On December 6th, 2023, LIPEMCO! Translations quietly released an English language translation patch for Tengai Makyou ZIRIA. This 1989 PC Engine game from Hudson Soft and Red Company has the distinction of being the first RPG developed for play on CD-ROM technology. ZIRIA is also the starting point of the Tengai Makyou/Far East of Eden series, which is one of Japan’s most beloved and well-known RPG franchises.
Only one of the many titles in the series was officially translated to English, which was the 1995 Neo Geo fighting game Tengai Makyou Shinden, aka Far East of Eden: Kabuki Klash, so these games were mostly inaccessible to the majority of RPG fans outside of Japan for decades. A couple of other titles in the series already got the fan translation treatment over the years, but the three extremely popular PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 titles were untouched for decades…until now.
Many thanks goes to Supper and his team (translator TheMajinZenki and tester cccmar) for their hard work in this translation, which was arguably one of the most sought after translations by RPG and PCE fans for many years. Below is a link to Supper’s website as well as a link to the project’s page at Romhacking.
http://stargood.org/trans/tenma.php
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7123/
As a bonus, Supper published an extensive collection of cut items and easter eggs over at The Cutting Room Floor: https://tcrf.net/Tengai_Makyou:_Ziria_(TurboGrafx-CD)
And in case you missed it, earlier this year I put out a 40-minute long video going over the history of the game and its legacy, with interviews and input by series artist Yoshiteru “Torajirou” Tsujino: https://youtu.be/sgS-yJEPaQk
