I obviously haven't tried out the new localization patch, but news of the release makes me more motivated than ever to finally push this blog post out into the world. Sailor Moon: Another Story was a very foundational RPG experience for me and playing through it is one of my cherished childhood memories. As I get older, I realize that the only reason I ever got to play it in English is because of the hard work, dedication, and passion of those Sailor Moon fans who wanted to open the game up to a wider, non-Japanese speaking audience. In a time where work and time are increasingly commodified, their labor of love means so much to me. Growing up with access to the Internet at such an early age is a true blessing in my eyes. With many niche or subcultural interests in the pre-Internet age, you had to be lucky enough to have someone get you in the door, to introduce you to something beyond the mainstream. With that in mind, I'd like to dedicate this post to all of those people who have tried to hold the door open for others over the years (and still do).
Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon: Another Story, or Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon: Another Story for us Westerners, is a Japanese turn-based RPG for the Super Famicom console (the Japanese equivalent of the Super Nintendo), released way back in 1995 by a small, now-defunct (?) developer called Angel. Of course, considering that the game never saw a release in the States, it isn't hard to see why the game has remained relatively unknown by most SNES enthusiasts in the West. America occasionally got stuff like Golgo 13: Top Secret Mission or M.U.S.C.L.E. (a localization of Kinnikuman) on the NES or Ultraman and the Ranma 1/2 fighter for the Super Nintendo, but many anime-based games from the 90s never made it across the Pacific. This is especially true when one considers the multitude of text-heavy JRPGs that were released on the Super Famicom, including the Tenchi Muyo! RPG, the Slayers RPG, and the Magic Knight Rayearth RPG.
However, many of these games eventually found an audience online in the form of fan translated ROMs. Kotaku ran a great article a few years back about the legacy and impact of RPGe's release of Final Fantasy V, which ended up being one of the most influential fan translations of its time -- it also paved the way for a multitude of Japan-only titles to be experienced by English-speaking audiences for the first time. Suddenly, it wasn't up to game companies or market trends to determine who got to play a game, but fans and enthusiasts had a chance to take the work into their own hands. Many of them met on IRC channels and collaborated to create fan translations and patches that you can still find all over the Internet today. In an interview with Esoteric Gaming, Lina`Chan (who worked on the translation for Another Story along with many other SNES games) explained the motivation for her work:
In a way, Lina’s motivation also came from her sense of responsibility belonging to the gaming community. Lina said that although she could have simply learned Japanese and played the games in their original form, that would have been incredibly selfish. She mentioned that she knew she wanted to play these games and that she knew that there were people who, like herself, wanted to play these games. However, she also knew that many of those individuals did not have the capacity to learn a foreign language from scratch as easily as she could, let alone master the ability of ROM hacking. She thus decided to translate games not just for herself, but for the gaming community as a whole.With all that said, are these games any good? You could argue that many of the games left behind in Japan weren't translated because they just weren't good games. I hesitated while writing that last sentence because I've gotten to the point where I try to find something valuable in anything, but most anime games do operate under a certain assumption: that the player has seen the anime the game's based on! There are many games, such as Inuyasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask and Digimon World: Data Squad (both for the PS2), that I've legitimately enjoyed (and put many, many hours into) but, if I'm honest, it's more about my appreciation of the anime's characters and story rather than the game itself.
Many anime games act as companion pieces and, as such, they can be hard to appreciate without the context of the source material. This rings especially true when one considers the magnificent RPGs found within the SNES library. Compared to gems from Squaresoft and Enix which defined the Japanese RPG for a generation of console gamers, some anime-based RPGs were lacking. Sure, the Tenchi Muyo! RPG was fun, but I probably wouldn't recommend it over Final Fantasy VI, Dragon Quest V, or Secret of Mana unless I knew they were a fan of the series.
However, Sailor Moon: Another Story, is a little different. While I can't in good faith say that the game reaches the same heights of games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV, or Super Mario RPG, I think it's pretty good. Much like other anime games, if you come into the game with previous knowledge of Sailor Moon, you'll find a lot to like. You've got numerous references to the show, as villains and friends from the first three series are all present from Queen Beryl to Black Lady and Dr. Tomoe. All ten of the Sailor Senshi are playable in the game, even Sailor Saturn (who made a very limited appearance in the anime). Characters from the movies appear, such as Kaguya and Fiore, making it clear that Angel wanted to cater to the fans of the series. Another Story is a pretty faithful addition to the Sailor Moon universe and it's filled with a lot of little details that fans will appreciate. You pretty much get to play through all the big moments from the series! There's even minor voice acting for the Sailor Senshi's attacks! In a 16-bit JRPG!
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| The completed puzzle on my SNES repro cart's save file. ^_^ |
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