Mega Man Battle Network 4.5 translation in the works

Even though the Mega Man Battle Network series has a following in North America, Capcom decided to pass on publishing Rockman EXE 4.5 Real Operation outside of Japan. Unlike the other games Rockman EXE 4.5’s focus is on controlling your net navis, indirectly. You can’t direct your net navis with the D-pad instead they move on their own and all you can do is input battle chips. Perhaps Rockman EXE 4.5 is best explained as a PET simulator where you step into the shoes of a net battler. A special edition of the game came bundled with a battlechip gate that plugged into the GBA and players could put in toy battle chips that worked with the game. Spikeman has been hard at work on translating the game into English and the current patch is about 20% done. The menus, battle chips and setup screen are complete, which makes the game playable even if you don’t read Japanese. There is still more work to be done, like translating the entire script. That’s going to be a daunting task, but Spikeman is going all out on his translation project. One patch has the localized US names for the characters such as Mega Man, Protoman and Forte. The other patch is for purists and it keeps the Japanese names for every character.