As spotted by bowloflentils, the self-proclaimed "largest adventure game" on the Game Boy Advance, Zero One SP, is getting an English fan translation 19 years after its original Japanese release.
Zero One SP is an enhanced remake of Zero One (a game that only launched one year prior on the Nintendo handheld). It was developed by the Japanese company Fuuki, who was previously responsible for creating the arcade fighting games Asura Blade: Sword of Destiny and Asura Buster: Eternal Warriors, and the handheld RPG Yōkaidō, and follows a young high school boy named Nagomu on an epic adventure blending comedy, sci-fi, and action.
The translator/hacker TraceyTrace announced the patch last Sunday (September 3rd) on the GBATemp forums, having worked on the code for the project over the last few weeks. To coincide with this, they also released a 24-minute preview of the patch, and have made a Google sheet public for people to suggest edits to the script and monitor progress.
Tracey Trace said the following about the project in the announcement:
"In total there is about 60,000 lines of dialogue, so quite hefty in terms of content. Branching story paths massively increase the amount of different conversations that can be had, and that is clear from playtesting I've done thus far.
"The story you experience in the first three scenes can vary WILDLY depending upon your dialogue choices, but I have recorded a demo of one of the many paths you can take through the first few scenes. The story starts as a typical high school VN but quickly takes a sharp turn off a cliff into one hell of a sci-fi adventure.
"As I said, this game has a colossal amount of text, not to mention all the menus and miscellaneous things that need translating. As such, this is a marathon and not a sprint. If you want to support me in completing this project, I urge you to make use of the Google Sheet I created to suggest edits if your English is excellent, suggest translations if your English AND Japanese is excellent, and if you cannot or choose not to do either of those, a coffee would go a long way over at www.ko-fi.com/traceytrace"
Obviously, we'll try and keep you updated on the progress of the patch. For now, though, you can watch bowloflentils excellent retrospective on the game and its predecessor Zero One below: