Yep, it’s a Sailor Moon RPG. Pretty nifty, huh? The game is pretty standard I guess; there are some pretty cool things in it though, like the nifty techniques and stuff. However, it is pretty hard to make sense of things (especially in the beginning) without a good knowledge of the series; the game continues the unfortunate “You’d damn well better know who everyone is before you play, cause no way in hell are we going to explain it to you” syndrome of anime gaming. Of course, this game isn’t meant for just your average Joe guy, it’s meant for people who like Sailor Moon. So, uhh, there you go.

To further confuse things for most Cartoon Network-lovers who haven’t seen the subtitled anime, this translation uses the Japanese names. Serena becomes Usagi, etcetc. Even with the patch’s included liner notes, it’s still confusing. But whose fault is that? Not theirs! Blame Cartoon Network! Those name-changing sons of bitches! Sure, they didn’t do it themselves, but hey, who else are you gonna blame?

As for the translation itself, it is nothing short of astounding. FuSoYa has done a superb job, even adding new code for a variable width font which looks really nice. Even the signs have been translated, which is a really nice touch. Of all the people I’ve talked to who played this game, even the ones who hated the game were still very impressed with the translation’s degree of professionalism. Which is saying a lot, knowing all the assholes that I know.

• IMPORTANT NOTE*

This patch only works 100% properly on older versions of snes9x and all current (as of March 17 2008) versions of Zsnes. It will have problems displaying the text in the intro on all other emulators, and real hardware, as proved by these two message board posts: http://tiny.cc/Swiu8 and http://tiny.cc/cekE4

The rest of the game should be fine.

UPDATE: As of September 2012, this issue can be resolved by applying this fix over the English translation, which makes the intro work as intended in newer and more accurate emulators, including bsnes and the latest versions of snes9x.

• GoodSNES: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon - Another Story (J)
• NoIntro: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon - Another Story (Japan)
• Size: 3,146,240 bytes (headered)
• MD5: 5f776488e366b6d6b44f6e8a01d9953d (without the header)
• CRC32: 02A442B8 (without the header)