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Kudos, also referred to as Studio KUDOS, is a Russian translation studio[1] supposedly based in Moscow, which mostly published unofficial Russian translations of Sony PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and Sega Dreamcast games, alongside unmodified versions.

As with many other unofficial Russian publishers, Kudos often published translations which were made by some translator teams specially for them, usually for money. Kudos also had his own translator going by the Koteuz pseudonym, also known as KZ. Moreover, Kudos ordered dubs for many games from GSC Game World, as was done for their 007: The World Is Not Enough release, in which the text was translated by Koteuz, and the dub was ordered from GSC Game World.

History[]

Kudos has three periods in its business. In the first era, Kudos primarily published Koteuz's translations, which were usually done by Koteuz. Games from this era can be distinguished with their blue covers.

The second period started when Kudos cooperated with another unofficial publisher named Red Station, and soon they worked as one company. During this period, previous Red Station's translations were republished and some new were made. Also, during this period, Kudos was accused of stealing translations, which originally were published by older companies, such as S.R.U. (aka Русские Версии) and Golden Leon (aka Golden Leon Interactive). For example, their release of 40 Winks used a translation that was alleged to be the translation created by Golden Leon.

The third period started with the beginning of the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 era. During this period, somewhere in 2004, Kudos went underground due to the start of so called "anti-piracy war" in Russia. During this era, many unofficial teams decided to work officially, including GSC. Kudos decided to continue work as an "unofficial" company. For this reason, none of their PlayStation 2 releases had any information about them (except of the in-game copyright notices where the studio is credited as "KZ"), and their website (rusperevod.com) has disappeared from their games' covers.

There is no exact information when Kudos stopped releasing games. According to the owner of Igrushek.net, one of the biggest internet CD and DVD shops that bought discs directly from Kudos and other unofficial companies, Koteuz left Kudos in 2004; soon after that, most of the team left Kudos and established their own unofficial company, Devil Soft. However, it is rumored that Kudos may have been returning to publishing games for the Mega Drive in the 2010s since some of the games also credit Kudos, although it's unclear if it's the same Kudos or another team/company that used the Kudos name.

In all years of them publishing disc-based games, Kudos' discs were professionally pressed with custom full color labeling, suggesting that they had access to a CD pressing plant.

Works[]

In addition to singular, translated games, Kudos has also released multiple pirate game compilations for both the PSX and the Dreamcast, which included multiple titles (usually a whole series) in one disc, with one of the smallest ones including 2 games in a single disc, and the biggest one including 9 games packaged in 3 CDs.

Kudos also distributed modified games such as Raptors! Quake and Simpsons Doom II, both created by users on the internet and otherwise available for free (and quite certainly published without the authors' knowledge nor consent), as well as developing some homebrew/pirate original games for PS1, one of them being TetraSEX (a Tetris clone with erotic pictures and porn scenes, similar in concept to Twin Eagles Group's Sextris).

A product catalog of bandicoot.ru dated January 2005 (Microsoft Excel file) includes games for the Sega Dreamcast and the Sony PlayStation, including "official" games, translations, and compilations, for a total of 1017 items available for sale. The connection between Kudos and the bandicoot.ru website (see below) suggests that most (if not all) translations were done by the studio and distributed by (or through) the website until its closure. The catalog does not include their translations of PlayStation 2 games due to their decision to hide their traces, although they do exist; these releases usually contain a loader before the game with a language selection between English and Russian.

Websites[]

In 2001, Kudos owned (or was involved with) two gaming-related websites:

  • rusperevod.com, the main website, which contained gaming news, reviews and demos and a bulletin board forum. It was advertised on most releases in the first and second era of the company. The name roughly translates to "rustranslate.com", referring to the original purpose of the studio.
  • kudosgames.com, a file hosting server that contained demos and videos linked on rusperevod.com.

According to the Wayback Machine, both websites launched in mid-2001, and in mid-2005, both were offline. The former redirected to a "404 Not found" error page of the original host and has then been on sale since, while the latter was sold twice: first to a game community that took the name, then to an unrelated game company (which took the name a second time) in late 2006.

They were also linked to another company (possibly a distributor), bandicoot.ru, which was a website advertised alongside rusperevod.com on later releases. It also went offline in late 2005.

Alternative logos[]

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Reference[]

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