Super Famicom Exclusive, Far East of Eden Zero, Translated Into English

The first game of the series I played and quite enjoyed was the Neo Geo spinoff "Kabuki Clash", but sadly since all of Hudson IPs are now held by Konami, this one is out of reach of HAMSTER's ACA line-up.

If all goes well, this might not be the last "impossible" Super Famicom English translation we see before 2017 ends...

Closer and closer to that dream of a fully translated Super Famicom library....even if it does have to include titles that really were just intended for Japan or garbage.... XD

The dedication and passion of the gaming community never ceases to impress me. Well done!

@Shiryu A small correction: the title of the game does NOT translate to "Far East of Eden of Zero".

From the translator himself:
"Comments from Tom, the translator:

Tengai Makyou Zero is the second fan-translation in the series (with the first being Oriental Blue: Ao no Tengai). Right off the bat, I want to stress that this game's title is "Tengai Makyou Zero" (pronounced something like "Ten Guy Mock Yo") and not "Far East of Eden Zero." The distinction between the two is really important to me.

"Far East of Eden" refers to an entirely made-up American book about the history of Jipang. (The book doesn't really exist. It's just a part of the series' lore.) Some games in the series do not take place in Jipang, and do not contain the word "Far East of Eden" on the package. Thus, it's not a suitable English name for the Tengai series as a whole.

To make a long story short: "Tengai Makyou Zero" is the name of the game, and "Far East of Eden" is just decorative text that reflects the "roots" of the series.

Please keep it in mind if you ever introduce the game to others! That's all I ask!"

@Shiryu Star Ocean didn't use the SPC7110. It was a different chip, SDD-1.
The SPC7110 was a Hudson chip (or maybe it was by Epson?). Regardless, I believe it was only used in three games, all Hudson. The other two were a video board game Momotaro Dentetsu Happy and baseball game Power League 4.

Also, one other Super Famicom game used the RTC element. It was another RPG (also published by Hudson) that has yet to be fan-translation, Daikaiju Monogatari II, or Big Shell Monsters Story II.

I'll never tire of outstanding 16-bit pixel art. Even the retro games of today rarely approach the craftsmanship of the stuff produced in the '90's. Just like the movies, when the technology is more limited the artists are forced to be that much more creative to overcome their limitations. Really great looking game I'd love to play someday.

@ThanosReXXX roger, roger.

@KingMike Now I have conflicted reports on what was inside that cartridge (which I have btw confirmed with a friend that it will not run on the Retron5 as I wrote). I am however far more inclined to trust you because it was what I was going to write before checking out sources like hcgaming101 and even wikipedia, and both pointed to Epson's SPCS7710 inside. I will revise the article as soon as possible.

... and one day, even "Big Shell Story II" will be tackled!

@KingMike I am sadly even more confused: https://snescentral.com/article.php?id=0883 Can you give me sources for the SDD-1?

Man the entire Hudson library is held on lockdown now just cause a crappy company (Konami) held the rights and doesn't want to do anything with them.

@ThanosReXXX So then why don't they give us the correct translation instead of lazily leaving in the gratuitous Japanese? I don't know how accurate it is, but according to Google Translate the title means "Irregular Cliff Zero."

@Shiryu Still got that full title wrong. Tom the translator is not going to be happy...

And what's with the Makyō instead of Makyou, as clearly seen in the games' title screen?

I know that "ō" is probably the official way of writing what we pronounce as "ou", but still...

What a bizarre rpg... Honestly it looks otherwise fine, but the battle theme sounds super dull and if there's one surefire way to kill a RPG for me, it's when the main battle theme is bad.

@BulbasaurusRex For difficult complex languages such as Japanese, I would NEVER recommend Google Translate, that doesn't even come close to giving an accurate translation.

More info about the what, when and why about the game can be read here:
http://www.romhacking.net/translations/snes/patches/3243readme.txt

The series that the game comes from (there were more games, but on other systems, such as the PC Engine/Turbografx16) is simply called Tengai Makyou, and all of them have different suffixes/subtitles.

And by the way: it's not gratuitous Japanese, it's the other way around, so the English part is additional/gratuitous.

More info on the series here:
https://www.giantbomb.com/tengai-makyou/3025-1326/

and here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TengaiMakyou

Including a correct translation of the title...

For those interested: the correct ROM needed to apply the translation patch on, can be found in the so-called "GoodSNES v3.23" collection, along with any other SNES ROM you might want to play on your PC or SNES Mini...

Just Google "GoodSNES v3.23" and you should be able to find it. It should be around 2.2GB in size.

Man, I remember the translation started back in 1996, and the De-Jap people had a partial translation up in about 2000 or so, and you had to download special packs to play it on an emulator (I think it was ZNES, or something) back then. I'll have to take a look at this!

