Romhacking and translation

mossy_11

I made an audio doco on the Demiforce translation group and the early days of the romhacking and translation scene as part of one of my side projects recently, if anyone's interested. It mainly covers the FF2 NES and Radical Dreamers translations, with a little bit on the Earthbound Zero hack/release and the 90s emulation and romhacking scene more broadly.

http://lifeandtimes.games/6-rom-hack

On a related note, anyone here actively following any romhacks or translation projects? Are there any cool projects in development or recently released that I should check out?

Squirrel

Listening to the documentary now.

For ROM hacking and translation projects, I recommend checking out Romhacking.net. Use the Translations and ROM Hacking links in the upper left, and filter/sort the list to your liking.

As for interesting stuff, I'd say it depends on who you're asking. I'm mainly a fan of 16 to 32-bit era translations and re-translations (translating games into English that already have an official English release.

New stuff in the translation & hacking scene that I found interesting:

English translation of Sutte Hakkun (SNES)
Bug fixes for Space Station Silicon Valley (N64). I actually booted up my N64 with a GameShark to try this out and was very happy with the ability to finally 100% the game!
Final Fantasy 6 (SNES) keeps getting various minor bug fixes.
The previously unreleased Star Fox 2 (SNES) was dumped from the SNES Classic and the fan translation was added to it. There are videos of people putting this game onto a SNES cart with a SuperFX2 chip and playing the game on real the SNES.
English translation of Wrecking Crew '98 (SNES)

There's also a the Reunion Project (3 years going, IIRC), which attempts to update Final Fantasy 7's PC and PSX versions with bug fixes and better dialog.

Happy hunting!

mossy_11

I'll check those out. Hadn't heard of Sutte Hakkun or Space Station Silicon Valley before, but they sound cool. Also never played any of the Wrecking Crew games, but maybe I'll see if I can load up the one you mentioned on my SNES Classic when I get around to hacking that.

Been meaning to try FF6 again, too, so will check out the fan patches before I decide which version to play. (First time around with FF6 was ~15 years ago; I stopped playing at Kefka's tower.)