Just recently, Derek Pascarella (ateam)’s long awaited fan translation, possibly his Magnum Opus of translation projects, Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me, has finally been released!
For those of you not familiar with Nakoruru, she is a selectable fighter in the Samurai Showdown series of fighting games on the Neo Geo, starring in the very first one back in 1993 (You may also know her as that one girl who threw birds at you in story mode).
In this spinoff game, originally released for the PC (July 06, 2001), and Dreamcast a few months later (March 28, 2002), you play as not Nakoruru, but a small girl who admires her named Mikato, who later becomes her disciple.
Throughout the game, you explore the village and residents of Kamui Kotan, and of course interact with said title character Nakoruru. As you progress through the game, you start to notice things start to diverge from where you began, with certain characters and events not being what they seem…
The gameplay is incredibly different from what you’d expect from a Samurai Showdown style game, instead taking a visual novel style approach rather than beating the other opponent up. Having you choose certain dialogue options, play quizzes, or even button mashing events that would result in several different endings to the game.
While this is a unique approach for SNK, this weirdly enough isn’t the first visual novel game published by SNK. That honor would go to The King of Fighters: Kyo, which was released on the PS1 in 1998 (Which was also only released in Japan, but got a Spanish translation patch in 2013).
Sadly, Nakoruru was the final story based visual novel we’d get from SNK. Having their efforts moved towards more dating sim orientated games, such as the Days of Memories series for the Nintendo DS, which of course, was a Japan only series… Sadly though, a fan translation of the Days of Memories series was worked on, but seems to have been cancelled…
After his work on the English patch for Sakura Wars: Columns 2, Derek started his work looking into Nakoruru, seeing what could be inserted, and hacked in. Giving a short preview of the intro of said game back in August of 2021:
Throughout the years, he’s slowly posted updates to said game, including modifying the game itself to adhere more to a western audience:
Even going as far as to translate the VMU games themselves:
As a bonus, excusive to the fan translation patch, a bonus disc was created by the team that allows you to watch the cancelled anime on your Dreamcast, and download the 100% complete VMU save:
Much more in depth info on the translation process itself, and hacking English into the game can be found on our sister site, The Dreamcast Junkyard, and of course on Derek’s GitHub page on the release of the patch.
If you’d like to download the patch and try it yourself, you can do so here.
Thank you again to the entire team for bringing this niche visual novel to the Dreamcast, a system which seems to have copious amounts of this style gameplay in Japan, but very little to none in the West.
The team who worked on the translation is as follows:
- Lead Developer / Lead Graphic Artist / Project Lead
- Derek Pascarella (ateam)
- Lead Translators
- Marshal Wong
- Duralumin
- Lead Editors
- Lewis Cox (LewisJFC)
- Derek Pascarella (ateam)
- Additional Translators
- Piggy (witchpiggy)
- Additional Graphic Artists
- Nico
- Danthrax4
- Special Thanks
- Lacquerware
- EsperKnight
- SnowyAria
- VincentNL
- cyo
- HaydenKow
Let us know if you are looking to try this out, and what other visual novels you’d like to see translated on the Dreamcast!
Leave a comment