Addie's Present
Image: Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

If you're the type of person who loves checking out obscure Japanese games, then you'll probably love the following bit of news.

Recently, a small team of fan translators and hackers have banded together to bring out a new fan translation patch for Addie's Present, a little-known (in the West, at least) Japanese adventure game released in the year 2000 by publisher Sony and the developer +d Software.

The patch is the work of EsperKnight (ROM hacking), Cargodin (translation, image editing, script editing), PSX Craver (image hacking), and Gwendolyn (playtesting), and was released to the public on October 21st.

As noted in the readme.txt, EsperKnight was previously working on a translation of the game over a decade ago, with some help from another translator named Aishsha, who eventually had to pull out of the project for personal reasons. This new translation doesn't reuse any of that prior effort but instead sees Cargodin start all over again from scratch.

Here's a quick plot summary taken from the description of the translation:

"On the eve of her ninth birthday, a young girl named Addie is gifted a Loglock—a peculiar cipher puzzle that has proven popular among children her age. While excited to transform one word into another using her newfound toy, she soon finds herself lost in a number of real-life puzzles that aren’t so easy to solve. That is, at least, until her night is met with a strange dream.

Join Addie as she chases familiar faces through an especially curious port town in this charming and whimsical coming-of-age story."

You can grab the patch from romhacking.net.

[source romhacking.net, via twitter.com]