Yearly Translation Patch Data Thread

[filler]

Once again, I'd like to highlight the English language translation patches released in the previous year (2018 this time) via some charts. This is just something I like to do and it's not something endorsed by the mods. This year I've named the thread more generally so it can be used again next year if that seems appropriate. Let's get started!

For starters, here are the English language translation patches released by year. Note: These are fully-playable patches only, and includes updates as well as first-time releases.



This was again the year with the greatest number of English language translation patches for what should be the 5th year running. Total patches were 98 in number compared to 89 last year, an increase by 9 patches.

Here is a high-level view by system.



And here are the raw data for the peanut gallery.



Though they were both outliers last year, FDS and PC-98 saw a sharp drop from 10 and 6 released patches last year, to 2 and 1 this year respectively. Famicom (NES) patches saw a slight drop from 34 to 30, but it's maintaining its general trend.

The most significant increases this year were in Game Gear, and Super Famicom (SNES) patches. The Game Gear saw 4 new, and 1 updated patch released for a total of 5 released patches, an all-time high for the system. The real shocker was the sheer number of Super Famicom patches released this year, a whopping 34 patches! This matched the most English language patches released for any system along with the Famicom that also saw 34 releases last year. It also marks the 5th time that Super Famicom releases have exceeded Famicom releases.

As usual, I'd like to congratulate everyone on all the great work this year, not only on English language translation patches, but many other language patches as well. Here's to another record breaking year of patch releases.

[#]

Nice graphs, but what percentage of those numbers are updates? As more first-time patches get released, the chance of updates increases and they might even start to outnumber first-time patches. For all I know the peaks and recent growth could all be due to updates.

[filler]

Nice graphs, but what percentage of those numbers are updates? As more first-time patches get released, the chance of updates increases and they might even start to outnumber first-time patches. For all I know the peaks and recent growth could all be due to updates.

I don't believe RHDN tracks those data. Each submitted patch is treated as a new patch. The only patches that I know were updates were Jonny's updates to, Kouryuu no Mimi, DoReMi Fantasy: Milon no DokiDoki Daibouken, Mickey to Donald: Magical Adventure 3, and Sassou Shounen Eiyuuden: Coca-Cola Kid. So that's 4 that I know of.

When you find some way to differentiate updates from new patches let me know.

EDIT: I did notice there is a "release date" and a "last modified" date for each translation patch when you drill down to the individual project page. If you check each of the translation pages individually you can check to see which were updates and which were first time releases.

[cccmar]

Nice! This year there will likely be quite a few GG translations as well, but after that likely there will be a sharp drop, as was the case with PC-98. Would be cool to see more translations for CD systems, however these games tend to be longer on average. There will likely be at least a few new SNES/NES RPGs this year as well. Overall, this should be a decent year too, but I don't know if it's gonna beat 2018. Still, it's off to a decent start already.

Also, it would be interesting to check how many of these were made by older groups/individuals that are still active, and how many were made by the newcomers to the scene (though that might be a bit more involving).

[filler]

Also, it would be interesting to check how many of these were made by older groups/individuals that are still active, and how many were made by the newcomers to the scene (though that might be a bit more involving).

I don't see myself going too crazy researching those demographics, but at one point a couple months ago I did attempt to figure out how many folks worked on English language translation projects during the year-to-date.

I seem to remember that it was around 100 individual users who were credited on released patches. The break-down of roles was roughly 1/3 hackers, 1/3 translators, and 1/3 other roles like graphics or script editing.

It's a relatively small group, but somehow I find it encouraging that there are around 33 active hackers working with around 33 translators, and approximately 33 others supported them in releasing nearly 100 patches this year.

[Kallisto]

Last year was the year most translators and Modders were finally finishing their projects that took a good amount of years, and I think there is still a few in the works for the moment. Probably will read something about it in the middle of this year if the trend continues like it did last year. There been a lot of interest in Famicom and Super Famicom as of late afaik, and I believe Sega Saturn Translations or modding will start picking up again at some point due to some great advancements that have been made recently that will make it easier to work with (assuming interest picks up again).

I haven't read much from PSP other than what projects are being worked on here currently.

PS1/PS2 still pretty much dead (aside from maybe the odd 1 or 2 projects that gets released).

