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Final Fantasy X (2001)

subdirectory_arrow_right Final Fantasy X-2 (Game), Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (Game), Final Fantasy (Franchise)

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In 2013, Square Enix published a novella titled "Final Fantasy X-2.5 ~Eien no Daishō~" ("Price of Eternity"), to commemorate the release of the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD remasters that year. It was written by both games' scenario writer Kazushige Nojima and never received an official English release. The only existing fan translation as of 2024 was translated from Japanese to French to English. The book was heavily criticized worldwide for its vague writing style, introducing violent and sexual elements uncommon to the Final Fantasy series, and weakening the impact of both games' endings. For context, X's plot builds up to Spoiler:a negative ending where Tidus dies and Yuna has to accept his death and move on, while X-2 turns it back around to Spoiler:a positive ending where Tidus is brought back to life. What X-2.5 does to weaken this is Spoiler:immediately kill Tidus and just as quickly resurrect him for the express purpose of setting up future stories, removing the emotional weight and finality from him being truly dead or alive.

X-2.5's plot takes place between the first ending of X-2 and its secret ending. It has two sections written from Tidus and Yuna's own perspectives and a third section with both perspectives. After reuniting, Yuna briefly leaves to address recent developments on Besaid Island. Tidus later goes sailing to look for her, falls asleep, and wakes up finding her in the boat. On their way back to Besaid, Spoiler:they get lost in a storm and are marooned on an island resembling Besaid, having transported 1000 years back in time. While there, Tidus inexplicably gets hit in the head with an object resembling a Blitzball that is actually a bomb. When he goes to pick it up, it explodes, decapitating Tidus and sending his head flying near Yuna with a surprised expression on his face. She faints and sees a vision of a god-like figure who helps her resurrect a ghost-like version of Tidus through Beckoning, where someone thinks of a person they knew who died, summoning an illusion of them from the Farplane made of Pyreflies, but if the illusion learns they are not actually alive, they will fade away.

The rest of the story involves Yuna Spoiler:going back and forth from the past to present trying to keep Tidus' spirit from vanishing by interacting with new characters. These include Briar and Kush, who also turn out to be Beckoned spirits from the past and vanish at the end of the book, and Ifarnal, a summoner who tells Yuna that Tidus must kill Kush if they want to return to the present together and later gets killed by another bomb. Through the subplot with the new characters, it's established that one way to create "cores" used to summon Aeons (these Aeon Cores are said to be very similar to Faytes but have differences) is implied to be through consensual sex in two scenes. One where Yuna is transferred the knowledge on how to create them and blushes in embarrassment, and one where Briar discovers Ifarnal and a half-naked Kush in bed together. At the end of the book, there is a small time-skip to the secret ending of X-2, shown in a different context now knowing the events of X-2.5, and ends on a "To Be Continued" cliffhanger.

Final Fantasy X-2: Last Mission takes place after X-2.5. Since it was released years before, it does not acknowledge the events of X-2.5, but the HD remaster does include a continuation that is relevant to both. It is a 30-minute audio drama that was dubbed internationally called "Final Fantasy X -Will-" and was also written by Nojima. The story follows two summoners, Chuami and her assistant Kurgum, who gradually meet the cast of X/X-2. During this, Yuna discovers Spoiler:that Sin is among a horde of souls being beckoned back from the Farplane. In what seems to be an effort to prevent the still undead Tidus from sacrificing himself to kill Sin again, she breaks up with him by lying about being in love with another man, and the summoners go to fight Sin, appearing to set up the plot for a potential Final Fantasy X-III.

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Unofficial Japanese to French to English translation of Final Fantasy X-2.5 ~Eien no Daishō~ (3 page forum thread):
https://ffx3chat.createaforum.com/general-discussion/~eternal-cost~-french-to-english-translation-47/

Final Fantasy -Will- (links include Japanese audio, English subtitles, and English audio):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpWZ4bli70Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJd3Tfu5ulY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXf2RqR3lM4

Amazon link to the novella with mixed user reviews:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/FINAL-FANTASY-X-2-5-~永遠の代償~-ノベルズ/dp/4757541570

Article about novella criticism:
https://gamerescape.com/2014/01/03/final-fantasy-x-novella-causing-a-stir-among-japanese-fans/

Satirical article criticizing the novella:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150325022124/https://www.p4rgaming.com/square-enix-accidentally-publishes-fanfiction-for-the-final-fantasy-x-2-5-novel/

Videos covering X-2.5 and Will:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbELoIdX7Hg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDb7hsrcZUY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT7Qr0oG1SA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ecZEPkemE

Blog posts discussing the plots of X-2.5 and Will:
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/03/18/final-fantasy-x-2-5-price-of-eternity-big-bad-book/
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/final-fantasy-x-2-5-price-of-eternity-violence-in-sports/
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/04/01/final-fantasy-x-2-5-price-of-eternity-kick-the-puppy-love/
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/05/13/final-fantasy-x-will-literally-listen-to-my-story/
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/05/20/final-fantasy-x-will-alls-well-that-ends-under-a-giant-whale/

Postal III (2011)

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On January 29, 2024, the Steam version of Postal III received a large content update adding various features and improvements originally made by the developers of the Zoom Platform version of the game as well as fixes and content by the series' fan community. The update notably included streamlined mod support, a high quality release of the official soundtrack, several bug and graphical fixes pointed out and contributed by players, updated versions of the game's official German and Japanese localizations, three new localizations in Portuguese/Brazilian, French and Polish translated by fans, and worldwide access to the previously Russian-only Fart Gun DLC.

