THE CULTURE OF THE FAN

To say that we live in times of cultural explosion of the video game is not only no exaggeration, but it is probably shooting too low. In recent years we have lived an outbreak of not only launches, but also the formats, the ways we have to talk, inform ourselves, and relate to them. Video games have become older, at least for the purpose of having become one of the entertainment industries that collect more money. The contemporary video game can be compared to an iceberg: on the visible surface there are all those things that regularly occupy us-the present, the calendar of events, the new releases-, but under it most of the ice remains submerged, configuring a part of the culture that is unnoticed, invisible and mute. A culture of the video game that exists, but that is spoken very little, and that is not accidental at all that also turns out to be the least commercially exploitable part.

• Part 1: Games, the only thing matters
• Part 2: Why didn't you know any of this? Understanding the dimensions of the problem
• PART 3: FAN-TRADUCCIONES AS AN EXTENSION OF HACKING
• Part 4: rehearsing a conclusion
• Tokamak Memorial (SNES)
• Planet Lanka (PSX)
• Tomato Adventure (GBA)

The sphere of the Rom hacking,the _fan games and the fan-translations are also living a kind of golden age, an avalanche of news in the form of patches and releases that are serving, among other things, to make available to the western public games that even time was impossible to play differently. The intention of this guide is double: First , offer a selection of relevant titles for everyone who wants to enter this interesting niche; and second , offer some keys at the critical level to understand why these efforts are important, and we should interest us all take them into account. Be that as it may, let's go to the point.

Part 1: Games, the only thing matters

Then I offer a selection of the most interesting fan-translations that have come out lately. It is a necessarily partial radiography of an ecosystem that if it is characterized by something is precisely because of how inexhaustible and unavailable it results. With this what I mean is that the games that I am going to enumerate are neither the most important nor the only ones that are : they are simply a small inevitably incomplete sample whose purpose is not to be other than to serve as a springboard to the Reader not started to start entering the world.

Among the criteria that I have used to choose them is The historical relevance , that is, how important each game is separate with respect to the evolution of the industry and how each game fits into it. Another criterion is The playful relevance , that is, the fun, interesting or stimulating that can be to play each of these games now, in 2022. This point seems especially important to me because, in some way, the central thesis that I would like to defend with all this is none other than that the games of the past are as fun, intelligently and intellectually stimulating as any current launch. If I could choose one thing to change with this text it would be this: destroy, demolish and demon A point where they become irrelevant and unusable. The only unusable are, in any case, the heads of the people who think that in this or in any means of creative expression the works cease to be important according to their longevity. The last criterion is that of the news of each fan-translation, with which I intend to demonstrate that the scene in charge of these projects is a living organism and in constant movement to which you have to pay as much attention as to commercial news, for the amount of things per second that happen when one stops looking.

And now, we start:

Bulk Slash (Saturn)

This translation, of which I echoed in the chronicle dedicated to this year's SGDQ, is relevant for several reasons. The most immediate is that it puts within our reach one of the many incunables of SEGA Saturn that were left without launch in the West. The other is that it involves a milestone that has set up the scope, scale and ambition that characterizes this type of projects.

One of Bulk Slash's peculiarities, and that very difficult to locate, is the problem that a large amount of dialogue and game scenes develop strictly in-game, this content was impossible to subtitle by technical limitations. The equipment solution? Make a call to the community and organize an authentic casting to find eight dubbing actresses (one for each of the pilots who star in the game) willing to fold the entire dialogue of the game to English. The result is a version of the game that rivals and even exceeds many professional locations. As if that were not enough, the care and attention to detail is such that those responsible for the patch also offer a version with the text in English and voices in Japanese, although as I say, without subtitles.

Sakura Wars (Saturn)

Saturn's argument ably more coveted game finally received his opportunity to be played in the West at the beginning of 2020. Sakura Wars is one of those games that have been speaking for decades. Released in Japan for the blue hedgehog console in 1996 and developed by SEGA itself, we are facing a game that is interesting for a lot of reasons. Not only does it offer an extremely unique mixture of ideas, combining mechanics of visual novel and dating sim with tactical RPG by shift generally focused on arcade.

