Update #2 [Tue 26th Mar, 2024 09:15 GMT]: The English fan translation patch for the 2001 PlayStation game 'Go For It! Goemon: The Grand Cycle of Oedo' has now been released, as announced by the ROM hacker AceDiez.
If you want to try it out for yourself, you can download the patch from archive.org. A Romhacking.net link will also be available soon.
Update #1 [Mon 11th Mar, 2024 10:00 GMT]: The ROM hacker AceDiez has offered another exciting update on the upcoming 'Go For It! Goemon: The Grand Cycle of Oedo' translation patch, which we first heard about last year.
Posting on Twitter, the hacker claimed the patch is now "all done", except for a final round of test playthroughs (and any tweaks and adjustments that come from that).
To accompany this bit of news, they also shared another brief video of the much-anticipated patch, demonstrating a closer look at the newly translated Area 1 loading screen.
You can find the tweet below:
Original Story [Mon 2nd Oct, 2023 11:05 GMT]: The Goemon series — also known as the Mystical Ninja series in the West — has built up a strong cult following outside of Japan, despite its developer Konami only ever localizing a handful of titles outside of the region. Because of this, fan translations of the series are pretty common, with groups of hackers stepping up to provide a more accessible way of approaching the more obscure releases.
Just last year, we told you about the release of a fan translation for the PlayStation title Goemon Shin Sedai Shuumei (AKA Goemon: The Successor for a New Generation). Well, now it appears that the same group (which includes AceDiez and RetroTranslator ) behind that effort is turning its attention toward another Goemon game for the PS1: Ganbare Goemon Oedo Daikaiten (AKA Go For It! Goemon: The Grand Cycle of Oedo).
Goemon: The Grand Cycle of Oedo was released for the Sony console in 2001 and sees the blue-haired bandit and his group of friends battling the Steel Five and the King of Recycling Ecorori who are responsible for the kidnapping of a princess. It features sidescrolling gameplay similar in style to the classic Goemon games for the SNES/Super Famicom and the N64 title Mystical Ninja 2 Starring Goemon (released as Goemon's Great Adventure in North America) and also includes a ton of references to characters and music from earlier titles to fit the game's theme of "recycling".
According to AceDiez, work on this new translation is almost done, with @RetroTranslator claiming there are "just a few snags to iron out on the hacking side".
We'll try and keep you updated on when the patch becomes available. For now, you can view a longplay of the game below to get a better idea of how it plays: