[thainferno305]

i did what u told me i put the lunar 2 into the iso patch and i use fusion then i saw the main menu of lunar eternal blue as soon as i hit start i got a black screen  so just to make sure i wanted to try again so i wont get the black screen again i used the genesis sega cd emulator only this time it went up to the cut scenes of the beginning of the game then when the cut scene was over i got a black screen again can u pls send me your version 2 patch pls im dying to play lunar 2 Thainferno305@yahoo.com keep up the good work i hope u can fix your version 3 patch

[Supper]

Supper, Thank You for the patches! Very cool of you!

You're welcome. Hopefully I'll have more coming soon -- I've finally gotten back to work on Rayearth, though I still haven't quite finished playing through the Japanese version. We'll see what kind of headaches the US one gives me.

i did what u told me i put the lunar 2 into the iso patch and i use fusion then i saw the main menu of lunar eternal blue as soon as i hit start i got a black screen  so just to make sure i wanted to try again so i wont get the black screen again i used the genesis sega cd emulator only this time it went up to the cut scenes of the beginning of the game then when the cut scene was over i got a black screen again can u pls send me your version 2 patch pls im dying to play lunar 2 Thainferno305@yahoo.com keep up the good work i hope u can fix your version 3 patch

While it's certainly possible there's a problem with your disc image, if the game gets as far as the title menu, it's more likely something's wrong with the emulator configuration. The game will always freeze during the opening cutscene in Gens (AFAIK), so don't bother using that. Make sure you have the latest version of Fusion (3.64), and try running the original, unpatched game to see if it works correctly.

[SC]

Thanks for the Alundra patch, I'll be trying it soon!

[varikares]

I remember giving up on popful mail due to being frustrated at a certain boss that could kill you in only 2 or 3 hits

I'm definitely going to give it another try after this

[Supper]

Glad to see the site's back up. Looks like this topic lost a few posts in the outage, but I don't think there was anything too important (if there was, please post it again!). Anyway, Rayearth's been ready to go for several days now:

Magic Knight Rayearth -- patch v0

Tested all the way through several times. Everything should be fine.
Changes:

Spoiler:

* All enemies and their attacks do the damage they did in the Japanese version.
* Enemy speeds have been reduced to their original levels.

This game had a lot of particularly nasty and insidious changes. Aside from doing 2x-5x more damage, nearly every enemy and projectile in the game moves faster in the US version, and fixing that mostly involved restoring constants that were directly embedded in the code instead of being in neat little tables like in some games. I managed to automate the bulk of the work, but I still had to find and fix quite a few things manually, so it's possible I missed something despite repeated verification playthroughs. At the very least, this fixes the vast majority of the issues, and I'm hopeful that I managed to find everything.

Also, this is my first Saturn hack, so I have no idea if this will work on modded consoles or even emulators other than the one I tested on (Yabause). As always, let me know if anything goes wrong.

I've started looking at Cosmic Fantasy 2. So far, my conclusion is that this game basically sucks even without Working Designs' help, and is best played with random encounters disabled and your stats hacked to absurdity. The story and cutscenes are all right, but everything else...

[RetroHelix]

I really like this project. 
Looks like Working Designs released quite a lot of games so you still have work to do Keep it up.

[dominater01]

thanks so much for the patch for popful mail i tried playing the original and it kicked my ace i almost gave up until i came across this patch you made, now its like one of my favorite games 

[Panzer88]

Thanks so much! I'm impressed by the number of games you've covered already, fantastic stuff.

[Supper]

Here's Cosmic Fantasy 2.

Cosmic Fantasy 2 (PC Engine CD/TurboGrafx-CD) -- patch v0 (3/21/17)

Tested all the way through, albeit very rapidly and with a lot of cheats turned on...
Changes:

Spoiler:

* Enemy stats are restored to what they were in the Japanese game. The only changes in the US version were to the first and last few bosses of the game (though some of their stats absolutely skyrocketed).
* Beating the first boss awards 20 EXP in the US version; it now gives nothing, per the original game.
* Rim (Babette)'s obscene gesture in her introductory cutscene has been restored.

