Purpose
The central focus of the fan translation community is historically of Japanese-exclusive computer and video games being made playable in English for the first time, and sometimes of games recently released in Japan that are import-worthy and are unlikely to be officially localized to English speaking countries. It has since expanded to include other languages as well. Fan translations to English have provided a starting point for translations to many other languages. A fan translation is also started if a certain game released in Japan is not announced for localization within one year from its Japanese release.
Fan translations may also be done to titles that have received official localizations that fans perceive as flawed; for example, if the game had controversial content removed (such as Bionic Commando), or there were unnecessary changes in plot and character names (such as Phantasy Star).
The fan translation community was at its most popular, and attracted the most media attention, when certain popular game titles were still being worked on. These were usually parts of popular series such as Square Enix's Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Some consider the peak was reached with the translation of Seiken Densetsu 3 (sequel to Secret of Mana), a title that was highly desirable to RPG players and also very difficult to translate on a technical basis.
Some already translated RPGs are available on reproduction cartridges to play on the real hardware for some systems like the SNES.
Read more about this topic: Fan Translation (video Gaming)
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