Taiko no Tatsujin: Don to Katsu no Jikuu Daibouken?
(a.k.a "Taiko no Tatsujin: Don and Katsu's Spacetime Adventure" or "Taiko Drum Master: Adventures Through Time and Space") ?
So a little while ago, I was trying to get the Japanese banner for Taiko no Tatsujin: Don to Katsu no Jikuu Daibouken to show up on my US emunand. I never did manage to get that done, but instead I did get a peek at the entire filesystem for the game. It was at that point that I realized how easy it would be to translate the game, given I had some help and had the right tools. Mostly everything was an image file, and the story text was contained in such a simple format. A close friend of mine was down to try to translate a game, and that's how this little project began.
Some people might wonder why we'd bother translating a rhythm game. Especially Taiko, which has quite the cult following in western audiences, despite the amount of Japanese used in the game. On the surface, it is a game very unwelcoming to people who have no knowledge of Japanese. Every little thing is in Japanese, with little to no English anywhere in sight. Yet, there are still people who play and enjoy the game since the rhythm bits defy any language barrier. Our goal, however was to break that language barrier down for those of us out there who can't seem to get past it. By just translating the menu for the game, we're opening up the quirky world of Taiko no Tatsujin to an audience of players who might not have been able to experience the game otherwise. This isn't to say that non-Japanese speaking people couldn't access Taiko before, since there was an english release back in the PS2 era, and there is the ever-popular computer game Osu! that allows people to scratch that Taiko itch. It is just that this is one of the first translation patches done on one of the Taiko console games, and to us that is pretty special.