Messages

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Help with Sindibad]

Finally i beat the game.
I write the walkthrough ASAP.

Very cool indeed... I know there's a translation project for this game also in the works, but I don't know how far along it is. I thought it was a longer game, but it seems I was wrong, judging by that walkthrough in Japanese. Oh well, that's nice either way. You may wanna upload the guide/FAQ to GameFAQs as well. Would be good to play through some of the other HuCard RPGs left, since the PCE-CD games are better covered... maybe I could look into Necros no Yousai and Necromancer, at least...

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Gai Flame/Guyframe - translation patch, beta version]

Yeah, it hasn't made its way to RHDN yet; we need to fix up some things, and we basically wanted to do a test run of the game first. It's a pretty small HuCard game in scope, and a (very) distant entry in the Langrisser series, kinda like the Crest of Gaia. I'll reupload it here with a new link for now. Once we deal with our current projects, we'll likely upload it to RHDN, as we did with our other projects. Basic hacking for this was done literally overnight (dumper/inserter etc.), but the menus and such haven't been fully dealt with yet. Still, it should be playable.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Dead of the Brain]

Slowbeef (the Youtuber guy you may or may not have heard about) has been working on and off on a PC-98 port of this game, but I don't know how far along he is. You'd have to ask him about it probably. VNs are sadly the hardest to translate, because of the amount of text. This especially pertains to the ones for older, more obscure systems. Well, sometimes RPGs are worse I guess, due to all the menus.

Some projects are relatively easy - like the PCE HuCard games we did (War of the Dead, Out Live, Gai Flame etc.) PCE-CD games are considerably more difficult to work on, which is likely why you almost never see fan-translations for it - most of the translation groups are very Nintendo-centric anyway. By that I mean, there aren't any PCE-dedicated groups, like AGTP in the case of SNES. Anyhow, I hope either slowbeef or someone else finishes this game at some point. The PC-98 version would likely be easier to hack. One person made a translated walkthrough of it on YT, too (don't remember if he finished it or not) -

That's the best you're gonna get for now, I think.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Son Son II - in western magazines]

Possibly it's kinda like Eastern Europeans using 'negr' (sounds rather similar to one particular word in English) to address black people, because calling somebody straight-up black there is much more offensive, for historic reasons, and of course Afro-American doesn't apply geographically either. In other words, such terms are based on socio-cultural factors and the local history.
I've rarely ever heard Oriental used these days in Ireland, but there was a time when it could be heard pretty much constantly, both IRL and in the news, so there could be something to that.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Necromancer Resurrected! No, not our esteemed moderator, the game!!]

It's pretty amazing such an obscure game gets picked for the e-shop! Pity that it's untranslated, but us westerners  can be freaked out by the intro-face anyway!

From what I've read, it's actually a pretty well-known game... in Japan, that is. Makes sense, considering that it's the first HuCard RPG, and there weren't that many HuCard RPGs overall. I guess fan-translators generally don't want to deal with Huffman compression in this case. I doubt that even at the 6-7 dollar price tag this pays back the investment for them, considering RPGs generally require at least some knowledge of the language (in most cases much more than that) to get anywhere.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Necromancer Resurrected! No, not our esteemed moderator, the game!!]

Oh, look - Konami released the very first PCE JRPG in the West (for its 30th b-day, I assume)... and it's untranslated? Way to go, shows how much they care about their PCE property. Still, gotta agree - it sure is the truest retro experience this way; after all, real men don't play in English! xD

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Anearth Fantasy Stories - Translation Development Blog]

According to elmer though: "Every scene that is voiced also has a message box with the text of the speech inside it.", meaning there's no need for dubbing in this particular case, unless they really want to do it additionally for the sake of completion, which is what I was referring to (assuming the space limitations don't prove to be overwhelming). There are a few other PCE-CD games like that from what I recall (Dragon Knight 1 & 2 come to mind right now, we wanted to work on them at some point).

