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 already have the PS1 tambourine controller, but felt that the official 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 translation 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 text 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 performance 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 can be found here on Hilltop’s Patreon page.