A fan has worked to translate Saturn tactical RPG Riglordsaga 2 into English over the last year, but he won’t see his project to completion now that he’s succumbed to terminal cancer.
Dan Frederickson — known as DragonsOfSaturn on SegaXtreme and YouTube, and Mr. Frederickson and Magic Knight Frederickson on Discord — died over the weekend just three months after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. A native of Calgary, Alberta, he was 40 years old. He leaves behind a wife, Brandy, and a young daughter, Louisa.
Mr. Frederickson first shared his efforts to translate Riglordsaga 2 on Jan. 16 last year. No patches are public yet, but Mr. Frederickson made remarkable progress despite having no previous experience hacking Saturn games.
It was a labor of love for him. Riglordsaga 2’s predecessor, Mystaria: The Realms of Lore, aka Blazing Heroes, is one of his favorite games. When SHIRO! played it as a community challenge in September 2024, Mr. Frederickson was thrilled.
“I’ve loved this game for nearly three decades,” he said after the challenge ended.
“When I was a kid, video games came from chore money. I also lived in a small town, so we didn’t have video game stores; had to drive to get to one. This meant any game I picked had to be good. I wouldn’t be coming back to exchange it. I think I passed this game up for a few others like ‘Nights’ and ‘Bug!’. When I finally did pick up ‘Blazing Heroes,’ I fell in love with the game. The story was decent (minus errors, which I didn’t really focus on). But for me the gameplay was amazing. I got so invested in the technique system I created my own version on paper that I shared with my friends.”
— Dan Frederickson
Over the past year, Mr. Frederickson shared his ups and downs translating the sequel to Mystaria, and at this point, he has a sizeable portion of the game’s non-story text, menus and more in English.
Mr. Frederickson’s most recent update on his Riglordsaga 2 translation as of Jan. 1.
Few projects have been as transparent or community-driven as this.
That transparency eventually included his health. In October, he let the community know he was in the hospital after experiencing lower abdominal pain. Within days, he was diagnosed with stage 3 terminal synovial sarcoma, a rare type of cancer that affects muscles, ligaments and other soft tissues. Doctors at the time gave him years to live.
Less than two months later, the cancer had advanced to stage 4, and by Christmas Day, his prognosis gave him just weeks left.
That prognosis turned out to be true — Dan Frederickson died Saturday.
In December a GoFundMe fundraiser was set up to help his family pay his medical bills.
SHIRO! put out a call for the community to contribute to Mr. Frederickson’s fundraiser in December.
During his short battle, the cancer did not deter him. He kept working on the translation patch while in and out of the hospital, a passion project for the console he poured countless hours into and the community he found welcoming. Following the initial diagnosis, he barely missed a step among unimaginable hurdles — appointments, surgeries, cries with his family.
We are all human. Mr. Frederickson stepped away from the project last week, but not before passing on a wealth of resources to the project’s long-time translator Sessh and some of the Saturn community’s most prolific romhackers: Malenko and Exxistance, the former of whom helped him begin his romhacking journey and latter is a team member who already began helping him in December.
Examples of Exxistance’s sprite work shared on Dec. 21 by Mr. Frederickson.
Community legends Bo Bayles — no stranger to Riglordsaga 2 — and Derek (ateam) also have contributed to the effort.
This author joined the expanded team in December and is working on enemy profiles.
Work-in-progress translation of an enemy profile.
Mr. Frederickson is at peace now. He won’t be able to see it, but the project he started will be finished by his friends and live on forever.
Micro Cabin Corp’s sequel to the 1995 strategy role playing game Riglordsaga, aka Mystaria: The Realms of Lore, or Blazing Heroes, Riglordsaga 2 remained region-locked to Japan despite the original’s relative success in Western markets — see SHIRO! coverage of cancelled Saturn games here.
Like many of the developer’s hits of the 1990s, Riglordsaga 2‘s development was led by Yasuhiko Nakatsu, famous for his contributions to the XAK series.
Wanna know what SHIRO! thinks of Riglordsaga 2? Check out Peter Malek’s #BestOfSaturn coverage here.
SHIRO! writer Danthrax contributed to this story.
May he rest in peace.
I hope his translation will be finished and available to all as a celebration of a fellow gamer’s love and dedication.
Rest in Peace Magic Knight..
This is such a tragedy. I give my condolences to his family and friends.
Dan was completely dedicated to the Riglord 2 translation to the very end. He never let on that the end was so close.
The last thing he asked of me was to submit the project for the 31st anniversary competition on Sega Extreme, which I did.
I hope we can continue his work and ensure that his legacy is eternally preserved on the internet.
RIP Magic Knight!
Gone but will never be forgotten.
My brother and I loved Mystaria and even found it, at the time, a bit quirky with its visuals and animation, but the game hooks the player, it has lots of charm and I can understand the passion poured into the sequel, as it`s more of the same we wanted back then.
When this project gets released, it will be a great way to celebrate and complete this dream project, it deserves to be released more than ever.
Such a good person always loved seeing his messages and even having him pop in the discord on some late night game sessions. Not a bad thing to say about the man EVER! He will be truly missed! Lets get this patch finalized so the all the Internet may see the Magic Knight Frederickson seal of approval!
I’m going to miss you Dragons. RIP.
I was shocked to hear this too. It’s true, he never let on how close he was. I thought he had months, such a tragic thing. I feel for his family especially his daughter.
We’ll get this finished eventually. We had also planned to re-translate the first RiglordSaga game as he said he had a horrible translation and needed to be redone.
I’ve actually not played either one of these games, so there’s no nostalgia for me on this series. He asked, I always wanted to try translating even though my japanese is a work-in-progress, so I accepted.
This game is growing on me as I’ve been working on it, so perhaps RiglordSaga 1 will also get the same treatment in the future. We’ll see.
Rest in Peace.Amazing he spent his last days making something for others.
R.I.P. Daniel. From the bottom of my heart, thanks for sharing your boundless passion for Saturn and Riglord Saga with us all!
Rest in peace! I am 43 years old and passing away with 40 makes me think more about my wife and three daughters. May God have mercy on you to next life(game). God bless your family!