Retro-Bit Accused Of Plagiarising Existing Fan-Translations – Time Extension
GuestLogin | Sign UpTime ExtensionGuestUser”Unfortunately in this instance, we let our guard down”Update [Mon 24th Feb 2025, 10:10pm]: Retro-Bit has given us the following statement:We (Retro-Bit) have had success working with a number of translators and programmers to deliver each release. Unfortunately, due to schedule conflicts, we are not always able to work with them on every title. The translator who worked on these titles has a portfolio of translating entire text-heavy games, so we believed he was capable of our translation request since they were games that contained less text. We reached out to the translator for their explanation regarding these claims. After our discussion internally we as Retro-Bit concluded that the final work submitted contained, to a lesser or higher degree, uncredited work. We’ve always had a successful understanding of our shared responsibilities with our collaborators and unfortunately in this instance, we let our guard down.This was an irresponsible oversight on our end and we take full accountability for this outcome and not verifying the submitted translation. To amend this situation, we will set out to reach those whose work was not recognized to offer a means of resolution.Although we have upcoming titles that we are excited to release that have never been localized, we will be delaying them to refine our translation and programming procedures to ensure this does not happen again. One of the most rewarding parts of doing these re-releases is collaborating with many talented members of the retro gaming community while being able to support the original developers. Our intent was never to take advantage of that relationship and we apologize for disappointing our fans.We deeply value the retro gaming community and appreciate your ongoing support and patience as we improve our processes.Original Story: Retro-Bit, a company which has a long history of re-releasing old-school titles in physical form, has been accused of plagiarising fan-translations—despite its insistence that its localisation efforts are totally bespoke.Translator Krokodyl has amassed a staggering amount of evidence to back up this claim and has cited four titles which prove it: Shubibinman Zero / Shockman Zero, Assault Suits Valken, Gley Lancer and Majyūō: King of Demons.The post is worth viewing, as it’s quite lengthy and includes an overwhelming amount of information and evidence. To summarise, Krokodyl highlights elements such as copied fonts, near-identical translated text and errors which appear both in the plagiarised translation and Retro-Bit’s releases. Krokodyl also uses special tools to analyse and compare hex data to see how closely the two match. It’s pretty damning stuff, and it would be amazing if all of this were merely a coincidence.One of the most compelling pieces of evidence relates to Gley Lancer, which, Krokodyl alleges, is based on MIJET’s translation from 2006. The game includes both an English and Japanese script (something Retro-Bit itself fails to note), and MIJET’s name appears in the Japanese version of the game’s “good” ending—which Retro-Bit’s translator clearly didn’t read properly.It’s important to note that with all four of these games, Retro-Bit has publicly stated that it has not used any existing translation for its versions. The credits on Retro-Bit’s games all list the same person as the translator.”I suspect that several of retro-bit’s releases presented as new and original translations of old SNES and Genesis games are, in fact, plagiarism of existing fan translations or, in at least one instance, other official translations,” concludes Krokodyl. “By plagiarism, I mean that they’ve used graphics, code and/or texts from pre-existing translations while claiming otherwise.”Krokodyl notes that Aeon Genesis—the translator behind Assault Suits Valken and Majyūō: King of Demons’ previous fan translations—has worked with Retro-Bit in the past and has always been credited. However, Aeon Genesis was not involved with any of these releases, nor were MIJET (Gley Lancer) or Svambo (Shockman Zero), as Krokodyl has reached out to all three and asked.For what it’s worth, I had no involvement with the Valken or Majuu-Ou releases referenced here. Retro-bit did try to reach out but for a variety of reasons I’ve been difficult to reach for the last long while.While Krokodyl admits that some of the evidence could be circumstantial, “having translated about a dozen games from Japanese to English over the last few years as an amateur translator and a professional developer, I am utterly convinced that these four translations by retro-bit use previous fan translations extensively in terms of graphics, game code and scripts. I am convinced that they are not original Japanese to English translations, and can only exist because of previous translations.”Krokodyl also points out that, even if these translations had been acquired legally, “the claim of not using existing work would be false advertisement. You can’t have it both ways. I believe that the FAQ that claims that ‘a talented programmer’ is working on the translations from scratch is a blatant lie. They’re not working from scratch and they are not talented. My understanding is that the translations are commissioned and not done in-house.”Long-standing readers of Time Extension will note that we’ve covered Retro-Bit’s releases in detail in the past. The company has always been kind enough to supply us with pre-release copies of