While the Vita has been getting shafted more than normal when it comes to Japanese-made games crossing over the oceans to the hands of western users on both Europe (somehow Australia counts as Europe, ask Sony about it) and the Americas, this is not a new phenomenon. If we roll back the clock all the way to the dying days of the PSP, we will notice a handful of games that were really high-profile that never made it to the West, the most egregious example of this being the non-release of Final Fantasy Type-0 (which later got a fan translation). However there are a few other games that got the same treatment: Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, Grand Knights History and Valkyria Chronicles 3 being the most popular among that group.

However there was another game that never made it West that I thought looked pretty cool when it was announced, and was sure would come to the West, by Capcom which had done a pretty good job at supporting the PSP with high-quality games. That game was The Last Ranker, an imageepoch developed RPG where you play as a man named Zig who enters an combat organization where warriors are ranked on how they perform in battle and decides to fight his way to the very top. This game was announced at the Tokyo Game Show back in 2009. Here is the trailer from 2010:

After the announcement I was relatively hyped to try out a new high-profile game on my PSP, especially a RPG, which is a genre I love and didn’t really feel like I got enough of it on that console. Until now, the only way to enjoy the game was to watch a series of videos by YouTube user EnglishSubs4All, which wasn’t the most optimal way to enjoy the game. That has all changed, since a member of the website romhacking.net, flamethrower, has decided to port the YouTube translation into the game, based on the work by EnglishSubs4All in the .*** (subtitle files) files they made available to anyone who might be interested in porting over their translation. This is only an initial, partial release but a lot of work is already done, according to the hacker himself about 50% of the game is now translated. Considering the wording flamethrower uses in the readme included with the patch, it is unlikely he will finish this, but he gives everyone instructions on how to build on his work and finish it if they so choose.

What is the status of the translation?

Done:

• Interface
• Item lists and descriptions
• Most of the main story (scripts)

Not done:

• Images
• Remainder of the scripts. These remain legible in Japanese.

Instructions to patch the Last Ranker

Two ways to run this:
1) Rename your source ISO to LR.iso. Then, double-click patch.bat.
2) Drag and drop your source ISO onto patch.bat

Download the Last Ranker translation patch

To start enjoying another game you were never meant to click here to jump to the release page over at RomHacking and download the patch. If you want to keep building on flamethrower and EnglishSubs4All‘s work and finish the patch, he has left intricate instruction on the whole process inside another files on the release ZIP.

Hope you guys enjoy this!