Startling Odyssey II translation patch released!

[M1Savage]

I know this was posted here already but I thought it deserved its own thread.

Long time PC Engine fan Tru has released an alpha version translation patch for this cool game:

_{pcengine-fx.com/downloads/
pcengine-fx.com/downloads/StartlingOdyssey2(US)v099.zip
pcengine-fx.com/downloads/StartlingOdysseyII-vwf.zip - (VWFont by EsperKnight, only works with YAME emulator!)
http://forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=2411}

Already trying it out here!







These results IF you use the VWF ISO and only with the included YAME emulator!
_{pcengine-fx.com/downloads/StartlingOdysseyII-vwf.zip}

[SignOfZeta]

Oh shit! I haven't touched this game since it was a year old, but I loved it. Looks like I'll be playing though it again.

[esteban]

I posted in the other thread, but I'll repeat myself:

"YAY!"

[M1Savage]

Finished the game today at around 24 hours at level 39 or so. Probably would have taken a little longer if I hadn't already played through most of it before.

Not going to give anything away so I'll just say it's a good, old school RPG. My only complaints would be that some of the areas suffer from "2 steps, fight" and the battle music wasn't a favorite of mine. It's well done, but too circus sounding to me. The translation itself is very well done, especially for a "beta" release. Not sure while this isn't generating more interest around here so maybe this bit of information will help out....

THERE'S BOOBIES IN THE GAME!!

[termis]

Nice, I'll definitely give it a go.... (sometime in the future when I get back into the RPG playing mode)

[anRPGlegend]

The translation is rather simplistic and leaves much to the imagination. BUT it IS better than nothing and still greatly appreciate the hard work the main designer put into the translation (MACHINE translated btw)!!

Here is a pic of Lady Sword 100% translated!

[Keith Courage]

Does anyone know if this will work on the actual system or just emulator only?

[SignOfZeta]

I played it on my Duo R. It runs great. There was one point where it spat out some glitched untranslated text, but it was fine other than that.

Everyone who likes RPGs should play this, btw. It so totally destroys shit the CF2 and most of the rest of the puny selection of official English Turbo RPGs.

[shubibiman]

I still haven't had time to play this game but is it better than Star Breaker, from the same company, that I found quite disappointing (it repeats itself other and other again)?

[SignOfZeta]

I really like Star Breaker.

[shubibiman]

I really like Star Breaker.

I like it too but from a certain point in the game, it kind of always goes the same. I always had to use the same tactics against the bosses and it's a shame that even though you go from one planet to another, the planets are so small with only one village or two.

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, well, its a PC Engine game, not some 50 million dollar PS3 game from Square. Rayforce was a REALLY fucking small company.

[shubibiman]

I know that. I would have prefered less planets but with more villages and a little bit more mazy. I think they came with the idea "travelling in entire galaxies will be great" but when you look at it, you only encounter one maze in an almots 40 hour RPG. They wanted to make an RPG that would last long rather than a shorter but more challenging RPG.

I'm not saying it's a bad game, the numerous bosses are really cool and impressive, I love the battle system and the chara design, don't get me wrong on this one.

Edit : and I enjoyed the spaceship fights.

About the repetitiveness (is that an english word?) of the game, after some time spent on the game, I didn't have to wonder where to go and what to do as it was always the same pattern over and other again. It's OK for players who can't read japanese as it makes things easier for them, not for me.

[FraGMarE]

Is there a comprehensive site out there with all the PC-Engine translation patches to date?  It seems I've missed a lot of these.

[Bernie]

A list would be nice.  Just in case Ive missed one..  lol.  Right now the disc games I have translated are

Code Select Expand

Xak III
Ys IV
Startling Odyssey II
Dracula X
I believe thats it.  I dont have any translated ROMS, although I know they are out there.  With no flashcart, I have no way to play them except via emulation...and after having actual hardware, I have kinda got away from that.

[Bernie]

There's also Motteke Tamago and Super Daisenryaku, Bernie.  Romhacking.net has many of the disc and rom translations, but not all of 'em (no SO2).

Yeah, I kinda forgot about those.  lol.

[M1Savage]

A few more -

Bikkuriman World
Die Hard
Gekisha Boy
Load Runner
Maison Ikkoku
Son Son 2
Tower Of Druaga

Probably more I've missed.

[HercTNT]

Great!! Just Great! Thanks to this thread i'm now playing SO2!  Like I needed another distraction.................  the game kicks ass btw:)

[nat]

A few more -

Bikkuriman World
Die Hard
Gekisha Boy
Load Runner
Maison Ikkoku
Son Son 2
Tower Of Druaga

Probably more I've missed.

Don't forget Puzzle Boy. Good thing Puzzle Boy got translated. That game had me bewildered until I discovered the single menu option was "Quit." I got stuck playing that thing for days once; I didn't know what to do!

.....Some of the decisions on what gets translated are downright odd.

