Saved by fan translators

Games that fans translated themselves, years after release. For many players in China, these patches were the only way to play GBA RPGs in their own language.

343 games

How fan translation worked

A fan translation is a patch: volunteers dig the text and fonts out of the game, translate them, redraw menus and title screens, then squeeze everything back into the original space. Chinese is especially hard — the game’s font has to be replaced with thousands of new characters, which often means expanding the ROM.

In mainland China in the early-to-mid 2000s, translated versions spread through emulators and through the cartridges sold in game shops, and for a generation of players they were simply how GBA games were played.

Translations that made history

The best-known English fan translation is Mother 3, released in 2008 after years of work. On the Chinese side, the most-translated games are the ones on this page’s first rows — Pokémon, Zelda, Golden Sun, Fire Emblem and Castlevania were each translated, sometimes more than once.

All 343 games in this exhibition