With more than five main deliveries, numerous spin-offs and even adaptations to anime, we are facing one of the most serious omissions perpetrated by the industry. It has not been relatively recently that the honeys of student romance and social mechanics have penetrated in the western public, thanks to Sagas as a person. Sakura Wars' fan-translation offers an unbeatable opportunity to realize that this type of proposals are, in fact, much older than many people can think.

Tokamak Memorial (SNES)

Speaking precisely about dating sims and very serious omissions, a couple of months ago the historic first location of Tokamak Memorial, the founding game of the genre was launched. Although it is not the favorite version of Tim Rogers, it continues to constitute a mile history.

Unfortunately, this version of Super Nintendo comes with notable commitments such as the lack of dubbing, mini-games and extra sequences, and although the ideal would have been to work in the revised version for PlayStation-subtitled Forever with you-or in the original PC-Engine CD, this version can, despite everything, serve as an intermediate step to approach the game in a first contact, before making the leap to the most complete versions. In any case, simply by offering an entrance door to a game as emblematic as this, the site has already won on this list.

Made Monogastric (several platforms)

Puyo is one of those sagas that do not need a presentation. Sega's Puzzles arcade belongs to that small niche of recognizable games anywhere in the world and for almost any person. What is not even so recognizable are the interesting origins of the saga: the concept of Puyo is not original, but was born as spin-off of a JRPGS saga that, you have guessed it, never reached the West. The story of Puyo was born with Made Monogastric, a series of dungeon crawlers designed by compile for PSX and PC-98, which were subsequently launched as remake for Game Gear.

The great peculiarity of these games is that, despite belonging to a genre traditionally characterized by its devotion to the numerates and the mmin-maxing, in Made Monogastric all this information remains hidden, and we must extrapolate the usefulness of our attacks from track visuals such as facial reactions and gestures that our enemies make. It is an interesting turn that becomes even more lovely for the adorable and nice art direction, which is committed to the expressiveness of its animated and recognizable characters. The Puzo are born precisely from the noise made by the fun colored mosques that assail us during the dungeons. The first part can be played both in its version for PC-Engine (which has voices), Mega Drive or Game Gear, while the next two games, which complete the trilogy, are available only for the SEGA laptop.

Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure (PC)

The Trails saga is one of those franchises that, thanks to the coverage of websites such as Kodak, has been able to live a kind of second birth and is going through an especially good time right now, after a few years being mostly ignored by the public. In spite of everything, these two games, originally launched for PSP, represent a kind of intermediate arc located between the Trails in the Sky trilogy and the current Trails of Cold Steel that until recently still did not translate. These two patches that link are an anomaly because, in reality, they are not available to download, but the reason why this is precisely what makes them especially relevant. The patches withdrew from the web at the time when Ni's America herself approached the group and offered them to convert their translation into an official launching both games in the West extraordinary. Trails from Zero can be played from September 27, with Trails to Azure following him at some point still to announce 2023.

Although a debate on work intrusion and the legitimacy of a translation made by non-professional fans could be considered, I believe that in the last term the existence of these releases is something enormously positive because it puts on the table the impact and the type of pressure that we can exert Fans with initiatives of this type, and whatever, that any of these lost games have, years later, an official launch seems unquestionably good news.

Bettie Satsuma Tosh 3/Disaster Report 3 (PSP)

Few niches are more fascinating but also forgotten than that of action games based on natural disasters. In a medium where the conflict is understood almost necessary through confrontation and combat, either with white or fire weapons, it is refreshing to be able to prove something that tries to channel the same sensations of tension, emotion and threat, but to through a much more diffuse and decentralized problem.

The Disaster Report saga has passed through all kinds of phases and names in the West. RAW DANGER OR SOS: The Final Escape are some titles with which deliveries of the saga have been located, but this third is never launched exclusively for PSP. In it, and for the first time for the saga, we can choose the protagonist, and our goal will be to survive inside a tunnel in which we were trapped after an earthquake, while trying to find other survivors and try to organize our rescue.

Planet Lanka (PSX)

Planet Lanka is one of those games that the public has barely heard speak, but for a certain type of fan, in this case the one who is sensitized with the JRPG of the late 90s represents a real candy. Developed in Tandem by Quintet (responsible for Act raiser, Illusion of Time and Terrarium) next to Sequel (authors of the unclassifiable Kowloon’s Gate), we are facing one of the latest games of the emblematic Unix, before merging with Square soft in 2003.

