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[Image]We're not even a week into 2022 and we've already received not one, but two English fan translations of Japanese Dreamcast games! This community sure works at a rapid pace. Both of the games are vertically scrolling shooters, or 'shmups,' as the cool kids like to say. Let's check ‘em out...[Image]First up is Radirgy, which was originally developed by MileStone, Inc. for the Sega NAOMI arcade platform. It was eventually ported over to the Dreamcast in 2006, exclusively in Japan, years after the West presumed the rest of the world had given up on Sega's swan song console. Radirgy replaces the usually dark, space theming of other shoot-em-ups with a colourful, cel-shaded anime style. With gameplay that verges on bullet hell, and a protagonist that is allergic to radio waves, this one is about as Japanese as they come. Even the box art is slightly odd, simply opting to feature said protagonist pushing her glasses up her nose in that cool way anime people do (should probably go to your local optician and get those adjusted, bud). Check out our Radirgy retrospective here.
An English translation of Radirgy appeared seemingly out of nowhere on the 2nd of January, submitted to RomHacking.net by user wiredcrackpot. The translation is based on the official US Wii release of the game, which wiredcrackpot admits isn't the best translation ever, but it's at least something that can serve to help us non-Japanese speakers understand the bonkers story that is taking place. [Image]You can download the translation patch at RomHacking.net. If you can't be bothered with all that patching stuff, though, you can simply go to the Dreamcast-Talk thread, where you will find an already patched .CDI and .GDI available for download. Burn the game onto a CD-R or throw it on to your GDEMU. Whatever you do, take a moment to speculate what drugs the people over at MileStone were taking when they made Radirgy. We'll have a debate about it next time we talk.
If you are also interested in playing an English translation of Radirgy's darker kind-of sequel, Karous, head here to download that.
[Image]Next up is Chaos Field, which was the first game ever developed by MileStone Inc. and was released in 2004 for the Sega NAOMI, with a Dreamcast release following a few months later. Perhaps a more standard shmup affair compared to Radirgy (stylistically, at least), the game consists entirely of boss battles, and has a pretty unique mechanic in which players can flip the environment at will between two parallel worlds. 
The Chaos Field translation patch was created by Derek Pascarella, whose work we've previously featured on the Junkyard (multiple times, in fact) and has also appeared on an episode of the Dreampod (check that out here). Inspired by wiredcrackpot's Radirgy patch, Derek started poking around in the code of Chaos Field to find the game actually shipped with about 80% of the text and images already translated into English - it had just been hidden away in the game’s code this entire time! Derek then translated the remaining 20%, and voilà! We now have Chaos Field completely in English, for the first time on Dreamcast.
You can download Derek's patch by going to this project’s GitHub repository. Patched CDIs and GDIs are available from the Dreamcast-Talk thread.[Image]These projects are a good start to what is hopefully another big year for the Dreamcast community. Have you played any of these shooters before? Are you excited to play them in English? Let us know in the comments below, or by sounding off on our various social media channels.