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The original Super Famicom version of Chunsoft's highly influential "sound novel" Kamaitachi no Yoru has just received a fan translation, allowing players to experience it in English for the very first time.
Released in 1994, Kamaitachi no Yoru was the second sound novel from Chunsoft, following the 1992 title Otogirisō (which itself received an English fan translation back in 2024), and was an extremely important influence on visual novel creators like the When They Cry developer Ryukishi07 (who later worked on the 2017 remake) and Zero Escape's Kotaro Uchikoshi.
The game follows a couple, Tōru and Mari, who travel to a remote ski lodge and must solve a murder case, with the plot unfolding through branching paths that lead to different endings based on your decisions. Similar to Otogirisō, the game placed heavy emphasis on atmosphere and text, with some horror elements thrown in for good measure.
Just to give some more context, the game later went on to receive multiple follow-ups, including Kamaitachi no Yoru 2 (2002), Kamaitachi no Yoru × 3 (2006), and Shin Kamaitachi no Yoru: 11ninme no Suspect (2011), as well as versions for other platforms, such as the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and mobile phones. The majority of these releases, however, were exclusively in Japanese, with the only official release to our knowledge being the 2014 iOS release from Aksys Games, localised by Jeremy Blaustein (of Silent Hill 2 and Metal Gear Solid fame) as Banshee's Last Cry, which moved the location to Canada.
A fan translation for the 2017 remake Kamaitachi no Yoru: Rinne Saisei was also released in 2021 by a team called Project Kamai for the PC version, but at the time, many expressed disappointment that there wasn't a similar endeavour for the Super Famicom original.
This is where ButThouMust comes in.
Having previously been involved in creating their own patch of Otogirisō (seemingly separate from the one we covered last year), the fan translator/hacker has since turned their attention to the 1994 Super Famicom title, enlisting FCC and FredArtz for some help with the graphic design for the opening and end credits, respectively. Because of this, it's now possible to play the game that started the series in English for the first time, without needing a Japanese-to-English dictionary and the patience of a saint.
"At some point during the creation of that [Otogirisō patch], I tried digging around in Chunsoft's next game in the same style," wrote ButThouMust on GitHub, "And found enough things in common between their internal workings that I wanted to work on it, too.
"If you care about how working on each compared, I would say that Otogirisou had the harder script to translate, but was relatively easy to hack. Kamaitachi was the opposite: its script was more straightforward to translate, but hacking it was much more difficult. Without that previous experience with Otogirisou, I never would've been able to crack Kamaitachi open."
ButThouMust makes clear on GitHub that, "No generative AI or LLMs have touched, nor will touch, any part of this translation project," stating, "All code for my custom tools, all ASM hacks, all graphics edits, and particularly the translated script, were created manually." They also included a list of some of the areas where they had difficulty translating the script in a spoilers folder and revealed they are currently attempting to reach out to Project Kamai to discuss using some of their translation choices.
If you've been waiting for this game to get a translation, now seems like the perfect time to dive in.