Popolocrois Story
Image: epics/SIE

A group of programmers, translators, and testers recently got together to translate the obscure Sony-published role-playing game, Popolocrois Story, into English.

The PlayStation 1 game, developed by Epics, is based on Yohsuke Tamori's manga series of the same name and follows a small prince named Pietro as he sets out on his 10th birthday to recover a crown from the self-proclaimed Devil King, GamiGami. Players take control of the prince shortly after GamiGami launches a devastating assault on the kingdom and must lead the boy through a fantastical world, fighting monsters and upgrading their gear, to track down and defeat this evil foe.

It's the first time the original PlayStation game has been made available in English, with the initial release never extending outside of Japan. A (partial) translation patch for its sequel Popolocrois Story 2 came out earlier this year from a different team, but the attempt to translate the first game was stop-start until a new group took over the project.

Something worth noting is that there was also an official PSP port of both games that did technically come out in the West in 2005 as a single package, but unfortunately, that title cut a lot of cutscenes and locations in order to combine the two plots. Now, western fans will be able to experience both games in a manner more akin to the original experience, albeit without the challenge of the language barrier.

According to the ReadMe file, the list of people responsible for the Popolocrois Story hack is as follows:

  • paul_met - major hacker, programmer and designer
  • aishsha - translation, testing, manual works
  • Pennywise - testing, editing, coordinating
  • MatatabiMitsu - Chapter 1 ver. 0.5 translation, misc help
  • Illidan - ver. 0.5 hacking, misc hacking and consulting
  • cccmar - major testing
  • Xanathis - testing
  • Peter Barnard - audio transcription assistance
  • blametherobots - main title logo design
  • cargodin - English voiceover
  • Graphicus - title design help
  • And Tom - misc text help

If you want to try out this language hack for yourself, it should work on pretty much any PSX emulator, having been tested rigorously on ePSXe, PCSX, and MedNafen.

You'll need to patch it to a Rev 1 version of the original game, with additional patching instructions being found on the ReadMe File. As an added bonus, you can also download a completely translated version of the game's manual, which you can view using CDisplay.

Have you tried out the patch yet? What do you think of it? Let us know!

[source romhacking.net]