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Kingdom Grand Prix (1994)

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Within the Saturn port's data is an unused English language option, suggesting that the title may have been considered for a Western release. Fan translator Malenko made the discover before creating a patch to re-enable the option.

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Final Fantasy V (1992)

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The translation group RPGe's 1998 English translation of Final Fantasy V is considered to be one of the most widely-played and influential fan translations in video game history. It gained this reputation because it released before Squaresoft's first official translation in Final Fantasy Anthology in late 1999, and despite RPGe primarily consisting of inexperienced teenagers, it was regarded as a better translation than the official one, leading many Western players to first experience the game through it.

The first translation attempts stemmed from widespread confusion over Squaresoft not releasing three FF games in the West: Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, and FFV. Their decision to release Final Fantasy VII internationally under its original numbering after Final Fantasy VI was released in the West a few years earlier as the "third" game in the series also contributed to this.

The co-creator of RPGe, named Shadow, was inspired by an incomplete FFII translation by users Demi and Som2freak (the latter having later lent Shadow tools to work on FFV), and started translating FFV by making flashcards for which hex code corresponded to each Japanese and English character in the game's data. He promoted his efforts online using photoshopped FFV images and recruited other users to create RPGe, including translator David Timko, and a computer engineering major named Hooie who also asked Japanese instructors at his university to help translate some enemy names. RPGe's plan was to directly edit their English script into the text files of a ROM of the Japanese version, but their work was slow and tedious due to them having little experience with fan translations and being out of touch with fledgling emulation communities. This lead to technical issues with their text and sprite editing software, and English characters being poorly displayed under conditions that were originally designed for larger Japanese characters. The group also suffered from internal factionalism, and since Shadow promoted himself as the public face of the project, he found that he could not handle the attention and controversy that came from how seriously he took the project and RPGe itself, seeing the translation effort as a vital service to the Squaresoft fan community. After Demi published a lengthy post parodying Shadow, he "snapped" and left RPGe. The co-founders of RPGe would also eventually step down, but other users would take over and start their own work.

A user named Myria, who had argued against RPGe's hex editing approach to no avail, split off from their efforts beforehand to work on a separate translation. Sharing similar setbacks to them, she gradually parsed through the code used to handle the text files, and edited it so it could recognize English characters of different sizes and fit more in a dialogue box. Som2freak helped translate the script for a time, but then left the project after bringing on a new editor, named harmony7, who started heavily revising Som2freak's translations to his chagrin despite seeing several issues with it.

One of the most controversial aspects of the translation was the main character's name. Squaresoft's later English translation named him "Bartz", but RPGe's translation named him "Butz", which many joked sounds like "butts". Myria claimed that Butz was the most accurate translation based on documents and official merchandise using it "the way we'd written it" (for reference, the Romanized version of the Japanese name "バッツ" comes out as "Battsu"). However, Butz is used in real life as an actual German surname with a different pronunciation, the vowel being an "oe" sound like in the English words "put" and "good". Therefore, Bartz would make more sense to match up with the vowels in the Japanese name than Butz, and also fits better as a German first name since Bartz is a pet name for Bartholomäus (Bartholomew).

The bulk of Myria's technical work ended in October 1997, with harmony7 still working to revise the entire script until something unexpected happened. An early version of the fan translation mysteriously appeared on a Geocities website with others taking credit for it. This prompted RPGe to release their work up to that point as "v0.96" on October 17, 1997, with the final patch eventually being released in June 1998. The translation patch received acclaim for its technical aspects and near-professional writing quality, and influenced other players to become translators, including Clyde Mandelin who would later create the English fan translation of Mother 3. Squaresoft never contacted RPGe about the translation, and while their 1999 localization of the game was seen as inferior to RPGe's, Myria would later opine that Square Enix's 2006 localization in Final Fantasy V: Advance was better than theirs. Myria continued hacking and reverse-engineering games and eventually earned a job at an undisclosed major video game company.

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2017 Kotaku article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170428183534/https://kotaku.com/how-three-kids-beat-the-odds-and-translated-final-fanta-1794628286

2021 IGN article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210508152802/https://www.ign.com/articles/the-untold-drama-and-history-behind-final-fantasy-5s-fan-translation

Butz surname pronunciation:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Butz#Pronunciation_2

Bartz pet name source from Ancestry.com:
https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=bartz

Final Fantasy Chrome Figure Collection wiki articles:
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Chrome_Figure_Collection
https://ffmerchandise.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Chrome_Figures_Collection

Ebay listing for Final Fantasy Chrome Figure set including Butz:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275540207811

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