11 Best GBA Fan Translations

Oriental Blue is a Hudson RPG from the Tengai series, the games many people know as Far East of Eden. That name has a backstory of its own, because Far East of Eden is supposed to be an English history book about a country called Jipang, written by a historian called P.H. Chada. None of it exists. That is commitment to the bit.

The name Oriental Blue also belonged to a cancelled Nintendo 64DD game before it landed on the Game Boy Advance in October 2003. It then took ten years for a complete English translation to arrive, courtesy of the Romhacking Aerie.

Patch: Oriental Blue translation by Kingcom and Tom, version 1.0, released September 16, 2013.

Kururin Paradise is the sequel to Kuru Kuru Kururin, and it barely touches the formula: you still steer a stick that never stops spinning through mazes, without touching the walls. The one new control is the R button, which speeds up the Helirin's rotation. Even so, the stages get really hard, really quickly, so this is a game for people who finished the first one and wanted more.

Each section ends with a minigame instead of a boss, and most of the fifteen can be played with up to four players. There's even a Love Tester for ranking your compatibility with your significant other. An American release was rumored and then fell through, so players who love the first game keep pointing each other to the Japan-only sequel and its patch.

Patch: Kururin Paradise Translation by Dimedime-d, version 1.1.1, released January 7, 2024.

Caravan Heart is the third Dragon Quest Monsters, and it was the very last game Enix published before it merged with Square. When the patch came out, it was the only game in the Monsters series that hadn't been localized, and the usual guess is that it got lost in the company's restructuring.

It works as a sort of prequel to Dragon Quest VII. You follow Prince Kiefer, one of that game's heroes, as he leads a growing caravan full of guard monsters and human party members, so it plays differently from the other Monsters games. There are 200 monsters to befriend and 22 classes for the humans. After the main story, a lot of optional content is still waiting. The translation team spent over two years on it.

Patch: Caravan Heart translation by KaioShin, version 1.0, released March 16, 2008.

The Game Boy Advance Boktai sequels had a solar sensor built into the cartridge, and the third game, Shin Bokura no Taiyou: Gyakushuu no Sabata, was released exclusively in Japan. That makes it twice as awkward to play today: you need the translation, and unless you plan to sit in a park with your emulator, you need a way to fake the sun.

The patch handles both. The whole script is translated and the game can be played from start to finish, although a few in-game graphics stay in Japanese, which is why it still carries a beta number. It also comes with a separate solar sensor hack that lets you raise or lower the sun by holding R and pressing Left or Right. Players say that hack is simply how you play Boktai now. Just watch the motorcycle sections, because the instructions admit it is easy to trigger by accident there.

Patch: Boktai 3 translation by Spikeman, DarthNemesis and LordHuffnPuff, version 0.7 beta, last updated January 16, 2022.

F-Zero Climax came out in 2004, and Nintendo didn't even bother publishing it outside Japan. That's a shame, because in many respects it is the game GP Legend should have been. Races are down to three laps against 24 opponents, which makes it the breeziest game in the series, but the AI is quite a bit tougher than before.

There's also a lot of it. The Grand Prix runs to 45 circuits across its cups, and the course editor that used to be a privilege of 64DD owners finally shows up here, with room for 30 courses. The fan patch was made to feel as if the game had been released in English officially, right down to the menus and the driver profiles. Samurai Goroh's profile even had a typo fixed in the last update.

Patch: F-Zero Climax translation by the F-Zero Climax Translation Project Team, version 1.1, released November 18, 2021.

Magical Vacation is Brownie Brown's first RPG, a prequel of sorts to Magical Starsign on the DS, and the studio went on to make Sword of Mana and Mother 3. In fact, Nobuyuki Inoue, who directed Mother 3, had directed the Magical Vacation series first, so this is where that team found its feet. Players mostly talk about how it looks, and they rank its pixel art among the prettiest on the system.

Go in with your eyes open, however. The patch is marked unfinished: a few characters will literally say "untranslated", some enemies are named "placeholder" in battle, and the ending is glitched and not translated. Some NPCs can even soft-lock the game if you talk to them, so save often.

