The world of fan translation patches has been booming in recent years, making video game curiosities and vintage gems more accessible around the world. At the forefront of this wave are Works on top of a hilla collective behind top-notch fixes for games that I thought would remain out of reach. Today, they announced a surprise project: a translation of a sinister four-disc PlayStation RPG inspired by a real-world cyberpunk hovel.
From the team behind the irreverent Planet Time, The Kowloon Gate is a sprawling RPG set in a claustrophobic environment. Set in 1997, Kowloon Walled City has re-emerged on the outskirts of Hong Kong despite its demolition in 1993. You play as a feng shui expert working for a shadowy agency that monitors spiritual balance. Terrified that such a cesspool could thwart the yin and yang of the universe, you must investigate the city, survive mazes of space and time, awaken the four divine beasts, and return reality to balance.
The shadow of the real Kowloon looms large in popular culture. A former military outpost that became a no-man’s land after World War II, Kowloon has attracted refugees, vagrants and crime families to an ever-expanding urban nugget. In the 1980s, around 35,000 people were gathered in the area of five football fields. It inspired the cyberpunk visions of William Gibson, Ghost in the shellAnd The strangest arcade in Tokyo. As illustrious as its legacy is, many have gone there to say that life in this dense complex was more mundane than its reputation suggests. Largely off the grid, the most popularized recordings are Greg Girard’s 1993 photo diary. City of Darkness And a handful of periodicals distributed.
A split between an FMV adventure game and a dungeon-type RPG, The Kowloon Gate is a surreal cyberpunk epic. You travel through abandoned passages and encounter many urban deserters. It’s a perfect recipe for a game lost to its original audience but which has become cult over time. This is how it received ports on PSP and PlayStation 3, a tie-in manga, a VR prequel and a visual novel sequel that I just can’t open the door. Although it never left Japan, some parts of the dialogue and copy are intended to be read in Chinese, making it a significant challenge for fan translators.
If you’re a fan of Japanese adventure games or PlayStation obscurities, you’ve had a good meal these past few years. Official and unofficial, there are English localizations for Garage: Bad Dream Adventure, Sprouts and even Linda³. Hilltop Works has built a strong reputation as a collective, releasing English-language patches for Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 and Japanese exclusivity playful adaptation of the coded phenomenon in the Midwest Jingle Cats. Their work is so renowned that they have also been commissioned for official translations, such as that of the 1999 port. Collection of odd jobs from Milan.
At the top of the hill The Kowloon Gate the patch is expected to be released on June 9.