Fan translations are quite simply, games translated from one language to another. Most often this occurs with games that were
released in Japan only and then are translated to English, even games that received an English release are often re-translated by
fans. Some games that received an official English translation also received lots of needless edits, and were sometimes censored
depending on the beliefs, laws and religious views of the receiving country. This is evident in games like Splatterhouse on the
Turbo Grafx-16 where upside down crosses were altogether removed while they were intact in the PC-Engine version. Other
translations are much more invasive such as what happened with Dynamite Headdy (pg. 9) or the Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy
series of Role Playing Games where characters, equipment, magical abilities and more were changed on a game by game basis.
Dedicated fans have taken on the challenge of fixing these errors, sometimes the results are great and sometimes the translating
team take liberties of their own (much to the chagrin of purist fans). The fan translations we are featuring here run the gamut of
digital comics (complementing the other main article in this issue) to action games such as Dynamite Headdy (pg. 9) but also
touches on strategy (Front Mission on page 11) to horror adventure games (Sweet Home on page 10).
We kick off the Fan Translations article with an interview with Artemio Urbina of JunkerHQ and The Policenauts Translation
Team. Turn the page already and find out what you really were missing back in the day!
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