Fandom Memories: The Harvest Moon GB2 Fan Translation
We're goin' back to the year 2000 again! It was a year where GameBoy emulation was really picking up thanks to the hype behind Pokémon Gold and Silver, and a little fan translation was feeding everyone's fever.
PR Translations, formed by Philip Reuben, was responsible for allowing tons of Pokémon fans to meet the second generation a little earlier than anyone else outside Japan. Not that he did it entirely alone, as there were around 30 additional contributors cited in the Readme of the final release before the project ended in favor of the official release. One of those contributors, Chris Judah, also helped with a much more low-key translation project: Bokujou Monogatari GB2.
While you could play most of the translation for Pokémon Gold, very little of GB2 was actually completed. Mostly just a few lines from around the farm. Signs, the TV, a bit from the intro and picking your character... It was really barely anything at all.
You could pretty easily tell that it was building off of their work with Pokémon. Things like the "PK" and "MN" letters from the Pokémon font being present being an obvious giveaway.
It really wasn't much, and the included ReadMe wasn't shy about that. Shortly after the patch released, Natsume would formally announce that the game would be releasing in English and the project was shelved. Still, the association with Pokémon's fan translation did get it a surprising amount of people playing it at the time. I only wish it was easier to find message boards from back then, since I definitely recall a lot of discussion about the game from people discovering the series after just wanting to play the new Pokémon and wanting to try this other game they had a translation for. Similar scenarios playing out for a few of their other incomplete translations, like Doraemon 3: Nobita to Toki no Hōgyoku.
For some additional context, this is from before HMFarm existed, as well as when FOGU was solely a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan page with a very lovely shrine to Vernon Fenwick. This tiny, extremely incomplete fan translation, really is one of the earliest surviving things to let you take a peek into the earliest era of the internet fandom for the series.
I tried to reach out to Philip Reuben a few times so I could ask about the project. Memories, why the project was chosen, things like that. Unfortunately, I never received any replies using publicly available e-mail addresses, but it's possible those aren't monitored anymore. Looking at Mobygames, it's easy to see he's a bit of a busy guy nowadays! His body of work includes several Nintendo of Europe releases, including series such as Splatoon, Xenoblade, and Super Smash Brothers. I didn't have much luck finding any contact information for Chris Judah, either.
If there's any oldschool fandom history you're interested in, feel free to reach out! I know all kinds of ancient history, but I don't really know what all anyone's interested in hearing about.
