For years, Wachenröder has been one of the most famous illusive games that has never been released in the west. Now though, after 23 years, it has finally gotten closer to becoming playable to a Western audience!
Originally released in August of 1998 in Japan, this has to be one of the darker themed RPGs released on the Saturn and published by SEGA. Dealing with themes of death, pollution, war, and overall population lethargicness.
Sadly, due to it’s darker tone compared to other RPGs at the time, this possibly was the main reason it was passed up for a western release (That, and coming out in late 1998 didn’t help it’s case).
Luckily, we are in an age where we don’t have to sit around and think, “What could have been?”, or hope for a western localization port. Many of those in the community (As demonstrated recently by the Bulk Slash team), decided to pick up the touch, and make these releases happen!
Thanks to Knight0fDragon, he has began to make a once far off dream a reality, starting work on a bonified Wachenröder fan translation!
So far, the game only has translated text up to the first battle, using the famous translation guide by Glenn A. Rudy III and Yumi Makita.
Take note: The build being shown off is an alpha of an alpha build, there are several text bugs currently that can make some text hard to see, but this is to be expected in this sort of build. Once the main translation process starts, many of these bugs will be cleaned up and fixed for your enjoyment!
One thing Knight0fDragon wants to make clear, is that this isn’t an easy game to work with. Requiring a lot of unpacking, fixing, and editing. A common misconception is that Wachenröder’s game engine is based off the Shining Force III engine, which he emphasizes is simply not true:
“Wachenroder is not the same engine as Shining Force 3. The file structure is different, the compression method is different, the rendering techniques are all different, I am unable to find any way the two games are similar.”
– Knight0fDragon
This coming week or next, the actual demo will drop for fans to download and try themselves! Just in time for Knight0fDragon to enter it in the Saturn Games Competition!
Many of the battle elements are also still in Japanese, but many of the menus have been translated however.
Knight0fDragon has indicated this is just a demo translation for the community, but hasn’t ruled out the potential to work on it in the future..
This translation already has a lot of promise, and we’re excited to see where it goes if he decides to move forward with it! Big thanks again to Knight0fDragon and all the hard work he has made to not only this translation, but the several he has assisted on in the community!
If you’d like to try out the game, Knight0fDragon says that he will be dropping a patch sometime before the end of the year, so you don’t have to wait long to try it yourself!
Stay tuned at SHIRO! for more updates on Wachenröder and other fan translations in the community!
If you’d like to get involved with the community and other fan translations, feel free to join our Discord and discuss it with other devs in the scene!:
This looks promising. I always afraid of the term ‘localization’ but i hope the translation is accurate.
Not going to lie this is one of the most exciting pieces of news I’ve read in a long time! It would be amazing if KOD is able to move forward with the translation for the whole game, would be simply amazing! But even only if the menu’s and such are translated it would still go a long way in helping people to play through the game. Such an exciting time to be a Saturn fan!!
This game is easily in the top 3 of those for which I wish there was a translation! This is incredible news, thank you.
I didn’t know about this game, maybe for the descripted reason here, a hidden in shadows game that never seen the light in western.
Good news!
fantastic!!!!