Ambrosia of the Videogameophiliac

Wikipedia is a powerful(ish) knowledge base for many situations.  In college, it was a resource for papers... a weak resource that was used to branch off into other areas.  Whatever, at the time professors hadn't caught on yet.  In life, it is used as a random trivia device.  Useless facts aplenty on there.  The truthiness of them, well that's debatable.

Last week, however, it provided a new bit of information that led me into a world of ecstacy.  At the time I was browsing the various RPGs in a modern setting that I knew of, like Earthbound and Persona.  When I got to the entry for Persona 2: Innocent Sin I saw a small entry at the bottom that floored me. Somebody had translated the game into English.

This game is coupled with Persona 2: Eternal Punishment to form the entire experience of the second game in the Persona series.  It was vital, it was necessary, it was... never released in America.  All along we were playing half a game.  A rare, great glimpse of an entire game.  Atlus never saw fit to publish the game stateside.  So I played Eternal Punishment and moved on, never really putting a second thought into it.  That led to last week, years later, when I made the discovery.  I immediately went to the site linked in the article.  What greeted me, these pictures.





It was Innocent Sin!  It was in English.  I was fortunate to discover this patch existed after it had already been completed.  Already having had the game on my computer, I immediately patched it with the given tools and began playing.  It was the ultimate payoff, the ultimate discovery.  I can't thank TranslatorTom for bringing us such a top notch translation.  Truly better than most official translations.

This patch brings up the issue of fan translations.  I'm sure to the companies they either have the attitude that it's encouraging piracy or that it's their time they can do what they want.  If the companies really think that it encourages piracy, perhaps they should attempt to understand their hardcore fanbase a little better.

Take a look at Mother 3.  This game is the conclusion of the hugely popular underground hit EarthBound series.  The second game in the series, EarthBound, was released in America on the SNES.  Three generations ago.  And yet to this day it still has a massive underground following of devoted fans.  Mother 3 was released after years of work on the GBA... but only in Japan.  This excited the fans, who believed that an English release wouldn't be far away.  Then time passed.  And passed.  There was no official word on an English release, which prompted internet translators to begin work on an English version for the ROM.  They promised to immediately cease their work if word ever came out of an official translation.  Completely ignoring the fans, Nintendo never had the game translated.  After a long labor of love, the Mother 3 English patch was released last year.

Dozens of translation patches exist on the internet.  I know, because it's how I've played some of the best games that I would never have been able to otherwise.  Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2), Star Ocean, and Romancing SaGa 3.

I want to personally thank the translators out there for their work.  I have enjoyed hundreds of hours of great Japanese games that I never could've without them.  I hope that the companies will one day start to pay better attention to their hardcore and niche fanbases, at least in respect to what should be brought stateside.  (Okay they did it with those Disgaea games, but I fucking hated those!)