[RHDNBot]

Update By: Supper

The Dark Kingdom has been resurrected! In the name of the moon, go beat everyone up.

The Genesis/Mega Drive version of the 1993 Sailor Moon beat-'em-up has been translated into English, featuring a translation by Eien Ni Hen and hacking by Supper. As one of the five Sailor Senshi of love and justice, players punch, kick, and suplex (hey, it's a beat-'em-up) through hordes of youma to reach the enemy's stronghold and protect the earth.

Though nominally a port of the SNES game, this version came out later and is actually considerably enhanced over the original, with expanded stages, heavily tweaked gameplay, new music, and an actual plot. It's well worth a look for both Sailor Moon and beat-'em-up fans.

This project was originally kicked off without a translator, so major thanks to Filler for agreeing to pick it up and ultimately arranging for Eien Ni Hen to handle things.

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[filler]

Happy to have played matchmaker on this. Congrats on the release! As a fan of both beat'em ups and Sailor Moon, I  see myself playing this in the near future. Based on the screenshots I'm glad to see you have tackled those background graphics. I was wondering if you would. The subtitles sound like a nice touch as well. Nice job!

EDIT: I forgot to say a big thanks to Eien for the translation as well! I haven't played it yet, but if her previous work is any indication, it will be a top-notch script.

[Lucumo]

It's always nice to see more Mega Drive games being translated. Thank you.

[Special T]

Thank you 

[vivify93]

Been waiting on this one! Thanks to Supper, Eien Ni Hen, and Filler for their certainly fruitful efforts. I left a review of the translation as well as the game (tl;dr it's good if you like beat-'em-ups or are a Sailor Moon fan) and a small section on moves.

[Supper]

Happy to have played matchmaker on this. Congrats on the release! As a fan of both beat'em ups and Sailor Moon, I  see myself playing this in the near future. Based on the screenshots I'm glad to see you have tackled those background graphics. I was wondering if you would. The subtitles sound like a nice touch as well. Nice job!

EDIT: I forgot to say a big thanks to Eien for the translation as well! I haven't played it yet, but if her previous work is any indication, it will be a top-notch script.

Thanks again to the both of you for helping out. And yes, Eien did an excellent job with the script, even though this game doesn't exactly have the thickest of plots Hope you enjoy it.

Glad you noticed the translated building text, because it ended up being a good bit of work for a very small thing -- those signs in the screenshot are actually the only instance in the entire game of Japanese text within a level, but I had to figure out most of the basics of the level format just to edit them. There wasn't actually room in the level tileset for the extra graphics I needed, but fortunately the game loads an unused hexadecimal font as part the HUD graphics, so I was able to overwrite that with the new stuff.

And the subtitles (well, "subtitle", but there are technically two voice clips!) were a last-minute addition -- it just felt a little sloppy not to have them, although most people who'll play this probably know what "tsuki ni kawatte oshioki yo" means anyway...

It's always nice to see more Mega Drive games being translated. Thank you.

Thank you 

You're welcome!

I never realized how few English translations the MD gets compared to other consoles until it turned out the Battle Golfer Yui translation I worked on with Filler last year was actually the only one that came out that year. It's not like there's a shortage of games, so I'm hoping to see (do?) more of them in the future. I'm always up for interesting projects if someone's willing to translate.

Been waiting on this one! Thanks to Supper, Eien Ni Hen, and Filler for their certainly fruitful efforts. I left a review of the translation as well as the game (tl;dr it's good if you like beat-'em-ups or are a Sailor Moon fan) and a small section on moves.

Thanks for playing! It's not a perfect game, but IMO it hits enough of the right notes to at least be worth a playthrough -- more than that if you're into the genre or the subject matter. Hard mode can be kind of a slog, though. At least it is for me, though the real problem may be that I'm terrible at games.

You may also have noticed I eventually gave in and went with "Pretty Soldier" on the title screen, which will hopefully cause less agitation among RHDN members Thanks for your feedback in the screenshot thread.

[cccmar]

First off, great job on the translation; I think this was the last brawler/beat 'em up game for the MD that needed a patch, so that's cool. I'd argue it's a better game than its SFC counterpart as well.

I never realized how few English translations the MD gets compared to other consoles until it turned out the Battle Golfer Yui translation I worked on with Filler last year was actually the only one that came out that year. It's not like there's a shortage of games, so I'm hoping to see (do?) more of them in the future. I'm always up for interesting projects if someone's willing to translate.

As to the MD translations as a whole - while it's true few games get done, there simply aren't that many of them left altogether (compared to, say, PCE/PCE-CD or SNES). Here's the list by Spinner 8: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wdIvWfaiuq-NCO1taA1kkPk-o6-XkMNOOkG9bEDp9HI/edit#gid=283823988. You can see that there are 77 games left now (though he didn't do the list for Mega CD, so the whole number is probably 100+; Game Gear games are listed separately also) and many of them have very little text overall. Some of them are also in the works, at various stages (mostly some of the strategy games/RPGs). Still, maybe you'll find something that interests you in there, assuming a willing translator shows up too.

[Supper]

Thanks. I'm surprised this game wasn't done earlier, given it has "Sailor Moon" in the title, but I guess the sequels got all the attention.

I am particularly interested in the Mega CD, since almost no one has ever done anything for it (after 25+ years, we have a grand total of one English translation, one Arabic translation, and an unfinished Spanish translation). Obviously a lot of that is down to the more challenging hardware, but I've flirted with the thing repeatedly over the last couple of years and it's nothing that can't be done with some effort.

Finding games worth translating is still an issue, since most of the decent games seem to have superior ports on other platforms, but I've poked around the pile and there are a few that are worth a look. It's mostly a question of enduring the pain of disassembling games that don't run properly (or at all) in debugging emulators.