its titles and has helped organise giveaway competitions via social media. In light of these accusations, we will be reviewing this relationship moving forward.We have also reached out to Retro-Bit over the weekend for a statement and will update this piece when we hear back.Due to “an issue with one of the featured games”And a Dreamcast wireless controllerLooking after the pennies[source krokodyl.github.io] PrevNext About Damien McFerranDamien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media’s sites from an editorial perspective. He’s also the editor of Time Extension, the network’s newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming’s past glories. Comments 40It honestly wouldn’t surprise me, I’m friends with quite a few members of the fan translation community, and a number of them have outright quit as they’re tired of people stealing their work to sell as repro cartridges without as much as a credit to them, let alone any money for their services.I don’t know whether they’ve outsourced it to a guy who’s ripping everyone off including them, but it doesn’t really matter – they clearly don’t even bother giving the result a cursory look-over.Within moments of starting up their release of “Cyber Citizen Shockman” you are greeted with the hero declaring himself “Cyborg Townsman Shockman!!”I’m not convinced their hotshot “translator” even speaks English – that game’s text is Machine Translation level bad.It appears to be a mixture of stealing the work of others, and doing a poor job with machine translation so it uses different words here and there.It’s unforgivably bad, and I can’t say I’m inclined to buy any more of their releases. Which is a shame, since the quality of the packaging, the cartridge, everything is really nice! Not much good if the game inside it is rubbish, though.So, they’re paying someone to do it for them, and that person is cutting a few corners? Whatever. Just try and add any credits in the future if necessary, and job done, right. All these fan translations are typically being put out there for free anyway, so it just comes down to them getting some acknowledgement, which is obviously what they’re after, and then everyone should be happy. Not everything is a master conspiracy or some heinous crime. And not all of it requires the “Saints” come marching in.@RetroGames This company put this person’s stolen work out there, charging for it, with their name on it–that’s not “oh hey what a simple mistake, we’ll blame the guy who did it”. That’s a company being sketchy. Companies are not your friends and they are here to sell you products. Hold them to the standard they hold their own employees to.I also find the “just give them credit” thing pretty laughable. Translations are not some trivial task, they’re a lot of work. Being put out for free is nice until they’re not being put out for free. If someone went and made money off my work and then went “well, we’ll credit you “, I’d find that to be in poor taste, to put it politely. I’m the reason your game is playable by anyone who can’t speak Japanese, and I get a thanks in the credits? Nah.@RetroGames Uhh, fan translations are not for the taking for free money. People in this do it for the passion and for free.As soon as it gets to be official, it is quite frankly fair to ask for compensation, because normally fan translations aren’t really supposed to be made in the first place, that should have been the job of those who own the rights.
And as someone who has made a few fan translations and that I know people who also did some of their own, I feel disrespected by your comment of “just credit them, problem solved.”
This is not just a matter of acknowledgement, this is a matter of respecting the amount of time spent doing the fan translation. It’s not free, it’s people who spent their free time doing it.@RetroGames The point being made here is that Retro-Bit has always claimed that it doesn’t use existing translations. If it had given credit then you could be more understanding, but to claim this is original work makes it a bit worse in my book.Anyway, I’ve reached out to them and will see what they say. The people I’ve dealt with there have all been really decent over the years, but clearly, someone has dropped the ball pretty badly here.The translators should setup a Patreon site to get some donations if people like their work, as the MiSTer creators do. Eventually everyone enjoys it, even those who don’t pay. These guys have found a niche market making physical carts for Retro consoles, pity they have not paid attention to the person doing the translation, who has taken someone else’s effort and slightly modified it. I guess my favourite is Panel Du Pon, on the SNES, even the NSO version is still in Japanese. Some of the comments by the PdP characters are a bit strong.