OFFWORLD LAZYWEB REQUEST: CAN WE TRANSLATE THIS JAPANESE SPELUNKER PARODY? [UPDATE: YES WE CAN]

Several days back, the always wonderful Tiny Cartridge posted the above video, which I suppose requires just a hint of explaining.

The game is the NES’s Spelunker, which — though it mostly floundered in relative obscurity in the States (apart from Derek Yu’s recent half-tribute Spelunky) — almost inexplicably has risen to legendary status in Japan, primarily as a ‘shit game’ (kusoge) for its punishing 5-pixel-fall instant deaths. (So wide is its ironic acclaim that Irem has recently resurrected the game for a four-player high-res downloadable PS3 version, which may or may not be headed our way.)

So we have that now combined with another ubiquitous Japanese meme, Hatsune Miku, the fabricated starlet based on Yamaha’s Vocaloid singing speech synthesizer technology, mentioned earlier both for “her” appearance in the Katamari Damacy DS downloadable, and, more recently, the chiptune tribute album 8-BIT PROPHET.

In the video, which replaces the standard Spelunker sprite with one of Miku, she provides not only an entirely a cappella rendition of its soundtrack and effects, but is continually narrating the deep-cave exploring experience. Basically, it’s ten different kinds of adorable and in-jokey, and something we’d like to see rendered out in nice, clear English subtitles.

Can you help? Email me or leave a comment if you can, and we’ll get this gal re-uploaded on YouTube for the rest of the world to enjoy.

[UPDATE: I love it when a plan comes together — a thousand thanks to Julie Whitehead, who sends on not only a wicked translation, but amazing notes on the songbird origins of Hatsune Miku’s name itself. As suspected, the song’s even more tongue in cheek and cutely funny than I hoped for: I’ll try and work up a nice subtitled post as a weekend project and share the results ASAP.]