Has anyone played Mizuki Shigeru's Ghost Photo Studio? Obviously a language barrier, but I figure some folks here might know Japanese and have played it. I've gotten a 100% English translation hack of it completed and I'm bugtesting now. (Which isn't trivial, there's a lot there since it's basically an RPG.) It's a delight to play - the photo taking "capture" mechanic has surprising depth, and the theme is loaded with flavor. I think the light travel mechanic of having to figure out where a Yokai lives, get there via train/plane/boat/foot, and sleuth out how and when it appears (to even get a chance of catching him) is solid as well. Overall an overlooked game. Lovely pixel art for a handheld game. And so fun that Mizuki Shigeru and his daughter appear in game as NPCs driving the story.

[ Post Followup ] [ Search ] [ Return to the Forum ]

Posted by VortexSpin on August 03, 2026 at 13:17:29 EST.

Has anyone played Mizuki Shigeru's Ghost Photo Studio? Obviously a language barrier, but I figure some folks here might know Japanese and have played it. I've gotten a 100% English translation hack of it completed and I'm bugtesting now. (Which isn't trivial, there's a lot there since it's basically an RPG.) It's a delight to play - the photo taking "capture" mechanic has surprising depth, and the theme is loaded with flavor. I think the light travel mechanic of having to figure out where a Yokai lives, get there via train/plane/boat/foot, and sleuth out how and when it appears (to even get a chance of catching him) is solid as well. Overall an overlooked game. Lovely pixel art for a handheld game. And so fun that Mizuki Shigeru and his daughter appear in game as NPCs driving the story.

n/t

Follow Ups:

It's been harder than I expected to learn and playtest a game that has no English materials as a non-Japanese speaker. The manual is light on details but between that and the old website I was about to figure out the details. Like I said, it's surprisingly deep vs. what I expected. Different Yokai types, power distributions, lenses, and a card battle game! I should have said this in the first message but I'm using machine translation + AI and I'm doing this just as a hobby project for myself. Not claiming that it's as good as a human translator. But nothing existed and I figured if I wanted to play it I would just have to do it.

(VortexSpin)

(13:24:55 08/03/26 EST)

I suspected from the first post - I'm personally not interested in anything that's just an AI job, probably contrary to the rest of the people looking at the forum at this point. I feel like it has a chilling effect on anybody doing it properly, on top of my ethical concerns about genAI in general. Oh well!

(exodus)

(12:44:46 08/19/26 EST)

I admit that while my opinion on fan translations of unknown games that still haven’t been patched 25 years after release are not so fully formed I think I can safely speak for nearly everyone here in saying that I hate AI, slop, data centers, the idea that robots know anything or can be trusted with anything and everything else to do with the scam of our time known as AI. I think we’re cool on this. Everyone except the new guy and of course Mental who will probably post here for the first time in three months just to tell me I’m being too mean to computers. Most of those in the membership who text with me on a regular basis know that I kinda won’t shut up about how much I hate AI. I sometimes spend an hour just poking holes in the shit…which is like shooting fish in a barrel…but it validates my world view like a mofo because this shit is still hella stupid.

(SignOfZeta)

(23:09:59 09/02/26 EST)

I own this game but have spent almost zero time with it. I look forward to whatever you learn.

(SignOfZeta)

(18:04:43 08/04/26 EST)

Post a Followup

[ Search ] [ Return to the Forum ]