If you're a Castlevania fan or someone who likes to occasionally dive into the weird and wonderful world of video game bootlegs, then we may have some news that will potentially interest you.
Recently, it was announced that a new English translation patch has just been published online for Castlevania Reincarnation, a Java bootleg from the Chinese studio Singing Cicadas that features music and graphics taken from the Castlevania series (thanks St1ka/RetroRGB).
According to various sources online, Castlevania Reincarnation was originally released for Java phones in China under a different title, "秦殇之千年轮回", which has often been translated as "Prince of Qin - Millennium Reincarnation". However, it was later partially translated into Russian, which is where it started to become known under its alternative title. The original release date of the game seems to be unknown, but most bootleg websites typically list it as being sometime around 2009.
Castlevania Reincarnation was inspired by Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow, and sees a character called Kamui — essentially a combination of Alucard and Soma Cruz — embarking on a mission to stop a great evil that has been resurrected. In Prince of Qin - Millenium Reincarnation, this is listed as being the Dragon Emperor, whereas in the remake this is instead believed to be Dracula.
In the past, the game has occasionally been favorably compared to Konami's official Castlevania entries for Java phones by fans online (including by St1ka in their video "18 Times Bootleg Games Were BETTER Than Official Games") and has even seemingly been mistaken in the past for a real entry in the series.
This new patch for the unofficial game comes courtesy of the hacker/translator Oersted (alongside PirateSephiroth, Shinovon, St1ka, and Saya Hyouseki) and translates almost the entirety of the game, except for a few UI elements.
You can download it now from archive.org.