The PS1 library is a treasure trove of wildly ambitious and unique games, and doubly so if you count the platform's Japanese library. One particularly big highlight is PopoloCrois, a series of adorable JRPGs published by Sony itself. Now, after five years of work from fan translators, the entire PS1 PopoloCrois trilogy is finally playable in English.
PopoloCrois has an odd history, originating as a manga series in the '70s, the rights to which were eventually sold to Sony. It then became a PS1 game, telling the story of a 10-year-old boy trying to get his comatose mother's soul out of the underworld in the format of a traditional JRPG. Its biggest claim to fame is its absolutely gorgeous art and animation, which is still some of the most adorable stuff you'll see in a video game.
PopoloCrois got one global release on PSP, which combined the two main PS1 games – PopoloCrois Story 1 and 2 – into a single RPG with a continuous story. That wasn't quite the full experience, however, so fan translators have spent the past few years patching the original games into English, and that job ultimately wrapped up in 2024.
One piece was missing, however: PopoRogue, a roguelike spin-off released between the two main games. Yes, roguelikes were pretty popular among Japanese RPG enthusiasts in the '90s – the likes of Mystery Dungeon and Shiren the Wanderer are testament to that – and even PopoloCrois was getting in on the action decades before the indie roguelike boom.
Today is the day, Poporogue PS1 full english patch v1.0 is released now! translated from JP>EN! www.romhacking.net/translations... Poporogue is a turn-based mix roguelike elements, as second game that set in dream world with mercenaries system where you can hire and recruit party members.
— @porosneustein094.bsky.social (@porosneustein094.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-09-17T14:19:01.449Z
That gets us to today's news, which is that PopoRogue finally has an English translation patch of its own, completing the whole trilogy. "The first translation patch for PopoloCrois was released 3 years ago, but there has been over 5 years of work from multiple teams to finally bring the whole series into English," as explained in a post on Romhacking.net.
This isn't purely a translation, either. The devs also went the extra mile here, hacking the game to let you get a handful of exclusive items you otherwise would've needed a demo disc and the Japan-exclusive PocketStation accessory for. "Something impossible is possible now," as team member keke_094 puts it on Bluesky, and I think that goes as much for the opportunity to play these games in English as it does for any other extras.
The best PS1 games never go out of style.