@Guru_Larry Known about this for sometime, they used the Valken fan translation it was clear from a quick comparison I did myself it was the same just with a few edits to clean it up or change it. I was surprised retro-bit did this as the fan translation is inferior to the excellent Switch M2 English release. Retro-bit didn’t want to pay M2 the rights costs it seems or even pay the fan translators.Not much they can do really as what people never mentioned is while fan translations are nice to see they are highly illegal. As you need the copyright holders permission to translate their work to another language in the first place, which 99% of them don’t have.If anything all they can sadly do is ask for a credit if that. As unless they had the copyright holders permission to translate the game in the first place, they have little in the way of a legal case. As if they try to sue retro-bit, they can just say they had permission while the fan translators didn’t.Last thing you want is a case that angers a rights holder, else that could see games companies turn on fan translators and could see all fan translations ever made taken down.Fan translations have been a grey area for a long time rights holders turn a blind eye to. Having professionally worked to localise games in the industry myself for a publisher. I know how much work goes into it myself. That said with A.I. now as it is I can self translate stuff myself for any game ever made with screen grabs.While it’s definitely possible that Retro-Bit itself was unaware of this and thought their translator was doing a good job, it’s unfortunate that they’re denying the reality that has been very clearly (and thorougly!) laid out here.You only get one chance to handle this correctly and they blew it.@RG-Riven m
This is an interesting point, and something I was wondering about when I first read this story earlier today.I’m intrigued to see how Retro-Bit responds to the case put forward, and Time Extensions request for comment. I’m a keen fan of the output, I’ve found the quality of their releases is great, their handling of this situation could be critical to many fans.@Damo Damo, as a fellow human being who I can state unequivocally is not anywhere close to perfect, don’t you think it’s even remotely possible the people making those statements were just as ignorant about what the person they paid for the translation was doing as we all were until you posted this article on it, or at least to some degree?What if said translator used some AI and wasn’t fully aware the AI might be taking snippets from someone else’s translation rather than doing it entirely from scratch using its patent vast digital genius and superior intelligence for example–I’m being sarcastic about AI here. And what if said person told the publisher they didn’t directly copy anyone else’s work, which they honestly believed, and the publisher believed them at their word.Now, I’m not claiming everyone is entirely innocent here, or otherwise, but I truly am becoming sick and tired of all the people acting holier than thou online. What, no one has ever cut corners, cheated a little here or there, fubbed the results, imitated just a little too closely, used our modern AI tools to take the load off, etc.Glass houses and throwing stones and all that stuff applies to probably most of the comments in here imo–the Internet truly has created a bunch of very virtuous outspoken “Saints”.It really doesn’t matter. The translators don’t own the copyright to the material anyway, in any language.The problem here is that as translations get better we’re going to see them resemble each other more and more when staying true to the Japanese text.Damoon, if you could translate anything, what would that be.While the evidence sounds pretty strong in this case, this is a tricky area to accuse people of plagiarism. As diverse as the English language is, there are only so many ways to translate text from another language and some of the verbiage is more common than others. If you asked 100 people to translate one project, you’re going to get a lot of near identical or even some identical passages. And yes, even some errors will be identical because certain types of mistakes are more likely to happen than others.It kind of reminds me of how people consider the spelling of Jif (the peanut butter) or the Berenstain Bears to be a “Mandela Effect” when its easily explained by people tending to make the same spelling mistakes.Somehow I’m not surprised. This kind of shady stuff seems to happen not-infrequently at the indie end of the retro re-release spectrum… (As well as with anime and VNs, though indie anime localization is all but dead at this point.)I still haven’t had a chance to play my Valken gold cart… 🤔 Only copy of Shubibinman Zero I’ve got is the actual Columbus Circle physical release.@DoomPlague The evidence “Sounds pretty strong”? The original fan translation—which Retro-Bit swears they didn’t use—credits are still in the game! That’s not “pretty strong” that’s what one would call “damning”. 🤨@RetroGames As a commercial entity, I wouldn’t be fine with just a credit. I’d want compensation, or I’d want affected portions with my work redone without infringing on my own because I may not want to be associated. It’s free for fans to grab, but not for companies to profit on. Retrobit, if the allegations are true (and they seem to be), are flying dangerously close to the sun on this in terms of copyright infringement.@Damo thank you for drilling into this. Some of us are still very miffed at this kind of abuse. I think many of us remember Hyperkin’s Retron 5 shenanigans.@avcrypt And how close to the sun do you think the people who make fan translations of copyrighted work would be flying if they started asking for financial compensation from the company who used the typically freely distributed fan translations on the original games that they actually own the copyright to?”In Shubibinman Zero, The line よくおぼえておくわ means “I’ll remember this well”. Svambo translated this as “I’ll put you on my list!” and this line is used in the Retro-Bit version, too”actually, judging from the pic, the retro bit one says “I’ve put you on my list!” 