The last few years have been an incredible time for fan translations, but here’s a doozy: Square’s combination racing and role-playing game Racing Lagoon is now fully playable in English.
Racing Lagoon, first released on the original PlayStation back in 1999, wasn’t a critical or commercial success for Square at the time. While the game received middling reviews from Japanese press and reportedly only moved around 141,000 units in its first six months, Racing Lagoon’s reputation as a stylish cult classic landed it on a 2009 list of Famitsu readers’ most wanted sequels.
Watching any Racing Lagoon footage at all makes it obvious why everyone was so enamored with this game almost a decade later. It just oozes cool, from the retro, almost vaporwave aesthetics to the smooth soundtrack of jazzy bangers.
Sadly, Racing Lagoon never left Japan, forcing English-speaking players to either learn the language (which, I mean, most of us probably should anyway) or stumble through its adventure with a third-party walkthrough. The possibility of experiencing Racing Lagoon in English became one of those pipe dreams that everyone hopes to see materialize but mostly assumes never will.
Enter a Canadian translator known as Hilltop. After wrapping up work on another PlayStation-era obscurity, Dr. Slump, Hilltop quickly set their sights on Racing Lagoon. They released their first Racing Lagoon patch, an English translation of the game’s prologue, in late June before building a team that steadily worked their way through subsequent chapters.
And now, in less than five months, Racing Lagoon is fully translated, a monumental achievement that would have sounded highly unlikely at the start of 2021.
The delightful sequel we never thought we’d see 20 years later, we finally have more content to explore and 171 more Pokémon to take cute little pictures of as they dance around and eat apples.
“Over 20 years later, it is finally time for the rest of the world to experience one of the most unique and memorable RPGs ever created,” Hilltop’s announcement post reads. “I want to extend my deepest thanks to the rest of the team and to everyone who kept the dream of this game’s localization alive.”
Forever Skies is a newly announced first-person survival game by developer Far From Home. Players control a scientist who returns to a devastated, barely inhabitable Earth to scavenge for remains while making larger discoveries about how the planet has changed. Earth is covered in a thick layer of toxic dust following an ecological disaster. You …
Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for January 6th, 2021. It’s the first Thursday of the year, and that means the first big day of new releases of the year. There are several new games to look at, and while none of them jump out in a big way there are certainly …
Nier Reincarnation is a story-driven mobile RPG that’s set in the world of Yoko Taro’s Nier. The game originally launched in Japan back in February, and since then, English-speaking fans have been patiently waiting for a Western release. Now that it’s here, you’re going to want to which of the characters is best. Well, that’s where we come in. With …
It’s time for tournaments in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel! But, instead of regular competitions with any old deck, Konami has opted to limit their contests by card type to challenge its player base. So, if you want to be the king, or queen, of games across all formats, you’ll need to know the ins and outs …
With thanks to Serebii for the tip, it seems a distribution event is on the way for US Pokémon players. This event gifts you with a Hisuian Growlithe alongside 20 feather balls for your Pokemon: Legends Arceus playthrough. Information is thin on the ground at the moment, but it seems the promotion will be through …
There are many reasons why people love the Dark Souls series and other From Software titles, such as Bloodborne and Sekiro. The first of which is the difficulty – though we acknowledge that this is also why some people curse these games. However, no one can deny that the worlds found within these games are …
Square’s Obscure Street Racing RPG Is Finally Playable In English
The last few years have been an incredible time for fan translations, but here’s a doozy: Square’s combination racing and role-playing game Racing Lagoon is now fully playable in English.
Racing Lagoon, first released on the original PlayStation back in 1999, wasn’t a critical or commercial success for Square at the time. While the game received middling reviews from Japanese press and reportedly only moved around 141,000 units in its first six months, Racing Lagoon’s reputation as a stylish cult classic landed it on a 2009 list of Famitsu readers’ most wanted sequels.
Watching any Racing Lagoon footage at all makes it obvious why everyone was so enamored with this game almost a decade later. It just oozes cool, from the retro, almost vaporwave aesthetics to the smooth soundtrack of jazzy bangers.
Sadly, Racing Lagoon never left Japan, forcing English-speaking players to either learn the language (which, I mean, most of us probably should anyway) or stumble through its adventure with a third-party walkthrough. The possibility of experiencing Racing Lagoon in English became one of those pipe dreams that everyone hopes to see materialize but mostly assumes never will.
Enter a Canadian translator known as Hilltop. After wrapping up work on another PlayStation-era obscurity, Dr. Slump, Hilltop quickly set their sights on Racing Lagoon. They released their first Racing Lagoon patch, an English translation of the game’s prologue, in late June before building a team that steadily worked their way through subsequent chapters.
And now, in less than five months, Racing Lagoon is fully translated, a monumental achievement that would have sounded highly unlikely at the start of 2021.
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New Pokémon Snap – Nintendo Switch
The delightful sequel we never thought we’d see
20 years later, we finally have more content to explore and 171 more Pokémon to take cute little pictures of as they dance around and eat apples.
“Over 20 years later, it is finally time for the rest of the world to experience one of the most unique and memorable RPGs ever created,” Hilltop’s announcement post reads. “I want to extend my deepest thanks to the rest of the team and to everyone who kept the dream of this game’s localization alive.”
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