It's fair to say that Blaze & Blade: Eternal Quest didn't exactly set the gaming world alight when it launched back in 1998.
The reception to this multiplayer action RPG was muted, and NextGen magazine even went as far as to call the PC version "crap in a box" in its May 2000 issue. "If you get this 'game' as a gift, throw it away — even Goodwill probably won’t take it," added the review.
The PS1 original was only released in Europe.
Despite this, developer T&E Soft was bold enough to create a sequel, which was released exclusively in Japan on PS1. Now, for the first time ever, Blaze and Blade Busters is finally playable in English thanks to the efforts of Ben128.
This patch is fully playable, but there are some issues to note:
+ Character names are not translated in the “Mingle” menu. This is because the game uses these names to determine which portrait to display. This issue only affects this menu and does not impact gameplay.
+ Some translations are shortened or less accurate. This is due to strict byte-size limitations for each entry. Japanese can convey more meaning per character than English (sometimes one character equals a full word), making it difficult to fit equivalent translations within the same space.
+ A few specific characters remain in Japanese in the pause menu (for example, spell categories). The corresponding bytes have not yet been identified in the game files, as they appear to behave differently. However, almost everything else in the pause menu has been translated, so this should not affect gameplay.
If you'd like to give it a spin and see if it's any better than Eternal Quest, head over here. In the meantime, here's some footage of the untranslated version.