Fantranslation on the way • Gaming • DS • Eurogamer.net

Deleted user 18 January 2018 12:48:56

Hi there,

Would anybody here happen to know the game: Super robot taisen og saga, mugen no frontier?
If you don't, and you're fan of jrpg's, I can really recommend it. For those who do and have heard of the sequel: mugen no frontier exceed, you probably know it never got translated or released over here? Well, there's a dedicated team that took up the challenge of fully translating the game!

A page that gets updated is found here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/mugen-no-frontier-exceed-super-robot-taisen-og-saga-open-translation.474137/

For the record, it's not my intention to get this known as spam or to advertise another forum. My only goal here is to get word out about this (imo) beauty. If it's not allowed (fully or partially), please do just notify me and I will adjust or remove it.

Small extra: if anybody here can translate japanese-english, they're looking for an extra to help out. no need to be a pro.

Deleted user 18 January 2018 19:45:22

This game is also known as endless frontier exceed from the super robot wars series

Rogueywon 18 Jan 2018 20:19:35 12,387 posts
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As a general word of polite advice: you might have got more of a response on this had you posted it to one of the existing general threads on the forums.

In recent days, there has been a rash of fairly shit posts made by brand new accounts. Your post is not actually anything like as bad as most of those: it is, at least, about a genuine gaming project, albeit in a genre that I don't think has much of a fanbase on this particular forum.

I'd also be a bit dubious about the legality of your project. It is presumably going to involve circulating modified ROMs which is, of course, all kinds of illegal (nothing really grey-area about this, even though I have some sympathy on one level given the game is unreleased in the West). As part of the OG branch of the Super Robot Wars franchise, an official Western release remains at least possible for this game.

For the uninitiated reading this thread, most Super Robot Wars games are essentially unreleasable in the West for licensing reasons. They bring together characters and mecha from many different anime franchises. The overseas distribution rights to said series are split across an impossibly complicated web of companies, some of whom no longer functionally exist and many of whom have no incentive to play ball with a project like this. These days, the publisher gets around it by creating a non-region locked "international" version with an English translation, giving it a notional Japanese release and shipping out the copies to international distributors.

The OG spinoffs, on the other hand, use only original characters and some have been released in the West in the past (with a change of name in the UK to avoid confusion with the Robot Wars TV show).

Don't get me wrong, I wish you the best with the project. But don't be surprised if you get shut down and be aware there may be better ways of getting a discussion going about it on this forum.

mal 18 Jan 2018 22:34:11 29,326 posts
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I like the look of this. Looks like a proper RPG that's not infected by the whole Square man-child-girl thing. And on the other hand, it doesn't seem to be too offputting by referring to all those japanese perversions at every other moment like some other translations I've seen, and it being a DS game it isn't badly affected by the whole uncanny valley thing that HD art like this often is.

And the translation thus far looks impressively complete.

Terrible thread title though.

Rogueywon 18 Jan 2018 22:47:18 12,387 posts
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@mal The Super Robot Wars games are a funny thing. Think a roughly 50/50 blend of Disgaea and Battle Isle (the old turn-based PC RTSes). They have RPG stat systems in place and leveling, but the tactical mechanics are very much those of a traditional military turn based strategy. Anime as hell, but in a way we don't often see in the west.

Though I'm not all that bothered by "all those japanese perversions" myself. I don't even put little curtains over the bottom of my table-legs, lest they incite the passions of the gentlemen assembled for the evening repast.

Edited by Rogueywon at 22:47:37 18-01-2018

One_Vurfed_Gwrx 18 Jan 2018 23:30:03 4,467 posts
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I was enjoying SRW V on Vita before I became sidetracked. Still barely played the 3 OG games I have though so in no hurry for a fan translation. Also, I recall some more of the better received mainline games also have fan translations but I suppose the OG series has less untranslated titles to make a full set to play.

Rogueywon 19 Jan 2018 08:53:36 12,387 posts
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@One_Vurfed_Gwrx I'm working through V at the moment on PS4. Up to mission 21, I think. Some ferocious play-time there; I'm at the point now where battles can easily take an hour and the dialogue between missions is usually around 30 minutes. Fortunately, I'm very fond of both of the "starring" franchises this time around (Yamato 2199 and Cross Ange), which helps keep things engaging. Also nice to see the big Gundam franchises take more of a back seat: feels like they've been a bit done to death by this point.

Tactical gameplay is more sophisticated than I'd realised at first. Like a lot of Japanese games, it's not very good at explaining the mechanics. It's only over the last couple of missions that I've really started to understand how the various stats interact with each other and how I need to be working positioning and weapon choice around that.

Overall storyline is very, very silly indeed, but I don't hate it. It also got me to look up the Brave Express Mightgaine OP on youtube (having never heard of the show before), which is simultaneously ridiculous and fabulous.

One_Vurfed_Gwrx 19 Jan 2018 09:26:30 4,467 posts
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I was unfamiliar with pretty much all of the franchises in the game (only Gundam I watched was the Iron Blooded Orphans which I gather is pretty unrepresntative) but the Yamato stuff caught my eye and I enjoy that part. I don't expect a great story from that many mashups but it does well for what it has to work with. I forgethie far tgrkygh I am though, don't think I am as far as you though.

Rogueywon 19 Jan 2018 09:39:54 12,387 posts
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@One_Vurfed_Gwrx Iron Blooded Orphans is indeed pretty unrepresentative. I think Valvrave and Cross Ange (both non-Gundam shows) taught Sunrise that dark protagonists can be fun (though in fairness, they've been there before with Code Geass). So they really doubled down on it for Iron Blooded Orphans.

The majority of Gundam shows are about some pacifist teenager who ends up having to fight reluctantly and only really wants everybody to be friends and stop the fighting. Doesn't mean some of them aren't good shows; Zeta Gundam, Turn-A Gundam and at least the first season of Gundam SEED are all classics. But there's a definite template there and quite a few of the shows end up with catastrophic tonal dissonance (Victory Gundam and Gundam Unicorn in particular). There's a reason why, for the most part, Gundam's antagonists are much more iconic than its main characters.

Iron Blooded Orphans, with its blank-eyed, traumatised, child-soldier protagonist happy to execute unarmed prisoners and is very, very much the exception. It's also a very, very good show. Wouldn't be surprised (and would be very pleased) to see it as one of the "starring" shows in a main-series Super Robot Wars game in the near future.

Yamato, on the other hand, is great fun. Arguably dodgy as hell in some respects (ever since the original show aired in the late 70s, it's been unofficially adopted by some very unpleasant people on the Japanese far right), but certainly in the 2199 incarnation, the ultra-nationalist content is more something projected onto it by others than actually in the show itself. Leaving that aside, it's a traditional and very well-executed space opera.

And yeah... Cross Ange. Starts showing up in SRW V from around mission 15 or so and then becomes the second major plotline alongside the Yamato one. Vulgar, trashy, nihilistic, frequently indefensible and incredibly fun.