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The rare and rubbish PS1 RPG Spectral Tower has been translated into English, and is now ready and raring to go for all players looking to have a tedious, endless adventure. The patch, crafted by a team of homebrewers, arrives just in time for the dubious title's 30th anniversary.
Released in 1996, Spectral Tower is an RPG with roguelike sensibilities, following a party of adventurers as they attempt to climb the titular 'spectral tower' - an isolated skyreacher that, legend tells, absolves sinners of their transgressions as they climb. The higher you go, the more purified your soul becomes. There are five successively difficult towers to conquer, ranging from 10 floors to 10,000.
And therein lies a large part of the problem. Spectral Tower is not only a clunky, laborious chore of an adventure, with drab storytelling, a dice-roll-based combat system, and endless empty rooms to traverse and corridors to "explore", but some have theorised that towers take upwards of hundreds of hours to complete, with the fifth and final tower boasting an expected 5,000 total hours of playtime.
Supposedly, developer Idea Factory offered pin badges to those who completed Spectral Tower's highest towers. As to whether anybody actually won said badges, who knows? It seems highly unlikely, but never put any challenge - no matter how tedious or monotonous - past the gaming community.
I'll wager somebody made it. Somebody clearly of the purest soul.
The new patch, credited to a team of translators, is available from Yoshimanix' GitHub. The patch translates in-game menus, dialogue, and adds subtitles to Spectral Tower's FMV sequences. It's Monday, so if you get going right now, you should have the game conquered by... I'd say Christmas.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure you still qualify for a pin badge, but the journey is the goal, right?