Version Differences

This is a sub-page of Golden Sun.

A few differences between regions here and there... and oh-so-many mistranslations and errors.

Regional Differences#

Text Input Screen#

The English, French, German, and Italian versions have the same characters available. This means German, French, and Italian players cannot name their party using language-exclusive characters (like ß, ç, etc.).

The Spanish version replaces some symbols in the last row with Spanish accented letters and Ñ. Interestingly, ü is missing (it is used in words like "pingüino" [penguin]), and the uppercase version Ü (though no native Spanish word begins with Ü).

The Japanese version has a "きりかえ" (Switch) option that switches between two modes: hiragana/katakana and latin characters.

Japanese	English, French, German, and Italian	Spanish

? and ! Characters#

For some reason, the Spanish version has a different glyph for the "?" and "!" characters.

English, French, German, and Italian	Spanish

Title Screen#

The Japanese game had a subtitle, much like the sequel: 黄金の太陽：開かれし封印 (Ōgon no Taiyō: Hirakareshi Fūin; "Golden Sun: The Broken Seal"). The English version only has "2001" as copyright date, while the European localisations have "2001,2002".

Japanese 黄金の太陽：開かれし封印	English Golden Sun	French Golden Sun
German Golden Sun	Italian Golden Sun	Spanish Golden Sun

Translation Errors#

In addition to story edits to remove references to death (such as Mia's father), and religion (such as the nature of the Wise One and "Healers") and make dialogue wordier, the translations have several outright errors.

• Breath/Bless (EN/ES/IT/DE)
  

Certain breath-related abilities were mistranslated from Japanese into English. The English localisation team interpreted ブレス as "bless" instead of "breath". The mistake carried over to the Spanish, German, and Italian localisations, which were based on the English version (the Spanish localisation got quite creative with them, though). The errors were corrected in the English version of the sequel (except "Evil Blessing", which is an ability for a GS1-only bossfight), but the other localisations kept the wrong translations.

• Cerberus (EN)
  

The enemy found in floor 9 of Crossbone Island is incorrectly named "Cerebus" instead of "Cerberus". The sequel corrected the error, although the enemy went unused.

• Death Size (EN/ES/FR/IT/DE)
  

The monster skill Death Scythe was translated as "Death Size" in the English version, which impacted the other localisations (which used "Sudden death" [ES/FR], "Fatal blow" [IT] or "Deathly grip" [DE] instead). It was corrected in the second game, but only in the English release.

• Translation of "Champa" (ES)
  

"The Shampa who rule the seas are frightful people. Beware."	"The Shampa are people from a coastal village in Angara."

The item shopkeeper in post-game Lalivero teasingly mentions Champa, a village that would appear prominently in both sequels (The Lost Age and Dark Dawn). However, the Spanish localisation uses an inconsistent translation here: "shampa". It's worth noting that in Dark Dawn, the demonym for the Champas in Spanish became "champeño" instead of "champa".

• Mia's relationship with Alex (EN/ES/FR/IT/DE)
  

In the Japanese version, when your party meets Mia at Mercury Lighthouse, she mentions Alex is part of her family (using the expression "同ぞく", meaning "same family"). This information was omitted in the English localisation, and thus from all other versions. This seemingly fleeting piece of information is later relevant in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

• Lighthouse Aerie (DE/FR)
  

The German and French localisations have a translation error in the place named "Lighthouse Aerie" (the top of Venus Lighthouse). The German version treats "Aerie" as a proper name, and the French version translated "aerie" as "area" or "nest". The term "aerie" was later translated in GS2 as "Spitze des Leuchtturms" (DE) and "sommet" (FR), though the French text still keeps some references to "aire".