In September of 1994, Illusion of Gaia made its North American debut. Known for being much darker than the other RPGs Nintendo was allowing at the time, it left players with a lot to think about… but unfortunately, the localization was often incomprehensible.
Now, thanks to the efforts of L Thammy, the game has received a new fan translation 30 years after its western release. The GitHub project page for this translation can be found here.
Key points:
- The new translation aims to make the English script more comprehensible and closer to the original Japanese dialogue.
- A demo is available on GitHub, including the translation up to South Cape location.
- In addition, the patch improves load times by decompressing all assets in the game.
Do you remember being confused by the original localization?
I don’t know how well it’s aged for a new player, but I found it very notable at the time for being dark, if not outright macabre, at times. We had very little of that in the 16-bit era.
Drawing from real-world locales and cultures was interesting, too. Ys is another series that does that to good effect.