A while back, some of you may recall me posting an English-language walkthrough and translation guide for the MSX1 game "A Life M36 Planet: MotherBrain has been aliving" by Pixel. When I first heard about this game, I knew I had to try it out, as the Engrish title was just SO STUPID... but to my surprise, the game wound up being really neat! I was expecting a Metroid clone from the short videos I could find online, but what I wound up getting was something much more ambitious and atmospheric -- kind of like a sci-fi equivalent to the NES classic "Faxanadu," or an improved take on the MSX1 game "Cross Blaim" with much more story.
Well, to my surprise, within just a couple weeks of me posting my walkthrough, a project to fan-translate the game rom using my text popped up (fronted by MP83 and a hacker who calls himself Hubz), and that project has now completed! And it wound up ballooning into something bigger than I ever could've predicted, too. Not only is there a fan-translation patch, but it includes fixes to some rather major bugs that plagued the original Japanese release (thank you Guillian!), plus there are now patches allowing for invincibility and superjump on top of that (thank you Larsthe18th!). Guillian also created a Java-based password generator for the game, and MP83 (who helped immensely in proofing and beta-testing the English fan-translation this whole time) created a trailer to advertise the patch, and is working on a full game map now.
Here's his trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9iLo2T6z4g
In the process of fan-translating this game, we also learned a lot more about it, including what some of the previously unidentified items actually do, as well as certain programming quirks that can be exploited by players. I've updated my walkthrough with all of this information, along with warnings about some of the bugs we've discovered (which can be mostly ignored if you're playing with the bug-fix version of the fan-translation patch, but it's still good to know about them just in case!).
Then my IRL friend Brandi got involved, adapting the updated version of my original walkthrough into a snazzy html site!
So... I figured I'd share that all here -- in the form of the above trailer link, as well as the html version of my walkthrough, since that includes links to all the aforementioned things (aside from the full game map, which isn't QUITE done yet, but will be added when it is).
Here it is:
http://forgottenkings.tripod.com/m36.html
Check it out, watch the trailer, and if it looks like something you might enjoy, I'd urge you to give it a try! It's glitchy and flickery, but has three things in spades: ambition, atmosphere, and charm. And those three things more than make up for any of its shortcomings IMHO.
Hope you guys end up enjoying it!
-Tom
P.S. Before anyone asks, we left the Engrish title and the Engrish confirmation prompt "ARE YOU OK? YES/NO" intact on purpose, because they're both super-charming. ;) Everything else has been fully translated into quite natural-sounding English, however, so no worries -- this should be a really smooth English-language experience for you! (Though you might still want to follow along in my walkthrough, as the game can get pretty obtuse at times...)
P.P.S. I'll be submitting an updated PDF version of my walkthrough to CheatMSX soon. I just want to make sure all the links are up-to-date first.
