Developer: Hudson Soft

For those who followed the English fantranslation efforts of Japanese RPGs since the very first days, back when the idea of playing localized versions of Final Fantasy V, Tales of Phantasia, Star Ocea...

Developer: Santa Entertainmemt

Writing is love, both for the topics one ends up discussing and for the act of turning thoughts and theories into words and words into long-winded essays.

Developer: Nihon Falcom

Developer: Namco - Team Souls

Developer: Door

Back in the early ‘90s, when tactical JRPGs were still a fairly young subgenre, Masaya and Team Career’s Langrisser franchise immediately left its mark on the Japanese audience due to its mix of uniqu...

Today, the first (and last) DLC for Spiders’ swashbuckling fantasy RPG, Greedfall: The Dying World, a sequel to the multi-million seller Greedfall, was finally released.

Quantity, as they say, can have a quality of its own, or at least that’s what I ended up thinking (rather self-indulgently, I admit) after I realized I had just published my hundredth long-form piece ...

This past week, Yoko Taro and Square Enix’s action JRPG franchise, Nier, celebrated its 15th anniversary, and it’s safe to say the series has come a long way since the alluringly dark, experimental an...

Even fairly unique cultural contexts like RPG art can end up following broader economic trends, like with Turkish immigration contributing a fresh workforce to Western Germany's economic boom after th...

Those invested in videogame RPGs have learned since the earliest days of this genre to expect tabletop RPGs being adapted into digital adventures, a trend whose most obvious exponents ended up being D...

So far, the Found in translation column has been devoted to English fantranslations of Japanese and Korean titles, but there are plenty of other unofficial localization efforts going on involving a va...

In the long history of artists contributing to the aesthetic trajectory of videogame RPGs, there are a few instances where one can observe the same trend that already affected classic art for centurie...

Even among diehard fans of Nihon Falcom’s storied action JRPG series, Ys, devoted to the adventures of redhead swordsman Adol Christin in a world reminiscent of Earth’s distant past in a previous hist...

Developer: Nihon Falcom

Among the Japanese artists who contributed to videogame RPGs in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, one can often distinguish between those that had a traditional art education, conveying their style throug...

Despite its relevance in Japanese RPG history, Tales of Phantasia, the first entry in Namco’s flagship action RPG series, originally released in December 1995 on Super Famicom, has a rather bizarre lo...

Developer: Monolith Soft

Developer: Big Bad Wolf - Cyanide

Developer: Artdink

Mere weeks after discussing Progenitor, the Japanese RPG scene saw yet another fantranslation effort originally kickstarted by a small group of ardent fans, whose passionate coverage was able to spotl...

With 2026 starting out, it’s time to unwind a bit and recount the tale of yet another year spent adventuring in the multiverse of videogame RPGs, almost like a digital version of Moorcock’s Eternal Ch...

This past year hasn’t just been a treasure trove of interesting videogame RPG releases, but also a landmark of sorts for RPG accessibility and preservation, with a number of key efforts, some of which...

Developer: Squaresoft (Super Famicom original), Historia and Square Enix BD2 (Remake)

Developer: BioWare (PC original), Runecraft (PS1 port)

ALT: a close up of a man 's face with the words `` it 's done '' written on the bottom .

This translation was started on September 22nd, and just after two months later it is finally playable from start to end (and some in between). I've documented as much of the controls and gameplay as...

Alongside sword and sorcery, the sci-fantasy genre was one of the cornerstones of pulp literature, building its own unique aesthetic with countless different works like Schoonover’s cover arts for Bur...

Writing about the history of videogame RPGs doesn’t just mean discussing titles, franchise, developers and game design trends, but also their audience and how the way it engaged with this genre change...

Developer: Feycraft

Developer: Forge Reply

While Western RPG fans are used to videogame RPGs adapting Dungeons & Dragons rulesets and settings, not to mention more esoteric takes like German RPGs retooling their own Das Schwarze Auge system, J...

While we already had a chance to discuss Shandalar, MicroProse’s attempt to bring Magic the Gathering to the videogame RPG space back in 1997 by mixing Richard Garfield’s magnum opus Trading Card Game...

Developer: Namco Tales Studio - Team Destiny

Developer: Quest Corporation (Super Famicom), Artdink (PS1), Riverhill Soft (Saturn), Square Enix (PSP, Reborn version)

Developer: Bandai Visual

Developers: Square Enix - Team Asano, Artdink, Netchubiyori

Nowadays, most people expect Japanese RPGs to have day and date PC releases alongside their console ones, with whole teams like Clouded Leopard or Peter “Durante” Thoman’s PH3 building their business ...

Developer: Obsidian

From the mid ‘80s to the early ‘90s, Japanese home PCs like NEC’s PC88 and PC98, Sharp’s X68000, Fujitsu’s FM Towns or the MSX line, born out of the partnership between Microsoft and Kazuhiko Nishi’s ...

Since the first time I had a chance to tackle Career Soft’s Growlanser franchise thanks to Working Designs’ PS2 Generations collection, I always found this series uniquely fascinating due to its stori...

Today marks the first anniversary of my Substack, which I finally started last September after procrastinating for a few years.

In the first two parts of this retrospective about the history of French videogame RPGs, we had a chance to discover the first pioneeristic effort of the mid ‘80s, the lull of the ‘90s, the disruption...

Considering this substack’s focus on videogame RPG history, I think it’s appropriate to start spotlighting select fantranslation efforts related to this genre, given how, since the mid ‘90s, they play...

Developer: Sega