The Japanese equivalent of Comic Sans is called “Soueikaku Poptai” (創英角ポップ体). And like Comic Sans, it sure can make cool things uncool. Especially video game titles.
Picture: muska
Recently, Twitter users in Japan have been uploading photos under the tag #絶対に創英角ポップ体しか使ってはいけないゲーム業界, showing how titles would look if the game industry were compelled to use the awful font.
For example, here is the original Final Fantasy Type-0 logo. Note the font! Isn’t it cool?
And now the Soueikaku Poptai version:
Picture: hosiken
Blergh.
Here’s the original Phantasy Star Online 2 logo:
Soueikaku Poptai version below:
Picture: mituguma
Gah.
The original Yakuza logo:
And then…
Picture: audrey1967
So, yes, the font also makes Japanese look bad. It makes everything look bad. Everything.
Picture: s5d2ce7dsugtc
Picture: sugar0079
Picture: s5d2ce7dsugtc
Picture: TB03x105E
*This says “Gran Turismo 5.”
Picture: himablack
Picture: sugar0079
Picture: m_tr
Getting in on the meme, some game’s official Twitter accounts even uploaded images:
Picture: wargamingjapan
Picture: EDF_OFFICIAL
Soueikaku Poptai sure knows how to make cool games look awful.
Comments
6 responses to “How To Ruin Video Game Titles With Crappy Font”
Comic Sans is still far worse.
I actually really like the Mother 2 one. Makes me think of Tintin comics or something.
I didn’t think the Japanese cared about fonts like we do. It always annoys me how amateurish the fonts look in things like Final Fantasy trailers.
As someone who studied typography, this font just hurts. Its strokes have such varying thicknesses and the angles are just bad. Especially noticeable in the Assassin’s Creed logo… Ugh!
Keep in mind that the focus of the font is most likely the Japanese kana rather than the latin characters.
It’d be the equivalent of you designing an English language font and then throwing in some hiragana glyphs. You might (correctly) assume that most of your audience won’t understand them, so it is best to put the time into the other glyphs.
Well I couldn’t find any info on the actual font itself by doing a Google search, but I would also agree that it most likely wasn’t created with Latin characters in mind. But I would also gather that if this is meant to be the Japanese equivalent of Comic Sans, then it also looks terrible in relation to their alphabet.
That font makes the titles look like those Chinese bootleg game covers to me.