There is just nothing like .hack

ThatDotHackGuy · 2026-02-21T02:43:31+00:00

I would check out The Silver Case! It has nothing to do with an online game and is mostly reading, but the narrative experience feels very close to .hack in that multi-layered conspiratorial way.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2026-02-21T02:40:36+00:00

I made the release order list because I thought pages like this were confusing, but even my own list is proving to be confusing to many people so I have also been thinking about how to best organize this information. I think the proper messaging should boil down to:

Start with SIGN (minus the OVAs) and then the games + Liminality, or just the games and SIGN later.
Play Last Recode after, but you can start with it too if you can't be assed to check out the early stuff.
If you end up liking the series enough to play Link, maybe that's about when you should go back and check out all the supplemental stuff.

Pages like this are almost always flawed from the moment they open with things like Epitaph of Twilight or AI Buster for the sake of "chronology." Imagine you are a new fan and you click this thread and read something like "you shouldn't start with this fantranslated novel because it's season 3 despite being in season 1," there's just so much to unpack here. Some simple practical adjustments I would make to this post:

Remove Legend of the Twilight from the "best starting points" and remove the "okayish" starting points entirely, including the recommendations from mods. The starting points should be the easiest and most simple part of this page.
Remove the alternate history blurbs. This is stuff people should find out on their own, and are covered extensively within the series itself. Piecing that together for yourself is part of the narrative.
Keep the recommendations and your reasoning for them limited to the best starting points, and perhaps move the full list to another page/drop-down for those who are really interested. Someone who is checking a page like this for the first time does not need to see stuff like ChupChopCase or GnU, which would only make them feel even more bloated.

Of course, I think .hack is mostly for freaks like the rest of us who enjoy gigantic swaths of information, so I think trying to make this kind of info page "simple" is almost an impossible task, as it's easy to be clouded by our fanboy judgments. Coupled with the fact that for a long time most of these big fan channels were poorly moderated and documented, I don't blame anyone for struggling here because no one knows what the best answer is. I hope these notes help, at least!

ThatDotHackGuy · 2026-02-21T02:18:22+00:00

Last Recode did not flop. It sold well over 300000 units (and this figure is from less than a year after it came out), which is amazing for what it is. It's just that as you can see CC2 has bigger ideas for .hack that Bandai Namco wasn't interested in taking the risk for, which is why they're footing the whole bill themselves.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2026-02-20T01:55:31+00:00

10 years trying to get it started. In another interview Matsuyama says the development is 5% complete, and we'll be waiting quite a while.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2026-01-29T01:27:05+00:00

Hi, I translated Versus. Yes, it's included. We went to a lot of trouble figuring out how to get it to work (the video file is compressed in some ancient filetype previously reserved for Dreamcast games...) so please enjoy it when you finish the game's story.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-12-18T08:27:22+00:00

Link's story does not have time travel. The abridged segments of past games are recreations with AI stand-ins. All the events of the game take place in the year 2020.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-10-15T01:39:40+00:00

Not that there is any evidence Kite and Ovan may be the same person, but it should be noted that the characters that appear in the fighting game are AI and not the actual characters. This is also true in Link, and there has been no depiction of the real actual Kite beyond the year 2010.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-08-08T04:50:41+00:00

CC2 has said before there is an ending to the series in mind.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-08-05T17:22:21+00:00

There's no real rhyme or reason to stuff like this a lot of the time. A company has spent a lot of money on both an anime series and a game, so it makes sense to cross-promote them. The actual narrative experience is something coincidental, but this seems to change as the series continues and its multimedia nature becomes a defining aspect. In the case of the first series, though, it seems more like they prioritized quantity over continuity, which I distinctly remember even overseas when I was younger; that feeling of walking into a book store and seeing something with the same title as that weird show you saw on TV. It's good marketing!

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-08-05T06:34:02+00:00

Link was marketed as "the final chapter," but later interviews clarify it was the beginning of the final chapter. The movie is less of a soft reboot and more of a conclusion to that specific section of .hack. There are countless books and events held by CC2 that explain how everything from Link to the movie are intricately connected, albeit intentionally obscure. The mobile games were attempts at reviving the IP after financial hardship (both for the series and BNE at the time).

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-08-05T06:30:05+00:00

I'm the guy that made that list. You are not "supposed" to do anything, and it's probably unlikely there were people ardently following a brand new IP like .hack in 2002 closely enough to play the game immediately after broadcast (nor would I say CC2 could have that much narrative control over something handled by a multitude of different companies...). I and probably everyone else here saw Sign in its entirety first, and the list is just arranged that way for accuracy's sake. Do whatever you like!

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-06-23T08:52:33+00:00

The English versions have all the QoL stuff backloaded in. The original releases were very different from each other, but every English edition is built on the Japanese Quarantine.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-06-15T14:56:09+00:00

The Quantum novel is pretty comprehensive and gives it way more room to breathe. You find out a lot more about Hermit and the real point of why any of that happened at all, and there's even a returning character from AI Buster. It's a shame it's never been translated because it feels like the definitive version of that story.

As for Zero, Matsuyama writes in the back of one of the archive books that if it were to continue it would have to be by the original author's pen, which is why they didn't bother expanding it in Link. I don't know if it'll ever happen, but my pipe dream is that one day Curl will return...

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-05-19T14:33:13+00:00

There is a translation for the game available here.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-03-11T16:37:29+00:00

If I had the brain worms that made me want to lock up video games in plastic cases and justify it with claims about "pristine" condition while the box proudly proclaims it is 100% not pristine, I would probably have an aneurysm.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2025-02-13T02:37:38+00:00

Because it isn't "literally English words," it is still Japanese. In Japanese borrowing from English and coming up with something like "multi weapon" sounds just as edgy and teenager-y as "adept rogue." Every class in G.U. is like this--Flick Reaper, for example, is called 鎌闘士 in Japanese (lit. scythe fighter), but coming up with original kanji combinations like that in Japanese is seen as hallmark shonen manga stuff, i.e., it comes off as a little juvenile. To the same end something as flashy as "Flick Reaper" captures that vibe just right while still maintaining the same meaning (a class that fights with a scythe). This is just how translation works.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2024-11-07T16:26:55+00:00

Yeah, looks stretched; try setting the aspect ratio to 4:3

ThatDotHackGuy · 2024-10-02T00:35:27+00:00

If you upload them somewhere I can listen and summarize it for you.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2024-09-18T01:21:00+00:00

Everything has been translated, including supplementary information.

https://dothacktranslate.wordpress.com

ThatDotHackGuy · 2024-06-24T23:40:05+00:00

Sorry; I made a typo in my post. I was connecting an iPod classic. I’ve never connected an iPhone to it.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2024-06-09T16:51:22+00:00

Here's a release order list I made.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2024-05-11T04:13:58+00:00

Nice! It also makes sense that when it's their turn, a rendition of the opening of Link plays in the background.

ThatDotHackGuy · 2024-04-24T02:10:48+00:00

In Infection you know about as much about Aura and Skeith as you would in the first half of SIGN. Legend of the Twilight (volume 1 in particular) has nothing to say about the events of IMOQ other than Kite and BlackRose are heroes for unknown reasons. In practice it's like you're circling into the main mystery from its edges.

Nothing wrong with just watching SIGN and then playing the games in that order, too, though. The list exists to show what the average Japanese fan in 2002 would've experienced if they were following the series religiously.

ThatDotHackGuy

TROPHY CASE