DBZ and other Games: English or Japanese?

[Super Sonic]

Ironically, the English voice actor for Ryu in Street Fighter IV is also the guy responsible for voicing Teen Gohan in the English Dub of Dragon Ball Z, which annoys me. I guess Street Fighter would be another exception for switching to Japanese voices--Street Fighter II was one of the first video games I ever played as a child, and the voices are fairly iconic... at least in terms of how the attacks are spoken in Japanese (if that makes any sense... I can't stand to hear an American shout "Tatsumaki Senpukyaku!"), or for Ken to sound like an arrogant yankee douche bag.

Actually in Street Fighter IV he doesn't say it. He just makes a kiai of some sort. He does say it in MvC3. And wasn't Ken already kind of an arrogant yankee douche bag? Or did you like him more in Devil May Cry games (Dante)?

[Adamant]

Slight correction; the European (at least the UK) version of Budokai 2 had the FUNimation voices, without an option to switch (though the Gamecube port has the original Japanese cast).

To properly clarify - The European releases of Dragonball games are dual-audio if the American release was dual-audio, and Japanese-audio-with-subtitles if the American release only had one voice track. The one exception is the PS2 (not GC) release of Budokai 2, which was English-audio-only in Europe because of Sony's ridiculous "if they talk in a a game, they must talk English" stance. Nintendo thankfully had no such stance (so the GC version of Budokai 2 is Japanese-audio-only) and Sony has since dropped it (so the PS2 release of Super DBZ is Japanese-audio-only).

None of the Marvel characters have an option for Japanese voices. And some of the characters on Capcom's side never even had Japanese voices outside of that game, oddly.

Yeah, that's the intent of the "Original language" option (or whatever it's called) - it sets all Capcom characters who originally had Japanese voices to Japanese, and all the Capcom characters who got a Japanese voice for this game but never had one before (like the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil characters) to their original English voices. Allows you to set the "correct" voice for the characters in one quick motion.

[Thanos]

Ironically, the English voice actor for Ryu in Street Fighter IV is also the guy responsible for voicing Teen Gohan in the English Dub of Dragon Ball Z, which annoys me. I guess Street Fighter would be another exception for switching to Japanese voices--Street Fighter II was one of the first video games I ever played as a child, and the voices are fairly iconic... at least in terms of how the attacks are spoken in Japanese (if that makes any sense... I can't stand to hear an American shout "Tatsumaki Senpukyaku!"), or for Ken to sound like an arrogant yankee douche bag.

Actually in Street Fighter IV he doesn't say it. He just makes a kiai of some sort. He does say it in MvC3. And wasn't Ken already kind of an arrogant yankee douche bag? Or did you like him more in Devil May Cry games (Dante)?

Well, not that it matters that much, but English Ryu does say "Senpu Tatsumaki!" When doing the roundhouse kick with the afterimage thing.

[Rocketman]

Soul Calibur IV

English, no goddamn contest. The Japanese voices for Darth Vader and Kratos are pathetic.


Talim being even higher pitched really doesn't help either.

[MCDaveG]

Nothing beats Jones' Darth Vader!!

Also with SF4, there goes one exception, as I'm using the alternative setting for Asian characters (including Bison dubbed by Wakamato!!!!) in Japanese and for the European/US ones english (including Dhalsim from India).

[Super Sonic]

Wakamoto and Hebert weren't the only DBZ actors in the games mentioned. Laura Bailey (Little Trunks) and Bob Carter (Bojack) were Chun-Li and Balrog. And in MvC3, Dameon Clarke (Cell) is the Bionic Commando guy.

[dbboxkaifan]

Normally I'd swap English for Japanese, but RB2 came with what I wanted, the DB Zed Kai English cast, perfect!

...except, my second favourite villain Cell (#1 Freeza) isn't voiced by Clarke.

[NitroEX]

Back when I was a kid the only Dragonball Z games were all in Japanese. From playing Ultimate Battle 22 to Final Bout to the first Budokai I became used to hearing the Japanese voices in the games so nowadays it just feels appropriate for me to switch the audio to Japanese when I'm playing a Tenkaichi or Raging Blast or whatever. Also since I grew up with the Ocean cast for the TV series it's always disappointing when I have to hear Chris Sabat as Vegeta and Piccolo rather than Drummond or McNiel for example. Japanese is sort of the 'neutral' option for people like myself.

[dario03]

I usually play with the English voices, though I mostly played the PS1 games in Japanese since I had the Japanese versions.

[Son Satan]

Well, not that it matters that much, but English Ryu does say "Senpu Tatsumaki!" When doing the roundhouse kick with the afterimage thing.

That is the Tatsumaki Senpukyaku. (Which makes it odd) And in MvC3 he seems to yell "Tatsumaki Seppuku!".


Anyway, I prefer the Japanese cast, though I switch to the English sometimes on games without captions for battle banter.