Translations of wapanese games

[Sreggin Etah I]

The translated PC version of Langrisser is based on the PSX version via the Saturn version, at least that's my understanding

Well, the PSX version looks way better, i like that 90s anime feel.

 

[Grauken]

The translated PC version of Langrisser is based on the PSX version via the Saturn version, at least that's my understanding

Well, the PSX version looks way better, i like that 90s anime feel.

More translations of ports are always welcome in my opinion

That said the PSX games I want to see translated are the Popolocrois games

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Another game that looks interesting:

Kaeru no Ehon: Nakushita Kioku o Motomete:


this looks very Breath of fire 3, i couldn't find a video that shows the combat system in this game though.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I'll be glad when this is completed.
I'd like to see these as well:
The Phantasie Memorial Set Trilogy
Rogue Alliance (yes its Realms of Darkness)


BTW, which is best system fm-7, pc-88 pc-88, sharp x1, or MSX? (Graphics & Sound)

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

BTW, which is best system fm-7, pc-88 pc-88, sharp x1, or MSX? (Graphics & Sound)

From my admittedly limited experiences, the MSX is comparable to the ZX Spectrum when the developers didn't care to the C64 when developers do care, both graphically and sound-wise. The X1 is slightly better graphically than the MSX, but I haven't heard anything on it better than the MSX. Every PC-88 title I've seen uses just the heaviest amount of dithering I've ever seen in a video game, so I'd wager if its better in terms of resolution and colors than the X1 not as many titles would make actual use of that.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

From some shots pc-98 looks to outclass the 88. I will say when I ran the FM-Towns emulators for the Marty it looked pretty good. I'll check the specs of each in a bit since poking around has had some decent results. Translations on these machines I have no clue on difficulty. Its a damn shame many titles across all platforms didn't have more translations. Some are pretty bad and need amending. You're damn lucky to get voice actors and even more rare GOOD voice actors. Musicals score never seem to have goid translations. The language barrier can only be broken down so far.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

From some shots pc-98 looks to outclass the 88. I will say when I ran the FM-Towns emulators for the Marty it looked pretty good. I'll check the specs of each in a bit since poking around has had some decent results. Translations on these machines I have no clue on difficulty. Its a damn shame many titles across all platforms didn't have more translations. Some are pretty bad and need amending. You're damn lucky to get voice actors and even more rare GOOD voice actors. Musicals score never seem to have goid translations. The language barrier can only be broken down so far.

PC-98 is a stronger machine -- even on the surface level it has higher resolution (640x400 vs 640x200 on PC-88) and more colors on screen (16 colors with a huge number of colors to choose from vs predetermined 8 colors on PC-88).

Hacking old Japanese PC games is tricky.

On one hand, text is easily accessible in most games, as it's stored in plain text (Shift-JIS encoding). On the other hand, the amount of space available to you is very low. Quite a few PC-98 games have support for half-width characters, which effectively doubles the amount of space you can use, but when there's no such thing (e.g. PC88, which mostly uses half-width romaji and katakana), you're out of luck, especially if you want to deliver something that doesn't resemble a bad localization from the early console days. That is, unless you're good with asm and willing to rework the game code...

From what I've gathered from my tests, support for half-width characters in FM Towns games is somewhat buggy and unpredictable, which explains the suspicious lack of (known) translations for this platform. My attempts to translate ElmKnight a few years ago (together with Helly, who is a big bro) proved to be problematic, but I'm willing to give it another go when I can afford to take time off from my day job. And before you ask -- the text is compressed in the PC-98 version...

 

[Derringer]

The curse prevents anyone even attempting translation of this mediorcre game.

I liked the movie for Minky Momo a lot when I watched it a few years back, it was decent.

 

[Helly]

From some shots pc-98 looks to outclass the 88. I will say when I ran the FM-Towns emulators for the Marty it looked pretty good. I'll check the specs of each in a bit since poking around has had some decent results. Translations on these machines I have no clue on difficulty. Its a damn shame many titles across all platforms didn't have more translations. Some are pretty bad and need amending. You're damn lucky to get voice actors and even more rare GOOD voice actors. Musicals score never seem to have goid translations. The language barrier can only be broken down so far.

