Nintendo Spotting: It’s a me, BIG MARIO
Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 9:54am by デール
Since I moved to Japan I’ve begun to notice various instances of copyright infringement in ads, store windows, and various products. The convenient store near my job uses a poorly drawn “colonel” to advertise their chicken and the barber shop down the street has Mickey Mouse in the window for no reason. There just isn’t as tight a hold on improper intellectual property usage here, and so you will often see Mario used as the logo for video game stores that opened around the big Famicom boom in the 80’s.
This game-shop in a Nakano shopping arcade took the trend a step further and copped the plumber’s name for their store “Big Mario (ma-ri-o is written in Katakana).” Nice! Even though the shop sells more than just Nintendo-goods, the name harkens back to when “playing Nintendo,” or even “playing Mario,” could mean gaming of any kind. Ahh the memories.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:00 am
What’s interesting is the combination of English and Japanese. Is this very common? Why not have the whole thing in English, or they whole thing in Japanese instead of half and half? I’ve seen pictures of some Japanese games, that seem to do the same thing - half and half. Why is this, and is it very common? And do most Japanese speak enough English to recognize the English words (I think it’s safe to assume that most Americans would have no idea what the Japanese half of the signs / games is saying).
April 20th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Joshdad — Just like a lot of clothes you see at American department stores have random chinese/japanese characters (many of them make no sense or the things they say are actually really horrible), it is “cool” to juxtapose English in Japanese products, advertisements, etc. only it’s been going on for a lot longer than similar movements in the states.
Even Nintendo uses English in Japanese product names/ads, heck, “Wii Fit,” and “Mario Kart,” are two recent examples. And how about “Pocket Monsters?” Since most Japanese people are required to study english in elementary school, almost anyone has a working knowledge of the written language. It’s when ads use strange and obscure words that they are often misspelled and understood by no one, but then again the usage of those words are pretty much meaningless anyway!
April 20th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
This seems like a great time to bring up Engrish.com!
April 20th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I know what you’re saying, but it still seems rather odd to me to mix and match like that. It would be kind of like seeing a store in the states called la Tienda Maravillosa de fun Mario Games. Even though many people understand Spanish, and know what the store is talking about, it would just seem to strange to see the languages mixed like that. And using the Japanese symbols alongside the American symbols seems to just make it even stranger.
But, I guess if it’s generating revenue than there’s really no reason to complain. I was just curious about it.