit console as such in Europe, compared to referring to it as the Sega Genesis in North America, with a title change.
  • Averted in the PC version of Sonic Mega Collection Plus. A few of the games mimicked genuine '90s PAL speed, though the manuals are written in American English and refer to the Genesis console.
• Metal Gear Solid 2 has a scene where a character describes the length of a ladder. To avert confusion, the length is given in feet in the American version, while the metric system is used for the European version, and the length is given in meters. Not 'metres', 'meters'. The Substance version has the character give the length in feet for both.
• "Spastic" is a mild word in North America, but a serious insult in UK English. Nintendo had to recall the UK release of Mario Party 8 and modify specifically that line because of this. Other than that one change, the translation is identical to the U.S. release.
• Similarly, Super Mario RPG removed an instance of "bugger" when it was released on the Virtual Console for Europe, because of the British meaning.
• The Ape Escape series has had completely different localizations in America and in Europe (both of them very narmily dubbed in different accents), resulting in some characters having different names depending on the region. When the series crossed over with Metal Gear Solid in MGS 3: Snake VS. Monkey, some of Snake's lines had to be re-recorded to match the names of the characters in the different regions.
• An unusual example happened in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl. Both of these games have a Mini Game in which the player has to hit a sandbag as far as possible. When it was first translated into English, the distances were converted from metres to feet, apparently because Americans don't understand metric. The PAL release restored the metres.
• In an early issue of the Marvel Transformers Generation 1 comic, Shockwave attempts to learn about humans by watching TV. In the original release, the first panel of this showed a scene from The Honeymooners. The UK reprint replaced this with a scene from the then-current show V.
• Similar to the Smash Bros. example, the PAL version of Pokémon Channel uses metric measurements for the height and weight data of the Pokémon. However, this is Averted in the main series where all English versions of the games have the measurements in feet and pounds.