PC-98 is a stronger machine -- even on the surface level it has higher resolution (640x400 vs 640x200 on PC-88) and more colors on screen (16 colors with a huge number of colors to choose from vs predetermined 8 colors on PC-88).

Hacking old Japanese PC games is tricky.

On one hand, text is easily accessible in most games, as it's stored in plain text (Shift-JIS encoding). On the other hand, the amount of space available to you is very low. Quite a few PC-98 games have support for half-width characters, which effectively doubles the amount of space you can use, but when there's no such thing (e.g. PC88, which mostly uses half-width romaji and katakana), you're out of luck, especially if you want to deliver something that doesn't resemble a bad localization from the early console days. That is, unless you're good with asm and willing to rework the game code...

From what I've gathered from my tests, support for half-width characters in FM Towns games is somewhat buggy and unpredictable, which explains the suspicious lack of (known) translations for this platform. My attempts to translate ElmKnight a few years ago (together with Helly, who is a big bro) proved to be problematic, but I'm willing to give it another go when I can afford to take time off from my day job. And before you ask -- the text is compressed in the PC-98 version...

ZZ is 100% right, arcane data encryption that only long gone jap dev knew how to bypass (which is a common threat even in more recent games such as Rhapsody of Zephyr) is basically a translation killer.
This won't prevent me from doing Illusion City one day since it felt doable, but still.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

From some shots pc-98 looks to outclass the 88. I will say when I ran the FM-Towns emulators for the Marty it looked pretty good. I'll check the specs of each in a bit since poking around has had some decent results. Translations on these machines I have no clue on difficulty. Its a damn shame many titles across all platforms didn't have more translations. Some are pretty bad and need amending. You're damn lucky to get voice actors and even more rare GOOD voice actors. Musicals score never seem to have goid translations. The language barrier can only be broken down so far.

PC-98 is a stronger machine -- even on the surface level it has higher resolution (640x400 vs 640x200 on PC-88) and more colors on screen (16 colors with a huge number of colors to choose from vs predetermined 8 colors on PC-88).

Hacking old Japanese PC games is tricky.

On one hand, text is easily accessible in most games, as it's stored in plain text (Shift-JIS encoding). On the other hand, the amount of space available to you is very low. Quite a few PC-98 games have support for half-width characters, which effectively doubles the amount of space you can use, but when there's no such thing (e.g. PC88, which mostly uses half-width romaji and katakana), you're out of luck, especially if you want to deliver something that doesn't resemble a bad localization from the early console days. That is, unless you're good with asm and willing to rework the game code...

From what I've gathered from my tests, support for half-width characters in FM Towns games is somewhat buggy and unpredictable, which explains the suspicious lack of (known) translations for this platform. My attempts to translate ElmKnight a few years ago (together with Helly, who is a big bro) proved to be problematic, but I'm willing to give it another go when I can afford to take time off from my day job. And before you ask -- the text is compressed in the PC-98 version...

ZZ is 100% right, arcane data encryption that only long gone jap dev knew how to bypass (which is a common threat even in more recent games such as Rhapsody of Zephyr) is basically a translation killer.
This won't prevent me from doing Illusion City one day since it felt doable, but still.

I did some tests and it's doable and has proper support for half-width characters. AFAIK the only big problem is the intro, but I might do some poking in my spare time to see if it's going to be a huge pain in the ass (besides, some BR dude already figured out how to do it on the MSX, so it might not be impossible).

 

[abnaxus]

Bastard!! is best untranslated PSX rpg game but the Samurai Shodown rpg game is p. neat as well

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I remember playing Samurai Showdown in the arcade. I was pretty damn impressed (esp since I only had a colecovision at home).

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

From some shots pc-98 looks to outclass the 88. I will say when I ran the FM-Towns emulators for the Marty it looked pretty good. I'll check the specs of each in a bit since poking around has had some decent results. Translations on these machines I have no clue on difficulty. Its a damn shame many titles across all platforms didn't have more translations. Some are pretty bad and need amending. You're damn lucky to get voice actors and even more rare GOOD voice actors. Musicals score never seem to have goid translations. The language barrier can only be broken down so far.

