Burai English | MSX Resource Center
The game Burai is in the process of being translated from Japanese to English, a huge undertaking given that it’s a text-heavy RPG. The team in charge is the same one that handled the SD-Snatcher translation under the name Project Melancholia. Although the long intro demo has been fully translated, the game texts are still in progress. A playable version will be showcased at the upcoming MSX2goto40 event.
Burai, or Vagabond, is a fantasy role-playing game created by Riverhill Soft Inc. for the MSX2 computer in 1989. Renowned in Japan for its captivating story and expansive world, it was a game that took many players by surprise at the time. The full title of Burai Joukan translates to “Volume One,” a common convention in Japanese literature, which often consists of two volumes. The game indeed got a second volume, called Burai II: The Tale of the Last Battle . Burai was originally developed for PC-88 before being carried on several platforms, including MSX2. The MSX version spans 6 3,5″ disks, and supports MSX-Music and S-RAM.
Originally released using the Japanese language, Burai has never before been translated from Japanese, not even for other platforms. That is going to change.
MRC users Max Iwamoto and Rieks Warendorp Torringa, renowned for their outstanding SD-Snatcher translation known as Project Melancholia, undertook the task of translating Burai entirely from Japanese to English. They call themself the Dream Team. Judging their earlier work, we can expect high quality results.
The game is a vast RPG featuring — especially for its time – a deep and detailed storyline that unfolds not only in-game but also through numerous demos and storyboards. The conversations are of a much more detailed nature than was common in games from that era. Each character also has a distinct way of speaking, and the translation aims to preserve such details and nuances. In the English version, each character therefore retains their own manner of speech.
Earlier, the Dream Team released a patch for the opening demo of Burai on the Future Disk 50 publication. This sequence stands as a piece of art on its own, delivering an impressive 40 minutes of storytelling and potentially holding the record for the longest opening demo—at least on the MSX. Currently the game is about 80% translated, text and images. Besides translating texts, the team has also enhanced the game by fixing bugs and adding new features.
For instance, the texts now feature coloured glyphs to distinguish speakers and utilize a smaller font set with added lowercase characters and proportional spacing. Text display has also been re-synchronized to align better with the English text flow. Additionally, turbo mode is activated on compatible machines, and game rendering is more seamless. A detailed change log can be found on the dedicated web site.
The team will showcase the current version of the game at their booth during the upcoming MSX2goto40 event, where visitors can try it out for themselves. This will be a great chance to experience the game first-hand – especially for those who haven’t played it before due to the language barrier.
The translation will be released as a patch. It is expected to be ready by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. In the meantime, you can keep up with their work on the official translation website
relevant link: Burai translation web site
Source: https://msx.org/news/en/burai-english