🧐 🤔Edit: Story is now updated with official response from Retro-Bit@damo I think something that is getting misconstrued in this article, based on some of these comments, is that Retro-Bit is not “denying” that this happened; they haven’t commented at all yet.The quotes in the article are from years ago, when the game was getting released; not a reaction to the current controversy. It might be worth clarifying that.Personally, I’ve worked with Retro-Bit directly on my own projects, and I’ve had nothing but great experiences working with them. I really give them the benefit of the doubt here.I think the likely scenario is that they hired someone who either cut corners or misunderstood what they could and couldn’t use from existing works. It would be very hard for any company to validate the work (as seen by the effort it took for this to come to light). At some point you have to assume that the people you are hiring aren’t just stealing other peoples work.@RetroGames none. At that point they would have the same licensed working relationship under the re-release contract that Retro-bit would have as sub-contractors.Also to the update, I’m super happy to hear this is getting sorted. Good on them for addressing it ASAP.The business will know to what extent they are getting original content. And like their translations, they are wholly unoriginal in testing to what extent they can save money and resources by considering lowest to no-standards options, which is common practice in the retro products industry, as we’ve seen in multiple instances for years now. And it won’t be the last we hear about shady practices in the retro products category, particularly from the businesses that sell themselves as a full notch above the Chinese bootleg market, but then inevitably adopt some of its practicesNot a shocker. Really sucks that most companies who set up shop in the retro space are some variety of shady, scummy, and/or greedy. And they generally get extensive grace by hiding behind the almighty games preservation and “community”@RG-Riven If you make a fan translation, the copyright still belongs to the people who made the fan translation. The company who owns the original game cannot just claim it as their own.EDIT:
To be more exact, the fan translation is still illegal as a modification of something you don’t have the rights of.
…but the modifications themselves do not magically belong to the company, it’s still belonging to the fans who did it.@RetroGames Sorry but it is still fair to blame the company when they do wrong, even if it might not be their fault. I completely disagree with you on that one.
Keep in mind also that the person doing the accusation has avoided to mention the name of the translator involved, out of respect.Also keep in mind my first comment about what you said. The fact you’re still talking about cutting corners by just stealing work of other people and implying it’s fine is still a huge disrespect to every fan who bothered to do the work.There’s no legal way to claim a fan translation, really, considering it’s an illegal modification of a game that is also most likely downloaded illegally.That being said, it’s objectively ***** to use someone else’s hard work that they made entirely for free and start selling it while claiming it was actually your own original work all along. Thankfully, the response is understandable – if the translator guilty of the stealing was known for doing honest work over the years, it’s easy to see how this could’ve slipped through. As long as they refine their quality control, I don’t think there’s anything further to get angry about. It’s just a shame when talented people take cheap and unethical shortcuts when they’re so clearly capable of doing it the right way.It seems like these sort of lazy mistakes are becoming endemic with publishers like LRG and Retro Bit, and when they get called on the carpet for it they always say “We trusted someone we shouldn’t have and we apologize.” Okay, but… a little time and effort to QA things and make sure you did it right in the first place would’ve prevented having to apologize (or manufacture replacement items) later.This should’ve never happened. There are countless romhackers and translators who would be thrilled to get the chance to work on a project that pays, and are the kind that would go the extra mile to make sure no shortcuts are taken.@Quick_Man “There’s no legal way to claim a fan translation, really, considering it’s an illegal modification of a game that is also most likely downloaded illegally.”There’s two statements here I wanted to address: that it’s an illegal modification and that it follows that the game is downloaded illegally.The second point I think addresses another issue entirely that I don’t think it’s material to what’s being discussed here as fan translations are rarely shared as full games. Rather they’re patches to be applied.On the first point, this is a huge legal grey area. Is it distributing copyrighted work? