Private Eye Dol
Image: HuneX

There's a big chance you've never heard of Private Eye Dol. The largely-forgotten detective game about a young actress tasked with solving a murder was released exclusively in Japan back in 1995 for the PC Engine CD-ROM² (or TurboGrafx-16, as it is called in the West). As such, it was only ever made available in Japanese, leading to issues for international audiences who have since attempted to understand its dialogue-heavy presentation.

Nevertheless, it remains an interesting curiosity, thanks to arriving at the end of the PC Engine's lifespan and incorporating an unusual RPG-like overworld as opposed to the first-person perspective seen in most Japanese detective games. And now, thanks to the recent efforts of a hacker and translator named Supper, it's finally possible 28 years later to play the game in English with the arrival of a new patch.

This new patch translates the entire game but leaves the Japanese voiceovers intact, so you can enjoy the original voiceover performances while having a greater grasp of what's unfolding.

Here's the synopsis of the game taken from Romhacking.net:

"Up-and-coming teen actress May Star thought the filming for her latest TV special would be a chance to enjoy some time with her friend Ayaka and new prototype AI partner Navi. Instead, it unexpectedly erupts into mystery and tragedy, leaving May the only one who can solve a baffling crime. Good thing she’s a detective’s daughter! But this proves to be only the beginning of a tangled saga, as May finds herself inexorably drawn into a web of incidents involving lies, corruption, and her own father’s mysterious suicide five years ago. Can May and her friends catch the culprits – or will this be their last shoot?"

If you want to give it a go yourself, you'll need to download the language patch from Romhacking.net. There are a few different options for patching included on the readme.txt, so it's worth reading through them carefully and deciding which one is the best for you.

Are you going to give this translation patch a try? Let us know in the comments!

[source romhacking.net]