Murder on the Mississippi

The German Version

In 1986 then video game journalist Boris Schneider undertook one of the first documented fan translation efforts:

Over the course of one weekend (!) he single-handedly cracked and translated the C64 version of Murder on the Mississippi into German by using a simple hex editor and a self-written disk editor. He then sent "his" translated version of the game to Activision, which they officially released in Germany.

If you check the Happy Computer review for the Commodore 64 the "tester" states (in German) "The fact that Activision has decided to have this adventure translated into German is extremely positive. The translation is quite good, apart from a few small spelling mistakes.". Interesting is, that this "tester" was Boris Schneider-Johne himself (as he was working for Happy Computer at that time). It seems as if he had to keep this part-time job a secret from the publisher of Happy Computer.