Monster Hunter Generations localization blog #1 – planning started December 2014, name explained

Capcom has published the first of what will surely be numerous localization blogs for Monster Hunter Generations. You can read it right here.

There is one excerpt from the blog that is worth highlighting on the site directly. Below, we learn that localization planning began in December 2014. Capcom also discusses why it changed the “Monster Hunter X” name and settled on “Monster Hunter Generations”. It’s rather interesting!

We started planning the localization for Monster Hunter Generations back in December 2014, as development on MH4U was winding down. We began having meetings with the development team to get an idea of the overall scope of the game, how much text there would be, what kind of time frame we had to work with, etc., so we could start mapping out our schedule. In the midst of all that, our first official request came from the producer. Our mission: localize the game’s title! We were given the following conditions for coming up with the international title:

1) Needs to match the game content

2) Must be clear that it is not a numbered entry in the series

3) Needs to be understandable in North American and European regions without translation

As I’m sure you know by now, the official Japanese title for the game is Monster Hunter X. I don’t know about you, but when I first saw this, I read it as “Monster Hunter 10.” I knew that couldn’t be right, so my second guess was the letter “X” (as in Mega Man X). Of course, I learned soon after that it was pronounced “cross,” to symbolize the crossing of both the returning and new elements in the Monster Hunter series. But given the conditions above, we couldn’t leave the title as is. We threw ideas back and forth and consulted with our friends at Capcom USA and Capcom Europe to see what would work best for both regions. Suggestions such as “Monster Hunter Tribute” and “Monster Hunter Unity” came up, but in the end we felt that Monster Hunter Generations summed up the game nicely, as it encompasses content from various games in Monster Hunter history.