KingMike's Translation projects.

[KingMike]

I decided I should make a thread about my translation projects.

Site: http://kingmike.emuxhaven.net

Script dumps:
Momotaro Densetsu madness:
Momotaro Densetsu (NES) - about 70KB kana.
Shin Momotaro Densetsu (SNES) - decompressor dumped around 319KB. A quick dump of the output in Windhex was around 741KB, but I suspect some isn't actually text.

Mappy Kids - A Famicom platformer spinoff of Mappy. Happy the mouse runs through each level trying to grab as much money as he can to build a house. Play mini-games between stages for more money (or just to avoid losing it ). Or play two-player mode and have a split-screen race to collect the money and finish the level.
I've been looking through the script using a dictionary and my limited knowledge of Japanese grammer to piece together a script. If a fluent speaker wants to look it over, it's about 7KB of SJIS, though I believe there is a fair amount of repeat (similar/identical text strings possibly used seperately for 1P/2P-player 1/2P-player 2.

Now to promote my latest project consideration:
Mito Koumon - A Famicom action game in ancient Japan times. Run through the levels, searching for clues. Talk to the happy people while slugging everyone else.
Or at least I think that's what you do. But I can't even finish the first level because I'm probably missing something by not understanding the text.
At least it seems it could be fun. I think you've got a few transformation powerups, too.
Script is dumped, at 53KB all-hiragana Shift-JIS, split among 8 blocks.
This might require some technical work involved, as the game uses most of the mapper's available ROM. Not sure which is a better option yet: compression or doing a mapper hack.
I think they even had to borrow some CHR-ROM for code. Must be the voice samples. Yep, this game's got a voice-only intro (in lovely FC internal-audio quality ) I have no way of dubbing, and they're like "Irashai!" whenever you enter a shop.

Some screens:




The ghost lady in the last screenshot is a real asshole. All I can try is to outrun her (futile without a sandal powerup). If she grabs me, she drains my health and restrains me so I'm an open target.

[FallenAngel2387]

kinda looks like the first goemon game.

[KingMike]

Newset update.
My PS2 is getting kinda sticky, possibly from testing DD3 and holding down B to speed up dialouge.
That and it's kinda annoying, I might see if I can implement a single button press to toggle slow+noisy/fast+quiet printing (I've found the routine, it seems as long as B is held, the game skips a sound effect/delay routine).


It has been done.

[Guadozoku]

Check your PMs. I got the Maka Maka script done.

[KingMike]

Spent all day working rewriting my LZ recompression program to handle this sucker with no such luck.
Then I restarted from a fresh copy and it turns out the data was recompressed fine the first of many attempts. Just needed to make a small adjustment to LZ codes withing a certain range because of this game's weird coding.
But yeah, we should be good on graphics compression issues.

[Guadozoku]

On a different note, I see a game called Mito Koumon up there. Is that based on actual history? Another game I'm translating has a character named ゴーモン taking over the town of Mito.  I changed his name to "Torcher" because a NPC says something to the effect of "Torcher has taken over the castle of this town of Mito and thrown the people in the dungeon. As his name implies, he loves to torture people. Real sicko, that guy."

[KingMike]

I made an update to my DTE doc.
I didn't cut out the old, clunky info (as it might be some help), but I darkened it out
and wrote how to use FCEUXD SP to speed the process up.
I also changed RAM to address space, ROM or RAM, depending on which was actually being accessed.
http://kingmike.emuxhaven.net/romhelp/dtehelp.zip

[KungFuFurby]

Zig Zag Cat was also LZ compressed... I remember that from a deleted post way back when.

[KingMike]

Today's progress... dump Takeshi no Chousenjou's script.
Anybody interested in translating this infamous bad NES game?
16KB (ShiftJIS) of all-hiragana text.

Just watched a video of some guy beating it. I didn't see the 20,000-hit final boss, though. There more than one ending?

