Fan Translations 2 - Game Sack -

 

hello and welcome to gamezac as you know many games were left in japan and never sold internationally and for a lot of those playing them can be difficultbecause language barrier poses quite the issue so in this episode let's take a look at some games that were left in japan but received some fan translations allowing english-speaking players to enjoy them as they were meant to be enjoyed up first is a game for a sega console that uses a keyboard and it has the word genesis in it

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first up is neon genesis evangelion typing project advanced on the dreamcast from gynax this one uses the dreamcast keyboard that's right you can now play another typing game on your dreamcast in english using your english keyboard thanks to the translation done by derek pasquerella aka a team anyway i'm always up for any game that uses the keyboard there are six different lessons here with three levels each for you to play it mostly works in a similar manner to the typing of the dead a word is shown on screen and you need to type it in before the timer runs out succeed and you move on to the next word fail and you get docked to point the different levels all have different visuals that have something to do with the neon genesis evangelion universe this one has winged robots that come and attack you with words but if you type them fast enough you can beat them up each robot has two words that they need typed in order for them to die forever and they proudly display those words so you can type them too i don't think these robots are very smart another has a character in the kitchen preparing a meal and she needs you to type enough words right in order to get the correct ingredients the words have nothing to do with the ingredients sadly another lesson has you doing some singing or some such and typing the words correctly will win whoever is singing the adulation of the audience my favorite one though is this one where you have to impress the girls with your sweet typing skills you have to type some words and the more you get right the hotter they get for you there is quite literally nothing more they liken a man than being accurate on the keyboard oh yeah if you get too many words wrong they actually end up hating you i mean if you can't even type a large percentage of words correctly in a limited amount of time what could your overall worth possibly be the visuals of the game are decent and the music is okay unfortunately the english words themselves are not curved very well and therefore have some odd spacing this can throw you off as you might input a space that shouldn't be there or just wonder what the word you're seeing is i hope they can fix this in future patches also there aren't a ton of words here and you'll be seeing the same ones quite a bit there also aren't any phrases or anything like that just singular words the difficulty of the words themselves range from easy to moderate but there aren't many super complex ones in here that's fine for now i think it's still fun to play another game like this on the dreamcast and i ended up enjoying this quite a bit there's no way i could have ever played this if it weren't translated so i'm certainly thankful that it was if you have a keyboard on your dreamcast and the ability to play patched games definitely try this one out

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here's sheen megami tensei for the super famicom from atlas this was translated way back in 2002 by aeon genesis wow two games in a row that have the word genesis i'm liking that this of course is in the megami tensei series and in case you didn't know so is persona i remember trying to play this one on the mega cd and of course i didn't get very far at the time the super famicom game seems very similar in most aspects from what i can recall you are a teenager who wakes up at the beginning of this rpg but only after a pretty weird dream you then wander around the mall in a first person perspective and i recommend you arm yourself with your allowance money you might as well get some survival gear to increase your defense as well eventually you'll go to sleep that night and have another creepy dream turns out that demons are infesting the world and you can fight them you even have a special computer program which allows you to talk to the demons you can choose to be friendly or intimidating sometimes you can scare demons off but usually you'll just end up fighting them anyway but it is kind of funny to go through the conversations with them the movement of the game could be a bit smoother but it's done well enough so you're never really confused about which way you're turning the graphics are otherwise kind of plain but it has its moments a bit of the text appears jumbled in some of the shops unfortunately i'm not sure if that's an issue with the translation or not i do know that the symbols are telling you if it's usable by a male or female character but it just doesn't look right the music is good and often kind of spooky

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i'm certainly not surprised that this was never released in the west back then as it deals with high school kids being murdered and other things that our puny western minds could never cope with in a million years thank goodness nintendo was there to shield us from this they save a little bit of society every day for the most part i'd say the translation is very well done and generally the game is enjoyable to play i absolutely recommend checking it out if you like rpgs

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there's also sheen megami tensei ii for the super famicom also translated by aeon genesis this one takes place in the future you still kill demons and stuff but the mood is a lot less spooky than the original the game more or less works the same way as before but it feels a bit snappier thankfully the overworld map is now represented isometrically and it looks futuristic even with how simple it is you can engage in virtual training which will let you fight monsters and gain experience and levels without worrying about dying though it will cost you some money the translation is rife with swearing so i guess maybe that makes up for the lack of spookiness if you're an edge lord you might like this one a little bit more the visuals look perhaps a touch more detailed but not much the music is pretty good but i think i might like how the first game sounded a bit more it's still worth checking out

