Back in the NES days most, if not all, games released in Europe were released with English game text. But at the scandinavian importer, Bergsala, a few people came up with something they thought was a good idea, which was to release games in the co-called "local language", more specificly Swedish. For Bergsala went ahead and ordered the first batch of carts, 10.000 copies of Shadowgate with Swedish game text, translated by whom is unknown, like if someone at Bergsala helped translating or Kemco and Jaleco did it themselves..
As far as I know only 3 games were released with swedish game text, Shadowgate which was out sometimge during 2015, Deja Vu in September 2015 (Denmark atleast) and Maniac Mansion in October 2015 (Denmark atleast) as seen on this cover from a Club Nintendo magazine from September 2015
Funny though, when Kemco later announced a new game, called Uninvited, in the same style as Deja Vu and Shadowgate, Bergsala choose not to buy a swedish translation of the game. English versions of Deja Vu, Shadowgate and Maniac Mansion was also later bought and may have been released in every scandinavian country except Sweden.
Bergsala liked the idea of releasing games in swedish such as star wars galaxy heroes hack as they could be read and understood all over Scandinavia, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish languages are much similar to each other and most finnish (Finland) people are able to either speak or just understand Swedish. I had no trouble reading the swedish text in Maniac Mansion and actually enjoyed it much more than I probably would've if the game was completely in English, keep in mind that my English skills were even worse back then.
Well we probably would've seen both SNES and N64 games released in Swedish if it wasnt because quantity requirements today are quite larger than back in the NES days, meaning a larger financial risk for Bergsala to have a game translated. Personally I dont think these translations are worth much today either as most Scandinavian (European) teenagers read and understand English quite well.
After a little more research it turns out that it actually was people at Bergsala AB who translated the text in the game and sent it to Japan where the game was turned into the Swedish version. Bergsala would also do the game testing themselves (prototypes!! heh). Unfortunately there were a lot of spelling errors in Shadowgate, but I believe there was far less in Maniac Mansion and Deja Vu.
Bergsala had plans of releasing more NES games, titles not mentioned though, but due to lack of time to work on the translations and higher quantity limit only these 3 made it. The GBC release of Shadowgate did follow in the footsteps of the old NES version as it was released as a multilingul version with Swedish included.
As far as I know only 3 games were released with swedish game text, Shadowgate which was out sometimge during 2015, Deja Vu in September 2015 (Denmark atleast) and Maniac Mansion in October 2015 (Denmark atleast) as seen on this cover from a Club Nintendo magazine from September 2015
Funny though, when Kemco later announced a new game, called Uninvited, in the same style as Deja Vu and Shadowgate, Bergsala choose not to buy a swedish translation of the game. English versions of Deja Vu, Shadowgate and Maniac Mansion was also later bought and may have been released in every scandinavian country except Sweden.
Bergsala liked the idea of releasing games in swedish such as star wars galaxy heroes hack as they could be read and understood all over Scandinavia, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish languages are much similar to each other and most finnish (Finland) people are able to either speak or just understand Swedish. I had no trouble reading the swedish text in Maniac Mansion and actually enjoyed it much more than I probably would've if the game was completely in English, keep in mind that my English skills were even worse back then.
Well we probably would've seen both SNES and N64 games released in Swedish if it wasnt because quantity requirements today are quite larger than back in the NES days, meaning a larger financial risk for Bergsala to have a game translated. Personally I dont think these translations are worth much today either as most Scandinavian (European) teenagers read and understand English quite well.
After a little more research it turns out that it actually was people at Bergsala AB who translated the text in the game and sent it to Japan where the game was turned into the Swedish version. Bergsala would also do the game testing themselves (prototypes!! heh). Unfortunately there were a lot of spelling errors in Shadowgate, but I believe there was far less in Maniac Mansion and Deja Vu.
Bergsala had plans of releasing more NES games, titles not mentioned though, but due to lack of time to work on the translations and higher quantity limit only these 3 made it. The GBC release of Shadowgate did follow in the footsteps of the old NES version as it was released as a multilingul version with Swedish included.