Turned out not much was changed in this game. I hit up all the usual suspects (enemy stats, MP costs, item prices) but the only significant changes I found were to the first and last few bosses, plus the cutscene with Rim flipping the bird.

On a side note, I think there are two revisions of the English edition of the game. There doesn't seem to be much concrete information due to the game's obscurity, but basically, the US version doesn't translate the Japanese version's "This treasure chest is empty" message. However, there's a chest that's empty in the Japanese version, and a guide on GameFAQs mentions that that chest displays a single kanji when opened in the US version (which I've verified is what happens when any empty chest is opened in the US version). Yet the version of the game I used to make this patch instead places Bingleberries in that chest.

tl;dr If the patch doesn't work, you may have an older version of the game than what I used to make the patch. If you do, please get in touch with me.

I'm now playing Lunar: The Silver Star Story (expect this to take a while). I didn't realize it was basically a completely different game. Why the hell didn't Luna get on the boat in the first place?

I really like this project. 
Looks like Working Designs released quite a lot of games so you still have work to do Keep it up.

Haha, I'm not expecting to get through all of them, but I haven't run out of interest yet. Thanks for the support.

thanks so much for the patch for popful mail i tried playing the original and it kicked my ace i almost gave up until i came across this patch you made, now its like one of my favorite games 

Well, that's the kind of success story I like to hear! Glad you enjoyed it, weird little game that it is. I should play one of the original home computer versions for kicks sometime...

Thanks so much! I'm impressed by the number of games you've covered already, fantastic stuff.

You're welcome -- I wasn't expecting to get this much done myself, because checking these thoroughly for changes takes quite a bit of work. I'll keep it up as long as time (and my patience) permits.

[Recapnation]

Congratulations once again, particularly for Magic Knight Rayearth as the first SS game to get the treatment. Is your patch compatible with the "undubbed version" patch which seems to exist out there?

[KingMike]

If I remember, WD even pointed out THE FINGER in the behind-the-scenes video included with Silver Star Story Complete.

[Supper]

Congratulations once again, particularly for Magic Knight Rayearth as the first SS game to get the treatment. Is your patch compatible with the "undubbed version" patch which seems to exist out there?

Thanks. Unfortunately, no, there's basically no chance that'll work. I've made undubbed versions of some of these for my own use, but obviously that's not something I can distribute as a patch.

While I haven't tried this, I expect that all you need to do to undub Rayearth is copy over all the .ADP files from the Japanese version to the US version. Assuming you have the tools to unpack and rebuild the ISO, it would be very simple to patch the US version and then do that on top of it, but it's probably still more technical trouble than most people will want to go to...

[Kallisto]

I wonder if will ever see the rest of the Cosmic Fantasy series in english? It seems kind of pointless just playing part II, and will never know the rest of the story.

[VicVergil]

Supper, you mentioned rebuilding tools for ISOs, is it ImgBurn or regular CD burning stuff by any chance if you want to replace stuff? Wouldn't CD sectors pose some problem especially for audio?

I wonder if will ever see the rest of the Cosmic Fantasy series in english? It seems kind of pointless just playing part II, and will never know the rest of the story.

Cosmic Fantasy series is on the PC Engine as 5 releases (the last two are one big game), and the first two have been remastered on the Sega CD (again, just in Japan). It apparently has lots of audio-only stuff (but mednafen has soft subs so that could be taken care of?) and the gameplay is very archaic and could use an easy type hack to make it easier and more streamlined (not harder like WD tried with CF2), after all story is its one most important aspect. It's designed by a mangaka so a scanlation translator would be a godsend for this project - otherwise it will just linger alongside all the other visual novel and licensed anime stuff.

The American cover art for Cosmic Fantasy 2 is so horrible by the way. Few stuff makes me cringe that badly aside from the pseudo-anime art style in Turrican games.

