An Appeal From The Game Preservation Society - Front Mission 5 Translated

Every year, dozens of games are left abandoned, alone, unable to fend for themselves. Deprived of vital developer and publisher assistance, they wander store shelves and the internet aimlessly, looking for love and support. Most end up fading into obscurity, but thanks to the efforts of dedicated fans, modders, coders and hackers, a lucky handfull of these games get a second chance, and a new lease of life.

Hit the jump for the first in a series of quick looks at the best in revivals, fan-patches and independent translations. Today: Square-Enix's militaristic mech strategy-RPG Front Mission 5.

Front Mission 5: Scars of The War (PS2, Import)
Front Mission 5 Translation Patch

Square-Enix's long-running Front Mission series has been a fan favourite for a long time. What's not to love about heavyweight sci-fi mech warfare? Assemble your team of pilots, head to the labs to assemble their Wanzers (mangled German-Japanese abbreviation for 'Wandurung Panzer' or somesuch) and indulge in more than a little bit of turn-based giant robot strategery. The whole series is pretty gritty and in-depth, usually telling tales of near-future conflicts, messy things driven by ulterior political motives chock full of underhanded dealings. The characters tend to be from professional military stock, too, so you won't have to worry about drowning in teenage angst. FM5 in particular looks to be one of the more straight-faced war stories in the series, and has a lot of depth to its gameplay.

The problem here is that only Front Missions 1 (only recently on the DS), 3 (PS1) and 4 (PS2) ever got official english releases. Apparently Square doesn't think that the western world is too interested in big stompy robots. FM5, the latest and greatest game in the series didn't get an english release at all, and that's what the translation patch is here to address. It finally crossed the finishing line in the past couple of days, and has all of the menus and most of the game text translated professionally enough to make it feel like an official localization. At the time of writing, the entire game is now in english, although the current patch is labelled as a prototype/beta, so it may contain bugs and errors, so be warned that problems may arise. If you're at all unsure, wait a while longer for the polished 'final' version patch, but I haven't heard any horror stories about this current build, so you're probably safe if you're feeling adventurous. Just to be on the safe side, I do reccomend using multiple save-slots. Just in case.

To use this patch, you'll obviously need a copy of the game, ripped to ISO format, and a PS2 capable of playing backups once you've installed the patch and burnt it back onto a disc. This is a pretty big barrier for entry. Worse still, it has to be a specific earlier build of the game. The original release, rather than the 'greatest hits' re-release. It's pretty hard to find, and quite frankly, I wouldn't blame anyone for taking the less legal route here. While I by no means endorse piracy, sometimes there's just no other reasonable way of getting your hands on a game, and that sucks. On a more positive note, now that they're wrapping up with FM5, the translation team are now turning their attention to FM2, the one game in the series not yet in english. You can see some production screenshots on their site.

Next from the Game Preservation Society: The Temple of Elemental Evil gets some new double-glazing and the holes patched up by the Circle of Eight.

Click here for a full list of Game Preservation Society articles.