I've heard the excuse that some of these things are done as "tests." Tests for what, I'm not sure, nevertheless, the people doing said "tests" never seem to actually go on and do anything else. They'll show up out of nowhere, translate all two strings of Japanese in a game like Puzzle Boy, and then disappear back to wherever they came from, never to be seen again.

Some real Field of Dreams shit right there.

[esteban]

Some real Field of Dreams shit right there.

Ha!

I hear ya'.

I don't mind, though. I'm sure these folks wouldn't have been able to tackle much more, since the necessry skills/time/energy would be significant.

I want a non-sanitized localization of Drop Rock Hora, myself. It turns out that many aspects of the NA release were censored/changed.

[arromdee]

romhacking.net lists:

Blue Blink
Bubblegum Crash
Crest of Gaia, The
Lady Sword
Lode Runner: Lost Labyrinth
Maison Ikkoku
Märchen Maze
Photograph Boy
Puzzle Boy
Shanghai
The Tower of Druaga
Wonderboy in Monster Land

(CD games:)
Motteke Tamago
Super Daisenryaku
Xak III - The Eternal Recurrence
Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys

Wonderboy, of course, is Bikkuriman World; I have no idea whether it's just called that on romhacking.net or whether the translation patch actually renames anything to the Wonderboy versions in the game.  Sonson II is on romhacking.net as unfinished, because the ending wasn't translated.  Dracula X is listed as unfinished because of graphics hacking.  This leaves Die Hard and Startling Odyssey 2.  I personally wouldn't count SO2 because it's not really translated (and worse yet, this sort of thing usually discourages anyone else from doing a real translation later).  No idea about Die Hard.

[SignOfZeta]

Not really translated? I've only ever finished it in Japanese, but I played the English hack for several hours and it seemed pretty translated to me. Is it not complete?

[nat]

Wonderboy, of course, is Bikkuriman World; I have no idea whether it's just called that on romhacking.net or whether the translation patch actually renames anything to the Wonderboy versions in the game. 

It doesn't change the titlescreen, but all in-game text makes reference to "Monsterland" and the same locations (Bora Bora Island or whatever, for example) as the English version of Monsterland.

[arromdee]

Not really translated? I've only ever finished it in Japanese, but I played the English hack for several hours and it seemed pretty translated to me. Is it not complete?

My point is that a machine translation is likely to have a number of problems that nobody could ever notice without the ability to translate it manually.

[SignOfZeta]

...who cares? Now we're grading games based on their language competency? If that's the case then there are a fair number of officially released NES games that are "untranslated".

[HercTNT]

Exactly, golgo 13 for the nes comes to mind.  I could care less how exact it is, as long as its close enough. After all for those of us that dont speak japanese, we can enjoy the game now.

[BigusSchmuck]

Just read this thread and all I have to say is wow! I'm glad we are getting a few more rpgs translated, but its still a small list compared to how many super famicom games that have been translated by fan groups. It would be kind of interesting to see how many rpgs are on the super famicom vs the pce engine cd.

[SignOfZeta]

Its probably pretty close to the same. RPGs were the most popular genre in the early 90s (with fighting and, of course, sports) and the PCE did just as good of a job as the SFC (although in a completely different style).

[incrediblehark]

I don't know if rpgs weren't as popular in america or game companies just thought they weren't as popular, marketable, etc. I grew up playing rpgs and all of my friends who played video games did too.

[nat]

I can only speak for myself, but I didn't play RPGs at all back in the day. As a matter of fact, I didn't start playing RPGs until the 2000s.

The closest I got to RPGs in the early 90s was Dungeon Explorer.

[SignOfZeta]

Its probably pretty close to the same. RPGs were the most popular genre in the early 90s (with fighting and, of course, sports) and the PCE did just as good of a job as the SFC (although in a completely different style).

according to some people here, RPGs weren't very popular at all.

Since we are talking about PCE I didn't specify, but yeah, I meant in Japan. RPGs were dominant in Japan, so much so that they would put "RPG elements" in games like World Court Tennis and Final Lap.

In the early 90s people really did NOT want to do in-game reading in the US. That has changed a lot, obviously. There is now 10x as much text during the unskipable tutorial in your average bullshit FPS than there is in the entirety of Dragon Warrior 1.

My friends and I either bought or rented literally every single RPG released in the US for TG-16, SNES, and Genesis. It...wasn't a lot. This is why I got into playing import RPGs. Americans only got one every three months during the 16-bit era, and if it was crap like 7th Saga or Secret of Evermore you just had to either learn to like crap or wait for the next one. I'd rather play Starling Odyssey 2 in Japanese than 7th Saga in English, which is exactly what I did. When I got stuck once I literally called Rayforce (number on the back of the box) and they helped me. This was back before internet FAQs. There were "help lines" back then for US releases, but they were usually 900 numbers ($1+ per minute). The US game industry really sucked dick back then, come to think of it.

[shubibiman]

Its probably pretty close to the same. RPGs were the most popular genre in the early 90s (with fighting and, of course, sports) and the PCE did just as good of a job as the SFC (although in a completely different style).

according to some people here, RPGs weren't very popular at all.