CrackTiger mentioned The Apocalypse IV for Saturn/PSP; that one had some voiced cutscenes without subtitles, as far as I recall, so it probably would be more of a pain to work with. And yeah, there are lots of songs and puns in that game, so that would likely be an interesting localization effort, but a rather difficult one nonetheless.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Anearth Fantasy Stories - Translation Development Blog]

Nice! It's looking really good thus far. As to dubbing vs. subs - I personally am not a huge fan of dubbing, but it's of course up to you. You can always decide to do two versions of the patch, with and without dubbing. Still, it's all up to you. Either way, wish you luck with this project.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

I can see where you're coming from. Just hacking/translating the written dialogues is literally nothing compared to the VA, unfortunately - which I'd assume is one of the reasons why not too many PCE-CD have been fan-translated up until now. There are some CD games which have subs for all the VA (vide Dragon Knight 1 and 2), but they're few and far between.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Shiryou Sensen/War of the Dead translation]

Do you have a site to send a donation your way?

We don't take donations (at least for now), but we do have a site: https://nebulous.group/ . It's more of a blog where we share news/updates concerning our work, upload our patches, manuals in the PDF form when available etc. We will upload the manual for War of the Dead there as well, in the future.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Shiryou Sensen/War of the Dead translation]

Great! I hope you guys do more, people need to get off the snes drug and give the PCE more loving!

Hahah, there's a grain of truth to that. I think it's mostly down to your preferences as far as hacking goes; we prefer working on NEC systems and Sega Genesis for the most part, largely because of very good debuggers and documentation. And well, there aren't nearly as many big games to do (unless you of course count PCE-CD). Still, to each his own. Would be cool to see more PCE translations from other groups too!

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Shiryou Sensen/War of the Dead translation]

Ah, I had gotten my hopes up with the translation of 4.6 Billion Year Story earlier in the year or the year previous that things had gotten easier! Still, I am not one to complain and appreciate that some thought was thrown that way. As it stands the PCE port - with the bug fixes - is a pretty good version of the game, when you compare it to some of the home computer releases that strain with the action.

I got to apply the patch and I am enjoying being able to figure things out now, even if it is as simple as the starting directions "Go south to check out the city hall", etc etc. The random encounter rate has always seemed pretty weird - you can go a minute without triggering anything, or have battles every couple of steps! Truly random! That being said, the tips you guys gave in the readme are also much appreciated.

One thing that may turn people off is the seemingly high difficulty for the battles. I think it might be good to use the gun for the first few battles, at least until you level up; your health is quickly depleted on contact with monsters, so getting up close should be reserved until you are more familiar with the controls. Another thing that might be confusing is the world! What a bizarrely huge layout - this town has buildings separated by miles of treacherous mountain pass, ha! Looking at a map will definitely help ease confusion.

I see your point, though 4.6 Billion Year Story came out on PC-98 - it's a significantly easier platform to work with, thanks to the wealth of materials, documentation etc. in English (we did some PC-98 games too). What's more, there's no decent debugger for PC-88 as of now (at least to our knowledge). Definitely nothing like the amazing debugger mednafen has. Without it you're just left stranded in the dark when trying to do anything.

Speaking of WotD, there are "safe" areas in the game, like some corridors for example, or the church region, and there are areas in which random encounters are more common than anywhere else - such as the ruins later on in the game, or certain field areas. And yes, you are absolutely right - it's best to use PS REM on your gun at first, gain a couple of levels, and then venture forth. Still, in this version at least you can run from battles (you can't do that in the PC-88 port). Of course, the map was a part of the manual, so you would have access to it upon purchasing the game; that's why I would consider the map an integral feature of this game. The NPCs do not always tell you where some place is located anyway, so it's pretty clear to me that they intended the map to be important. They could've implemented it into the game additionally though, I'd say.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Shiryou Sensen/War of the Dead translation]

Additionally I've dreamed of a translation hack of the PC88 sequel, but that's another story. 

We actually considered this port as well to some extent, but unfortunately PC-88 is much more pain to work on. Maybe we'll try it in the future when there's a better debugger, or once we come up with one on our own. 

Cool, another translation patch!  I hope y'all do more. 

We have a few more games on the back-burner, but none of them are for PCE thus far. There are definitely more HuCard games we'd like to have a shot at in the future though - WotD was our 4th project of this type, and there are at least 3-4 more we may get around to at some point - maybe sooner, maybe later. There are still some pretty interesting potential HuCard projects left.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Shiryou Sensen: War of the Dead translation]

https://nebulous.group/index.php/projects/translations/war-of-dead/
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/3328/

We did this one spontaneously in 2 weeks - turned out that it wasn't too difficult to hack, and it didn't have that much text either, so we figured we'd do it, especially considering that it's the 30th anniversary of the MSX2 version, and the sequel has been translated for ages.