As for the game itself, it is better to let the synopsis speak by itself: «The game follows the story of Lanka in his mission towards the planet Mars. In it the player must manipulate the multiple personality disorder of the protagonist to solve the different puzzles. All characters have a dog head, referring to the Soviet space bitch ».

Baroque (PSX)

The next pair of translations represent a fairly peculiar exception, because although the usual thing is that these types of projects are carried out in English (to reach as many audiences as possible) during the last couple of years we have been receiving a constant translation flow Strictly to Spanish, all by the same person, who identifies himself as Mr. Nobody, and dedicated to games mostly of niche and little known (in fact he also worked at Planet Lanka, although in that case he collaborated with others Hackers Anglopartlantes). Although from July 14 Baroque is now available in the language of the perfidious Albion, Spanish translation was playable since last year.

Baroque is a dungeon crawler with roguelike elements in which we control an amnesic protagonist who must descend an immense tower with the aim of finding God to help us repair the world after a devastating cataclysm that has left the uninhabitable planet and everyone Survivors transformed into physical manifestations of guilt. With an aesthetic that combines H.R. Tiger, Neon Genesis Evangelist and Zdzislaw Helsinki, is one of those cult games that already had a legion of fans (thanks to his remake for Wii and PS2, which did arrive in the West). Thanks to these patches we can play the PSX version, considered superior to the remakes, although lower than the original Sega Saturn, which unfortunately is still available in Japanese.

Mizzen Falls (PSX)

**** Mizzen Falls was for a long time one of the most coveted games in the world of fan-translation. And it is not for less, because although Deadly Premonition has been won by its own merit North American), but it combined it with a 3D open game a lot before they also became popular thanks to GTA3. Developed by Human Entertainment, one of the most fascinating companies within the overview of the 90s (in which Sudan 51 premiered as director, by the way), we are facing another of those unrepeatable and unclassifiable games, which remained, until Very little, out of our reach.

As for the translation, we are facing a case similar to that of Baroque and Planet Lanka. A first Spanish version made by Mr. Nobody in 2019-two others were followed in English launched in the middle of last year.

Tomato Adventure (GBA)

It was an authentic pity when at the end of 2019 Alpha dream, the developer responsible for the emblematic Mario & Luigi saga declared in bankruptcy. His games never arrived, perhaps, to receive the attention they deserved and with the closed study, it is difficult for this situation to change. The translation of Tomato Adventure, one of the few games that the study developed outside the Ham taro and Mario franchise, the two franchises that most decisively defined their career, exemplifies another of the virtues that can have this of the locations made by fans: the Possibility of reuniting with our favorite creators looking towards the past, instead of that future that unfortunately is now truncated.

Tomato Adventure is an RPG in shifts in which a good part of the elements that made the Mario & Luigi can be seen such a dear saga: the casual and colorful tone, the combats based on mini-games and the design of levels with platform touches. It was, I venture to say, perhaps the game that convinced Nintendo that this was the right team to resurrect the role of Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG, and thanks to this translation we can finally verify it.

Part 2: Why didn't you know any of this? Understanding the dimensions of the problem

With a little luck, the quality of this brief selection will have even convinced the most skeptical that this fan-translations is, really, a very serious matter. That is why it is worth influencing a little more in it, offering a diagnosis regarding its situation and the causes for which this whole region of the video game remains fundamentally hidden in the eyes of the public Mainstream.

The cultural explosion of the video game is an ambivalent phenomenon. On the one hand, the ease of access, the diversity of proposals, of genres, of styles with the number of options and ways of accessing them. Playing video games is easier than ever, and playing exactly the suitable video game for each moment too, but this series of positive circumstances accompany a series of shadows that are not so much. Because a panorama in which the possibilities and availability is so great goes hand in hand with the problem of overexposure of stimuli and information overdose. And although most people who have had continued treatment with video games throughout their lives are more than accustomed because it has been facing it since it was a child, the reality is that sailing the chaos of the news of the video game, with His news, events, ads, releases, updates, expansions and patches is a talent and an acquired skill that we often give too much for granted.

