Translations: Sukeban Deka II (SMS) in English

[RHDNBot]

Update By: kingofcrusher

Sukeban Deka II for the Sega Master System is now in English. If you've never heard of it (and probably 3 people in the western world have), it's a hybrid digital comic/brawler based on a Japanese movie from the 80's. I made a couple improvements such as expanding the rom to give room for all the text and increasing your health so that you don't die quickly like in the original version. There's no password or save feature, but it's a very short game and can be easily beaten in an hour or so. This is also the first released translation for enigmaopoeia who did a great job on the text considering how corny the source material was.

I also believe this marks the last Sega Master System game that needed to be translated into English. I've went over the release lists and can't find anything else that isn't available officially or with a patch!

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link: (http://www.backloggery.com/enigmaopoeia)

[kingofcrusher]

Oops, actually there's one more Master System game left that I overlooked- Tensai Bakabon.

[filler]

kingofcrusher, I should have guessed. I didn't know you were working on this game (or if you told me I forgot). Really big congrats! I'll have to check this out. The MKIII really has a short list of unlocalized games. I believe this is all of them:

- Comical Machine Gun Joe (コミカル マシンガンジョー). April, 1986.
- Great Baseball (グレートベースボール). December, 1985.
- Great Golf (グレートゴルフ). December, 1986.
- High School! Kimengumi (ハイスクール！奇面組). December, 1986.
- Hoshi Wo Sagashite... (星をさがして・・・) "Searching the Stars...". April, 1988.
- Loretta no Shouzzou (ロレッタの肖像) "Portrait of Loretta". February, 1987.
- Mahjong Sengoku Jidai (麻雀戦国時代) "Civil War Period Mahjong". October, 1987.
- Nekyuu Kousien (熱球甲子園) "Kosien Smoking Pitch". September, 1988.
- Satellite 7 (サテライト７). December, 1985.
- Sukeban Deka II - Shojou Tekkamen Densetsu (スケバン刑事II　少女鉄仮面伝説) "Female Gang Leader Detective - Legend of the Iron Mask Girl". April, 1987.
- Tensai Bakabon (天才バカボン) "Genius Bakabon". June, 1988.
- The Pro Yakyuu Pennant Race (ザ・プロ野球 ペナントレース) "The Pro Baseball Pennant Race". April, 1987.

Really cool to see another one checked off the list.

[kingofcrusher]

Hah thanks, it was an easy game to do, plus the script was pretty small so enigmaopoeia was able to do the whole thing in about 5 days.

On MKIII games, I wasn't counting SG-1000 stuff :-) If I was, that list is missing The Black Onyx (the only SG-1000 game that would be worth translating, but it's a pain in the ass, I think some of the text actually doubles as ASM). Tensei Bakabon would be the only one worth doing in my opinion as it's a text-heavy platformer with a password feature, so it must be a decent length. I've only played a bit though, not sure if it's actually fun or not, so I don't know if it'd be worth the effort.

[filler]

I just checked and Tensai Bakabon (and Sukeban Deka II for that matter) is in my "on hold" folder of stuff to look at at a later date. I really liked the manga-like word-bubble dialog that appears in this game. As a platformer I only played it a bit but it plays more like an adventure game than a regular platformer. You can use items and interact with NPCs and stuff which is kind of neat. I never got very far in it though.

[kingofcrusher]

Really? Well I just looked at it and the text is all uncompressed (at least from a cursory inspection), the font is slightly compressed but it'll be easy to insert one. If you decide you want to take a look at the script let me know and I'll pull it out of there.

[KingMike]

I've done a bit of work on the GBC version of Black Onyx, specifically the "Legacy" mode, which is a port of the original game. Looks like it might be doable, though it would take a serious effort to translate the "Legend" mode, which is an updated game.

Though I think someone released a translation to the SG-1000 Black Onyx, but only as disassembled source code. I couldn't compile it, or else I think it'd have been pretty easy to get a patch out.
(I'd easily violate the piracy rule if I linked it.)

[Cryomancer]

Sukeban Deka is actually a manga, three TV series, three movies, and an anime, the third movie even got US DVD release.  So it isn't *quite* as unknown as you make it out to be.  Thanks for the translation though, of course!