We also fixed two game-breaking bugs this game had, both likely caused by code duplicates: EXP bug (after getting more than 9999 EXP, your health would go down to 0/numbers would overflow) and item bug (you could only get 14 items before, otherwise the item menu would bug out, and you'd have to use the password to fix it - now it's no longer the case). Still, if you notice any issues with the patch, by all means let me know. Shouldn't take too long to fix them.

Overall, while not a great game, there is a strange charm to it, perhaps due to the subject matter. I personally liked the story, as it was kinda different from most other games at that time. Either way, here it is. I think we'll tackle some PCE-CD games next though, for a change.

One more thing - I strongly suggest you read the "tips and tricks/how to play" section from the text manual form/readme we came up with. The manual will be ready in its pdf form somewhat later, but for now you just need the text anyway. The manual should help out in a pinch, and it explains certain things much better than the game itself. We also put the most important pieces of advice in the RHDN patch description, so hopefully you won't miss them.

Download Patch v1.00: wotd_1.0.zip

Addendum:

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: What happened to...]

There's one more project I can think of... there was some effort to translate Nazo no Masquerade, wasn't there? Is this still an active project, or is it up for grabs? 

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Gai Flame/Guyframe - translation patch, beta version]

Now, do you think a game like Spiral Wave has any chance of getting some love? Spiral Wave is, arguably, the spiritual sci-fi successor to the Langrisser series, after all. (Actually, nobody would make such a ridiculous claim). 

Funny that you mentioned this game, because we did consider it at one point, half a year ago or so... what put us off was the hair-pulling difficulty level, and the fact that the first two cutscenes had almost as much text as the entirety of Gai Flame.  At the time, we had some other big projects going too, so we put this one on the back-burner. We may go back to it at some point, but definitely not anytime soon, as we already have enough on our plate. 

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Gai Flame/Guyframe - translation patch, beta version]

This is fantastic! I was just going through some of my cheapy cheap hueys the other day and thought, Doesn't this game have a translation? I must have esp.

Thanks for the hard work!

I believe someone else was working on it, but the project was either dropped or severely stalled for some reason. So, we figured that we'd do it, as a companion project to X-Serd.
Either way, we chose this one as a quick side project, actually - it turned out that it had a fairly short script, and wasn't that much pain to hack. It's just that we got sidetracked with numerous big PC-98 projects in the meantime.   

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Gai Flame/Guyframe - translation patch, beta version]

This one is actually a bit cryptic if you don't know that you absolutely need to follow a pretty specific order of places to visit to complete the game successfully (you're told in the game where to go, thankfully). Well, either way, not that many HuCard strategy games left. 

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Gai Flame/Guyframe - translation patch, beta version]

Hello,
so, we've had this project on the shelf for ages, and it's not fully finished, but I thought it would be a good idea to have it additionally tested beforehand. Most of the game is done away. The only major issue we know of are the menus. Of course, if you manage to notice any errors, inconsistencies etc. please report them, at best in this thread.

The game itself is a turn-based strategy, somewhat akin to other games of this type, such as X-Serd or, especially, its predecessor Gaia no Monshou. It's a part of the Langrisser saga, though this one in particular isn't nearly as long, nor epic in scope. To win, you need to go from city to city with your protagonist, investigate them and find the NPC that advances the plot, all the while doing battles. If you find some good blogs resources on this game, feel free to link them here too.

Without further ado, here's the patch: https://ufile.io/2csgn. This game seems to work best on Mednafen or BizHawk. We haven't yet checked how it works on the hardware, so feel free to do that if you want. 

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: What happened to...]

Wasn't Dead of the Brain translated into French?

Maybe I'm confused...but I would love an English translation (I could hobble my way through a French version, though...)

As someone mentioned, the script was ready, but the patch was never completed... which is a bit of a shame overall. I think things were similar with War of the Dead 1, which is not available in English, unlike its sequel.
We're working on Gaiflame... in fact, we had it translated and mostly hacked a year ago, but somehow we got sidetracked with that game. I think I'll upload the patch and drop the link to it later here on the forum.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Useful Web Links]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y9eeNPz0gusXpHR177TXGOVxP8sFouMiHzp3Pivv2kw/edit#gid=1935945707 - Spinner 8 from the ROMhacking.net forum made this list of untranslated HuCard PCE games and PC-FX games. You can sort it by genre, date etc., and it is updated regularly, whenever a new translation comes out. I thought it could potentially be useful to some translators/hackers. I'd put it in the "Collecting & Games Lists etc." section, naturally.

