The world of video games has never been more expansive than it is today, with so many new releases it can be hard to go back and enjoy classics from the previous golden ages of gaming like the Playstation 1 and 2 era, where hundreds of great experimental games went under the radar. Hundreds more were never seen by Western eyes due to the lack of translation they received at the time, and this is speaking mainly about games from Japan. Games from other countries, such as South Korean developer Softmax’s Magna Carta: Phantom of Avalanche, had even less chance to be brought to the Western world. Until today.
Magna Carta: Phantom of Avalanche, the first game in Softmax’s Magna Carta series, was recently translated to English. Having never been released outside of Korea, the Magna Carta series would eventually leave Korea and be available in English, but Phantom of Avalanche was never translated and never left the peninsula. Luckily for those fans, it was recently fan translated and they can now enjoy where the series began.
Now, Magna Carta: Phantom of Avalanche, wasn’t exactly stellar upon release, being criticized for being buggy to the point that the publisher recalled the game but it’s still fantastic and important that these fan translations of innovative but underappreciated titles keep coming out so gamers can appreciate gems that went under the radar decades ago. Magna Carta: Phantom of Avalanche joins other fan translated titles such as Racing Lagoon and Mizzurna Falls as underground cult favorites that can now be appreciated by a wider audience thanks to the efforts of the fans. Hopefully, these games are joined by several more fan projects, so that everyone can see how great and innovative a time this generation of games truly was.