Sunday, August 30, 2009

Houston: We Have Policenauts!

My god, this was so much easier than I had thought. After a good friend of mine hooked me up with a pre-patched file, it was a simple task of extracting the file and burning both ISOs to two CDs. I popped the first disc into my modded PSone (for imports; I don't pirate), and it booted just fine. I can now play Policenauts in English.

The voice overs are still in Japanese, but who cares when you have beautiful English subtitles? I can't comment yet on the overall quality of the translation, as I've been busy with other games and haven't sat down with it completely, but this week that will change. I've been staring at my Japanese copy of the game for years, and now I can finally enjoy it!

Those who don't have a modded console can play the game just fine via emulator, and while it's not on actual hardware, it's better than never being able to enjoy Policenauts at all. You can find the patch at The Policenauts Translation Project, so grab it and enjoy all the hard work these good folks put into this translation.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Policenauts! In English!

It only took a bit more than a decade, but Konami's spiritual successor to the classic Snatcher is finally available in English via a fan-made patch courtesy of the good folks over at Policenauts.net. Since Konami itself obviously couldn't be bothered to give the game the props it deserves and make it available to English-speaking audiences, some diehard fans thankfully took it upon themselves to translate Hideo Kojima's overlooked two-disc classic.

The only problem I find with the whole scenario is the actual patching process. I've never been very good at such things, and this kind of endeavor intimidates me quite a bit. My quest to finally play Ys IV on my Turbo Duo took me an entire night to complete, and the first time I soft modded my Xbox took almost as long. Hacking, modding, and patching are things best left to others with more skills.

Thankfully, a good friend of mine already patched his and set me up with a pre-patched copy that is currently being downloaded. Hopefully, this should set me on the right path, and I will soon be enjoying this great game in English!

More news when the downloadand install is complete!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

A Look at Sega.com from 1997

Web Archive is an incredible site and virtually the only one trying to preserve the websites of yesteryear for posterity. Recently, someone over at the Digital Press forums looked up Sega's site from 1997. It's there almost in its entirety, and it has some really cool images! Check it out here.