We're talking of japanese market here. Tengai Makyou II is the best sold game for the PCE.

[incrediblehark]

well if there was more marketing behind rpgs in america like they had for street fighter, mortal kombat, nba jam, or FMV games (ugh) then maybe sales would have gone up.

[SignOfZeta]

I doubt it.

[turbofan1]

America blows.

If we didn't, you would have been released in the US!

Not even sure what that comment is supposed to mean?.I`ll just leave it at that.Does anybody no what happened to the Cosmic Fantasy 1 translation that Dave Shadoff was doing?.He posted A progress video on youtube A few years ago,but it hasn't been updated since.

[BigusSchmuck]

America blows.

If we didn't, you would have been released in the US!

Not even sure what that comment is supposed to mean?.I`ll just leave it at that.Does anybody no what happened to the Cosmic Fantasy 1 translation that Dave Shadoff was doing?.He posted A progress video on youtube A few years ago,but it hasn't been updated since.

Sounds a lot like other projects I know of... I call it the davanci syndrome. Start a bunch of projects all at once and get next to little done. Happens all the time in the scene.

[BigusSchmuck]

Sounds a lot like other projects I know of... I call it the davanci syndrome. Start a bunch of projects all at once and get next to little done. Happens all the time in the scene.

Since Shadoff's completed a half dozen translations thus far, I'd say he's done infinitely more in this scene than most.

Indeed he has. Again, I'm thankful for what we got, but if we had half the amount of fan translations that rom hackers have done for the super famicom over the years we would be seeing a heck of a lot more rpgs being translated for the pce. I would wager some of them can even be directly lifted from official translations from other systems as well (Snatcher, Popful Mail comes into mind), but in reality time will tell. In the meantime, I'll use gamefaqs for now at least... Anyway, Starling Odyssey 2= hours of fun.

[HercTNT]

I understand what he's getting at. If we could get just a fraction of that talent to go towards a few pc-engine games it would be unreal. Maybe a few platformers, action rpg's, one or two really involved rpg's.

[nat]

The "dwindling effort" phase is always the best. Nothing actually happens during this phase except regularly scheduled public service announcements over the course of a year or two that "work is proceeding, albeit at a slowed pace" but everyone should "rest assured, the project WILL be completed!" Everybody knows deep down this phase is just the precursor to "the end," but this phase still manages to drum up cries of encouragement from the community.

A good percentage of folks seem genuinely dismayed when it's finally announced that "after months of inactivity, this patch is being released as-is," which ultimately really baffles me since it's the same thing every single time.

If you look at all the released patches for Duo games, how many can claim 100% completion? Two? Maybe three? The rest sit at "90%" or in some cases, even less, since that last paragraph of text just proved too befuddling for the translators or that last menu was just too difficult for the hackers to re-insert.

Unfortunately, although not at all surprisingly, this is the phase the current Legend of Xanadu II translation effort is currently dwelling in. In a few more months, maybe a year, it'll get released as-is.... At 90% (or less) completion.

[SignOfZeta]

Unfortunately, although not at all surprisingly, this is the phase the current Legend of Xanadu II translation effort is currently dwelling in. In a few more months, maybe a year, it'll get released as-is.... At 90% (or less) completion.

I would be very very VERY happy with a %90 translated Xanadu II.

[HercTNT]

i second that

[esteban]

Unfortunately, although not at all surprisingly, this is the phase the current Legend of Xanadu II translation effort is currently dwelling in. In a few more months, maybe a year, it'll get released as-is.... At 90% (or less) completion.

I would be very very VERY happy with a %90 translated Xanadu II.

I third that ;)

[geise]

I'd play that.

[HercTNT]

I'm bumping this thread for alittle help.  Anyone familiar with SO2 please lend a hand.  I'm currently in the gaia underworld and just picked up the airship. I'm supposed to go to delrossa but options as to were i can fly are very limited. Are there special controls i'm missing, is Delrossa hidden and i just need to stumble on it?  I would appreciate alittle guidance, thanks in advance.

[SignOfZeta]

There is a point in the game where I got stuck...this might be that point, maybe not, its been a long while. What someone had to tell me was that you have to put your ship over one of those towers and use the Orichalcum. This will teleport you to other towers, and other places you can go.

[HercTNT]

That did it, thanks!  I looked on the internet but could not find anything. Its an excellent game and I did not want to abandon it.

[SignOfZeta]

That was what got me stuck as well, and why I called Rayforce for help. The rest of the game is pretty straightforward. The ending is GREAT in this game, btw.

[HercTNT]

Yea i'm loving so far. After this it's gonna be Ys 4. thanks again!

[HercTNT]

I found this page and ran it through google translate. Anyone getting stuck in SO2, this should help.

wayback://geocities.jp/HeartLand-Suzuran/9038/StartlingOdyssey2/pce_kouryaku3.html

[nectarsis]

Maybe (probably) I am retarded, but the patch links were Megaupload (obviously gone), and checked RomHacking (nothing)....where should I be looking?