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if you want to continue playing the shin megami tensei series be sure to check out part 3 as well as the digital devil saga games for the playstation 2. next up let's check out a hugely popular series from sega that most of us have never played sakura wars is one of sega's super popular franchises in japan over there they call it sakura tyson and the first game appeared on the saturn in 1996. it's one of the titles that made the console a big hit in japan and many sega fans have long wondered why sega never bothered to bring it over well for one the copious amount of text in the game would require a lot of translation not only that but there's a voice that would need to be translated as well all that costs money then there's the style of the game which undoubtedly made sega of america very nervous about localizing it fortunately a team led by noah steam and cj iwakara worked to release this with full english text basically the game is almost a visual novel with loads of text to sift through and not a whole lot of interactivity you're hired as part of an assault troop that's t-r-o-u-p-e as in a troupe of actors not t-r-o-o-p basically you work undercover with a bunch of girls in a stage theater and when the alarm sounds you go fight battles and stuff but you'll spend most of your time sifting through text you'll need to flirt with all of the girls to keep them happy too so be careful how you respond to everything you also have a limited amount of time to answer the questions indicated by the gauge that fills around the box this right here is a staple in the sakura wars series the game will let you know when a girl approves of your answer and likes you a bit more by the little chime that sounds man i wish i had that chime in real life sometimes the game gives you the illusion of interaction by pointing out on the map where you want to go but this is still somewhat limited as different conversations and whatnot will happen to you in route to wherever you selected to go sometimes you may never even get there because whatever needed to happen already happened and you visiting such and such a room is no longer needed there's quite a bit of full motion video that spans the game's two discs and even these are subtitled so you know what's going on there's still a lot of japanese voice that happens during the text scenes but i turn those off because they can prevent you from advancing the text as fast as you'd like sometimes you'll have to fight tactical battles like a strategy rpg these work well enough and are super easy to grasp how they work they're also pretty enjoyable then you get a preview of the upcoming episode just like alan wake anyone remember alan wake in the second episode a new girl joins the troupe and of course you gotta flirt with her as well she'll eventually help you out on the battlefield so that your numbers increase just try not to make anyone jealous the visuals look pretty soft on an lcd screen due to the anti-aliasing on the graphics but it still looks really nice and smooth on a crt the tactical battles look a little sharper the music is fairly nice for the most part and won't get on your nerves too much as for the translation itself it seems very professional better than some officially localized games if i do say so myself i don't blame sega for not bringing this over as the console's user base was smaller than it was in japan so it likely wouldn't have sold well but i still can't help but wonder how it would have been received had they done it if you want a relaxing game that you don't need to put a ton of effort into and just want to spend some leisure time with this is a good one i do sometimes feel a bit weird as a dude in my 40s flirting with teenage girls but hey  that's just part of the game

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sakura wars gb is for the game boy color  and it was released in the year 2000. indeed sega released a game on competing hardware as they hadn't quite bailed from the console scene yet not sure why they did this but here we are anyway this translation was handled by a team led by burnt ends 2. it takes place around the same time as the first saturn game which i just talked about and you'll see all the same characters here this one is quite a different game though yes there's plenty of text and story here and you still need to charm the girls if you can but there's also a bit more interactivity here basically you're a new cadet to the assault troop however you're only staying for a month each day you more or less do the same thing when you wake up you explore which gives you one chance to talk to someone who's staying at the theater slash headquarters then you train to improve your stats this happens automatically and is quick then you explore again which means you'll have another quick conversation then you can train again but this time you can choose how to train this will affect which gauge increases each time you train you lose stamina you can choose to forego your afternoon training to sleep to regain some of your stamina then you explore once more at night to have a final conversation then you go to sleep the next day you repeat the process and you're there for 31 days you don't have to do this each and every single day though as you have sundays off sometimes you'll engage in a mock battle these work a lot differently than the saturn game they're in first person and you have to choose via selecting text how you approach and battle the other mech or whatever it is i usually survive by the skin of my teeth so it's a bit tougher than the saturn game you can also unlock mini games one for each character these all have names that are based on sega franchises like beats of rage or grind gear radio of course these play nothing like their namesakes but they can be fun as they're usually pretty simple this one reminds me of the shooting scenes in snatcher as it works exactly the same way but you need to be faster than she is once again the translation is very well done no complaints here at all the days in the game go by quickly so you'll finish all 31 days in no time but it's meant for multiple playthroughs to unlock everything by the way the rom size is pretty big for a game boy color cartridge clocking in at just over 4 megabytes in video game terms that's 32 mega power oh my about half of the game is filled with voice samples many of which were cut from the retail release but the voices are still in the rom for example in the retail version at the end of the game you get this one line which is voiced but the translation team has restored the voices so now the entire sequence is voiced yeah it's still in japanese but it's still pretty cool for a game boy color game actually there's five minutes of total voice in the game eat your heart out joe montana sports talk football i can't believe it another interesting thing is that there is code in the rom for a planned peripheral to link the game to the dreamcast version of sakura wars but of course the peripheral ended up never existing they do plan to restore the bonuses that you get from this however this is another very relaxing game to play in the series

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i'm really glad i was finally able to play some of the sakura wars games in english after so many years and apparently i'm not done because i have one more to cover it's a bit of an odd one also be sure to stick around for the last game because it's good

