When you consider it's a relatively obscure title which never saw release outside of Japan, Princess Crown has been getting an awful lot of attention recently.
This is due to the release of an English language patch for the Saturn version, published by an individual called eadmaster. After years of waiting, Vanillaware fans finally had the chance to play a game that forms an important part of the company's pre-history – but there was a catch.
You see, eadmaster's patch was based on the translation project created back in 2021 by CyberWarriorX and SamIAm, both of whom reacted quite negatively to it being released. Now, eadmaster hadn't actually done anything wrong here, as the original project is being developed under a GPL licence, and he claims to have notified both CyberWarriorX and SamIAm of his "forked" patch.
While the whole episode has caused some friction around the long-awaited project, it has at least revived the original translation effort, so much so that CyberWarriorX has released a video showing the current status of the translation.
"SamIAm and I began our Princess Crown translation in the spring of 2012," CyberWarriorX says in the video description.
"By the year's end, we had a complete first draft of the script and a print routine displaying English characters in-game, but it was all very rudimentary, and the bulk of our work still lay ahead of us. In February 2013, I created a public GitHub with a snapshot of the project in its then-current state with the hope of attracting someone to help me solve some technical issues. After making more progress, however, Sam and I agreed to keep the team to just the two of us for the sake of simplicity. Years went by, and real life kept us both very busy, but we each made great progress, and neither of us ever considered abandoning the project. The GitHub, meanwhile, was never updated."
CyberWarriorX notes that eadmaster "took the assets from that now-ancient GitHub project, made a few minor adjustments, and used them to release his own Princess Crown translation," and claims that no notice was given beforehand (it's worth noting that eadmaster has said he is "definitively willing to fix any misunderstanding or miscommunication that may have passed").
"Strictly speaking, GitHub's licensing terms do allow him to do so," continues CyberWarriorX. "However, in practice, this kind of thing is widely considered to be disrespectful and poor etiquette in the game translation scene. As we had always made clear, the translation as it existed then was not ready to be seen. Furthermore, it is now wildly obsolete."
The new video is intended to "demonstrate our progress and show people that ours will be the translation worth playing," says CyberWarriorX. "No, we aren't releasing a beta now, and no, we can't make promises about when we'll finish. What we can say is that Princess Crown deserves a high-quality translation, and that's what we intend to deliver. Going forward, we'll try to release more in the way of updates and previews. To fans of the game and everyone who has been waiting, we thank you for your patience. Believe us, we'd like us to get this thing finished, too."