Princess Maker 2 Translation Project Is Underway

A fan is hacking an old English translation into the Saturn version of daughter-raising simulator Princess Maker 2.

Washbear posted a thread on SegaXtreme last week showing off their progress so far. The menus and game interfaces are in English but not the dialogue yet. Washbear is using the script from a professionally translated DOS version that was canceled in 1996 but leaked onto the Internet after it had been sent to reviewers at the time.

“I would consider it playable to completion using a walkthrough for the English DOS version, but obviously, you’re missing out on the characterization and plot,” Washbear said in the thread.

Apparently, the menus can be swapped with the script’s plaintext easily, but the game crashes when doing so with the dialogue — likely because there are control codes for triggering animations and voice samples interspersed with the script.

“I’ve yet to figure out a way around the crashing,” Washbear said. “I’ve struggled to figure out how to manipulate its pointer tables.”

One of the unique things about the Saturn (and 3DO) version of Princess Maker 2 is that it features voice work and smooth scrolling, which the PC-98 original and other ports lack. It also has redrawn graphics that use more colors.

Washbear posted in the thread a ZIP file containing the partial translation patch, which is in XDelta3 format, but made an important request. Since it’s an incomplete patch, they asked that patched copies of the game not be uploaded to ROM download sites.

“It just ends up confusing people more than anything,” Washbear said.

The Princess Maker series was made by Gainax, a studio more famous for anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gunbuster. It’s basically a dad simulator — the player is a demon-slaying knight to whom the heavens give a 10-year-old daughter, so he settles down in a village to raise her. Players have eight years to manage everything about her life, from her education to her combat abilities in dungeons to her eating habits, to get one of more than 70 endings. She can end up something as glorious as a queen or a warrior hero, as mundane as a merchant’s wife or a lumberjack, or as detestable as a bandit or even the princess of darkness.

Princess Maker 2 was published by Microcabin on the Saturn in October 1995 after appearing on the PC-98 and MS-DOS in 1993, on the FM-Towns in 1994 and on the PC Engine in June 1995. The game was remastered in 2004 and officially translated into English when released on Steam in 2016 as Princess Maker 2 Refine. It was remastered again in 2024 as Princess Maker 2 Regeneration, and translated versions of it are sold on the Switch eShop and on Steam.