Magic: The Gathering‘s new Final Fantasy set is an absolute love letter to the beloved RPG series, with hundreds of cards making a flavorful nod to their source material in one way or another. But one of the most fun references in a set filled with them almost didn’t make it in—thanks to a quibble between Wizards of the Coast and Square Enix’s translation teams.
In a fascinating new article about translating the Final Fantasy set for its English and Japanese-language versions shared on the official Magic website today, Joseph Leis, the program manager for the Final Fantasy set, explained some of the challenges facing translating several cards in the set to ensure the standards of Magic‘s usual international translation process, while also working with Square Enix and its own translations for Final Fantasy as a franchise.
But one of the most intriguing examples concerns one of the most fun nods to Final Fantasy fandom’s western history that almost didn’t make it in: the Final Fantasy VI card, Suplex. Or, at least in the form that Final Fantasy VI fans would’ve wanted it to.
A red mana sorcery card, Suplex in the set can either be used to deal three damage to a target creature (with the added bonus of exiling them if it destroys it), or exiling a target artifact card from play. This second rule is a specific synergy so that Suplex can target another card in the game, the black mana artifact Phantom Train. It’s a reference to the memetic legacy of FFVI players realizing that Sabin the monk, one of the game’s expansive party members, can use one of his special abilities, Suplex, to physically hoist up the giant demon locomotive and slam it back down in an absurd image, dealing a ton of damage.
In the years since its release, and especially in the advent of the online age, Sabin suplexing a literal train has become a part of Final Fantasy meme culture. But the thing is, Suplex wasn’t called Suplex in the original Japanese game. It was called Meteor Strike (or specifically “メテオストライク” in katakana) back when Final Fantasy VI was first brought over to North America as Final Fantasy III (several games in the series initially missed being translated), a name that Square Enix has kept ever since. While the original translation remained for many FFVI ports, it took until 2022 when the game was re-released as part of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection for the official translation to be updated to Meteor Strike.
So Wizards and Square Enix found themselves at a bit of an impasse. Where possible, Wizards prefers that translation and localizations of card names diverge as little as possible from the English-language originals: Magic sets are typically designed in English first, and then translated into various languages, but the Final Fantasy set was the first in the game’s history to be developed in English and Japanese simultaneously. Square Enix wanted to keep the Meteor Strike name as the official translation of Sabin’s move as that’s what was it always was in Japanese, but Wizards argued that English-language fans who played VI as kids would be disappointed if the card wasn’t called Suplex as tribute to the nostalgic place the fight has taken in western fandom culture.
“This was something that principle narrative designer Dillon Deveney went back and forth through multiple rounds of negotiations with Square Enix,” Leis said, “explaining how important that scene and the name ‘Suplex’ would be to English-speaking Final Fantasy VI fans, how kids growing up would yell ‘suplex!’ at the top of their lungs while playing at the playground, and how the nostalgia of the term was something that he wanted to keep as an Easter egg for English-speaking Final Fantasy VI fans.”
Thankfully, Square Enix eventually relented, and a rare divergence between the English and Japanese sets allowed Suplex and Meteor Strike to co-exist. Now you can exile that one particular artifact to your heart’s content, in the exact way you’d want to.
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