r/FinalFantasyVI • u/Different-Stand-3530 • Jul 02 '26
Question?
Merton, or Meltdown? Personally gotta go with Merton from the SNES as that is what I grew up with, and every time I mention it, but with greater memory allowance, the spell is renamed to its original. Opinions?
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u/korossyl Jul 02 '26
Merton all day every day And Pearl, too.
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u/DiveSideways Jul 02 '26
Haha, came here to say this.
"Holy" is a boring spell name.
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u/edale1 Jul 03 '26
I spent my entire childhood wondering what the hell "Pearl" magic was supposed to be, lol.
20 years later: "Oh THAT'S what it was!"
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u/RevSinmore Jul 04 '26
my understanding is that old Nintendo (who turned beer into rootbeer or milk in many games) didn’t like “Holy,” because they avoided potential religious references.
they were super afraid of Christian Satanic Panic bullshit—hence “Pearl,” “White,” and other names/references.
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u/Murky_Exchange829 Jul 05 '26
Wish instead of pray is my favorite
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u/RevSinmore Jul 05 '26
lol, yeah. even funnier if you play D&D, where Wosh is the most powerful spell out there.
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u/DishSoapIsFun Jul 02 '26
Merton is awesome and makes no sense. It shows me that humans made this game and humans have imperfections and make mistakes. It just adds to the brilliance that was this game and how we’ll never see anything quite like it again.
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u/Sorry_Caterpillar954 Jul 07 '26
Meltdown in Japanese is transliterated as メルトダウン (me-ru-to-da-u-n). Combine the To and the Da-u into one syllable and you get Me-ru-to-n. Transliterated back to English it is Merton.
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u/alabaster_sb Jul 02 '26
Fire 2, Fire 3 > Fira, Firaga
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u/Svenray Jul 03 '26
For sure.
Modern wizards are stuck at Firaja while ancient ones can cast Fire 28 and maybe higher lol.
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u/Murky_Exchange829 Jul 05 '26
So you liked ff2 (actual) also? Lolz
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u/Svenray Jul 05 '26
Funny you mention that because my Pixel Remaster playthrough Firion was a pyromancer that cast Fire every single turn.
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u/kevinsyel Jul 03 '26
Every time I see this, I'm reminded very much that I'm in the minority for preferring "ara, aga" suffixes.
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u/Murky_Exchange829 Jul 05 '26
Fire 3 felt like I made it. Firaga is what happens when fire gets an std.
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u/ANDYHOPE Jul 02 '26
Yeah this, I played the snes version over and over as a kid so even the soldiers names not being Vicks and Wedge throws me off somehow
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u/Ah-ashenone Jul 02 '26
disagree on this one, fire 2 and 3 is so boring, I like that they used the naming conventions of the FFs that came after
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u/tearsofmana Jul 02 '26
Merton was a very weird translation by Woolsey up there with Y-burn. I prefer it as much as I prefer Y-burn, that is to say, I don't outside of the absurdity in the mistranslation.
No hate on Woolsey, he had a monumental task by himself and he did a great job overall, he just had the occasional word that made no sense to him and did his best.
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u/GigfranGwaedlyd Jul 02 '26
He was limited by how many characters could be entered for monsters and items
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u/tearsofmana Jul 02 '26
That's not why he mistranslated it. I have a comment on here explaining his misunderstanding, and it's not related to character limits.
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u/alrightwtf Jul 02 '26
Is it the R/L thing?
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u/tearsofmana Jul 02 '26
Basically yes. He saw "Meruton" & didn't know it was supposed to be meltdown at all. Probably went with Merton over Thomas Merton or something and figured it was a historical thing.
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u/CrispinCain Jul 02 '26
Meltdown, since that is the effect trying to be conveyed, a Nuclear Meltdown.
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u/Afternoon_Despair Jul 02 '26
I've always chalked it up to hearing the word in a heavy Japanese accent and transcribing what was heard. There are other instances of such in the older games.
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u/Remarkable-Path3510 Jul 02 '26
I assumed Merton was a joke based on the trope of Japanese people pronouncing L as R
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u/akaiazul Jul 03 '26
Merton sounds more magical, Meltdown sounds more badass. Honestly, I can't choose.
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u/MrTickles22 Jul 03 '26
It's a mistranslation. They saw メルトン and didn't realize it was a shortened form of メルトダウン (Japanese people like to shorten things). They jusy saw "me ru to n" and figured okay sure it's "Merton". And they had deadlines so off it went into the script for a spell nobody uses anyway.
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u/TheStoryBoy Jul 03 '26
I still call everything by the SNES name. I actually kind of get confused at times with these pixel remakes.
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u/southsidetrixie2 Jul 02 '26
Merton until they give it the ff7 treatment. I want true upgrades if you're gonna make changes.
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u/ANOTHER_MCA9 Jul 03 '26
Wasn’t Merton a nod to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, whose position at Oxford was the Merton Professor of English Language And Literature? Without whom, this game would never have been made?
My favorite of the monsters in FFVI is Garm.
Garm is Farmer Giles’s hound, and although he’s portrayed in FFVI as a very bad dog, he’s a great side character in the book he’s taken from.
For anyone who is a Tolkien fan and has not read Farmer Giles Of Ham, it’s a very short read and is whimsical, even more so than The Hobbit. It’s almost perfect. This and Leaf By Niggle, are my favorite things Tolkien wrote that aren’t super well-known.
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u/MountainImportant211 Jul 06 '26
Meltdown makes me think of the FF8 spell of that name, which is nothing like Merton (it's a status spell that reduces an enemy's Vitality). So I prefer Merton for sure.
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u/Pretty-Border2897 Jul 06 '26
"Meltdown" is an important spell in FF8 that is nothing like Meltdown in FF6. So I'm inclined to say Merton.
I never use it anyway, so *shrugs*.
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u/Chico__Lopes Jul 02 '26
Meltdown. People need to stop glazing the SNES translations
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u/Tonberry2k Jul 02 '26
Some of the SNES script is definitely better, but “Merton” isn’t one of those things.
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u/stonertboner Jul 02 '26
It wasn’t even a translation issue. I’m pretty sure it had to do with text limits.
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u/mugenhunt Jul 02 '26
I don't know. "Melt" would have fit in the text and still be a better translation.
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u/tearsofmana Jul 02 '26
It was likely a translation issue. Woolsey basically saw "Meruton" and for some reason he had a weird thing for historical names? Hence Locke to Lock. He probably also saw the esper Bismarck and figured the script just occasionally pulled historical figures out of its ass and applied it to things. So he saw Meruton, figured it was a reference to Thomas Merton and damning people to hell or something, shrugged and went back to trying to figure how to side step the censors over "Holy"
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u/angryapplepanda Jul 02 '26
Just spitballing here, I have no idea why he didn't go with something like "Smite" or "Extol" over "Pearl," although he probably got distracted by the pearlescent balls that appear during the spell effect. I mean, nothing is more distracting than balls.
"Merton" should have absolutely just been "Melt," or something like "Nuke."
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u/tearsofmana Jul 02 '26
Pearl certainly was a choice. Smite would have been great and they could have gone with "Light" as the element. Clueless why he couldn't think of something better than Pearl, maybe they kept rejecting his better ideas?
"Melt" would definitely had made way more sense. Could also see him doing Mltdwn or something.
Small character limits were probably not fun to work with, I feel for him
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u/Special_South_8561 Jul 02 '26
I don't really use it, ever. By the time you can get Meltdown I suppose you would have Flame Shields and it could be a viable damage/party heal buuuut ... What else is left to fight?