Patch: Magical Vacation translation by magicalpatcher, version 1.00, released June 7, 2016.

Mother 1+2 puts the first two Mother games on one Game Boy Advance cartridge, and it came out only in Japan. It sold more than 250,000 copies, but its biggest moment was a TV ad, where a Mr. Saturn left a little message at the end: "We're working on Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance, dakota." Who better to announce a sequel than a tiny alien with a bow on his head?

Know what you're getting, though. The patch is a complete translation of Mother 1 only, and the Mother 2 half gets minimal menu hacking so EarthBound players can find their way around. The Mother 1 side is based on the unreleased NES version, so it has the run button and the longer ending. On top of that, the patch adds an Easy Ring to the hero's room that doubles the experience and money from fights, if you'd rather skip the grind.

Patch: Mother 1+2 translation by Tomato and Jeffman, version 1.01, released April 30, 2011.

Rhythm Tengoku is where Rhythm Heaven started, made by much the same team as WarioWare from an idea by music producer Tsunku. Its sequels were translated and released overseas, but Nintendo declined to translate this one, probably because it came out almost two years after the DS and was so odd. The poor sales of other late Game Boy Advance localizations probably didn't help.

Each stage is a short song with its own beat, and nailing the timing matters more than watching the screen. You smash rocks as Karate Man, and in Space Dance a missed move gets you elbowed in the crotch. There are 48 stages on paper, but the remixes reuse older games, so it's more like 25 unique ones. Players still recommend it, and they tell you to get it patched first.

Patch: Rhythm Heaven Silver by W hat, Beta 13a, released April 20, 2019.

Tomato Adventure was developed by AlphaDream and published by Nintendo in January 2002, exclusively in Japan, and it is recognized as a precursor to the Mario & Luigi series. You play DeMille, an outcast because he dislikes tomatoes in a kingdom that has no patience for that, and he sets out to save his girlfriend from King Abira.

Fans of Mario & Luigi will feel at home right away, and players say so constantly. One player summed up the appeal as "AlphaDream's special brand of humor turned up to 11". The patch also stretches character names from 4 to 7 characters and swaps out every graphic with Japanese in it. Fittingly, the credits list someone called Tomato.

Patch: Tomato Adventure translation by Unknown W. Brackets, CrazyMLC, Tomato and DeMille, version 1.1.1, last updated June 18, 2023.

Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi, or The Binding Blade, is the game Roy comes from. He and Marth gave Western players their first wider look at the series in Super Smash Bros. Melee, even though his own game never released overseas. It sold over 345,000 units, and Roy's appearance in Melee helped its prequel, The Blazing Blade, get localized as plain Fire Emblem.

It plays like a lighter, more mass market successor to Thracia 776, with a huge drop in difficulty and support conversations between characters who fight side by side. It also rewards replays: there are three endings and secret characters, and unlocking Guinevere takes a full nine playthroughs. Players recommend the patch right alongside the two English GBA games. The current patch aims to read as close to an official translation as possible, and it even adds a Support Conversation reader.

Patch: FE6 Localization Patch by gringe, version 1.2.1, last updated February 23, 2024.

Mother 3 was first planned for the Super Famicom CD, became a 3D project for the Nintendo 64 and the 64DD, and was cancelled in 2000. The Game Boy Advance version was finally released on April 26, 2006, with a new team at Brownie Brown. The story moves to the Nowhere Islands and is told in eight chapters. It is also the darkest game in the series. Its slogan says it best: it's both strange and funny, but then it also gets heartrending.

Battles hide a rhythm game, too. Every battle track has a beat, and pressing A in time with it chains your attack up to a 16-hit combo. Nintendo never gave an official reason for skipping the West, so Tomato's team did the job and made a translation that could easily pass as an official product. In 2013 he even offered it to Nintendo for free. It is the most-recommended translation on this list by a wide margin, named about five times as often as the runner-up, and whenever anyone asks what fan translations make possible, Mother 3 is the first answer. (Nintendo, the gift is still on the table.)

Patch: Mother 3 Fan Translation by Tomato, Jeffman, Chewy, Lorenzooone and Karmageddon, version 1.3, released April 20, 2021.