@Lone_Beagle Indeed, ZSNES needed special graphics packs that were the raw, decompressed graphic file dumps. Ah, good times, we have come so far...

Among other things they need to come up with the translation for Popful Mail SNES

Oh,its that game series that a lot of people only know because of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfqwLbxJhew

@Randomname19
I have heard of this game. I have never heard of whatever that link is.

by the way, if I can't apply this to a cart, that is a big disappointment.

Damn, the patched ROM does not work with Snes9x, meaning it also won't work with the SNES Mini...

I've got the cart for this a few months back, hoping a translation would come out for it. I didn't have to wait too long! Now I just have to wait to see if it's easy to update the ROM on the cart with the translation, what with all the special chips and RTC and stuff inside.

It's funny as well that the RTC doesn't go up to 2017 (it stops at 2014 or something). Has this/can this be changed with the translation?

Also, does anyone know if this will ever work on the SD2SNES? I know it doesn't currently, but Star Ocean didn't originally until a patch was created for it that allowed it to work. This would save me having to get my cart translated.

@ThanosReXXX You need Tom's custom SNES9x version. Hey, I wrote in the article it would not work.

@GravyThief Yes, I set up the date to current day, 2017.

@speedracer216 Its a cutscene from Far East of Eden: The Fourth Apocalypse.

I hope this means interest will build for the Gamecube Tengai.

Amazing work! ^_^ Thank you to the people behind this translation! <3

@Shiryu Star Ocean has an SDD-1 chip. I think you're confusing comments on here. Far East of Eden indeed has the Epson chip.

@bolt05 @KingMike Now I get it. I apologise to the both of you, I am very (very!) clearly overworked.

@Shiryu haha. I like your articles so keep up the great work! Can't wait to try this translation, but I just started work for the day. Gives me something to look forward to tonight I suppose!

Good stuff. I'll try it out later. Hopefully The Apocalypse IV gets translated some day. That's the one I'd like to play the most.

Special version of Snes9x? What? @Shiryu, what version of Snes9x are you talking about? I take it it's hard to find?

@mikegamer Not really, you just need to look up Tom's twitter feed.

@ThanosReXXX Fine, "The Devil's World Far From Heaven Zero," then. It is gratuitous Japanese if the whole point of the project is to translate the game into English. That translation should include the very title of the game. We don't call it the Densetsu no Zelda series, do we?

So weird to see how such a wrong translation/misunderstanding can take root so easily...

Everybody calling this game/series "Far East from Eden" when there is ample evidence to be found that this is a complete misnomer, such as the info that I provided in my previous comments...

The series is called Tengai Makyou, and that does NOT translate to "Far East from Eden". The latter is just an English subtitle, added for whatever gratuitous reason, but it is definitely not the main title of the series.

The ACTUAL (and literal) translation of Tengai Makyou is "The Devil's World Far From Heaven", as explained here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TengaiMakyou

The translator of the game mentioned in the article also stressed the fact that the series is not called "Far East from Eden". (I quoted him in comment #4)

It is a misunderstanding that has probably arisen from the fact that before the title was translated, the only thing that was understandable to (native) English speakers, was that very subtitle, and as such, the series has become "Far East of Eden" to them, regardless of the actual name of the series...

@BulbasaurusRex Hey man, don't shoot the messenger. I'm only quoting the translator and have kindly provided links with additional information.

If you don't agree, attack take it up with the translator, not me.

And the reason why I said it is gratuitous English, is because of the Japanese origins of the game. Tengai Makyou IS the series' name.

There are so many other series that we know and love and play games from and watch animes from, and these often still Japanese titles aren't questioned either, so why should this one be?

@ThanosReXXX
translation is always interpretation. "The Devil's World far from Heaven".... what is meant by that? taking the biblical story (based on Devil/Heaven) what is the part of the world far from heaven? Well, if Adam and Eve went East out of the Garden of Eden after the Devil deceived them.... then now they live in the Devil's world very far (in the east direction) from the heaven-like place that was Eden.

I think it was an English attempt to capture the narrative of being cast out into the world after the confrontation with the devil. that is not uncommon in translation when it is thought for thought instead of word for word.

@mikegamer The translation uses a ROM mapping that doesn't exist on any physical cart, so they used a modified SNES9x to add the custom mapping. higan (which by the way was named after the main character of this exact game)/bsnes can run the game with the mapping definition file included with the patch.