At least one title on the MSX is just a BASIC file, and with my admittedly limited knowledge of BASIC I think that means its easy to code the translation. I also know at least one title on the MSX uses katakana exclusively, so in theory, it should be easy to translate. At least one of these titles has both of these features. I'd also wager that other early Japanese computers, at the very least the PC-60 series, probably have some titles with those features. Plus the MSX has a translated version of Dead of the Brain, but I don't know if that was any easier to hack in than it would have been on the PC-98.

Also...

Spoiler

Yes, I know that in practice having only katakana to translate could lead to sentences with double, triple or even more meanings with no clear "right" meaning. A more pressing concern I noticed is that its very tricky to distinguish some characters on computers back then. Probably just me barely knowing the language.

 

[Siveon]

PSX games that i would like to see translations:

I think I agree with some of these, although personally I believe people should just try to reinsert the Atlus translation into Persona 1 PSX if they feel the need to. Same goes for Soul Hackers, more effort should be put into Devil Summoner.

Summon Night is a big up from me, I think the first few games look a lot better than the ones we got (aside from Swordcraft Story which is excellent). It's amazing we never saw some kind of compilation/localization, as the Swordcraft Story spinoff (the one we got) references Summon Night 1! One of the four possible heroes makes an appearance (depending on what you choose). I also would like to see the action RPG spinoffs on PS2 have a look at as well, it's practically an entire series most of the west has never seen.

Big agree on the translation of Wild Arms 2 as well, as I loved Wild Arms 1 but 2's translation is so rough. On that note, as well as Front Mission 2, it'd be excellent if someone could translation Tales of Eternia's conversations. As the western release just removed 99% of them.

 

[kaisergeddon]

Didn't the Samurai Shodown RPG get a complete translation ready to be released that got flushed because of scene drama a decade ago? I vaguely recall something about that.

Anyways, three games I'd love to see translated someday are Illusion City (that Helly is eyeing ), Gran Historia, and Surging Aura. I'm aware Gideon is working on Gran Historia, but well, you know how that goes. You just have to be patient. I'm surprised nobody tackled Surging Aura since it shares the PS IV engine, possibly making it easier to approach than other MD titles. I wouldn't know for certain, though.

 

[Dramart]

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6163/
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children. Fully playable.
It's a rare coincidence last week I was trying the PS1 version of this in japanese. I know little of japanese but now I can play this fully in English. Luck or destiny?

 

[getter77]

Surging Aura was already tackled, but oddly enough only in French IIRC---so Hopefully One Day.

 

[abnaxus]

Surging Aura lacks turn-based combat. Couldn't get into it.

 

[deuxhero]

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6163/
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children. Fully playable.
It's a rare coincidence last week I was trying the PS1 version of this in japanese. I know little of japanese but now I can play this fully in English. Luck or destiny?

Only the Black version, not Red.

 

[Latro]

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6163/
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children. Fully playable.
It's a rare coincidence last week I was trying the PS1 version of this in japanese. I know little of japanese but now I can play this fully in English. Luck or destiny?

Only the Black version, not Red.

black lives matter

 

[MurkrLurkr]

I don't know if this thread is dedicated to translation of Visual Novels but for someone who likes them, I think this is pretty big news ...

https://youtu.be/uH_lYc9HzpU

 

[Duraframe300]

The Tomato Adventure translation has now full released.

(Tomato Adventure is the game that got the Mario & Luigi devs their jobs on the franchise)

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6181/

 

[Duraframe300]

The entire first chapter (of 15) of Racing Lagoon has been translated.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/54636971

Making good progress.

 

[j2alg]

A user on zenhax announced the intent of translating Dungeon Travelers 2-2, but apparently it didn't go anywhere (so far)

 

[deuxhero]

Original Medarot/Metabots has been translated. Even the remake of the second game, with all the added polish that implies, has some really stupid holes in the basic gameflow (it's very, very RNG) for me, so I won't be trying it, but I know this series has fans.