There is some very exciting news for all you PC-FX gamers who aren’t fluent in Japanese. The first ever, full PC-FX translation patch is finished. It will allow you to play the adult dating game Pia Carrot e Youkoso!! The game is translated as “Welcome to Pia Carrot” in English. All the dialog and menus have been translated. This really is a very impressive and hopefully it is the start or even more PC-FX projects. Read on for videos, screenshots and an exclusive interview with the translator.

As you can see from the above shots this is no simple hack. The layout and translation are very professional looking. I would imagine this is how a U.S. release of this game would have looked like had the PC-FX ever gone on sale outside of Japan.

This video shows the first part of the game. In it you play a boy who has a part-time job at the cafe Pia Carrot. But the game is really about his co-workers. Okay, this might be a good time to remind everyone that this game is for players 18 and older. There are more screenshots and videos on the translator’s site, which you should all go to.

The man behind all of this, Matthew La France, was nice enough to let me interview him about the game. The interview follows:

Rising Stuff: So can you tell me a little bit about the Pia Carrot Translation project?

Matt: Sure. It probably started around 2005 when I began offering to help David beta test his PC-FX emulator Magic Engine FX. One of the stumbling blocks for translation hacks on any system is having a working emulator for it. I was aware of one other translation project being worked on at the time which was Akazukin Cha-cha, but the imminent release of an emulator felt like the chance to see a bunch more translation projects start for this system. I’d played a lot of WtPC around ‘97/’98 and I really wanted to translate it. I asked David if he’d help out and he agreed.

Rising Stuff: Why did you choose to translate a game for such an obscure system? The PC-FX has never seen a release outside of Japan and was barely known even in Japan.

Matt: That’s partially the answer right there. Sometimes it’s fun to see what happened on a system that was slightly off the beaten path. It was essentially old technology resurrected to compete with a sudden rival, kind of like what happened with the Atari 7800. It was a great 2D system however and its FMV capabilities were unrivaled. Plus it was kind of marketed towards anime fans. Anime was becoming big in the US around that time and I was a huge fan. A friend of mine recently made a great point about collecting. He said basically you go back and put together this picture of a certain moment, like a snapshot in time. You can then look at that and say “I was THERE man!” I only got to play a small number of games on the PC-FX when it was new. Going back now and exploring that it’s like traveling back in time and going “what if I played those other games?” It’s kind of nostalgic.

Rising Stuff: This is the first full game translation ever for the PC-FX was it difficult to step into new territory like that? Did you have any help figuring out how to work with the system?

Matt: Yeah. I’ve made some script dumps myself but this was beyond me. Once I found a hex editor that could handle opening an entire ISO image I managed to create a table file and dump some text but without knowing how the blocks are stored in the game it’s hard to know what you need. I made some simple dumps and tried to start translating but it wasn’t until David stepped in and dumped a nicely formatted script that I was able to get to work. As far as other technical things, you’ll have to ask David. I’d recommend interviewing him as well. This project wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without his knowledge. I’m still amazed at what he did.

Rising Stuff: I will try to see if I can talk to him next. The PC-FX community I know is thrilled about your release. Have you gotten much feedback for it so far?

Matt: I have gotten some and it’s interesting. I think the Maison Ikkoku project was much more well received than I was expecting. I figured maybe three people in the world actually cared. With Pia Carrot I don’t think I was as surprised, but I’ve gotten a fair amount of response. It’s fun to hear people say things like “Thanks a lot for your work. This is giving me some seriously delicious feelings of nostalgia.” I think we’re at that 10 year nostalgia point. People unconsciously start to pine for the things from around a decade ago so the timing couldn’t be more perfect. It’s great to hear that kind of thing because I feel the same way, and I know that someone who played it in Japanese before now gets to experience it in a whole new way. I’m really happy that I was able to help with that.

Rising Stuff: Would you ever consider doing more PC-FX translations? I know some fans would kill for an English version of Team Innocent or Yuna FX.

Matt: Yeah. I’d really like to, but only time will tell. I’ve been messing with the system again playing some games I never spent much time with. Tonari no Princess Rolfee is unique. It’s kind of a raising simulation with truly random events that happen per location. You can save/load and try going to the same location and something different will happen. Team Innocent is great. There are a lot of interesting games on the system. I’d like to see more people get into translation hacking for the PC-FX.

Rising Stuff: Thank you for taking to time to answer these questions.

Matt: My pleasure.

In honor of this special event and to allow you all to have nice legal copies of the game to patch, Rising stuff will be selling Pia Carrot for the special price of only $19. This sale will go on until the end of March or until it is sold out.

For more information on the game, the patch file and information on how to use it, please go to Matt’s site. While you are there check out all his other great posts and projects and thank him for taking the time to translate and release Pia Carrot.

Links:
Matt’s Messy Room
Info on Pia Carrot(wikipedia)