Duality ZF is now officially 双攻 (Double Attack) in Japanese.  Let us know what you think about our new bilingual logo!

Duality ZF, officially translated to 双攻 in Japanese,
which means "Double Attack".

Our bilingual logo, in English and Japanese.
It's a dual-language logo, further playing on our duality concept!

Learn Some Japanese:

双攻 translates back to English as "Double Attack".  It is comprised of two words, 双 and 攻, which mean "twin" and "attack", respectively.  The Japanese language often combines words to create new words with more elaborate meanings.  It is a very interesting and philosophical language.  I would love to learn more of it.

Here are some Google Translate links for your convenience:

http://translate.google.com/translate_t?tl=en#ja|en|%E5%8F%8C%E6%94%BB (双攻 to Double Attack)
http://translate.google.com/translate_t?tl=en#ja|en|%E5%8F%8C (双 to Twin)
http://translate.google.com/translate_t?tl=en#ja|en|%E6%94%BB (攻 to Attack)

For your information, Duality directly translated to 双対性, which also is made up of the word 双, which means "twin":

http://translate.google.com/translate_t?tl=en#en|ja|Duality (Duality to 双対性)

I will leave it up to you to see what various combinations and orderings of 双, 対, and 性 mean!

Where's the ZF?!

"ZF" fans may be wondering why the ZF disappeared in the Japanese translation.  Since ZF is an English military abbreviation, that stands for "Zone of Fire" (details deep on our Duality ZF page), it did not translate well into Japanese.  ZF translated literally would not be an abbreviation in Japanese.  We would have to skip the abbreviation and translate "Zone of Fire" directly, which is now more than we wish to convey in our title.  So we dropped it.

Correct me if I am wrong (see "I Stand Corrected" below), but as far as I have learned, it is cooler to have a shorter Japanese name than a long one.  We already had two words, so we did not want anymore.  A few shoot'em up games I researched had only two, as well.  Ikaruga is 斑鳩 (Spot + Dove).  Raiden is 雷電 (Lightning + Electric).  So we were fine with 双攻 (Twin + Attack).

Another example I looked up, remembering the Japanese in the title screen, is one of my favorite Sega Genesis games, "The Revenge of Shinobi".  In Japanese it is just 忍, which is Shinobi.  To translate "The Revenge of Shinobi" fully would make 忍復讐 or longer.  As you can see, just 忍 is cooler.

I Stand Corrected!

I just received the following email from a Japanese friend who wanted to clarify my misleading words above:

http://xona.com/2009/10/17.html
You wrote "Correct me if I am wrong".

>Ikaruga is 斑鳩 (Spot + Dove). Raiden is 雷電 (Lightning + Electric).

斑鳩 and 雷電 are proper nouns.

斑(madara) means 'spot' and 鳩(hato) means 'dove'. Those are right.
But, 斑鳩(ikaruga) means 'Japanese grosbeak", not '斑 and 鳩(spot and dove)'

雷電(raiden), the name of shoot'em-up derives from that of fighter aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_J2M
So, in this case, '雷電(raiden)' is not '雷 and 電' or 'lightning and electric'.

Thank you, friend!   I actually knew 雷電 (Raiden) was a proper noun, in of itself, and derived from the fighter aircraft mentioned in the email above, so it was misleading for me to break it down into 雷 and 電 (Lightning + Electric) as if that was the true origin.

Translate Duality ZF?

Are you interested in translating Duality ZF into your native language?  Would you like to double check our Japanese translation?  Please contact us.

Thanks to nal:

I would like to thank nal for working with us on a proper translation of Duality ZF into Japanese, and suggesting 双攻 (Double Attack) as the title.

Also See:

• Duality ZF (official developer site)
• CBC News (TV, radio, website)
• Duality ZF Dream Build Play 2009 Top 20 Finalist (2nd in Canada, 7th in the world)
• Interviews (Xona Games, Duality ZF)
• Duality ZF Promo Materials

External Links:

• Duality ZF (official game site)
• Duality ZF Forums (hosted on xbox.com)
• Xona Games (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo)
• Dream Build Play (Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Contest)
• Xbox LIVE Indie Games* (xbox.com, Xbox Forums)
• Imphenzia Music (creator of the Duality ZF soundtrack)

*Xbox LIVE Indie Games formerly known as Xbox LIVE Community Games.

About the Author:  I am Matthew Doucette of Xona Games, an award-winning, team-of-two indie studio concentrating on "intense retro" games (Xbox LIVE, PSN, WiiWare, and Windows PC). We've released Decimation X (XBLIG), a 1-4 player shmup, #1 best selling and #1 top rated XBLIG in Japan. We're working on Duality ZF (XBLA), a groundbreaking 1-4 player shmup, which placed #1 in Canada and #5 in the world in Microsoft's Dream Build Play 2010 contest. It features dual play, the ability to control two fighters at once, and a massively upgradable 32-stage spread/laser weapon system. 4 player dual play allows up to eight fighters at once.  Many of these features are never before seen shoot'em up firsts. Both games feature beautiful electronic Imphenzia soundtracks.  Help spread the word with our official dualityzf.com and decimationx.com websites.

P.S. Watch out for Score Rush (official website scorerush.com), another 1-4 player shmup. Coming soon to XBLIG.

*Shmup also known as: shoot'em up, 2D shooter, scrolling shooter, space shooter, spaceship shooter, retro shooter, etc.