Update #3 []:
eadmaster, the person behind the "new" Princess Crown patch, has responded to claims from the original developers that they were not consulted about its release (thanks SegaSaturnShiro).
“My point is that I’ve reused GPL-released code, which gives developers freedom to fork, modify and share back changes without asking for permissions to the original authors," says eadmaster. "By the way, I’m definitively willing to fix any misunderstanding or miscommunication that may have passed.” He has also said that he's happy to work with CyberWarriorX and SamIAm, and that he has made some improvements to the existing code.
eadmaster is working on version 0.4 of the patch, which will include more condensed text and retranslated event sections. He's working with a new translator, MiYakuGaming, who has said she aims to produce an "uncensored" version of the Japanese text.
Update #2 []:
CyberWarriorX and SamIAm, the creators of the Princess Crown patch upon which this new version is based, have stated that they were not consulted on its release, and that it does not reflect the current status of the project.
"CyberWarriorX and I did not sign off on this," says SamIAm in a Discord post (thanks, SegaSaturnShiro). "As far as I know, no attempt to contact us was made. And I believe that even if we had been contacted, we would not have chosen to give permission to use our work like this.
He adds:
The code and the script that this person used as a base are both wildly obsolete. That old version of the script is loaded with problems, and I’m embarrassed that anyone is even looking at it. We have not shared our most up-to-date work with the public.
The game will freeze in several places. The only way to get around this is to load a save via the Japanese game, play past the freeze point, save, and load the English version again. Even our latest version has a couple of these points.
He later gave a more detailed explanation of the situation:
CyberWarriorX shared that Princess Crown github page way back in maybe 2014 with the intention of recruiting hacking help. It was a snapshot of where we were at the time: various tools and a complete early draft of the script were there, but it was also limited quite deliberately so that laypeople wouldn’t be able to make a patch with it. Eventually, when nobody responded, CyberWarriorX gave up on recruiting help and moved on. In our respective areas, he and I each made significant progress, and none of this was ever shared in that github. That’s the first thing that people need to understand about all of this. CyberWarriorX and I are sitting on a version 0.9. This Eadmaster guy took our old version 0.2, made it barely functional, and released it as complete. Something I will consider doing after talking with CyberWarriorX is releasing a video of the translation in its current state. Just the intro would be enough. Looking at the screenshots in the segasaturnshiro.com page and seeing the ancient print routine literally made me facepalm. That’s not what it’s supposed to look like, guys.
Update #1 []:
It seems that wishes do come true; translator eadmaster has released an English translation patch for Princess Crown, ending years of waiting for fans.
It has been confirmed as working on original hardware, too.
The developer has stated that this patch is built on Cyber Warrior X's previous translation project.
Original Story: Vanillaware is famous for titles such as Odin Sphere, 13 Sentinels, Grim Grimoire, Dragon's Crown Muramasa: The Demon Blade, but the company's origins actually pre-date its foundation (as Puraguru) in 2002.
Founder George Kamitani previously worked for companies such as Capcom, creating pixel artwork for titles such as Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara and Muscle Bomber / Saturday Night Slam Masters. His first game as a director was 1997's Princess Crown, a side-scrolling 2D action RPG that shares many similarities with Vanillaware's work (in fact, Dragon's Crown is considered a successor of sorts).
The game began life at a company Kamitani had joined after leaving Capcom, which then went bankrupt/ Sega stepped in, also involving Atlus in development. Sadly, Princess Crown was a commercial flop, and it led to Atlus' Kansai studio being shuttered and the reputation of both Kamitani and his team being diminished. Thankfully, Kamitani would eventually establish his own studio, which has gone from strength to strength in the subsequent years; its latest effort, Unicorn Overlord, launches next year on Switch, PS4, PS5 and Xbox Series S/X.
Despite all of this, Princess Crown remains a focal title in the history of both Kamitani and Vanillaware, despite the fact that it never got a Western release back in the day (the subsequent PSP re-release was also exclusive to Japan).
While it contains a lot of Japanese text, it is possible to play the game to completion without understanding any of it, thanks to the fact that key conversations with NPCs contain coloured text, denoting progress. Even so, a full English localisation for Princess Crown has been something Vanillaware (and Saturn) fans have been keen to see for quite some time – which is why, back in 2013, there was much excitement when RomHacking member Cyber Warrior X announced that they were undertaking the project.
The announcement was met with a wave of gushing replies, with many pointing out that they had been waiting years to play the game in English. Obviously, a project of this size would take time, but people took encouragement when in 2016 (with the RomHacking forum post now nine pages long) Cyber Warrior X posted to say that "we're getting to the point where a real release is getting closer."
Then, in 2017, Cyber Warrior X posted:
Just wanted to let you know we're not dead and the project is still alive. Personally I've been swamped since last fall with my father passing away. He unfortunately was a hoarder and the whole process has taken a life of it's own. So I've had to put aside all personal projects I've been working on until it's resolved. I wasn't anticipating it to take this long but hopefully I'll have more time soon.
In 2018, he said that "work has been slow lately but we're getting closer to the end." Then, in 2019, he reconfirmed that he hadn't forgotten about the project, even going as far as to say that it would be finished within two months.