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that it is distributing translations of copyrighted dialog as a derivative work. No in the sense that it’s only usable by presumed owners of the original work under non-commercial terms for the purposes of accessibility, and so they stand a chance at sliding just under the bar of fair use… potentially. As all fair use cases go, it’s not really fair use until a judge says so.Important here is that it’s not an illegal modification per se. That and illegal modifications aren’t really a thing in copyright. Whistler tips and catalytic converter deletes are illegal modifications. Translations are derivative works. It’s the distribution that’s potentially illegal.I want to recognize a case in Sweden in 2017 that is referenced a lot about this issue where they did focus heavily on the pirate aspect. I live in the US where we factor in that sort of situation differently and have different factors for fair use.Krokodyl did a great job on the RE and comparison work here. Thanks!Translation work is an iceberg. The text you see at the top hides the other 80% of work involved to store and print it. There’s no one solution to that, or even an optimal solution. When you’re rewriting code, writing a codec, doing original image work, reworking existing resources, choices on reshuffling and reorganizing, your choices are very much your own. Implementation is rarely repeatable. It’s almost a personal signature. I’m glad to see someone use that as the metric for comparison.honestly, it seems a bit ridiculous for something someone did for free and distributed for free to be ostracized for being used freely in a way that legitimizes it, though credit should still be given to the one that did it.well, the main issue here is more retro-bit claiming not to use pre-existing script but doing so anyway.@LuigiBlood I doubt that very much under the current laws, as if you illegal translate something without the copyright holders consent. Then I suspect the rights of even the translation you did will go back to the original rights holders. If you commit a crime under law, you don’t get to keep your ill gotten gains so to speak. I’ll end the legal discussion there.@slider1983 All translations are all a series of choices. Great translations can and should read differently, simply because different people worked on them, especially with such wildly different languages as English and Japanese.Really, it’s only bad/basic translations that should read more closely because it’ll mean the translator couldn’t understand the nuances of the text.I completed a Phantasy Star IV retranslation and used the same boilerplate “don’t use this without permission or for commercial use” but I was acutely aware I was working on a company copyrighted IP and there’s nothing I can do if someone stole my writing or programming for commercial use.IMO most of the carpet bagger, overpriced retro industry is BS lol.Not surprised by this news at all but really what can you do about it if you did the work ;( I think you must have to resign yourself that you did it for the passion and people who actually will really appreciate it, and the work is available for free for anyone who wants to play it or make their own cartridge.I really appreciate when companies license their repros though or do the work to credit people who did the real work though.The FOMO ***** of LRE and the like is crap but licensing and rel releasing a super expensive game like Gley Lancer and owning it legally is pretty cool. I hope the backlash forces retro bit and others to pay more attention and not be lazy, money-grubbing dicks but I doubt the speculating ***** that but these up to sell them once they’re sold out really careAnd now teh Internet can go back to waiting for the next thing to get on the high horse over.Retro-Bit could had gotten away with this if they had just change a few words/sentences and the style and size of the texts.This is why I pirate every last retro rerelease. They’re selling roms. Show Comments Leave A CommentHold on there, you need to login to post a comment…”This Cartridge Is A Tiny Time Bomb” – Limited Run Accused Of Selling Carts Which Can Damage Your NES”So far, I’ve caught them doing it with Rugrats and PioPow”A New PS3 Emulator Has Been Released For Android, But Is Proving ControversialThe developer is facing criticism for breaking RPCS3 GPLv2 licenseFeature: The Tale Of Final Fantasy VII’s Lost Prequel, And The Fans That Are Trying To Save ItBefore Crisis was originally released episodically for Docomo phonesThe MSXBOOK Is A New Laptop Based On The Japanese Home Computer StandardFrom the creators of the Pocket386 and Pocket8086″EA Gives You Enough Rope To Hang Yourself” – BioWare Co-Founder On His Dream Of Taking Over EA From The Inside”Ray and I would have probably launched a bid to try and take over EA from the inside” 7News Former Amico Exclusive ‘Breakout Beyond’ Comes To PC & Modern Consoles This March 2News SNES Title ‘Shounen Ninja Sasuke’ Is Getting Its First Ever Western Release Later This Week 7Feature Please, Please, Please Treasure Your Offline Multiplayer Buddy 1News The Commodore 64 Is Getting A New Ultima-Style RPG 5News Forever Entertainment’s House Of The Dead 2: Remake Now Has A Steam DemoNews “This Cartridge Is A Tiny Time Bomb” – Limited Run Accused Of …News A New PS3 Emulator Has Been Released For Android, But Is Proving Controv…News “EA Gives You Enough Rope To Hang Yourself” – BioWare Co-Found…Feature The Tale Of Final Fantasy VII’s Lost Prequel, And The Fans That Are Tryi…News The MSXBOOK Is A New Laptop Based On The Japanese Home Computer StandardNews Just Like Switch, Xbox And PS5, Sega Dreamcast Is Getting Cloud Save Sup…News 24 Percent Of Gen Z Brits Own A Classic Gaming System, While 74 Percent …News This New Handheld Aims To Bring Back The Magic Of ’80s Text AdventuresNews Retro-Bit Apologises For Using Fan-Translations Without PermissionNews Lewd N64-Powered ‘Super Real Mahjong VS’ Gets English-Language PatchPopular Right NowShow More Join 24,947 people following Time Extension:© 2025 Hookshot Media, partner of IGN Entertainment | Hosted by 44 Bytes | AdChoices | Do Not Sell My Personal Information
