In a previous written piece where I briefly talked about my thoughts on the fan patch that had been made for the original Yakuza PlayStation 2 game I mentioned that I would love to also see some fan translations with Japanese audio for the original Fatal Frame/Project Zero trilogy of games that came out on the PlayStation 2 consoles.
Well, thanks to Retro Gamer (issue 281) and their article on Project Zero II they mentioned that undubbings were available for the original 3 games. 'Undub' is a term for games that have had additional audio taken out and replaced with the original audio language with additional subtitles.
So, I took to the internet to find patches for the original games, which I still own on the PlayStation 2 and after some head scratching I managed to successfully patch the 3 games and now I can finally play the original games in their original Japanese language with English subtitles.
Fatal Frame II has also recently seen a release of a remake for new consoles and thankfully in that version there is an official option to play it with Japanese audio and English subtitles.
I played the demo of Fatal Frame II Remake and found my brief time with the game to be enjoyable - it plays were much like the Wii version (which is also a remake), but the character movements feel smoother and is not restricted to motion controls. I am interested to play more of the game in the future.
Below is a video from each of the games with the undubbing running correctly:
Fatal Frame 2 Wii Remake
There is a undubbing available also for the second game that was remade for platform. I believe it will only work on a modded Wii - I do not think it works on an emulator - at least, the files I have.
I modded a Will a while ago so I could play the fan translated patch for the fourth game that was only ever released in Japan on the Wii platform (many years later the game finally saw a release in the form of a remaster on the Switch and PlayStation 4.
As I have a modded Wii I may try one day to play the undubbed version of the remake, but I may take a break before as I have had enough head scratching exercises lately with the undubs for the original trilogy.
But here is a video of the undub of the start of the game: