The original Pokémon Red and Blue games have a new lease of life with a brand-new Irish translation.
After 27 years, the new fan-made Pokémon Red and Blue Irish translation converts all of the in-game text into native Irish, also known as Gaeilge.
Shared on the Ireland subreddit, dedicated Pokémon player Eireannnorudeigin created a ROM hack translation of the iconic Game Boy RPGs that converts all story text, items and Pokémon names into Gaeilge.
Images of the game were shared on Twitter by Irish CD Projekt RED writer Cian Maher. The images show the Pokémon Red and Blue Irish translation’s main menu, Professor Oak speech and the starting battle against your rival.
The new translation converts everything into the native Irish language. While Pokémon names were translated by fans years ago, this is the first time that Kanto’s towns have a native translation as well as the rest of the game’s text.
Eireannnorudeigin revealed that the game translation took six whole months of work. However, the hack still isn’t quite ready for release.
Before the Pokémon Red and Blue Irish translation is released, Eireannnorudeigin has a final grammar and error checking sweep to do. The modder also revealed that they will take feedback on any errors and issues after it’s released.
There are not many games that boast a native Irish language mode, but there are a few. In a post on We Are Irish, around 14 games have full Gaeilge language options for Irish gamers to play through.
From Among Us to Minecraft to PUBG, the Irish language is available in a few high-profile games, but not that many. Hopefully, the country’s beautiful language will become more prominent in other video games over time.
The Pokémon franchise is just as big as ever, if not more so. Recent entries such as Pokémon Scarlet and Violet continue to be bestselling games, with mroe language options than ever before. While smaller languages like Irish, Welsh and more are absent,