The group stated plans to translate Final Fantasy V, but their efforts were never publicly released. A revival began in 1996 when a group calling themselves Kowasu Ku formed under the lead of one "Hazama". The development of console emulators led to access to foreign video games. These were possible before emulation on PCs became popular (or even adequate enough to play games) because the games were on floppy disks, and were therefore easier to distribute to the users, in comparison to ROM cartridges used by video game consoles (the MSX also used cartridges, but methods were discovered to copy the content onto floppy disks and other media too). Their other projects include Fray, Rune Master 3, Xak - The Art of Visual Stage, Xak 2, Xak - The Tower of Gazzel, Ys, Ys II: The Final Chapter and Wanderers From Ys. Konami’s RPG SD Snatcher was translated in April 1993, and Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes was translated in 1995. The earliest fan translations were done by Oasis, a group formed by Dennis Lardenoye and Ron Bouwland, two Dutch fans of the MSX system. Some already translated RPGs are available on reproduction cartridges to play on the real hardware for some systems like the SNES. Some consider the peak to have been reached with the translation of Seiken Densetsu 3 (sequel to Secret of Mana, eventually given an official translation as Trials of Mana), a title that was highly desirable to RPG players and also very difficult to translate on a technical basis.
These were usually parts of popular series such as Square Enix's Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The fan translation community was at its most popular, and attracted the most media attention, when certain popular game titles were still being worked on. įan translations may also be done to titles that have received official localizations that fans perceive as flawed for example, if the game had controversial content removed (such as Bionic Commando), or there were unnecessary changes in plot and character names (such as Phantasy Star). A fan translation is also started if a certain game released in Japan is not announced for localization within one year from its Japanese release. Fan translations to English have provided a starting point for translations to many other languages. It has since expanded to include other languages as well. The central focus of the fan translation community is historically of Japanese-exclusive computer and video games being made playable in English for the first time, and sometimes of games recently released in Japan that are import-worthy and are unlikely to be officially localized to English-speaking countries.
In dealing with translations of console games, a console emulator is generally utilized to play the final product, although unofficial hardware, hardware mods or software mods can be used to run the translated ROM image on its native hardware.
Fan translations of PC games, on the other hand, can involve translation of many binary files throughout the game's directory which are packaged and distributed as fan patch. The knowledge and tools that came out of this community allowed them to work with translators to localize video game titles that had never been available outside of their original country of origin.įan translations of video game console games are usually accomplished by modifying a single binary ROM image of the game. A community of people developed that were interested in replaying and modifying the games they played in their youth. The fan translation practice grew with the rise of video game console emulation in the late 1990s. In video gaming, a fan translation is an unofficial translation of a video game made by fans. Original Japanese is on the left RPGe's translation is on the right. RPGe's translation of Final Fantasy V was one of the early major fan-translated works.