During the Usagi’s Birthday event held on June 30th in Japan a number of things were announced, one of which was a Sailor Moon Ice Show, that being a figure skating show, which will be taking place in June of 2020. This was then shared on the Sailor Moon Official Site. Though we don’t have many details of what this will be like it was announced that Russian figure skater Evgenia Medvedeva will be involved. I’ve posted about Evgenia Medvedeva on this site a number of times. She first made an impression on the Sailor Moon fan community with her Sailor Moon inspired figure skating routine in which she skated to Moonlight Densetsu, the original Sailor Moon anime’s opening theme, and transformed into a Sailor Moon costume during her performance. She later met with Naoko Takeuchi who awarded her with a sketch. She’s a dedicated fan of anime and Sailor Moon specifically. Below you will find a video of her comments, in English, on joining this show.

What will this show be all about? We can only speculate at this point. With only one star announced to date we do at least know that it will feature at least one professional figure skater. Will this be something like the Disney On Ice type of shows? Honestly I’ve never seen this kind of show so I wouldn’t know where to start. If any of you are fans of figure skating shows, do you have thoughts on what this might be like?

Though skating isn’t referenced in the Sailor Moon manga the original Sailor Moon anime features skating in episode 39, Paired With a Monster: Makoto, the Ice Skating Queen. In this episode we are told that skating was the most popular sport in Silver Millennium. The Sailor Moon Another Story RPG for the Super Famicom also shows a skating rink on the Moon. It is certainly possible that the story of the Ice Show will reference this episode of the original anime.

As a Canadian I’m inclined to refer to this as simply “skating” and not “ice skating” because what else do people skate on? Are roller skates actually more popular than ice skates in some places? As the event is simply being called an “Ice Show” by official sources this is what I will call it as well.

An updated English translation for the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon Another Story RPG has been released on romhacking.net. This game, a Japanese Role Playing Game from 1995, was only ever released in Japan on the Super Famicom. Since there was never an English language release on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the overseas equivalent of the Super Famicom, fans looking to play the game have been able to do so thanks to an English fan translation released nearly 20 years ago back in 1999 by Bishoujo Senshi Translation. So what does this new one have to offer that the original translation didn’t? The new team built on the work of BST but improved the translation with over 400 changes. If we look at some comparison screenshots we can see that basic elements such as fonts are based on the original patch and the script is similar but with a lot of small changes to the language. There were also some programming changes to bugs in the game. The text files included with the patch also have some new built in cheat codes for those looking to have a different game experience.

Japanese Version	Original Translation – Glitched on some Emulators
New Translation – Fixed

So! How can fans play this game? Video game emulators require a rom (read only memory) file which is basically a dump of the video game’s data to play. The Sailor Moon: Another Story rom file itself is not included on the romhacking.net web site for copyright reasons. Only a patch file is hosted there which can be applied using a patching tool to the original Japanese rom file. Patching tools are easy enough to find. I use a pearl script because there are less tools available on Mac than on Windows PCs. If you’re looking for the rom file there are some disreputable sites on the Internet which host such files including Sailor Moon Another Story.

Japanese version	Original Translation
New Translation

Have you played this game? Do you plan on checking out this new translation as a way to experience this game for the first time or yet again? I’ve restarted playing this game at least 3 times previously! The first time I played a Japanese rom before a translation was available and didn’t get too far. A few years later I emulated the English version on my Sega Dreamcast and gave up at some point in the North Pole when I found the random encounters time consuming. I later bought a copy of the Super Famicom game and played that in Japanese, giving up after a tough boss fight during Sailor Mercury’s side quest. This might be a good time to try the game out again! I enjoy doing game emulation on my Raspberry Pi and my hacked 3DS. What do you emulate games on?

Thanks to Dan Bednarsky on Twitter for the heads up.

Keep reading for more comparison screenshots.

Japanese Version	Original Translation
New Translation

Japanese Version	Original Translation
New Translation

Japanese Version	Original Translation
New Translation