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I love the time travel adventure Steins;Gate in all its forms and am always left wanting more. Luckily for me, there are plenty of spin-off games, manga, and light novels out there. There are also several audio dramas—one of which has been turned into an hour-long movie by fans.


Fan translation group Tempus Edax Rerum has made it their mission to bring as many of the Steins;Gate side stories and spin-offs to the English-speaking world as possible. While they have, understandably, made no effort to translate the spinoff games, they have (and continue to) translate many of the various manga and light novels. But their real crowning achievement to date is their translation of Steins;Gate Drama CD Gamma: Hyde of the Dark Dimension.


[Skip to the next paragraph to avoid spoilers from the main game.] The story of the audio drama is as follows: One of Okabe's D-Mails from late in the game so dramatically shifts the timeline, that he appears in a gamma (2.0+) attractor field worldline. In this world, he is a rounder and partner of Moeka under FB's command and thus finds that his allies from across countless time loops are arrayed against him.

It is an awesome extra hour-long adventure and a great listen. But what makes this version of the drama CD so amazing is that it is far more than just a simple text translation. Rather, they have created a video to go along with the audio drama—turning it into an hour-long cutscene much like those you'd find in the game itself.

Made in collaboration with the anime fansubbing group WhyNot Subs, Tempus Edax Rerum translator “Reading Steiner” translated the text and wrote out a basic layout for each scene. Then “MrDrSr” at WhyNot gathered the needed assets from the game proper, made the extra backgrounds they needed, and animated it in Blender so that it resembled the game. In all, it took close to a year to complete.


And what about the other Steins;Gate audio dramas? “Reading Steiner” hopes to get started on the Beta CD audio drama (which follows Mayuri) sometime soon and eventually do the Alpha CD audio drama (which follows Kurisu) in the same format as well. He even plans to release some of the sillier side-story audio dramas—like one where Okabe gets trapped in a VR dating sim with a yandere version of Kurisu—but doesn't plan on giving them the full treatment like Drama CD Gamma.


Check out the opening minutes of Steins;Gate Drama CD Gamma: Hyde of the Dark Dimension in the video above or, to see the full drama for yourself, head on over to the WhyNot homepage.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

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