Persona 2: Eternal Punishment PSP Unofficial English Patch Released!
After many years of waiting, it's unofficially finally here and it's amazing!
After many years of waiting, the English Patch for Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for the Playstation Portable (PSP) has finally been gifted to the fans from the fans of the game (ie not Atlus).
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for the PSP was released, in Japan Only, on May 17, 2012. Originally rumored to get an Official English release, at some point it didn’t make sense for Atlus to put in the time, effort, and money to make it happen.
Prior to this release, it seemed as if Atlus was going entirely portable with the Persona series. In 2009, Atlus created a remake of the original Persona game titled “Shin Megami Tensei: Persona” exclusively for the PSP for release in Japan and the United States. As if that wasn’t enough, around the same time, Atlus was working on Persona 3 Portable, which released in Japan in 2009 and the United States in 2010.
In 2011, Atlus released “Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 2 - Innocent Sin”, which was controversial internally to say the least, due to the inclusion of a character similar to a major World War 2 figure. This was the first time the game had been localized to English. At the time of this release, the PSP was on its way out as Sony was getting ready to unveil the PSP’s successor, the Playstation Vita (PS Vita).
On February 15th of 2012, the PS Vita was released in the United States (in Japan on December 17, 2011). This was 3 months prior to the release of the remake of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for the PSP. At this point, the project was likely almost complete, but an English Translation for a console that had been replaced was out of the picture.
There were also some rumors that Persona 4 Golden was originally going to be a PSP release (similar to Persona 3 Portable), but that version was allegedly scrapped early on in favor of development on the PS Vita.
Atlus tried to do as right by the fans as they could (without doing what would have been the best choice) by releasing the English PS1 version of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for Playstation Network (PSN) purchase on the PSP, the PS Vita and the PS3.
The main reason that fans were angry about the remake not getting localized to English is that the remake performed better and included the additional “Tatsuya’s Scenario(s)” which explained some additional plot never before explained.
Which brings us to modern day, over a decade after it was originally released, fans have created a patch that translates the entire game into english, provided you have a legitimately acquired backup of your Japanese copy.
Information on the release can be found here:
The project, composed of a team of three—eiowlta, Sayucchi, and DarTisD—takes that original PS1 localization script and modifies and improves upon it, while taking the Tatsuya scenario—exclusive to the PSP version--translation from another team—p2px-scenario tumblr--with permission, and editing it.
I can honestly say that this is exactly what I was hoping for back when I originally purchased my Japanese copy of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for the PSP several years back, and I am thoroughly enjoying it.
- Chris, from The CHRILLCAST