@ThanosReXXX With all due respect to the translator, I think it's the other way around, and in a sense you're right to refer to "Far East of Eden" as "gratuitous English": it's not part of the Japanese title. Indeed, it's very common in Japan to keep the original title alongside with its Japanese translation. (E.g. a Japanese edition of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" would have the original title in small print on top, above the Japanese translation.) The Japanese title "Tengai Makyou" is supposed to be a translation of the "original" title Far east of Eden, the author himself being regularly credited as the translator, so I think it makes sense to use Far East of Eden as the English title for the series.

(Of course, "Far East of Eden doesn't literally translate into "Tengai Makyou", but then translation, especially for a title, is rarely literal....)

@speedracer216 I have that trivia at the bottom of the article.

DYING FOR OLD NINTENDO GAMES IN THE OLD SYSTEMS!!!!! I remembered playing games for several days without shutting off the system, so that I can always go back to it right away!

@icerzerocool
got that going on Contra right now. that little red light tells me it's waiting when i get done with my work. haha

@speedracer216 Considering the Japanese people's love of legends, and otherworldly beings, and most definitely demons, I would not think that a comparison to any real world religion applies.

So, it's simply focused on a world ravaged by demons, and the place that's "far from heaven" is their demon home world. You could translate that to Hell, but that would once again be a too "real-worldly" translation. So to make it simple, I would just refer to it as either the Demon World or at the most "a Hell", but not THE Hell.

Asian lore and Christian lore aren't mixed that often, so chances are slim that it is based upon being cast out of paradise or whatever. But you can read up on the lore of the series here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TengaiMakyou
Perhaps that might give you more of an idea on how to interpret it for yourself.

@Champollion "The Japanese title "Tengai Makyou" is supposed to be a translation of the "original" title Far east of Eden"

Sorry, but I don't agree. That is exactly what I was trying to get across. First off, as you already know, Tengai Makyou does not even come close to translating to the English subtitle, so if "Far East of Eden" actually IS the real translation, then I find it to be sincerely lacking, and apparently, I'm not the only one thinking that.

Second, as explained by both the translator and multiple sources (of which I only linked to a few), the English "translation"/title is a misunderstanding based upon a fictitious book, that is part of the lore of the world and is mentioned frequently in the Tengai series, but it is NOT the main title.

"the author himself being regularly credited as the translator, so I think it makes sense to use Far East of Eden as the English title for the series."

What author? Of the game, or of the fictitious book in that game?

And since that fictitious book is only part of the entire lore in the Tengai series, it doesn't make sense to me at ALL to use "Far East of Eden" as the English title for all the reasons provided by me, the translator and the multiple sources available, because that book is not the main story line or binding factor in all of those games; it's just a component.

A component that's certainly quite frequently present and important to the lore of the Tengai universe, but it's not the main thread of the series.

@ThanosReXXX
good info. I would argue that the japanese do mix Christian lore in though. out of Eden doesn't mean Hell, it just means the world and if the devil has some dominion there it could connect. Even if not, I see them appropriate Biblical stuff in other places precisely because they consider it legend. they often mix it in.

one example is Megami Tensei where the final boss was YHWH, the tetragrammaton which is the way God's name was written in Hebrew in the old testament. Of course, the rest of the story is anti-biblical if anything, but the borrowed element is there.

another example is one of my favorite anime, D. Gray-Man. They use the story of Noah's flood in a lot of weird ways. Both the terminology (a group of people called "Noah" or the "Ark") and flashbacks to the actual biblical story though it includes strange changes of course). Again, it makes virtually no sense with the actual biblical passage, but they seem to enjoy borrowing some of the motifs.

i've actually done a lot of research on biblical stuff in games so it's fun to find these things.
thanks for your insight and the link too!

@ThanosReXXX Give it a couple of months...

@icerzerocool lol, which is why the "Sleep" feature on the Switch is so awesome!

@speedracer216 Those are good points as well, so right back at'cha.

And you're more than welcome. I also find topics like these interesting, even though I'm not even a religious person. The stories and legends of all these cultures are highly interesting to me nonetheless.

But to be fair, though: I didn't say that they don't mix, I said that they don't do it that often, and to elaborate on my point: a lot of the times, when they delve into demon territory in manga, anime or games, it is nearly always based upon their own lore, which is of course a far more interesting (and extensive) database which holds tons of demons and evil deities, which makes most of the Western myths and/or our religion-based evils pale in comparison.

@Lone_Beagle ??? Care to elaborate?

I miss old school jrpgs

Seeing this makes me wish I could find a translation patch for Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes 2 for the SFC cart so that I could play it on my retron 5.

