The non-Iranian video games that officially support Persian language are few in number, but the unofficial scene is far different.

Note: Thank you John, for editing this piece! To know more about the history of gaming in Iran, read this article.

Video games in Persian!

For those who don’t know, only a few number of video games officially support Persian. And to name the recent ones, we can refer to Alone in the Dark, Prince of Persia the Lost Crown, and DarkSiders 3. No Iranian gaming outlet analyzed the quality of the works, and I’m not here either to judge these products localization-wise, but it finally happened in an official way: “video games in Persian”!

The early 2000s

Modifying video games, for the purpose of localization in Iran, became popular in the early 2000s, where Persian-dubbed versions of the games Stronghold and Mafia gained a huge amount of popularity by Iranian audiences. The team behind the mentioned titles was Darinoos, one of the many unofficial game localization teams based in Iran, which was founded in the early 2000s and is still active. In the non-digital era of video games, Darinoos distributed their localized PC games in a full package, which they packed their boxes with physical guides and cards. I don’t know where this idea came from, but at least this was the first chance of Iranian players to have a game box with some manuals. Why? Because of piracy, which is still an issue. Not to mention that the idea of providing a complete package was common in the scene, but its origin is unknown.

It was just the beginning of an era in which the players could understand any part of any game’s script. And even to this day, some certain lines of Stronghold’s script are famous amongst its Iranian fans.

However, Darinoos was not the first unofficial game localization group in Iran. According to Ali Seyedof (one of the first Iranian game developers), there was a Persian-dubbed FIFA game localized by Honafa studio, in an undocumented year before 2000, and it was even before the foundation of Darinoos, proving the fact that video game localization was still a thing back then in the country.

Another considerable step after Darinoos, was the unofficial version of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on Windows PCs with a complete Persian dub, from the disbanded team, Cyber. According to an interview with them, it was a commercial failure due to other modders modifying this version and distributing them.

The late 2000s

It was the late 2000s, where many teams started to grow, localizing PC games unofficially in Iran. They localized as many titles as possible, ranging from Call of Duty 4 to Resident Evil 5. Thanks to Old Persian Games (aka OPG), an independent project led by Ali Hardan, every possible localized game is archived.

Considering PlayStation as a brand among Iranians, some people in this scene decided to localize popular titles on the Sony platforms, with the notable ones being the two God of War’s released on the PS2 that fully supported Persian subtitles.

The early 2010s

In the 2010s, localizing video games goes to another level. Farid Abbasi had founded a website named MicroBaz, which was dedicated to Micro Genius Famiclones, as having no official hardware made these clones popular in Iran’s market. This website, which is still alive, was developed for the purpose of informing anyone about this cloned hardware, including ROM hacks, cheat codes, etc. Farid localized the title, Kunio Kun no Nekketsu Soccer League, and released it through the MicroBaz, its forum, and RHDN. Some years later, Farid finished working on the Persian version of Captain Tsubasa Vol 2 Super Striker, and the NES finally became another go-to platform for the Iranian modders.

What Farid did, made some people follow the same path. Ehsan Kouhi was another keen follower of Farid’s work, and did a lot to preserve retro video games. His notable works include Contra, Adventure Island, and BomberMan, and he’s currently working on Ninja Gaiden 3. These works resulted in the NES being considered as a localization-friendly platform by a few of Iranian modders.

The late 2010s — the early 2020s

Thanks to the Internet, some online stores started to appear, with the aim of offering localizations on the wide range of platforms, including PS3 and PS4. Now, dubbing a video game rarely happens and the teams decide to mostly provide subtitles. GameSub, FarsiSaz, DLFox, ApolloArcade, FanSub, and many others belong to this group, and the impact of social media, made most of the teams create a group on Telegram or a server on Discord, to have the audiences in touch with the localization team. GameSub, founded in 2016, is still running after almost a decade. Their recent works include Ghost of Tsushima and Elden Ring, while some of them have been released for free, meaning this team have the biggest archive of modern subtitle-localizations, compared to the others.

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