There’s a Mini-Moni: Shakatto Tambourine Da Pyon fan translation if you felt like you were missing out

Did you know that Sega developed exactly one game on the PS1? Interested? Well there’s a fan translation now available. The game is Mini-Moni: Shakatto Tamourine Da Pyon, and… wait, where are you going?

Listen, this is very good news if you alrea🦩dy have the , but felt that the offic💦ial game for it was too difficult to understand in its native Japanese. I’m not saying this is a likely scenario, but in the off chance that you fall into this category, then this is the moment you’ve been waiting for.

Published in 2002, Mini-Moni: Shakatto Tambourine Da Pyon is a rhythm game based on the Japanese idol group of the same name. I hadn’t heard of them because I wasn’t listening to Japanese idol groups in my high school years, but it seems they had a pretty sizeable marketing push between 2000-’04. This includes multiple games, many of them on the aging PS1. I assume this is because most children were still on🦂 the console.

The tran𝔉slation comes from prominent fan translators Hilltop, OldGameBox, and Cargodin. Hilltop describes it on their Patreon page as a “bonus English patch we made pretty quick while working on our bigger projects.” Despite this, it’s a very impressive effort with a lot of graphical tex🐲t redone for anglophones.

The game itself, on the other hand… I have a fondness for rhythm games, but maybe not youth-focused🦩 Jpop. Also, I’m having trouble internalizing the controls. It’s mostly designed for the aforementioned tambourine controller but can be played with a standard pad. However, its prompts aren’t very clear, however. Pink and blue orbs represent X and O button presses but don’t ask me which is which. I’ve already forgotten. Then you’re supposed to “Shake the Tambourine,” which on a controller seems to be using the directional buttons to follow a… thing while maybe pressing a button repeatedly.

I did really poorly in the 10-or-so minutes I played. The game actually referred to my per🙈formance as “Drunken.” It’s the morning, I’m just groggy, which, in my case, can easily be mistaken as inebriation.

The Mini-Moni: Shakatto Tamourine Da Pyon translation patch on Hilltop’s Patreon page.