No time to waste: fans make plans

Gamers are a passionate breed of people. When a new game is released that isn’t available in their language, they will take to social media and whip up a storm about it. And if games companies drag their feet on the subject of localization or, worse, decide not to localize the game at all (because of the financial layout and the time and resources required), gamers will take matters into their own hands.

One of the earliest, most significant fan translations was for critically acclaimed Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. The game was originally launched by Konami in 1990, who then waited 16 years to release an official English language version. Fans got impatient. Over in the Netherlands, Maarten ter Huurne started working on a localized version and, after teaming up remotely with translator Takamichi Suzukawa, they released their own, unofficial English language version in a mere seven years.

Language wars: fans vs. developers (and fans vs. fans)

Though such efforts are often warmly received by the fans, the games companies have been ambivalent. During the struggles for and against a fan translation of Final Fantasy Type-o, Square Enix, the company behind the game, contacted the fan translation team that had taken up the challenge of creating an unofficial localization of the game. The fans were told that the company intended to protect its copyrights but was willing to set up talks with the fans to see if mutual solutions could be found that would leave both parties happy.

Such ‘conversations’ dragged on; meanwhile, schisms appeared in the fan translation team between those who were impatient to get on with the translation, and those who wanted to honour team’s official position of playing ball with Square Enix. Then Square Enix made a sudden announcement that it was preparing to release its own, official localization. Some members of the fan team felt used and hurriedly went ahead and released the version of the game that they’d been working on. Square Enix immediately ordered the unofficial version to be taken down. The situation got messy, with fallouts between the fans and the company, and in-fighting between the fans themselves. SkyBladeCloud, the fan who had initially headed up the fan translation team blogged: “[a] certain game company thinks that threats and false accusations are the way to treat its biggest fans”.

Many hands make light work

For an undertaking that seems so arduous, long and painful, why do it? For most of the games hackers and renegade translators, translating a game or ROMhacking (as it is properly referred to by those who do it) is a labour of love. An article on hardcoregaming101.net cites Nightcrawler, a self-proclaimed ‘Dark Angel of ROM hacking’: “Do NOT underestimate the amount of work that goes into a translation. There is a good reason that the number of abandoned projects to completed projects is probably around 20:1 or higher.” Usually starting a game translation as a self-taught, after-school project, teenaged hackers will work alone until they find kindred spirits on the internet, and form groups to divide the labour according to each individual’s specific skill-sets, whether that’s decoding, encoding and re-encoding the script files, translating the text, graphics hacking and even music editing.

The more specifically skilled hackers you have on your team, the better. In layman’s terms, the first step is to create a translation patch. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to track down a pre-existing language patch to insert into the game which will give you a head start on the translation. However, many games require purpose-made patches to be made from scratch. You’ll also need a handle on binary and hexadecimal so you can write or code a font tile table from one language’s alphabet into another (having a hex editor is a must), being mindful to juggle single and double byte values (depending on the language). And that’s before you even get to any actual translation.

Let’s get together

Aside from the myriad of fan-sites dedicated to specific games, the world’s fan-translation community finds its main hub at ROMhacking.net , a deceptively creaky-looking website which, in fact, has absolutely all the technical and networking information that both the newbie and the experienced ROMhacker could ever need. ROMhacking.net (commonly referred to as RHDN) is a massive database of hackers, translators, games and the first stop for news on the latest game translations, wherever they pop up across the globe.

The trend for ROMhacking really took off in the early-mid nineties. From thereon, fan groups began to get more organized and more ambitious. In 2011, “Auryn”, a user on the fan-site dedicated to the Dai Gyakuten Saiban series (called Ace Attorney in the West), put out a call for applications from hackers and translators, interested in working on a translation for the second instalment of the franchise, which had not been released outside Japan. Applicants were required to list their skills and explain why they felt they should work on the projects; after a short-listing process, interviews would take place. Even with a finelytuned team of skilled hackers and translators, projects to translate games still take years.

History makers

Ultimately, a ROMhacker’s aim is to share a game they love, and take their place in the history books of the world’s gaming community. Forums and fans-sites are set ablaze with chatter about the latest fan-translation of a game. The good ones become landmarks in their own right. The story of the localization of Mother 3 is a fan-translation legend. The sequel to the Earthbound franchise which was not launched outside Japan, Mother 3 was taken on by a group of hackers and translators who, after working incredibly hard for two years, released a first translation of the game to a delighted Western audience.
Since that time, there have been a series of improved versions with bug-fixes and typo corrections, which have increased the game’s popularity. It remains a much-cherished title, with even a beautifully designed handbook being produced, in print for $32 but free online, which will take you step-by-step through the whole game. T-shirts, also produced by the fans, are available too.

Sometimes a translation will get the ultimate seal of approval, as in the case of Ys: The Oath in Felghana, when XSEED, the company behind the game, bought the translation from ROMhacker “Deuce” for an official PSP release. But this is a rarity. Though many gamers and ROMhackers think that games companies should work more with fantranslators, the industry is still wary, understandably concerned about protecting their product and their brand image, as well as their profits.

Generation games

But it’s a fast-moving industry. Gaming is becoming a more and more mainstream pastime, with more non-gamers wanting to play games on portable tablets and smart phones, without having to enter into the ‘commitment’ of using a console or memoryheavy PC version. Through advances in technology and information resources, ROMhackers and translators are getting more proficient at taking a game to pieces to recreate it in another language, in a lot less time than it would’ve taken them even five years ago.

Just as the market has now grown, so games companies need to weigh up the pros and cons of stumping up the time and resources to localize their own game, or risk losing streams and streams of revenue when fans do the translations themselves and release them, Robin Hood-style, on the internet for the whole world to download for free.