I also thought about trying to hack that pirate NES port of Final Fantasy Legend 3, now possibly for the challenge. Only emulator that seems to support it is a mod of VirtuaNES. Unfortunately, VirtuaNES doesn't seem to have any real useful debug capabilities (it has a tile, nametable, and palette viewer. But it doesn't seem to give any useful information, like tile number, address, etc.) and when I open the memory viewer, I see it in an illegible font.
(fceu-mm at least has a debugger, but unfortunately it can't seem to go past the title or save screens)
The same would apply if anybody's trying to hack that FF7 pirate.

[StreetTrash]

Today's progress... dump Takeshi no Chousenjou's script.
Anybody interested in translating this infamous bad NES game?
16KB (ShiftJIS) of all-hiragana text.

Just watched a video of some guy beating it. I didn't see the 20,000-hit final boss, though. There more than one ending?

Theres only one ending, but if you leave the ending screen on for awhile it gives you a special message. I'm guessing he just used the opening screen trick to skip straight to the ending and recorded it without actually beating the boss.

[KingMike]

I made a crappy title-screen translation that I'll upload later today.

I call it Ghost Manor, it's Youkai Yashiki for FDS.
A mazy platformer, originally made by Casio for the MSX.
But someone at Irem decided to make an FDS version with better graphics and some assholish level design.
I'll later see if I'm insane enough to beat it myself, but I watched a walkthrough video on nicovideo to see the only Japanese text is the title.

[KungFuFurby]

Reported a serious bug with one of your current patches: Dream Maze for the SNES.  See my PM for more details...

I have one warning to those playing Dream Maze with a patch: Do not leave the name empty, as once you save that game, you won't be able to get back to that save menu...

[KingMike]

I uploaded that patch to my site yesterday.
Still waiting to see if RHDN approves/denies it.

[odino]

Just watched a video of some guy beating it. I didn't see the 20,000-hit final boss, though. There more than one ending?

To be honest, I have seen screenshots and walkthroughs and they never mention anything that cruel either. I think it is a rumour going around by one or two people, and few or none play it to actually disprove it. Case and point:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/nes/review/R99627.html
Why write a review if that guy obviously only managed to jump around randomly in the first part of town, and the rest are myths he "heard". The other review states "40,000 hits"...

Would really like to see this getting translated and/or FAQed for that matter.

[KingMike]

My Christmas gift is a fully playable translation patch for Popeye for SNES.

[Next gen Cowboy]

Awesomeness + 10

And wooty woot even, with the Christmas and the presents!

[FallenAngel2387]

technos eh? i'll definitely be checkin that one out. technos to me = square-enix to rpg geeks.

edit: pretty cool so far, has a super mario feel to it. definitely works better patched with the ups file.

[KingMike]

So, just before the server crash I had scanned a Kaiju Monogatari manual.
My next victim: the Famicom version of Momotarou Densetsu.
It is a newspaper-style fold-out manual, so I had to flatten it, scan in parts and paste them together.

[KingMike]

Working on Momotarou Densetsu's menus.
I hate you, NES 16x16 attribute table limitations!
So, in order to fit the item menu the battle screen without glitching the menu, I had to change the menu system to use single-spaced windows. Fairly painless, and with creative position of windows, can be overcome in most cases.
For shops, I made it auto-position the shopping window based on the number of items available. So now the bottom border of the shop window should rest on or above the border of the dialogue window. Fair compromise, since I can't figure out how to add extra blank lines.
Now I just need to figure out some way of detecting the battle scene.
The issue with the item window is that the same one is used inside and outside of battle.
Because of the enemy, the only place I can fit the item window is at the bottom of the screen, where the message box is (which seems to be fine, since the message window and menu redraw when the item box is closed).
But outside of battle, I need to place the item window near the top, so I can overlap the stats window at the top if the window size is odd, to avoid palette bugs.

[SteveMartin]

Has any progress come of Ginga no Sannin? 

Also you may recall you gave me a script for Shin Momotarou Densetsu for SFC months ago. Obviously, I never got anywhere with it   Have had a hard time making...well, time for it. Even now I'm wrapped up with another project that's taking priority. Hope I didn't get you upset or anything by that. Translators just seem to naturally vanish