There is has been a lot of modifications for games that needed it that cleans up official bugs, uncensoring graphics, cleans up official translations, etc.

There has been a good amount of focus on the Super Robot Wars Series on various platforms which is nice.

[Mugi]

the psp is quite a beast to work with really.
being a handheld you get the (false)impression that the games arent really that huge to deal with, but psp games are more or less equivalent to
ps2 games in terms of size and compexity. working through one (especially rpg's or other text heavy stuff) takes a long time.
i have 2 in the works, both going since years now.

it's pretty unreasonable to think that we'll ever see numbers we do on consoles like nes on more modern systems propably.
as for if there's things going on, trust me, there are, but psp hacking scene is a really unorganized clusterfuck. you can find all kinds of stitched together half-wit hacks for tons and tons of psp games if you dig around in the internets, but full, polished patches are quite uncommon.

also, i hate to be "that guy" but with the inclusion of custom modding tools into ppsspp, we are also now seeing hacks and translations that are again repeating the zsnes dilemma, and are locked into the emulator to function, which, if you ask me, is terrible and should not have ever happened.

[#]

also, i hate to be "that guy" but with the inclusion of custom modding tools into ppsspp, we are also now seeing hacks and translations that are again repeating the zsnes dilemma, and are locked into the emulator to function, which, if you ask me, is terrible and should not have ever happened.

Emulator locked translations are a different subject, but I don't see audiovisual enhancements as bad. I like the options for HD texture mods in PPSSPP (and Mesen) as it makes it possible to replace hard to distinguish HUD elements or text with high quality new material. And a few games received second analog stick support, which is a great feature as well.

[Mugi]

Emulator locked translations are a different subject, but I don't see audiovisual enhancements as bad. I like the options for HD texture mods in PPSSPP (and Mesen) as it makes it possible to replace hard to distinguish HUD elements or text with high quality new material. And a few games received second analog stick support, which is a great feature as well.

Im not mocking the "HDpacks" Im working on one for shatterhand myself, and the fact that ppsspp allows those too is cool, the issue is that several translations that exists, use those to translate textures, locking it to the emulator, as they didnt hack the rom to insert translated graphics at all.

[Gemini]

I guess my RE2 Classic REbirth technically counts as one of the two PC translations?

[filler]

Happy 2020! You know what that means... Let's take a look at the state of English language translation patch releases/updates last year.

Here are all English language translation patch releases and updates year by year.



It's worth noting that this is the first time in 8 years we see a decrease in the total number of patches/updates. Not so bad considering there were 82 patches/updates last year, which places it as the 3rd greatest number of releases ever.

Here is our high-level view by system.



And here are the raw data for the peanut gallery.



As usual, NES and SNES saw the largest number of patches/updates at 31 and 14 respectively. These are followed by the Game Gear and Game Boy Advance at a distant 3rd (6 releases) and 4th (4 releases) respectively.

The SNES saw the largest drop in releases, from 34 to 14, a full 20 fewer releases than last year. As last year was a bit of an outlier, it's no surprise there were fewer SNES releases, and subsequently a dip in the number of total releases over 2018. Game Boy releases also took a dive from 7 in 2018 to only 2 in 2019.

Other stand-outs include 3 Dreamcast releases, 2 Saturn releases, 2 X68000 releases, and 2 Xbox releases, all of which don't normally see much action.

A great year for English language translation patch releases and updates over all. Despite a precipitous drop in SNES releases, this was still a banner year with many high-profile and niche releases for folks to enjoy for the first time. As usual, I'd like to congratulate everyone on all the great work, not only on English language translation patches but many other language patches as well.

[cccmar]

Interesting... if you check it, it would seem that a lot of the patches this year have been updates to already existing patches, so the actual number of new translations is definitely much smaller than the last year. However, I think that's to be expected. Some projects, like the GG completion project, will likely reach their peak this year, assuming nothing gets in the way. I'd expect more NES stuff this year, as usual, since that fountain hasn't fully dried yet. Surely some more Game Gear stuff - that's pretty much a given - and perhaps something for the CD-based systems as well? Time will tell.