By 2021, many forum members were voicing concern at the lack of updates. SamIAm, who has been working alongside Cyber Warrior X on the epic translation workload, posted: "It's definitely not dead. It's just been stuck as a low priority for a while, with the usual real-life curveballs making it difficult to get around to it. I still think about it often, and I'd like to see it finished, if that counts for anything."
The final post from Cyber Warrior X was submitted last year, which appeared to reference reports online claiming the translation had been abandoned:
Sorry for the radio silence on my end. Just to clarify so it doesn't get wings the story seems to originate from NeoGAF where it seems they misunderstood an earlier post dealing with the aftermath of my father's passing from a few years ago as a current affair. GitHub project was an old build that I haven't updated in a long time since I've been using a private repository for a while now. So I decided there was no real point in keeping it up. The current hold up is basically trying to juggle working on this with my work life.
However, there's been nothing since then, and a RomHacking moderator locked the thread in March of this year to prevent it from becoming a flood of people asking for updates.
So, is the Princess Crown translation really dead? We'd certainly hope not; it's one of the best Saturn games of all time, so we'd love the chance to finally experience it in English. It's also worth noting that nobody should be getting angry over a fan translation being abandoned or failing to meet a deadline, regardless of the level of expectation – the people who undertake this arduous work do it for the love of the game, and, more often than not, receive no financial reward for years of effort.
Hopefully, the decade of work done by Cyber Warrior X and SamIAm might help pave the way for a future run at this particular project – or the pair may even return to the venture in the fullness of time. For now, though, if you want to experience this absolute gem of a game, then you'll have to soldier through the Japanese version.
Comments 15
This with a proper translation on a Saturn Mini would be a dream come true.
I'm not sure how I feel about these "thanks to fans" headlines...
Often these projects are HUGE undertakings by a single person. While it's true the tools & knowledge involved in each project are typically a the result of community efforts, the projects themselves are a different thing entirely.
I'm not suggesting each modder/hacker specifically needs to be mention by name in the headline, I just find the "thanks to fans" phrasing to be poor. It comes across... "dismissive" is too strong a word, more like impersonal. Plus when it comes to games of a certain vintage, fan translations are the norm... it really doesn't need to be clarified. The exception however is when one of these games gets an "official" translation for the first time.
Hate to be the baron of bad news but unless you're really itching to play this today I suggest continuing to wait, the people who wrote the code and translated script didn't sign off on this and the translation was made with an unfinished version of their work that they have described as being a "0.2" version in desperate need of improvement, as opposed to their "0.9" version they're still working on
More details here:
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:sh673rl7j4cvljnuufcqoey4/bafkreih627jor6kseikdzxmrnwgib3l7saxqwvjdzojdwerzbw35wxgjtm@jpeg
I'm siding with eadmaster on this one. I remember being excited for that original project and keeping track of it, but CyberWarriorX slowly kept taking longer and longer to respond to anything before essentially disappearing like the story said, the admins when they locked the thread even said that they would re-open it on request of the original translator, and as the time of this comment it's still locked.
CyberWarriorX's last post was actually more than a year ago, it was in early 2022, and the last post before that was in 2019 where they claimed it was about "two months" away from completion. Looking at their account, there was only one more post made after 2022, in August of 2024 to say they were sad to see RHDN close. They had basically stopped even logging into their account.
The code eadmaster used was publicly released as open source under the GPL license, which means anyone can fork and contribute to it, you don't need the original owner's permission. eadmaster in no way attempted to claim ownership of the project either, they credited both CyberWarriorX and SamIAm and said they did most of the work.
Now CyberWarriorX is claiming that the code was "stolen" (It was not, it was posted under GPL), that they changed the license later so that should retroactively apply (It does not, open source would be useless if that was the case), and are basically demanding that eadmaster take down the translation while insisting that they have a much further along version, and when asked when this would be finished (Again they claimed back in 2019, five years ago now, that it was a few months ago) they refused to answer and just said "When it's done"
Sorry but it was clearly dead at this point. A person should not be allowed to eternally call dibs on a translation and hold it hostage for over a decade (the thread was started in 2012, 12 years ago). They claimed it was almost done in 2019, posted one more "Still alive!" post in 2022 and then stopped even logging into their account to the point where the admins locked the thread because even they thought it was dead, with the condition that CyberWarriorX could request it be unlocked if it was not, and they never did. Even at the time of this comment that thread is still locked, and CyberWarriorX only re-emerged once news broke out that someone else was patching up their old GPL open source code and releasing it. Their account on SegaXtreme had not had a post since 2017 until this news broke out, and all it was used for was to claim the code was "stolen", insist ed close their repo down, and refuse to give an answer to a possible release date for their supposedly far more complete version.
Can't say I feel sympathy for CyberWarriorX when they released code as open source GPL and then seemingly abandoned the project, only to get angry that someone took their old open-source code and is actually doing something with it now. I am not saying we needed detailed monthly progress reports, but just a simple "No, it's not dead, we are still working on it" every 6 months or even once a year isn't too much to ask.
