Bowser overthrown?

I was playing SMB3 yesterday and I noticed something very weird. The PAL version (which I currently own) of the game is pretty much the same as the NTSC version, but after beating World 7, I noticed a difference in Bowser's letter when compared to the NTSC version (which I had owned previously).





For some reason the European release has had the author of the letter changed from "King of the Koopa" to "Koopa Troopa". I don't understand this change because the European version was released after the North American one so they couldn't have made that mistake accidentally, unless they translated the name from the Japanese release again which wouldn't make much sense. Bowser has always been called "Kuppa" in Japan and from what I recall Koopa Troopas are called "Nokonoko".

JP letter: くっぱ (Kuppa)

US letter: King of the Koopa

EU letter: Koopa Troopa

The sentence "She's here in my castle, if you dare to try and rescue her." obviosly implies that the author is the owner of the castle. Therefore the conclusion is that one of Bowser's underlings had taken rule at the time of the localization and had ordered Bowser to guard the princess. On the other hand, while the castle may be in the author's possession, it doesn't necessarily mean that he has taken Bowser's place as king of the Koopas. Perhaps Bowser was just using the Koopa Troopa's castle temporarily. Making the Koopa Troopa go kidnap the princess was a jerk move though.

Anyways I am overthinking it and barely making sense anymore. What do you think?

The Europeans thought that it would have been to unrealistic to have a king send you a letter.


So they just made one of his turtle minions send it to you.

Booo95 wrote:

The Europeans thought that it would have been to unrealistic to have a king send you a letter.


So they just made one of his turtle minions send it to you.

As far as I'm aware, letters are generally signed by the author, not the message sender. If the minion is the author of the letter, then wouldn't he/she be referring to the castle as "my King's castle" or something similar? I would understand if the minion had kidnapped the princess (though doesn't Bowser usually do it himself?), so it's fair to say "I kidnapped the princess..." et cetera.

maybe it's just something to do with the translation. they might have translated it themselves from the japanese version instead of using the american one. i've read a lot of mangas, and depending on who the translator is, you will get different variations of the sentence or even completely different sentences. maybe they translated it the way they thought it was supposed to be

yuki_fox_demon wrote:

maybe it's just something to do with the translation. they might have translated it themselves from the japanese version instead of using the american one. i've read a lot of mangas, and depending on who the translator is, you will get different variations of the sentence or even completely different sentences. maybe they translated it the way they thought it was supposed to be

Sounds fair, though the EU translation is (AFAIK) exactly the same as the US translation with the exception of the last letter, which seems uncommonly coincidental.

hmm very interesting