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Hello everyone. I just made a free translation patch for a really unique game from the 90s, and today I'd like to share it with you.      Ever hear of the PC-FX? It was a console made by NEC in 1994 that only ever came out in Japan, and it bombed pretty badly, mostly because it had no 3D hardware. Basically, NEC was thinking that all the anime nerds who bought PC Engine (aka Turbografx-16) CD games in the early 90s would move on to buy their anime themed FMV games in the mid-to-late 90s. While they did give the PC-FX a rather good MJPEG playback chip, gamers and developers alike were generally unimpressed with the system. These days, the PC-FX is known for having a tiny library of digital comic book/dating sim/RPG hybrid games, and very little else. That's not exactly an unfair legacy, but the system does have some decent 2D hardware, too. Out of 62 games released, there are a grand total of four real 2D action games on the PC-FX, and one of them is, IMHO, its single best game: a 2D vertical shooter called Zeroigar. I've never encountered a shooter quite like Zeroigar anywhere before. The game has seven stages and takes about 50 minutes to beat, and you'll spend 16 of those minutes watching some high quality, retro-style anime cutscenes in between each stage that tell a heck of a story. To my knowledge, at least compared to shooters that aren't based on any kind of existing license, Zeroigar's story is the most thoroughly developed and lavishly produced in the entire genre. In spite of this, it's still totally isolated to the PC-FX. There are no ports, no OAVs, nor even a manga spinoff. That's probably because the 2nd-party company that made Zeroigar folded not long after it came out in 1997. To add one last superlative, I'll go ahead and say that this game also has the highest language barrier of any shooter I've ever played. Not only is there a lot of FMV and some in-game dialogue, but the gameplay system itself has RPG elements that you are pretty much guaranteed not to grasp if you can't read kanji. Most of the negative English reviews of Zeroigar have come about for this reason. With this patch, the language barrier comes down completely. We've got the level-up screen, the dialogue text, the in-game icons, the title screen and menus, and even the credits in English. Best of all, though, in what I think is a first in the fan-translation world, we have hard-subtitled all of the FMV in a way that not only works on real hardware, but also causes absolutely no quality loss to the original image. Here's the project page on romhacking.net where you can get the patch. And here's a preview on youtube. (No, the entire game is not as easy as the first stage.) If you'd like to give it a shot, simply download the patch (only 1.3MB!) and get yourself a legal BIN/CUE backup of your Zeroigar CD. See the readme for more details. If you're emulating, be sure to run the game in Mednafen, since none of the other emulators really work with it. Also, remember to toggle the "Mode-1" switch on the controller for autofire. I hope you enjoy it! Thank you!
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Aug 22, 2015 02:40
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:46 |
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I feel like i've seen videos of this game before. Looks neat, might try playing it sometime soon.
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Aug 22, 2015 20:18
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I thought I'd give this topic one last little bump with two more youtube videos. This first one shows the "Anime Mode" all the way through to the end of the fourth stage. Only three stages remain after this. I'd have included them as well, but I don't want to spoil what happens. http://youtu.be/ATWu0FgTLko This second one, you might find even more interesting. Zeroigar contains a special unlockable "Sakuraigar Mode" which has the enemies, music, and story totally changed from the main Anime Mode. It's quite a trip. https://youtu.be/duLT4IukI-w (I do recommend at least familiarizing yourself with the story in Anime Mode before watching this. Has anyone played this? Positive or negative, I would love to read your comments!
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Sep 2, 2015 05:46
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