With the Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster launching this September, we’re getting more and more details about these niche card-based RPGs from back in the GameCube days. And series director Yasuyuki Honne recently revealed that Baten Kaitos almost wasn’t called Baten Kaitos (thanks to our sister site, Time Extension!).
Sharing the details on Twitter, Honne revealed that (translated by Simon Griffin and SatsumaFS for Nintendo Everything) “there was a lot of opposition” to the name at Namco. Honne doesn’t specify what Namco, now known as Bandai Namco, thought at the time or why they changed their mind, but we’re glad they did.
Here’s Honne’s tweet (translated via Nintendo Everything):
“Thanks to the kindness of Bandai Namco, the world I worked so hard to create, and the maps I worked so hard to draw twenty years ago have been resurrected! Incidentally, I was the one that named the title ‘Baten Kaitos’, but there was a lot of opposition from higher-ups at Namco to the name…we got it passed though!”
Baten Kaitos is an unusual name at first glance, but anyone who’s played the game may have done a bit of extra digging to find out what it means. Baten Kaitos is actually the traditional name for Zeta Ceti, a binary star in the Cetus constellation. It’s an Arabic phrase which translates to “belly of the sea monster”. Cetus is also known as ‘The Whale’, and is named after a sea monster in Greek mythology.
Both constellations and sea monsters — specifically a sea whale — are prominent in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean and Baten Kaitos Origins. Multiple different locations, weapons, and moves are named after other Arabic star constellations. An entire sidequest is dedicated to collecting star constellations and rebuilding a map, too. The sea whale is a bit more spoiler-y, but it’s an important figure in the lore of the series’ world. So ‘Baten Kaitos’ is a very deliberate name.
With the Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster launching this September, we’re getting more and more details about these niche card-based RPGs from back in the GameCube days. And series director Yasuyuki Honne recently revealed that Baten Kaitos almost wasn’t called Baten Kaitos (thanks to our sister site, Time Extension!).
Sharing the details on Twitter, Honne revealed that (translated by Simon Griffin and SatsumaFS for Nintendo Everything) “there was a lot of opposition” to the name at Namco. Honne doesn’t specify what Namco, now known as Bandai Namco, thought at the time or why they changed their mind, but we’re glad they did.
Here’s Honne’s tweet (translated via Nintendo Everything):
“Thanks to the kindness of Bandai Namco, the world I worked so hard to create, and the maps I worked so hard to draw twenty years ago have been resurrected! Incidentally, I was the one that named the title ‘Baten Kaitos’, but there was a lot of opposition from higher-ups at Namco to the name…we got it passed though!”
Baten Kaitos is an unusual name at first glance, but anyone who’s played the game may have done a bit of extra digging to find out what it means. Baten Kaitos is actually the traditional name for Zeta Ceti, a binary star in the Cetus constellation. It’s an Arabic phrase which translates to “belly of the sea monster”. Cetus is also known as ‘The Whale’, and is named after a sea monster in Greek mythology.
Both constellations and sea monsters — specifically a sea whale — are prominent in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean and Baten Kaitos Origins. Multiple different locations, weapons, and moves are named after other Arabic star constellations. An entire sidequest is dedicated to collecting star constellations and rebuilding a map, too. The sea whale is a bit more spoiler-y, but it’s an important figure in the lore of the series’ world. So ‘Baten Kaitos’ is a very deliberate name.
