Old News: 2023-2024

It turned out that the issue fixed in the v1.1 update to Tengai Makyou wasn't actually the (main) cause of the crashes people were experiencing when playing using burned discs on real hardware. After more complaints and some more thorough testing, we've fixed the issues and released a v1.2 update, which can be found on the Tengai Makyou page. Sorry to anyone who lost progress due to this problem; we've tested the updated version on real hardware and are reasonably confident that it will now work as intended. Thank you very much to rg111 for providing critical help with diagnosing the issue and testing the fixed version.

As with the previous update, this doesn't change anything aside from fixing issues that occurred when using a burned disc, so if you're using an emulator or flashcard, you're not missing anything if you don't download it.

On a side note, the reason for the crashes wasn't a problem with the translation itself, but a bug in the System Card BIOS's CD-reading routine that had apparently never before been documented. In other words: It's not really our fault, okay? (Please ignore the bug that was fixed in v1.1, and the fact that this update also fixes another issue, caused entirely by the translation, which would have caused gibberish text to appear and only failed to occur because the game was crashing first.)

A small v1.1 update has been released for the Tengai Makyou: Ziria translation to fix a crash that could occasionally occur when switching maps if the game was played using an actual optical drive (i.e. a burned disc on a real console). This issue doesn't occur on emulators or flashcards that simulate the CD drive, which is how we overlooked it originally. Thanks to various people for mentioning this, and sorry for the inconvenience.

Aside from fixing this problem, nothing has been changed, so there's no need to bother downloading the new version unless you're planning to burn your own disc.

Following many delays, I've released a v1.3 update for the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna translation.

Several months back, an issue with the subtitle synchronization on real hardware was brought to my attention, and in the course of fixing that, I found several other issues that needed to be corrected. This eventually snowballed into doing a complete review of the translation and making changes (mostly minor) to some dozens of lines, as well as updating several characters in the font to look less tacky. For a full list of changes, see the new version's readme file.

Most of the work on this was done months ago, but due to various circumstances, I didn't end up sitting down to do final testing on it until yesterday. Major thanks to Alcahest for the bug report that kicked this whole thing off, and sorry for the very long wait.

Unless further issues turn up, I intend for this to be the final update for this game. Since I changed the font slightly, I'll probably do a small update for Yuna 2 at some point just to keep the font consistent between games, but I don't plan on making any more changes of real consequence at this point.

It's been a while since we really sat down and did a project together, so we figured we should make it a big one this time. LIPEMCO! Translations is happy to present a new translation: Tengai Makyou: Ziria! (Protip: It's pronounced "Jiraiya.")

Due to finding reams and reams of unused content while working on the game, I've also taken the opportunity to return to TCRF for the first time in many years to put together a page collecting all of it. And since this is a game a few people might actually care about, I even dug through some old Japanese magazines and put together a page covering its chaotic development. Oh, and don't forget about the previously undiscovered developer easter eggs! Take a look if it's the kind of thing that interests you.

And please, please, please don't immediately turn around and ask when we're going to be translating Tengai Makyou II, because other people are already working on it and unless something changes drastically, we're not going to.

Those afflicted with a particular kind of PC-Engine mania are probably already aware that the complete run of the Japanese magazine PC Engine Fan was scanned in and made publicly available a year or two ago. I've been itching to put those scans to use ever since they were posted, so a few weeks ago, I finally sat down and put together a rare non-translation feature for this site: the PC Engine Fan Magazine Data Collection, a collection of sales data from the magazine that includes a tool for viewing, sorting, and filtering the aggregated results.

Sadly, this turned out to be of questionable utility, as it's pretty clear from looking at the data that the magazine repeatedly changed its methodology and made it pretty much impossible to actually compare the sales performance of games over an extended period of time. But if nothing else, at least now you can view the charts without having to flip through all 95 of the magazine's issues! (Then again, I had a lot of fun doing just that in order to make this, so if you do have that particular kind of PCE mania, you might want to do it anyway.)

New translation: Galaxy Fraulein Yuna: Final Edition! (A.K.A. "the PlayStation version of Yuna 3" -- no, it's not the Yuna 1 remake!) At last, the debatably grand saga of Yuna reaches its arguably epic conclusion! Don't miss it! And, uh, you might want to watch the OVAs if you haven't already...

In lesser news, I reviewed the Yuna 2 translation and found a number of rather embarrassing errors, so I've made an updated v1.1 release to fix them which can be downloaded from the Yuna 2 page. A very small v1.2 update has also been made to the Yuna 1 translation, changing only a handful of lines for consistency with Yuna 3.

I had a bit of a late night, so forgive me if the annual news cleanout hasn't fallen precisely within the bounds of January 26th in local time. Let's pretend I live a few hundred miles to the west. In any case, news from the last year can now be found on its own page.

This also means this web site has now been around for five years. What an achievement, huh? I bet no one ever imagined I'd keep paying the bills for this long. I mean, look at this place: a bunch of PHP pages with no content management system, no dynamic content beyond a silly random page button, no JavaScript, no mobile optimizations, no social media integration...It was an anachronism five years ago, and it's even more of one now. Fortunately, that's just what I wanted, and I can only assume the five of you that actually use it feel the same.

As always, thanks to everyone who's endured my perpetual inaninity for the last year, including but not limited to TheMajinZenki, cccmar, Xanathis, and Mafoo343. I don't know how you manage to put up with me, but I'm glad you do.

Wonder if this place will make it another five years? I wouldn't bet on it. But I suppose that five years ago, I wouldn't have bet on Yumimi Mix ever getting translated either, and look where we are now. I guess sometimes life's funny that way.

I didn't work on any games this year that had a character saying "Thanks, everybody!", so I'm afraid I don't have a pithy on-point screenshot to put here. Well, perhaps the gag had run its course anyway...I'll just have to find something else that sums up how I feel on this truly unmomentous occasion. Ah, yes, how about this?