This saturation leads, I believe, to run in certain ways, to fall into inertia and customs that, although they are understandable, can also be problematic. For example, to enter a handful of websites that have earned our trust and interest, waiting for an initial first filtering of that chaos: that the news offers us, but that are only the news that we are interested in. We want to know what is passing but, almost like a self-defense mechanism, we develop biases and, among everything that happens, we are only interested in reading about the companies or the games that remain closer to us, which we consider more relevant. And in that relevance is the true deadly trap, because the importance of something is, above all, a construct like any other, established in a media and public consensus that the news of the video game feeds back. But also: the relevance is bought and paid, and it is often a pure emerging phenomenon of the amount of money, resources put in marketing campaigns and the number of people who have involved in a certain game. This game is very expensive and has been promoted extremely aggressively, therefore, it must be _important.

But the culture of the video game is, above all, culture, and culture is a phenomenon that has much more to do with the people who are part and participate in it than of the companies that use it to extract an economic benefit at their expense. Culture is domain of anthropology (this is the name of the discipline that is responsible for studying what it is, what it is for and why it exists), not of the Faculty of Economic Sciences or that of Administration and Business Management. The culture of the video game, in capital letters, is actually the heritage that belongs to all the people; The mirror in which they are reflected and on which each of the people who have played, play or play video games at some point in their lives. That there are companies that are economically viable as a result of the commercial demand that is generated by the pure chance that people who want to play video games EXIST It is nothing more than a pure accident. An unexpected contingency, a piece of bark, from the trunk of a tree that only reflects the true nature of the facts: the economy is actually an accident, an emerging phenomenon of culture, and not on the contrary. Without culture there would be no economy, but without economy there would not only be a culture, but it could be asked how much better it would be without capital-based exchanges.

From the economy of the video game in turn emerges a strictly commercial news, which occupies so much space, is so omniscient and so permanently deafening that it is very easy to make mistakes and come to believe that it isthe only one that there is_. But this is the truth: in the same way that there is not only a culture of the video game beyond the consumption of products manufactured by companies, there are also more realities. In these other plots of culture there are also news, news and relevant facts that happen daily and that it is greatly simple that they go unnoticed because of that other face of the currency (never better) of which I come talking.

PART 3: FAN-TRADUCCIONES AS AN EXTENSION OF HACKING

The Rom hacking is precisely one of those realities, which is currently going through a kind of particular revolution. Rom hacking, the term umbrella with which all this sphere of the video game dedicated to the modifications (usually console) made by fans is known. Although the Rom hacking involves all kinds of transformations and changes-from adding new levels or characters to the total conversions left by the unrecognizable classic games-also encompasses another plot, even more interesting even if possible. The world of fan-translations or fan-translations is intimately related to this universe of hacking because, although their focus and interest inevitably pass by modify Or transform the original game, but quite the opposite: to make it accessible precisely in a way that, until now, I had never been.

The scene of the fan-translations has, in my view, much to do with the paid of accounts. What it is about is to repair damage, to cover the rioters of an industry that for one reason or another did not live up to the circumstances. It is precisely to claim-to reappropriate, even, if you want to see that way-a series of games that this market could not or did not want to distribute. It is the operation by which a debt with a group of people is repaired, the fans, who in many cases have been asking for officials. Because when the Nintendo fan has been organizing to send all kinds of messages and giving all kinds of signs to the Japanese giant that he wants to have the possibility of playing Mother 3, and the giant, cold and impassive response, is the most absolute Silence, the equation can only be resolved in two ways: with the resignation of the fan and the acceptance of never being able to play, or rolling up and getting to work to finally be able to access one of the titles probably more historically influential and relevant to the history of the video game. Even though the Titan descends with all its anger, his fury and his armies of lawyers to crush that group of people who simply wanted to offer an alternative.

It is not an issue, however, of free disobedience, or to offer resistance to authority for the mere pleasure of doing so. It is an absolutely pragmatic issue, because in many cases these games are positioned in a genealogy of influences, of creative debts between studies and creators, which cannot be understood if certain games are not available. Furthermore, it is difficult to understand where they go from, for example, games like contact for Nintendo DS or the by fox Undertake itself if others, such as the aforementioned Mother 3 or off-which, although it is a game amateur, for the purposes of the fan-translation, we are all equal-are not available to the public.

This historical repair that Rom hacking is also efforts. For example, patches dedicated to the restoration of content and the elimination of censorship. The reasons why developers and distribution the product of controversial or potentially problematic issues. Sometimes, it is even for mere whim, as happened in the 90s with cases such as the inflaming working design, celebrities for modifying the code of the games (breaking them, in many cases) and rewriting the scripts in Its locations incorporating sexual jokes and vulgarities of all kinds, decisively devaluing the quality of the original text. It is common, for example, that certain games are considered too Japanese for their own good, or that the presence of sensitive elements such as religious or political iconography is modified to avoid problems and make the most comfortable and docile games. Sometimes, this translates into a loss of sense of certain scenes or even themes, an impoverishment that these fans also decide to correct with modifications and patches distributed through the Internet.

Finally, there is also a branch of modifications that are given by pure convenience. Reconfigured controls to make the most comfortable experience, modifications of color palettes to adjust the games to modern screens and systems (a special case necessary for all those games such as those of GBA, which were designed for displays very different from those we have now), or the niche of the Indus, the restoration after the original voices in games that arrived with dubbing in other languages, dedicated precisely to cover the space of all the language options that have become the norm in recent years, but that in past generations they shone by their absence.

As for the reasons why all this culture has grown so much in recent times, the explanation is complex. They come together, for example, advances in emulation (a very popular way of playing all these modifications, which are usually not used in the original hardware for pure reasons for comfort/convenience) with the appearance of platforms such as Patreon, that allow to provide resources and infrastructure to the different translation groups, giving them access to better tools or equipment and expediting the workflow. Or services such as Discord, which facilitate communication and make the tremendous coordination work that these projects require is carried out much more comfortably and fluidly, in addition to also serving as a direct communication channel between the public and these groups. Twitter and social networks have also had a fundamental role in allowing different groups of people interested in the subject to be able to contact each other, but also to show all this type of games, giving them visibility and making the reasons why they can be historically relevant are clearer than ever. Webs such as the Archive Internet, which seek to preserve all digital heritage, or romhacking.net, which makes _hub to gather all these efforts in the same place, also fulfill a role in all this.

Part 4: rehearsing a conclusion

As I said at the beginning of this guide, this is a necessarily partial selection of a universe that not only seems inexhaustible, but is living an exponential growth in recent years. Only in the couple of days since I started writing this guide, translations from other quite relevant projects have already come Board: Laura No Karl Mach, which allows us heaven_.

Be that as it may, I hope I have been able to demonstrate sufficiently that the universe of hacking and the fan-translations suppose the opportunity to develop a healthy and living cultural fabric, completely away from the commercial and commercial needs of the contemporary video game. They offer, in short, the possibility of playing, speaking and meeting video games in their own terms, allowing us.

They also offer a great opportunity to break with other inertia that, almost unintentionally, are worryingly impoverishing the discourse and debates that are built around the video game. The indie/AAA dichotomy has been pushing criticism and specialized press for a time to an exclusively binary, black and black, good and bad model, which neither favors nor stimulates the critical fabric that we can and must provide from the press, and we must provide, and whose development and maintenance is almost our sole responsibility. Paying proper attention and with the fair dose of mischief, the reader may have realized that many of the games that I have decided to highlight, mostly with more than 20 years behind the back, they have at least one or two markers than in The current context would identify them as indie games, for the original or transgressor of their proposal, or by the way they have to move from what constituted the norm of their time. But neither threw themselves, nor their production values were less than those of their peers at the time they came out, breaking with some of the most common arguments when defining the indie. I Current, they can have much more than countercultural and independent than nothing that can come under the seal of companies such as returning or Annapurna. Companies actually large enough, visible and relevant so that the appellation of indie is forced, and whose perhaps great success has been, ironically, that of having popularized-there would be who would like to say here gentrify-the indie movement, making it its brand value at the expense of eroding its supposed independence.

Finally, I would like to offer a couple of resources for anyone who wants to launch to the adventure of exploring this universe alone, either diving in the catalog of translations available, or following the actuality of what is going out. For the first, Romhacking.net is undoubtedly the primary resource to use to see what is out there. For the second, Twitter is the most reliable tool, by the hand of accounts such as @gosokkyu, @dragenregalia or @cdromance_spike, which usually follow the scene closely and comment on real time every time some interesting novelty occurs. Now, so far this guide, see you next time, if any!