ABSTRACT
Any translation of a digital object, whether a .docx file, a PDF, or an NES ROM, is intrinsically bound to the idiomatic contours of its supporting technology. Understanding how complex material transformations are necessary for software translations to function helps us better understand how platforms – the bounded configurations of hardware, software, players and markets – inform and inflect the process of game translation and localization. Informed by platform studies perspectives in game studies, this chapter provides a focused technical look ‘behind the screens’ of multiple commercial and hobbyist translations of the NES game Dragon Warrior and their relationship to the computational affordances of the game’s host platform, the Nintendo Entertainment System.