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the last of the sakura war games translated into english that i'll be showing you today is sakura wars columns 2 on the dreamcast this one was translated by derek pasquerella burnt ends 2 blaster mania and danbot 4. there's a normal mode where you just play columns 2 with the various characters and yes i know this is the second game that combines sakura wars with columns hence the two but columns 2 is the first to introduce the versus mode so i'm rolling with it the background image changes a lot and they all have a ton of stuff to say the voices are all still in japanese but i don't think you need to know what they say i mean this is columns 2 after all i don't like the battling aspect that seems to be so popular with these games when a whole bunch of nonsense like this drops on my side that just pisses me off let me play the game on my own without this craziness please granted if you're playing with two players dropping this kind of nonsense on your opponent does make it a little bit more fun but not with single player anyway as you can obviously see characters from sakura wars have been inserted and that does add some fresh play mechanics there's a gauge that fills up when you clear some gems when it gets full you can choose one of three commands defend will clear a couple of lines at the bottom to give you a bit more space attack will drop nonsense blocks on your opponent's side making sure that they also hate columns too selecting charge will let you continue to build up your power so that when you attack you drop more nonsense blocks or when you defend you clear more lines i of course never use this because well i suck at the game but wait there's also a story mode this is all now in english it looks just like the saturn game but with much higher resolution visuals of course you have similar text dialogues and questions to answer within a limited time this chick apparently has amnesia for some reason naturally the only way to fix that is to play columns 2 columns 2 recommended by more doctors than any other match 3 puzzle game except here it's much more difficult and dare i say annoying still the visuals in this game are great and even the music is good the controls are also responsive and the english text has also done well in fact the only english in the original game was the press start button on the title screen they had to change everything else but in the end well it's still columns too fancy columns too with a story so i've got to give credit where it's due they did enhance the game with some new play mechanics

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finally we have bulk slash on the sega saturn from hudson soft i actually reviewed this one way back in the very first left in japan episode in early 2012. it's a really cool mech game that has some anime girls that act as your navigator they talk a lot and of course you have no clue what they're saying

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well now it's been translated into english and this project was spearheaded by lacquerware of course now your mission briefing screens and whatnot are in english so that's nice but the project doesn't end there oh no that's right they translated all of the japanese voice and inserted english voice and you know what it sounds really really good the only road sergeant first class reporting i honestly wasn't expecting much but they really delivered and then some nearing target straight ahead there are five different girls in the game that are your navigators they more or less tell you where to go and comment on how well or how crappy you're doing just one left shield recovered the animation of them in the little window is also really well done for a video game of this time something i failed to mention back in 2012 each girl has their own personality once you unlock them you can choose your navigator before you pick your first stage then you're stuck with her for the rest of the game unless you start over the game itself is super fun and it gets more fun the more you play you run around and destroy targets in certain stages listening to your navigator to find them you can also press a button to turn into a flying thingymabob which can go anywhere then guess what you're not going to believe this you fight a boss one stage in particular is an escort mission which i originally hated because the ship would always get shot down what are you doing however this stage became exceedingly easy once i discovered that you can just ignore the ship and just pay attention to wrecking everyone's lives on the ground in another stage you need to carry a bomb to a predetermined location and plant it hudson was fairly inventive with the stage design here the controls work well especially after you change them so that you rotate with the d-pad instead of the lnr buttons i personally preferred rotating with the l r buttons as a mech but rotating with the d-pad as i'm flying around as a thingamabob the graphics are mostly really good for the console what's not good however is the draw distance that's because most areas are densely packed with polygonal structures and whatnot i can understand that but it can make bosses tough to fight as if they get more than 50 feet away or so they fade out into nothingness the polygons do fade into and out of existence with transparency like sonic r which is an impressive feat for the saturn at least they do on this stage it's not tremendously consistent throughout the game for whatever reason the music is super good i haven't heard one bad track and of course the voices all have acting that is perfectly suited for the game they sound professional and the sound quality is also extremely good

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seriously kudos to the translation team here another thing that should be mentioned is that they added support for the saturn twin stick in this game those things are a bit hard to come by so sadly i don't have one and can't try it believe me i'd love to try it though i'd just love to have a twin stick it's sad that this game never came out in the west but at least now we can finally play it as it could have been maybe even a little better don't miss out on this one onwards

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we're nearing a target you nitwit onwards onwards to the rear there you go a handful of games that have been translated into english so that you can play them i've tried to link to many of the patches in the description below so check them out if you're interested i don't know about you but i love being able to read and comprehend the games that i play in fact i hope the mega drive game surging aurig is an english translation someday kind of surprised that it hasn't really surprised actually anyway what are some of your favorite translation projects let me know in the meantime thank you for watching game sag

flashback on the 16-bit sega genesis fantastic game or at least that's what i hear i haven't played it i can't play it reason being the manual manual's missing i don't know how to play it i mean what do you expect me to do plug it in and figure things out on my own without at least a lengthy tutorial but there is a solution and that is a japanese mega drive version of flashback and i know this has a manual that's right let's get this bad boy in there and play it all right now let's see how to play it

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how about miss pac-man maybe i can play this oh please have a manual oh thank god