This does beg the question... why hasn't a more recent version been shared? They've used 0.2 but you claim to be on 0.9?!
Really?! 7 versions without sharing? I'm not surprised someone pressed on with 0.2.
There are people willing to work on and finish this today. New fixes are even being applied to this old hack.
CyberWarriorX and SamIAm shouldn't have dropped a GPL2 copy of their hack, if they didn't want anyone to fork it. Do they not know how OSS works?
@nocdaes It's 0.3 not 0.2, and it's not even clear what "0.3" means because that might not even be the original translator's version numbering but the new person's. If you look at the releases tab in the repo there was a version 0.1 and 0.2 released within days of each other, I think those versions are the new translator's work, in which case they would have nothing to do with the original translator's versioning.
But like my long-winded post said, I agree, 10 years and nothing, over two years of silence since the last communication, and they only reappeared after someone used their old open-source code that under GPL anyone can use to actually release something to complain and insist it should be taken down.
Simply put. It was open source code. The new dev gave full credit to the original dev and translator. The original devs were silent for, and didn't update the GitHub, for a decade. There is no problem here.
@MARl0 @Cyber_Akuma Attempting to "finish" someone else's work is just asking for the result to be garbage anyways, on either the code or text side.
I'd be worried about even reusing my own code from many years ago without relearning how the games work, let alone try to figure out someone else's.
I mean, reprogramming a game is already a matter of trying to figure out how the original game programmer's brain work. It's like a game of telephone when you add other coders into the mix.
And on the translation side is much the same, the more people you have writing the text, the sloppier it's going to be. Aside from the original writer, different people are going to have different ideas of how the same things should be translated.
There's probably a number of professional translations where you can it had different writers (inconsistent tone or even worse, things like the US version of Lufia II where even a few names were inconsistent between the dialogue and menus).
Snooze you lose
I've seen several fan-trans groups over the years lay claim to a game, do 10%, then let it rot for years and years. No one else wants to then take it on, because group XYZ are working on it.
Like someone else said, this is akin to holding the game hostage.
Either get it done, or publicly announce you abandon it and let others get on with it.
In 20 years I've seen this countless times! Someone asks on the RHDN forum: "I'm fluent in Japanese / a master hacker, anyone want to team up on COOL GAME?"
Rando: "Don't you dare touch COOL GAME! Fifteen years ago LAZYGUYS called dibs on that. They're 7% done, just give them time! Thread locked!"
Honestly sick of that crap.
Also, everything @Cyber_Akuma said.
As other have said very well, if you don't want your stuff used and forked, then don't make it open source in the first place. It was made available and the license was apparently followed, so there's really nothing more that needs saying. It reminds me of some drama within the emulation community a while back that sort of briefly came back into focus recently. And it might actually be a case of both sides having problems, but it was very clear that a developer had no idea how such software licenses worked in a similar way to this one.
This will be the first thing I'll play when I have the Retroid Pocket 5.
Let's be real here, the issue is not that publicly available code was used, the issue is that one person took code from somebody else that pretty much stated to not use it in the given state it was in, made zero improvements to it, and then put it out there claiming they did zero improvements to it. Now we have a guy incapable of doing any changes putting out what is essentially a piece of garbage that the original creators are embarrassed about existing. Had this just been a simple "hey I got the project working, who wants to help me" call, with some videos released, the narrative would have been fine. It would have been even better if ead gave them a heads up prior to it being released to avoid all of the drama. Hell, he could have even been able to ask them how they solved certain problems as he works on his derivative. Once a distinctive derivative existed showing that ead actually put work in by himself, then it would have been appropriate to release it. It is just common etiquette among developers and translators. Either add something of your own that makes it your own (which is a reason why forks exist) or extend a courteous message letting the creator know you plan on distributing a build and try to get a blessing so that drama is minimal. Taking somebody's work and just distributing it is a dick move.
@nocdaes Really. This isn't the '90s any more where incomplete demo patches helped drive interest to the games, when it was harder to find Japanese games and check out if they are any good.
These days, incomplete patches only serve the most impatient of gamers. Only they'd be satisfied with a patch that is very likely to crash horribly or simply not translate anything after an hour's worth of gameplay. And they probably wouldn't even sit through an RPG-length (I don't know how long this game is) if it was.
People who want to devote time and effort to fully play a game aren't going to want their experience abruptly ended.
If people are really desperate to play the game, they can seek out the unpatched game, or watch videos online.
I have met many gamers on the Internet who have learned no Japanese beyond the kana charts. I've heard of Super Robot Wars fans who bothered to learn just the kanji needed for menu navigation.
If it's really that important to play a game, people can make efforts to play them regardless of a patch.
Buggy and incomplete patches do not have much more value for "playing" than just playing the original.
I'm not familiar with this game, but I have read above it is fairly playable without reading.
@sdelfin People with such discourtesy to the original patch team are likely to produce an awful result anyways, so it doesn't really matter.
I've read some Discord discussions this new patch translator has far less Japanese literacy qualifications than the original translator ("Absolutely no censorship!" claims tend to be a sign of the former) including some comparisons.
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