[fireball]

Sukeban Deka is actually a manga, three TV series, three movies, and an anime, the third movie even got US DVD release.  So it isn't *quite* as unknown as you make it out to be.  Thanks for the translation though, of course!

Heh, well, they actually showed some of the movies on a local japan film festival. These were SO cheesy 80's japan trash that I had a good laugh together with the rest of the audience, even the newer one couldn't be possibly taken for serious. I never thought that there was even a game made of it  Japan never ceases to amaze me.

[Cryomancer]

Looked it up earlier, someone actually did subtitles for the entire first series.  Watched the first couple eps, it's fairly entertaining.

[Starscream]

- Comical Machine Gun Joe (コミカル マシンガンジョー). April, 1986.
- Great Baseball (グレートベースボール). December, 1985.
- Great Golf (グレートゴルフ). December, 1986.
- High School! Kimengumi (ハイスクール！奇面組). December, 1986.
- Hoshi Wo Sagashite... (星をさがして・・・) "Searching the Stars...". April, 1988.
- Loretta no Shouzzou (ロレッタの肖像) "Portrait of Loretta". February, 1987.
- Mahjong Sengoku Jidai (麻雀戦国時代) "Civil War Period Mahjong". October, 1987.
- Nekyuu Kousien (熱球甲子園) "Kosien Smoking Pitch". September, 1988.
- Satellite 7 (サテライト７). December, 1985.
- Sukeban Deka II - Shojou Tekkamen Densetsu (スケバン刑事II　少女鉄仮面伝説) "Female Gang Leader Detective - Legend of the Iron Mask Girl". April, 1987.
- Tensai Bakabon (天才バカボン) "Genius Bakabon". June, 1988.
- The Pro Yakyuu Pennant Race (ザ・プロ野球 ペナントレース) "The Pro Baseball Pennant Race". April, 1987.

The Pro Yakyuu game was localized as "Great Baseball" I believe, meaning there are two different games bearing that title (like Great Golf).
The loretta game looks mildly interesting to me, it appears to be some kind of Sherlock Holmes adventure?

[Pennywise]

As for games that could be translated on the SMS, I know of one that could be retranslated. Renegade or Hokuto no Ken would be interesting to see redone.

[Christuserloeser]

Thanks a lot for this release! 

Seeing as we're talking about retranslations, I'd like to throw in a couple of games, the most important one being Anmitsu Hime (aka "Alex Kidd in High Tech World"), then Borgman (Cyborg Hunter) and Kujaku-Oh (Spellcaster).

[filler]

Really? Well I just looked at it and the text is all uncompressed (at least from a cursory inspection), the font is slightly compressed but it'll be easy to insert one. If you decide you want to take a look at the script let me know and I'll pull it out of there.

If it's genuinely easy then sure. I'd love to take a look at it.

[KingMike]

As to Tensai Bakabon, there was some effort on the SMS Power forum, but it seems to have died off.

[kingofcrusher]

Cool I'll yank the script out of there when I get a chance. I took a look at the font and turns out it just uses standard SMS compression so Maxim's Tile Decoder will do the trick (yay, no figuring compression out). I should probably finish up Madou first though, haha.

Kingmike, do you know where to find the disassembled source for The Black Onyx? I'd love to take a look at that and figure out if the text is actually part of the ASM in places. I guess I could just step through it in Meka, but if it's already been translated that's much cooler. I just remember that changing certain characters would completely jack the game up, especially on the menu screens, it was really weird.

Edit- Just compiled it and it works great. I'll make a patch and upload it pretty soon. I was going to try and eliminate that annoying screen blinking when you move just for fun first.

[grolt]

I just want to say, thank you so much for completing this translation.  There's definitely a community of us out there hankering for these releases.  I've had the Mark III game for some time, and despite my best attempts to play it, I've obviously had little luck.  Now, finally, I can give this a go.  With this coming shortly after the much requested translation of The Story of Mio, I can truly say it's a great time to be a Mark III collector!  I'm a regular poster over at Sega8Bit.com, but I just wanted to jump in to give you my thanks and to show that your work here truly is appreciated.

Of course the true relic is Tensai Bakabon...that game looks absolutely insane, and the control seems pretty responsive, so hopefully this one will be next for you guys.  I wish I could help, because I definitely feel like I owe you all something.  Thanks again!