EDIT: I missed it somehow in the "Translation" section, sorry for that! I'm pretty sure that Spinner is working on the PCE-CD list as well, so perhaps when the time comes it will come in handy as well.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: What Turbo game are you currently playing?]

Dragon Egg (the platforming gets tough, though, with the lava)

Cool game, but it's actually really short if you know what you're doing!

I'm playing Toshi Tenso Keikaku Eternal City right now. It is a Japanese exclusive, mecha metroidvania game, if you can call it that way. Quite a decent platformer, although it does get a bit too maze-like and monotonous later on. Still, not the worst game ever IMHO.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: List of all PCE translation projects.]

Hey guys, I'm looking for a list of all the PCE games that have been translated, and ones that are currently being translated.

SuperPlay keeps an updated list in his dedicated thread, my projects are listed as well. Scroll down to "Homebrew, PD, Translations."

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=9483.msg165499#msg165499

Spinner 8 recently made a list of all the untranslated PCE games as well -> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y9eeNPz0gusXpHR177TXGOVxP8sFouMiHzp3Pivv2kw/edit#gid=1935945707. All the credit obviously goes to him. The list is updated regularly, whenever a new patch comes out.
He's in the process of making a separate list for PCE-CD I believe.

Yes, I believe MooZ was (is) working on Nazo no Masquerade.
I can think of at least a couple more digital comics on hucard (Sadakichi Seven and Chikudenya Tobe)

Nice to hear Gai Flame is in the works. I look forward to spending some time with it~

That game is quite simplistic actually, it's mostly just an updated Gaia no Monshou with a more prominent, overarching plot. Still, it's not that bad, just doesn't stand out too much nowadays. It had a really tiny script for a game of this sort as well. I guess X-SERD was the priority for the company back then.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: List of all PCE translation projects.]

I've been playing the translated ROM of Gaia no Monshou lately. There's a lot about the game I like, and I had fun with it at first, but the stringent time requirements and cumulative points thing make it into such a chore. I don't mind replaying scenarios to see if I can do better, but having those replays be essentially mandatory and dependent on a RNG is rough.

I guess there's no FAQ out there telling me the approximate minimum number of points I should have at the start of each battle -- is there? I've managed to complete the first couple scenarios without losing any men & in the allotted time or less, but I'm not sure if I need to do even better than that to have a realistic chance in later levels.

Gai Flame is the final game in the series on the PCE, actually. The patch will drop later this year, since it's already partly done. The final game improves upon many issues present in Gaia no Monshou, but it's very easy in my opinion.
Also, wasn't someone working on Nazo no Masquerade? IIRC that's the final untranslated HuCard adventure game, or is there anything else?

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Japanese language games we might have missed, with nice art]

Princess Minerva has the best 16-bit RPG graphics, but it's technically a digital adventure. Not for the novice gaijin.

The SFC version is more or less 90% done, Dynamic Designs have been working on it for a while. There are quite a few good-looking/sounding PCECD games that look/play much worse on SFC, NES or other platforms, but these other versions are usually more popular for one reason or another (and I guess it also has to do with the fact that hacking CD games is usually more annoying).

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Worst US TG16 game]

For me it's a toss-up between Darkwing Duck and Falcon. Darkwing Duck just feels so off compared to the vastly superior NES version... it wasn't the worst game ever, but it just felt incredibly dull and uninspired. Falcon's concept was quite decent, but the execution was abysmal. So yeah, definitely either one of those 2 for me.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Hucard Volume thread]

Sunsoft 3 -> City Hunter (it's a clone of Rolling Thunder basically, just licensed)

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Out Live for TG16 got translated]

I'd like a translation of myself, though the Giger artwork is probably the best thing going for it.

Believe it or not, we were considering it at one point, but a) apparently someone else is working on it behind the scenes on an on-and-off basis; b) our lead translator is much more of a mech/robot guy (you could probably consider this his main area of interest). We may go back to it if it turns out there's no progress of any kind, but it's not very likely right now. I'm not sure how it plays, considering that this was the first PCE RPG, but my guess is that it's a fairly standard affair apart from the artwork.

