First off, impressive work on this game. Ingenious work on implementing those subs.
Now, I do have on criticism that is minor in the grand scheme things. I think it's a bad idea to not translate the entire game and leave Japanese in. Sure, the origin of the game is Japanese, but I believe the goal of a translation is to make the entire game understandable for non-Japanese speaking people. That includes stuff like the title screen. I think romanizing and having a literal/clunky translation of the title are both not the best approach. Why not go with a looser translation that attempts to capture the spirit of the game? Also, even though I know we all do fan translations, but I always strive for professional quality translation. I think if a professional company like XSEED hypothetically translated the game, they would have translated the title screen.
Just my two cents.
We appreciate your comments. It's something we're talking about now.
I must confess, there is an element of compromise to leaving some things in Japanese. Changing them wouldn't just be a matter of "losing some Japanese flavor", but also a matter of being an enormous hacking ordeal.
As it stands the "Anime Mode", which is really the game's main attraction, is 100% translated. People who try this mode are going to get the full experience. Even the credits are translated.
Zeroigar has a special unlockable parody mode with slide-show style cutscenes that
aren't FMV and are only voiced. Translating these would mean hacking in a print routine where there was none before. I haven't done any of the hacking, but from what elmer tells me, that would be the kind of undertaking that would take weeks and dozens of hours. Considering that few people are going to get that far in the first place, it seems acceptable to me to release a simple supplement as a PDF or web-site. I've written up a translation for the whole thing already.
As for the other bits that are untranslated in the game, we'll have another look at what we can do.
By the way, about the subtitle 超神兵器. "Super God Trooper" does not appear to be official, thank god. 兵器 doesn't mean "trooper", it means "weapon", for one thing. Also, contrary to what many English websites say, it is
not "Choushin Heiki", it's "Choujin Heiki". Somebody used the wrong on-yomi there. I am positive that this is a bit of wordplay on 超人兵器, which would mean the giant humanoid robot weapon.
I'm thinking of forgoing any attempt to duplicate that pun and just going with "Divine Weapon". Let's just say that there's more than one reason to go with "divine", too.
Anyway, we'll see what we can do!
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