@KingMike Higan... Sigh

@ThanosReXXX I meant Adachi Hiroshi, the "translator" of the books — I think actually an other pen-name of Hiroi Ouji, the creator of the series . For the books are not /that/ fictional, they have been published — kind of like "Fantastic beasts and where to find them" is a real book — and they have been published, in Japanese, under the title Tengai Makyou. From that point of view, Tengai Makyou is the Japanese translation of the fictionally original Far East of Eden title. That the translation is loose is not unusual — Secret of Mana is not a translation of Seiken Densetu 2 (litt. the legend of the sacred sword 2) but that's still the English title of the game. Sometimes the title is changed in different region even from English to English — cf. the Biohazard/Resident Evil series, or Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone.

On the game box, "Far East of Eden" is printed in small, above the Japanese 天外魔境 exactly in the same way as original English titles are often written above — sometimes below — their translation in Japanese. (Cf. Harry Potter: https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%8F%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9D%E3%83%83%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%A8%E8%B3%A2%E8%80%85%E3%81%AE%E7%9F%B3-1-J-K-%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0/dp/4915512371/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1508823187&sr=1-4&keywords=harry+potter or Rayman Legends: https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E4%BB%BB%E5%A4%A9%E5%A0%82-%E3%83%AC%E3%82%A4%E3%83%9E%E3%83%B3-%E3%83%AC%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89/dp/B00EUWJEKQ )

It's clear to me that Tengai Makyou was meant to be the translation of Far East of Eden, and since the (real) Japanese title of the (fictional) book has been given to the series, it makes sense to me to use the (fictionally original) English title of the book for the games as well. Even if the book doesn't appear in all games of the series — after all, Zelda herself doesn't appear in all games of the Legend of Zelda series...

@Champollion I was just pulling your leg about the writer part, but you've brought up some good points, even though I don't agree with each and every one of them.

Secret of Mana is actually a more applicable translation, even though it isn't 1:1 either, but collecting Mana and how to use it, is very much an important and intrinsic part of the world, whereas the fictional book mentioned in the Tengai series is not. It is only one of the many, many parts of the entire lore that encompasses books, animes and games, so that's a pretty big difference.

It's like renaming "Lord of the Rings" to "The Red Book of Westmarch"...

I would love to see what the translator of the game has to say about that, so maybe you should share your point of view with him. I'm pretty sure he's not going to agree.

My point was also more that I find it strange that people completely accept almost any translation and go with it, simply because they don't understand the language or care to investigate into the background of a series.

Say for example that the original writer would want to pull a prank and translate the title to "The grass is always greener in Eden", then that would now have been the title of the series, even though that is an even more lacking and ridiculous title than "Far East of Eden".

Makyou is a word used to describe/mean a place (in Japanese lore generally caves or grottos) of evil ghosts or demonic beings, so that part should at the very least also be present in the translation. (side note: in modern day Japanese life, the term is still used, but then as a synonym for "illusion")

And of course, English is NOT the original language, so Tengai Makyou is not the translation of Far East of Eden, but the other way around.

Besides all that, I think I've provided enough evidence to support my point of view:
https://www.giantbomb.com/tengai-makyou/3025-1326/

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TengaiMakyou

As for the Legend of Zelda: she actually IS an ever present part of the series, albeit not always in the same form. Sometimes she has a different name or a different appearance, but it is still Zelda.

The games that she isn't in, often aren't part of the main story line, but even so, it's understandable why they aren't suddenly going to call these games "The Legend of Link", since Zelda is an established series, so it has instant recognition with its target audience.

Little boy, blond hair, pointy ears, green tunic, sword and a shield: AHA! A new Zelda game! It's become a household name, so Nintendo would be stupid to change that for some spinoffs/minor games.

Now, if they were to name it "The Deku Tree sagas", then it would be strange, because although the tree is there or is mentioned in several games, it's only PART of the entire lore.

A better alternative name for the series would probably be "Legends of the Triforce", since that is almost always there, or maybe even better: "Hyrule Legends"...

Anyways, I think I'm just going to call it a day here. I've got my point of view, you've got yours, and I respect that, but I'm probably never going to agree with all of your points, so I'll simply agree to disagree.

@ThanosReXXX Zelda is not in Link's Awakening. Oddly a picture of Peach DOES appear.

@KingMike Ehm, I never said she was?

@ThanosReXXX Most video game titles ARE tanslated though (if they aren't already in English to begin with), and translation is the entire point of this project. True, many anime and manga titles are left untranslated, but they still should be translated (at least roughly), and yes many people do question such decisions.

@BulbasaurusRex Wow, I was discussing this topic quite a few months ago, so you're royally late to the party, and I honestly have no idea about all this anymore, so no offense but I am not about to re-read all my own comments here, let alone the ones of the people that responded to me, to see if I can make any sense of your comment here, because right now, I can't make heads or tails of it, sorry.

Alll I can say in general is that yes, I do indeed question the translation mentioned in this topic, which was the whole point of why I entered this discussion in the first place, so in that we at least agree, I think?