[RHDNBot]

Update By: cccmar

After some work, the retranslation of Kouryuu Densetsu Villgust Gaiden was finally completed. This franchise is based on an old toy line used to play a tabletop RPG. It spawned an OVA, two games and some other types of media. It was decided that this game would be a good candidate for a retranslation (there are a couple more games like that from the early period of romhacking). It's a pretty simple action RPG, and hopefully the potential players will enjoy the efforts to give it some more polish.

Also, additionally, congrats to Pluvius/Eien Ni Hen/Filler on completing the patch for Outlanders, yet another franchise that got its own anime adaption!

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[mikeprado30]

As I say, ALWAYS is a nice moment to get a new RPG translated.

Thanks for your effort, guys! 

[KingMike]

The biggest problem I remember in the original translation is that the ending (credits?) wasn't translated.
Also for whatever reason at the time the original was released, a ROM spreading had the game identified as mapper 20 (which is the iNES reserved value for the FDS!). So only Nesticle played it since it only cared about the lower bits of the mapper (0x14, compared to 4 for MMC3). With glitches since MMC3 wasn't well emulated then.

[cccmar]

You're right, credits weren't done, but a much more serious issue was that some plot-relevant dialogue boxes were broken (so, you wouldn't be able to get the hints regarding game progression) and lots of other lines were basically made-up, likely due to the lack of context. I think that's also because they were editing text pointers manually. We weren't able to find any Japanese LP of this game even now, 20 years later; I had to record one first, so that TheMajinZenki wouldn't be stumbling in the dark. Anyway, hopefully all our efforts paid off.

[noneother]

The new translation looks very clean so far. I'd enjoyed the SNES Villgust way back when, but never bothered with the NES game cause it was all glitchy and weird. Glad I can give it a fair shake now. Thanks for the work you put in.

[KingMike]

You're right, credits weren't done, but a much more serious issue was that some plot-relevant dialogue boxes were broken (so, you wouldn't be able to get the hints regarding game progression) and lots of other lines were basically made-up, likely due to the lack of context. I think that's also because they were editing text pointers manually. We weren't able to find any Japanese LP of this game even now, 20 years later; I had to record one first, so that TheMajinZenki wouldn't be stumbling in the dark. Anyway, hopefully all our efforts paid off.

I remember the first FAQ I found in the game was, I think, German and I had to use Babelfish to figure out how to get past at least one part of the game.

[Pluvius]

Thanks for the shout-out.  I still haven't done a high-quality translation hack for a game that I thought was worthy of a news post, so...

I knew the translator for Villgust Gaiden (and Venus Wars, which could also use a rehack) back in my Usenet days.  He was a typical nerdy teenager, and his liberal addition of profanity was not at all surprising.  I think his favorite game was FF5 (which we all referred to in the mid-'90s as "FF5j" for some reason, even though it was 'j' by definition) and he was also deep into the ZZT/Megazeux scene.  There's still a lot of his posts on Google Groups.

[Supper]

Thanks, everyone, hope you enjoy the game. I was actually pretty surprised to find out it was developed by TOSE -- the production values are a lot better than I'd expect from them. I wouldn't call it a great game, and it could have used some balance adjustments, but the core action battle system is actually pretty fun.

Several people will be happy to note that based on the feedback from our last couple of projects, I used automatic line wrapping this time around instead of hyphen breaks. Saved me a lot of time, so I can't complain.

I actually wasn't that interested in this project until after I'd finished it, when I played the old patch and found out just how -- let's say "dated" it is. While the inscrutable "translation" is the biggest problem, I don't think anyone at J2e actually bothered playing the game after the text was inserted; there are a bunch of bugs you can't beat the game without seeing. One of the NPCs you have to talk to to advance the plot has a broken text pointer, causing his dialogue box to open and close without displaying anything. Similarly, there's an item you have to use in battle to complete the game that's completely invisible in menus. Combined with the borderline-nonsense text, the whole experience is pretty surreal. Unfortunately, our translation may actually have hurt the entertainment value in that regard

Thanks for the shout-out.  I still haven't done a high-quality translation hack for a game that I thought was worthy of a news post, so...

I knew the translator for Villgust Gaiden (and Venus Wars, which could also use a rehack) back in my Usenet days.  He was a typical nerdy teenager, and his liberal addition of profanity was not at all surprising.  I think his favorite game was FF5 (which we all referred to in the mid-'90s as "FF5j" for some reason, even though it was 'j' by definition) and he was also deep into the ZZT/Megazeux scene.  There's still a lot of his posts on Google Groups.

Heh, I looked up a few of his posts. The games change, but the pointless arguments never do.

I don't really know what happened with his translation for this game. Most of the dialogue in the old patch isn't just wrong, it really doesn't make any sense, even given that it was translated without context and never edited. How do you come up with lines like "This butterfly is with the boat" or "We must rebuild the temple for entertainment!" and not think, "Hey, wait a minute, something's off here"?

His Usenet messages make it pretty obvious he was proud of his work, too. I guess the novelty of having fan translations at all probably covered for a lot of the issues. That and having a scene comprised mostly of teenagers looking for attention.

Which reminds me, I couldn't help but crack a smile at the note at the start of the readme:

WARNING:

This translation contains explicict
language (including the all famous "F" word),
and is highly not recommended for anyone
who cannot handle the language factor.

This is NOT a result of our adding in
a few words here or there, but is infact
part of the translation directly from
the Japenese scripts!

and please do NOT ask us to tone down
the language because we will NOT do
so any time soon.  Thank you.

[KingMike]

My understanding of Japanese is that it contains only as much profanity as you want it to.
(ie, offending someone is more using an inappropriate level of politeness than that the words themselves are "bad"?)

[SupraKarma]

What emulator are you guys using? I patched the game, and it's crashing every single core in RetroArch.

[noneother]

So, I've finished the game. It's not very long - you can beat it in a day (I did it in two). My main issue with it is the lack of variety in terms of monsters - it seems they stop introducing new types about halfway through, and then you're left fighting the same fights until the end. It's too bad, because for a while it was actually pretty fun as the fights became a little more complex. Some of the boss battles are nice, too. That battle system had a lot of potential - they could have stepped it up to 3 enemies simultaneously down the line to keep things entertaining, and balanced it better (everything becomes super easy late in the game, and why can't you ever run from battles?) Of course, like almost all NES RPGs, the encounter rate is too high, but most of the dungeons are small so it doesn't get too annoying.

Anyway, congrats on the translation, it reads well and looks good (I agree that the line wrapping was the better option).

[Gideon Zhi]

Neat! I remember trying this with the old patch years ago and not really getting anywhere. I'll have to give it another shake.

Congratulations!

[SupraKarma]

So I figured out that the ROM that needs patched is NOT the No-Intro ROM in the description in the link, just a heads up.