Thanks for your answer that augurs some awesome and exiting things to come in the future!
And thanks for what you already delivered!
One more question if you don't mind:  will you focus on SciFi / Mechs games?

Yes, definitely - as I mentioned above, TheMajinZenki is mostly a SciFi/mecha expert.  He's working on Super Robot Wars A Portable (PSP) with another group, and that game has probably around 20000 lines of text. He generally doesn't mind other types of games, but he's not really that big on straight-up fantasy stuff (to tell the truth, none of us are, unless the game is either short or exceptionally good for translation purposes).

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Out Live for TG16 got translated]

Will you keep concentrate on HuCards or is a CDrom translation imaginable?

The majority of good HuCard games are already translated I think, so we won't be working on many of those in the future (although there are 2-3 more we may decide to tackle later on).
There are a few CD games we'd like to work on, but definitely not anytime soon. I personally really enjoyed some Japan exclusives (especially Blood Gear and Macross), but they will probably have to wait. 

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Out Live for TG16 got translated]

I didn't realize that you wirked on the Out Live translation. Thanks a lot for the effort and for picking off one of the more deserving HuCard games.

Please tell me that the next game is Benkei Gaiden.

Benkai Gaiden would be rad!  I was just listening to the soundtrack on my way to work a few weeks ago.

Sorry to be dashing your hopes to the ground, but nope - our project is different. With that being said, to my knowledge another team is working on BG (I'm just not sure whether it's the SFC or TG16 version that's in the works - either way this game will be translated eventually). For now, it's hard to tell what other PCE games we're going to tackle. There are a couple of RPGs/strategy games left, and also a few adventure games. We'll see how it goes. 

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Out Live for TG16 got translated]

Ooo, nice.  You guys got any more PCE games in the works?

There is one more PCE game that's in the works for now. ;) In fact, it's almost fully translated, we just need to work on some of the menus (and I have to do one more playthrough regardless). It may even drop before the end of the year. Then, we have a rather big project in the pipeline, but for a different console. There are certainly a few PCE games we'd like to work on in the future as well.  We'll see how the timetable turns out.

Thanks for translating it!  I'm not a fan of menu-based games in general (RPGs and the like) but at least it has great music!

Different strokes for different folks, as they say. It just so happens that most of the games requiring translation to be enjoyed at all are either RPGs or adventure games (although there are a few Japan exclusive platformers for the console with some story too).

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Out Live for TG16 got translated]

Links are your friend: http://www.romhacking.net/translations/2814/

On that subject, I wonder if there are any TG16/PC Engine CD translation patches that weren't uploaded to ROMhacking.net at this point...

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Out Live for TG16 got translated]

If you enjoy dungeon crawlers starring giant mechs, this could potentially be a treat for you.  If not, well... it's still cool that another RPG for good ol' TG16 got translated.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: New Translated Game - Hisou Kihei X-Serd]

Gaia no Monsho has also been translated and is considered the predecessor to Langrisser.

There's one more PC-Engine game from that series, Gai Flame. I don't think that one was translated though. The author has one more PC-Engine project in the pipeline, but the only thing he mentioned is that it features mechs as well (and that it's not Gai Flame).

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: List of all PCE translation projects.]

i have completed hisou kihei xserd without knowing much of the story, i would like to know this story for this game

It's actually a prequel to an SMD game called Vixen 357. I remember reading somewhere that XSERD is more highly regarded in Japan though. Anyhow, the more translated PC-Engine games, the better.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: List of all PCE translation projects.]

Hisou Kihei XSERD and Out Live are in the works as well, so those are 2 more patches that will likely drop this year. There will possibly more PC-Engine translations in the foreseeable future, considering that people are slowly starting to rediscover the system, and SFC translation craze is seemingly waning.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: What Turbo game are you currently playing?]

Out Live and Kihou Hisei XSERD - I'm trying out Japan exclusives I've never tried before for fun. XSERD is very similar to the recently translate Vixen 357 on SMD (in fact, I believe it is a prequel of sorts), so it's alright. Out Live... well, if you enjoy dungeon crawlers it is sorta interesting, if only because it is a) the first game by Sunsoft on the PC-Engine and b) it's a mech dungeon crawler.