It’s taken nearly 18 years, but non-Japanese readers may finally get to play the original Medarot game. Announced on the Project Rising Beetle forums, a group of fans have pledged to release an English translation patch for the first RPG in the series.

Debuting in November 1997 on the Nintendo Game Boy in both Kabuto and Kuwagata flavours, Medarot stars Hikaru Agata in his quest to become the world’s best Medarotter. After its successful launch, the game then received an enhanced Wonderswan port in 1999. In 2004 it was re-imagined with a different set of characters on the Game Boy Advance. Citing better documentation for ROM hacking, the fan translation will be based on the game’s original release.

The team, which consists of a few carryovers from the Medarot manga translation project, is as such:

Translation: Kimbles and Tobias

Coding and Programming: Variant and Sanky

Graphics: Pluto_Nonary

Beta Testers: The whole team

The translation will be true to the Japanese text, so localized names seen in official English products won’t be used.

To show that they’re serious, the team has released a batch of screenshots with the translation injected in the game:

While unable to promise anything, the hope is to launch the English patch sometime this year.