The month of October has been a real treat for all the followers of the rom hacking scene. Not just one, or two, but a whopping three high-profile releases have come out! Here’s the rundown and a couple of special surprises.

Mother 3 is without a doubt the most talked one of the releases and rightly so; it was a mystery to me why Nintendo decided not to release this game outside of Japan. But here it is after two years of fans’ hard work!

While Persona 2: Innocent Sin‘s twin game Eternal Punishment did get (horribly mis-) localized , the first part of the duology never left the shelves of Japan. But now it is here for all the Atlus fans to enjoy. How could a game with the resurrection of Hitler go wrong? At least when the content is viewed as too controversial.

Asmik’s Lennus II never got localized outside of Japan although its prequel Paladin’s Quest did get picked up by Enix. The game looks stunning and suitable for anyone looking for a 16-bit RPG-fix. A surprising fact is that the game got originally released a full month after the release of the Nintendo 64!

Now here’s a little less known game. Exile II for the MSX, while already available for the Mega Drive and the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² and translated by none other than Working Designs, has not suffered from the cencorship the other versions have gone trough, including drug references and religious themes. As such it should be in it’s true form. The RPG is set during the Christian crusades, and features an Islamic assassin attempting to unite the world and bring world peace.

Last but not the least is a project still underway, Namco’s Tales of Innocence for the DS. While the other games in the series have been quite succesfull outside of Japan Namco for whatever reason decided not to localize this one.