The 1993 Game Boy spin-off to the arcade beat 'em up Undercover Cops has just received an unofficial fan translation, courtesy of the translation group Stardust Crusaders.
Originally hitting the arcades back in 1992, the original Undercover Cops, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is an often overlooked title from the legendary R-Type developer, which focuses on a small group of police-like agents called "City Sweepers" who have been tasked with restoring order to a city gone to hell.
While not exactly the most famous example of the belt-scrolling genre — lacking the same success or name recognition as Capcom's Final Fight and Sega's Streets of Rage — it proved to be an enjoyable title all the same, and is significant for being developed by several of the same developers who would later go on to create the Metal Slug series at Nazca Corp. It even ended making our list of the Best Beat 'Em Ups of All Time back in 2023, and later spawned a Super Famicom port in 1995, which was eventually reissued by Retro-Bit in 2021 with an official English translation.
The Game Boy game Undercover Cops: Hakaishin Garumaa (or Undercover Cops Gaiden), on the other hand, is an entirely different genre of game, featuring board game style gameplay, with some light RPG elements thrown in.
Players take control of one of the three Undercover Cops (Zan Takahara, Matt Gables, or Rosa Felmonde) from the arcade title, using a slot machine to travel through the world landing on squares. Different types of squares hold different functions, with black squares typically instigating battles against thugs that are played with numbers depicted on the top and bottom of the screen.
As outlined on the romhack.ing page, an individual named Pennywise was responsible for hacking and editing the text, while TheMajinZenki and Ryusui tackled the translation, and Graphicus did some miscellaneous graphic design.
You can download the patch here, if you want to give it a go.