[vivify93]

You may also have noticed I eventually gave in and went with "Pretty Soldier" on the title screen, which will hopefully cause less agitation among RHDN members Thanks for your feedback in the screenshot thread.

Hey, it's no problem! Being able to give feedback where I can is helpful. Hey, if you ever feel like translating other Sailor Moon games, hit up the Sailor Moon Genvid forums. They might be able to help. http://sailormoonforum.com/index.php

Or just contact me, but I'm biased. 

Edit - My review is up! https://www.romhacking.net/reviews/3502/#review

Some other things I found out during a couple more tentative playthroughs:

1. You CAN throw enemies forward, actually.

2. The Sailor Guardians' play styles are indeed super varied, which I like.

Moon is your everyman all-rounder.
Mercury seems to specialize in knock-back techs. If you hold forward while doing a strike combo, she'll do a thrust-kick that knocks enemies backward.
Mars seems to have an extra hit in her strike combo, as well a slightly longer time for her circular magic's active state.
Jupiter only gets a 2-strike combo, but she does more damage.
Venus, as stated in my review, gets a whip and can do mid-range attacks, but can't strike combo at all.

3. In the Dream Land levels, you can pick up giant paper fans to do mid-range attacks. They do massive damage!

4. The SNES version of this game REEKS! It doesn't have super jump or super jump-kick, nor does it have circular magic. And aside from Venus, who keeps her whip, all the Guardians seem to play the same. Yuck. It might look and sound a bit better, and it does have multiplayer... but I'd recommend the Genesis version over the SNES original any day. Sailor Moon R (Which has been translated to English by FuSoYa for some time) should cover your need for multiplayer Sailor Moon beat-'em-ups anyhow.

Edit - It looks like the SNES version does have circular magic; you just press Attack and Jump at the same time to use it. That's incredibly stupid... they had at least two more face buttons to use and instead they opt to only use Y and B? OK, sure. I also found a guide that claims each Sailor Guardian plays differently, but I couldn't tell a difference between any of them except Venus.

[filler]

I never realized how few English translations the MD gets compared to other consoles until it turned out the Battle Golfer Yui translation I worked on with Filler last year was actually the only one that came out that year. It's not like there's a shortage of games, so I'm hoping to see (do?) more of them in the future. I'm always up for interesting projects if someone's willing to translate.

Ditto, only swap out "willing to translate" with "willing to hack".

I've tried my hand at dumping scripts for a number of other Mega Drive games since we did Battle Golfer Yui but no dice. I just lucked out with that one I guess. I won't make any suggestions since I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, or burn either of us out, but suffice to say maybe later in the year I'd be up for trying to knock out another short Mega Drive script.

[cccmar]

I am particularly interested in the Mega CD, since almost no one has ever done anything for it (after 25+ years, we have a grand total of one English translation, one Arabic translation, and an unfinished Spanish translation). Obviously a lot of that is down to the more challenging hardware, but I've flirted with the thing repeatedly over the last couple of years and it's nothing that can't be done with some effort.

Finding games worth translating is still an issue, since most of the decent games seem to have superior ports on other platforms, but I've poked around the pile and there are a few that are worth a look. It's mostly a question of enduring the pain of disassembling games that don't run properly (or at all) in debugging emulators.

Yeah, it kinda shares the fate of PCE-CD in that sense, though there are much more games for that one. The only game I know of for which the patch is in production as far as Mega CD goes is Shadowrun. There's supposedly a good 3x3 Eyes game for the system as well, and After Armageddon Gaiden is considered generally better in terms of mechanics than Last Armageddon... but most of the other games from what I recall aren't exclusives, so someone might be working on PC-98 ports in the shadows, theoretically.

[Supper]

Hey, it's no problem! Being able to give feedback where I can is helpful. Hey, if you ever feel like translating other Sailor Moon games, hit up the Sailor Moon Genvid forums. They might be able to help. http://sailormoonforum.com/index.php

Or just contact me, but I'm biased. 

I actually posted about this over there a few days back! Didn't get much of a response, though. Guess there's only so much you can say about it.

I haven't given any real thought to doing other games, but I did take a very brief peek at the PCE-CD Sailor Moon game the other day. The script is probably pretty hefty since it's an adventure game, but if someone was actually willing to take the plunge and translate, I think it'd be an interesting project.

Ditto, only swap out "willing to translate" with "willing to hack".

I've tried my hand at dumping scripts for a number of other Mega Drive games since we did Battle Golfer Yui but no dice. I just lucked out with that one I guess. I won't make any suggestions since I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, or burn either of us out, but suffice to say maybe later in the year I'd be up for trying to knock out another short Mega Drive script.

If you've got anything you're particularly interested in, I'd be glad to take a look at it -- with this done, the only other project I'm actively working on is the one you already know about. As always, no promises, but I've got to keep myself out of trouble somehow.

[filler]

If you've got anything you're particularly interested in, I'd be glad to take a look at it -- with this done, the only other project I'm actively working on is the one you already know about. As always, no promises, but I've got to keep myself out of trouble somehow.

That's the thing. I don't have anything in particular. It's more that I'd be up for trying to knock out a game or two with a small-ish script. I'd flip it back to you and say anything that seems fun/easy to hack with a dumped script that's in the 50K or less range is in the running.

That said, I do have a project I'd like you to look in to. It has a completed script, and possibly some tools written as well. I need to check in with someone first though. And you'd need to be willing to look at it of course.

[LittleRollBot]

I've been waiting for this for so long! I've been playing it since I was young with out knowing a word of Japanese. It was one of the first import games I played back in the 90s! Thank you so much!