[Supper]

Supper, you mentioned rebuilding tools for ISOs, is it ImgBurn or regular CD burning stuff by any chance if you want to replace stuff? Wouldn't CD sectors pose some problem especially for audio?

For all patches that have a rebuilt filesystem, I used the Linux utility xorrisofs (equivalent to mkisofs, if that's more easily available). For Rayearth specifically, the game wouldn't run unless I added the --norock parameter to disable Rockridge extensions. I also use -iso-level 1, although I don't think it's necessary. Rayearth happens not to use CD audio or low-level disc accesses -- at least I assume so, since the rebuilt ISO runs fine -- so that's not a problem in this case.

Also, I haven't looked at the existing undub, but you could probably also just copy over the code files from my patch (which are "0" and all of the "OLXX.BIN" files in the root directory) to that one.

Regarding Cosmic Fantasy 2, it's just a very strange situation overall. Working Designs apparently liked the second game in the series more and decided they'd publish it instead of the first one. It's quite odd that they kept the "2" in the title -- I assume they intended to bring over the first game later, but sales wound being too poor to justify it. And considering it was one of Working Designs' first projects, I can cut them a little slack for scrimping on the box art budget. (Though it certainly is bad -- did someone actually get paid for that? On a similar note, see this bizarre promotional diorama they had made for Exile II.)

[VicVergil]

Oh, to be fair, bad US cover arts were commonplace in the nineties. And they're not without their B-movie charm. 

Spoiler:

Speaking of undubs, having the translations for Silhouette Mirage, Grandia and both Lunar games ported to their superior Sega Saturn ports would be nice too. I tried with Grandia but the font being compressed in the disc (and probably not including the ASCII set) put a swift end to whatever plans I might have had.

It's also interesting how games from back then used standard Mac computer fonts, like Chicago, but the Lunar PSX games used Times New Roman. If you figure out how to change the font, please share any info you can find out, as well as your hacking notes so far (which must be a real treasure trove for anyone wanting to prepare balance mods for these games).

[darthvaderx]

About Arc the Lad 1 :

1) Portraits are better in the japanese version , WD changed them to look more like Arc the Lad II:

USA:



Japan:




2) WD also removed some speeches (when the characters are moving in battle without doing any other action) that were in the Japanese version ...

[SCD]

I never knew that Working Designs messed up Arc the Lad like that.

Another PSX Working Designs game that needs to be fixed up is Silhouette Mirage, here's all the stuff they changed: https://tcrf.net/Silhouette_Mirage_(PlayStation)

Here's two screenshots from the Japanese version to help you:



There supposed to be religious references.



The rabbit merchant is supposed to smoke.

I wonder what changes they did to the PSX Lunar games that need to fix?

[KingMike]

I'd at least cut them a little slack if stuff was omitted from Arc due to Sony (likely) making them bundle the games than sell them individually. That probably had an effect on their budget. (like Growlanser 2+3 for PS2)

[Recapnation]

The problem with "un-working" stuff such as Silhouette Mirage, the 32-bits Lunars or Grandia (not WD, this one, but still) is that it would be a [monumental] wasted effort for many people since the PS versions are way worse than the original SS versions. In this day an age, nobody wants to play downgraded versions --  most fans are well aware of the subject, and will most likely ignore any patch for the PS versions. In other words, many want to believe that masterpieces such as Grandia or Shiru-Mira deserve a translation patch for their original versions, and that it will come sooner or later, given that the SS is a system still young in the hacking communities which just hasn't been looked into too much yet. In the very case of Grandia, finding anybody tolerating the dubbed version these days would be weird, if you ask me (though I believe there's an undubbed version patch for this too).

Too bad, hearing that Supper's patches aren't compatible with undubbed versions patches, by the way, though that's what I expected. Thanks for letting us know there's a way for doing it yourself -- it's anything but quick or easy, though. Hopefully your MKR patch gets popular enough so that well... it happens what it usually happens when something's popular enough in the internets (...).