A new English fan translation has just been released for Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor: 98-Shiki Kidou Seyo! — a 1992 Sega Mega Drive adventure game with RPG elements based on the popular anime and manga series Patlabor.
Patlabor, in case you've never heard of it, is a sci-fi media franchise that was originally created by a group of Japanese artists, filmmakers and designers named Headgear in the late 80s, and later went on to spawn a bunch of manga, light novels, TV shows, films, and video games.
The franchise took place in a near-future of Tokyo where giant robots called "Labors" have become a common party of everyday life (being used for basic municipal jobs and to fight acts of crime), and followed the adventures of a police woman named Noa Izumi and the rest of her unit, inside Division 2.
Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor: 98-Shiki Kidou Seyo! was the third official game to be released based on the Patlabor license (following Kidō Keisatsu Patlabor for the Famicom Disk System and Kidō Keisatsu Patlabor: Nerawareta Machi for the Nintendo Game Boy). It put player in control of a new Division 2 recruit, who must rise to the occasion to save the rest of the team after a terrorist attack occurs on their first day on the job.
The game features a mix of top-down exploration, adventure game-style dialogue scenes (with some nice character sprites), and RPG-esque turn-based encounters. However, the title notably lack any sort of experience or levelling system, with fights instead being an act of attrition between yourself and your opponents.
The new translation is the work of Barbarian_Moham. You can download the patch now from the website romhack.ing.