The Retro Game Challenge 2 Fan Translation

The beginning of February was fun — besides starting SCROLL, romhacker xvirus of Orenji Translations revealed, at virtually the same time, that he had cracked the surface of Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou 2, the sequel to Retro Game Challenge, and put out feelers for people who can help get the game translated (as “Retro Game Challenge 2,” of course!). Knowing not to look this gift horse in the mouth, I’ve volunteered my services in editing the translation, to help turn this into more of a “localization.” If you know and love Retro Game Challenge, you’ll understand that the sequel deserves that treatment. Today, a web page for the translation went up to serve as an announcement, although there isn’t a ton to look at yet.

GCCX2 was released in Japan in the same month as Retro Game Challenge was in America, but as you may know, RGC didn’t hit publisher XSEED’s sales targets, and the company understandably didn’t pursue an English version of GCCX2, which prevented lots of people from experiencing a wholly-improved sequel with a bunch of great new games-within-games, from the platformer Demon Returns to the flashy shooter GunDuel. (For a refresher course, you can go back and look at my series of blogs on GCCX2 on 1UP — the link goes to the final entry, which links to the previous ones.)

But for me, and I think many others on the outside, the fulcrum of this translation project will be “Kacho wa Meitantei,” the text-heavy detective adventure that’s packed with cameos of folks from the GCCX TV show, not to mention a few related in-jokes buried within. Even without those, it’s more “gaijin-proof” than anything in either RGC, and a dealbreaker for anyone who wanted to import GCCX2 (which I find ridiculous, but I digress).

The whole project has just barely started, so there are plenty of unanswered questions at this point, and none of us can guarantee when you can see the finished product. But hey, nobody seemed to complain when the Mother 3 patch finally came out. One or two factors can raise hope, though. Design-wise, there isn’t much in GCCX2 that’s structurally different from RGC, other than the new games, of course — it looks the same, but better. And with many elements already established in XSEED’s localization, including names, logos, and so on, this can (potentially) maintain a focus on the brand-new stuff.

I know a lot of fan translations peter out or start gaining on Duke Nukem before they’re finally done, and I’ve observed plenty of that since I was a snot-nosed shit in the early days of the “emu scene.” But this is totally a passion project, from my end if no one else’s, so if it gets to a point where it’s just me and xvirus, well, I might just have to roll up my sleeves further. Who knows! Just allow yourself a shred of optimism and let us roll. Speaking of passion projects, this undertaking shouldn’t impact SCROLL too much. In fact, wouldn’t it be nice if it could compliment the translation at some point?