Little Busters! English Edition is exactly what it sounds like: an official, expanded, English version of Little Busters! which is a visual novel now available on Steam. It's on sale for $28 (down 20 percent from its normal $35) until Wednesday, November 8.
It stars Riki Naoe, an unassuming narcoleptic orphan, and his ever-expanding gang of baseball-loving friends. If you can't tell, it's a wholly light-hearted slice of life romp. In addition to the usual dialogue options, it also includes several minigames like baseball practice, a shooting game and slapstick fighting sequences.
This isn't the first time Little Busters! has been translated. The series originally released in Japan in 2007 and was expanded with an erotic version, Little Busters! Ecstasy, in 2008. The games received multiple fan translations between 2007 and 2012, when publisher VisualArts announced it would officially localize the VN. In fact, the publisher used the work of the VN Translation community as a stage for the localization.
"Little Busters! will be released officially in English on Steam by VisualArts," VN Translation wrote in an announcement. "They have personally played our translation and liked it, and they wish to use our translation as a basis for the Steam release."
With the help of the VN Translation community, as well as localization company Fruitbat Factory, VisualArts released Little Busters! Perfect Edition in 2012. However, it isn't available on Steam, and I can't find anything suggesting it ever was. At best, you can get it through Amazon for an eye-watering $128.
The new English Edition was made with the help of both Fruitbat Factory and Interweave Productions, with VisualArts overseeing the project. Ironically, it improves upon the Perfect Edition by adding support for HD resolutions and the option to swap between Japanese and English text.
Correction: This article previously stated that Little Busters! English Edition includes the mature scenes from Little Busters! Ecstasy. This is not the case. We regret the error. However, as VisualArts says on Steam, the Perfect Edition released with "improvements" made in Ecstasy, and the English Edition does retain these.