[filler]

Interesting... if you check it, it would seem that a lot of the patches this year have been updates to already existing patches, so the actual number of new translations is definitely much smaller than the last year. However, I think that's to be expected. Some projects, like the GG completion project, will likely reach their peak this year, assuming nothing gets in the way. I'd expect more NES stuff this year, as usual, since that fountain hasn't fully dried yet. Surely some more Game Gear stuff - that's pretty much a given - and perhaps something for the CD-based systems as well? Time will tell.

I still don't know how to tell if a release date indicates an update or not. For instance I know that Outlanders (http://www.romhacking.net/translations/3862/) was updated last year, but it has a "release date" of 09 December 2019 and a "last modified" date of 09 December 2019. The only way to tell that v1.0 was 09-26-18 and v1.01 was 12-09-19 is to check the readme.

At any rate, I'm thrilled that last year was the second in a row to have around 5 English language Game Gear patch releases, and I appreciate your help in making that happen. I hope that 2020 will be a third year in a row! I feel a little guilty that there was only one Genesis/Mega Drive patch last year since I was sitting on Bahamut Senki, BUT that might change in 2020 if Supper or someone else is willing to work on a few Mega Drive games with small scripts.

[filler]

Happy 2021? At least it's not 2020 I guess. So far so good.

How was last year for English language translation projects? Pretty great actually.



The past year saw the greatest number of new and updated English language translation patches to date. 109 specifically.



As usual the greatest number of patches were for the Famicom and Super Famicom. This time the former beats out the latter by only one, with both a dip in the number of Famicom patches, and a spike in the number of Super Famicom patches, both a far cry from the heights they reached during the last 5 years, but still not too shabby.

The winners last year seem to be certain less active systems. The 3DO got it's first translation patch ever. The Dreamcast got 3 patches again last year which is a trend I'd like to see continue. N64 had a record 5 patches and is showing consistent activity since 2016. The biggest spikes might be the PlayStation and Wii at 7 and 6 patches respectively. The Genesis, Game Boy, Game Gear, PlayStation 2, DS, and WonderSwan also did quite well at 4-5 patches each.

Here are the raw data for the peanut gallery.

[cccmar]

That's a good number, but I feel that the number is going to drop for some of the older (especially 8-bit) consoles soon, since there seem to be genres which are more interesting to Western players than others, and those are generally the ones which end up translated usually - there are fewer and fewer of them each year, and I predict that the rest will likely remain untouched mostly.

Also, there's some other stuff that's not on the site, like some new MSX patches and 3DS patches, and some other stuff here and there, including a couple PSP patches I guess. Newer consoles in general tend to have fewer unlocalized games (especially from the last decade or so).

[zarkon]

Saturn 2020 patches I'm aware of:

Lunar SSS
Lunar SSSC MPEG
Dracula X (SOTN)
Vandal Hearts
Valhollian
Grandia (Update)
Shining Force 3 Scenario 1 (Update)
Shining Force 3 Scenario 2 (Update)
Shining Force 3 Scenario 3 (Update)
Shining Force 3 Premium Disc (Update)
Ninpen Manmaru (Update)

I think Fire Pro Wrestling S : 6Men Scramble is mostly done too, but I haven't tried it so I don't know if it fits "fully playable".

[cj iwakura]

Surreal to think it's already been a year since Sakura... there's an update pending to fix battle sprites and such, but it's still pending.

If this year brings us Shikigami 2, I'll be a happy camper.

[zarkon]

Surreal to think it's already been a year since Sakura... there's an update pending to fix battle sprites and such, but it's still pending.

If this year brings us Shikigami 2, I'll be a happy camper.

Are you still working on Shadowun?  Vaguely recall you saying a few years ago that there were some big issues to overcome on the hacking side, is that still a sticking point?

[filler]

Saturn 2020 patches I'm aware of:

Lunar SSS
Lunar SSSC MPEG
Dracula X (SOTN)
Vandal Hearts
Valhollian
Grandia (Update)
Shining Force 3 Scenario 1 (Update)
Shining Force 3 Scenario 2 (Update)
Shining Force 3 Scenario 3 (Update)
Shining Force 3 Premium Disc (Update)
Ninpen Manmaru (Update)

I think Fire Pro Wrestling S : 6Men Scramble is mostly done too, but I haven't tried it so I don't know if it fits "fully playable".

Sounds like someone better get busy submitting patches to the site.

[tc]

Wrestling and SOTN are welcome.