Posted by Bob Mackey
With the Mother 3 translation looming on the horizon that is Friday (or Saturday), this is looking to be a great week for the fan translation scene. But Mother 3 isn't the only Japanese game to receive obsessive attention from devoted fans; yesterday marked the release of the translation patch for Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Due to their general size and complexity, very few PSX games are fan-translated (the most notable one being Tales of Phantasia), so this is quite a feat. But I'll let the trailer say more than my words ever could:
The story behind Persona 2 is an interesting one; we actually got one of the Persona 2 games, Eternal Punishment, in the States back in 2000. For whatever reason--probably the low profits involved in localizing a niche RPG on a dying system--Atlus opted to bring out the second Persona 2 game, leaving Innocent Sin to the same fate as the last two chapters in the Shining Force 3 trilogy. Now, thanks to the work of a few devoted fans, we'll finally get to play one of the missing chapters in a series that's really picked up steam in the US since Persona 2's release.
I gotta say, if you love video games, hobbyist translators are possibly the best people in the world. It's strange; the translation scene doesn't feel nearly as large or productive as it did back in the late 90s/early 00s, but every so often there's a huge release that proves they aren't going away anytime soon. And if they're taking requests for any future projects, might I recommend Marvelous: Another Treasure Island? Something about not getting to play a Nintendo-developed SNES RPG directed by Eiji Aonuma (who's basically been head honcho of Zelda since Ocarina of Time) makes the world seem much more horrible.
Related Links:
The End of Time and the Beginning of Fan Drama
TVTropes' "Woolseyisms"
The Mother 3 Translation is Coming (For Real This Time)!
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About Bob Mackey
For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's
Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.
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