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Magic: The Gathering is arguably more popular now than it has ever been, but it's important to remember that the card game's history goes all the way back to the '90s.
Created by Richard Garfield and published by Wizards of the Coast in 1993, MtG (for short) is now one of the world's most popular trading card games and generated $1 billion for Hasbro in 2022 alone.
While it wasn't quite as massive back in 2001, it was still popular enough to get its own Dreamcast game, which was exclusive to Japan. That game has now been translated into English by AstraleAmalthea, with the caveat that AI assistance was called upon to "write some Python scripts to extract the text and format it into a CSV" for editing.
The developer also notes that some other issues couldn't be resolved. "There [were] really hard-coded text string limits. Card names and prompts needed to be shortened. I tried to make each one readable, but I was editing a lot of them without context. There are a lot of possible board states, so if you see something that doesn't make sense at all, or even something that is entirely wrong, please let me know."
If you'd like to see the (untranslated) version of the game, check out the video below.
The tutorial videos remain untranslated, so you'll need at least a modicum of MtG experience to know how to play this, even after being translated into English. "I did consider hardcoding subs on the videos as there are tools to do that to .SFD video files, but I ultimately decided nobody would actually bother watching the tutorial videos to learn how to play, so skipped it," explains AstraleAmalthea.
"That, and my Japanese listening skills are not really up to it. If someone would be interested in giving me a transcription of the videos (accessed on the About Magic main menu option), then I could probably update the patch to include them."
The dev notes that "the character's English voice acting does not match the subtitles. I went with translating the Japanese subtitle text (which was slightly different from the spoken dialogue). But I am open to changing this if people find it too weird."
Regarding the use of AI, AstraleAmalthea gives the following statement:
"I did use AI to create the tools for this project. I used Claude to write some python scripts to extract the text and format it into a CSV I could edit.
I did NOT use AI to translate any text! This was all translated by a normal dumb human.
I either looked up content on Scryfall, MTG wikis, Jisho.org, or just from my own game/Japanese language knowledge.
All texture edits were done in PaintNet with the PVR plugin."
The use of AI in the world of fan translations is causing all kinds of drama at present, but in this case, AstraleAmalthea hasn't used it to do the really important thing – transform the original Japanese text into English.