[SargeSmash]

Goemon 3 is probably my favorite retro title this year so far. Getting all these translated is absolutely fantastic, and congrats to DDS/Tom/FlashPV for getting them done!

[A.W. Laris Borromeo]

The N64 games are were both localized. It would be a waste to relocalize them.

Apparently the N64 Goemon that I'm talking about is Goemon Mononoke Sugoroku which is a board game based on the series only released for the N64 which has connectivity with of one the GB Goemon games. The reason for this is because of its title theme. As for the other Goemon N64 game (Goemon's Great Adventure), the JP version has an intro and I think that needs to be restored on the USA one. By the way, that Kirakira Douchuu had two revisions, and I want to know because I wonder if these revisions will get patches.

[kikujade]

Apparently the N64 Goemon that I'm talking about is Goemon Mononoke Sugoroku which is a board game based on the series only released for the N64 which has connectivity with of one the GB Goemon games. The reason for this is because of its title theme. As for the other Goemon N64 game (Goemon's Great Adventure), the JP version has an intro and I think that needs to be restored on the USA one. By the way, that Kirakira Douchuu had two revisions, and I want to know because I wonder if these revisions will get patches.

Well the more you know, lol, I could've gone another 20 years without knowing that game existed.

The 4th goemon patch, to my experience, only works with rev2 of the rom, as I tried on both with the bps patch.

[marioxb]

So Goemon SNES games got translated, and I think either the Gameboy or the N64 games are next.

The N64 games are were both localized. It would be a waste to relocalize them.

As are both Game Boy games. Part 2 is the one everyone knows about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical_Ninja_Starring_Goemon_(Game_Boy_video_game)

But part one was released on a compilation in Europe (under the same title, confusingly):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganbare_Goemon:_Sarawareta_Ebisumaru!

However, none of the Game Boy Color games are in English.

[maximo806]

As are both Game Boy games. Part 2 is the one everyone knows about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical_Ninja_Starring_Goemon_(Game_Boy_video_game)

But part one was released on a compilation in Europe (under the same title, confusingly):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganbare_Goemon:_Sarawareta_Ebisumaru!

However, none of the Game Boy Color games are in English.

you posted the wrong links here are the real ones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical_Ninja_Starring_Goemon_(Game_Boy_video_game)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganbare_Goemon:_Sarawareta_Ebisumaru!

[marioxb]

you posted the wrong links here are the real ones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical_Ninja_Starring_Goemon_(Game_Boy_video_game)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganbare_Goemon:_Sarawareta_Ebisumaru!

Weird. I guess because I didn't put URL tags around the links. Fixed!

[Fei Wong]

Can someone help me? I patched every game but I'm having problems with 4, the game text is glitched out, I play on the real hardware with Everdrive, can someone tell me if it is a compatibility thing? Same thing happened with Nightcrawler's Tenshi no Uta patch.

[Zeality]

Can someone help me? I patched every game but I'm having problems with 4, the game text is glitched out, I play on the real hardware with Everdrive, can someone tell me if it is a compatibility thing? Same thing happened with Nightcrawler's Tenshi no Uta patch.

Had this issue too, and it was a problem of which ROM I was using. The popular SMC download (3,146,240 bytes) throws out the right CRC32, but has a header that the popular SFC version doesn't (3,145,728 bytes). So try to find the SFC extension version with that number of bytes.

Many thanks to the team. Had just assumed I'd never get to play these in my lifetime.

[Fei Wong]

Had this issue too, and it was a problem of which ROM I was using. The popular SMC download (3,146,240 bytes) throws out the right CRC32, but has a header that the popular SFC version doesn't (3,145,728 bytes). So try to find the SFC extension version with that number of bytes.

Many thanks to the team. Had just assumed I'd never get to play these in my lifetime.

THANK you very much! Effectively I was using SMC roms, I will try SFC with that size 

[Poe]

When I heard about the Goemon series in my youth I caught immediately fire as I played the first part "The Mystical Ninja". But soon I had to realize that part 2-4 had only been released in Japan what made it difficult to play the games within Germany and also to read and understand the story. Thanks to the amazing work of the whole team a dream came finally true! Playing these games in English, and more oriented to the original files, feels great! I honor all the work and effort that had been put in and I look forward seeing new great projects from the team! So please keep on going, and always remember ... Go for it, Goemon!

[WiiGi]

I can't wait for the Nintendo DS Goemon to get translated eventually. I've been waiting eagerly. I love the effort in the SNES collection + Ebisumaru. Stay amazing!

[Tom]

Still in awe that a grammatical error like this:

Go for it! Goemon

...is being accepted by everybody so that you of course have this now as well:

Get Going! Ebisumaru!

There in the freaking game titles, no less.

There aren't any errors in the titles as they appear in the game. Allow me to explain.

The words in the title come in distinct chunks.

Go for it!
Goemon
The Rescue of Princess Yuki

While the first part of the title is a sentence, the last parts stand independently.

What you're doing is mashing the first two parts of the title together, as if they are one single sentence, but they're not. In both the Japanese title screen and the English title screen, the first part is always contained in separate and distinct sections of the title logo.

Instead of mashing the first two parts together (which would make them seem like a grammatical error), try reading each part separately. Keep in mind that these three parts are written in different fonts, and in different areas of the title logo.

If you separate the names from the initial sentence (which stands alone), and read each section independently, you'll find that there aren't actually any grammatical errors in any of the titles.

In the case of Ebisumaru's game, the title has four distinct sections:

Get going!
Ebisumaru
The Mechanical Maze
Mystery of the Missing Goemon!!

Although there is no exclamation point after the word Ebisumaru, there were two exclamation points after Mystery of the Missing Goemon. When I had initially requested the graphic, I only intended to have one exclamation point there, but when I got the graphic back, it had two (like the Japanese release). I couldn't bear to ask for a redo on the entire graphic for such a minor point, so I chose to leave it as-is.

Hopefully this clarifies things.

[Recapnation]

Hi, Tom,

Thanks for sharing your reasoning (and of course, your translation efforts, once again!). You're plain wrong, I'm afraid.

In both the Japanese title screen and the English title screen, the first part is always contained in separate and distinct sections of the title logo.

But not all. This is the first iteration ever of the Ganbare, Goemon title name:




And the truth is, there're so many samples of Japanese logos using different typography (or "different areas" of the logo) for every word or part of a single sentence, it comes off  really surprising that anybody used to Japanese editions thinks of that as "separated and distinct sections" instead of a mere stylization exercise (which just tries to emphazise the important word from a marketing perspective, in this case). Just a few found in less than one minute:



(I'm sure you'll wholeheartedly agree that you can't separate, semantics-wise, Dolucky nofrom Puzzle Tour, Arcus from Spirits, or Deae from Tonosama.)


Moreover, Konami themselves have made patent more than once how to put together the different "chunks" with similar logos, for example:




So there's little doubt that we actually have Go for It, Goemon and Get Going, Ebisumaru (which makes more sense and would be the logical construction no matter what, anyway).


(Why Tengai Makyou and not Ganbare, Goemon is the next big question, if may I!)

[Tom]

I'm not wrong. There aren't any grammatical errors in any of the titles. As I said, you were just reading them differently, so you're seeing them as grammatical errors when they aren't.

There are many ways to render a Japanese title in a fan translation. It could be left in romanized Japanese, sure. It could be translated, or even given a fully localized title like "Legend of the Mystical Ninja." There are many ways to approach it, but there is no one way that it HAS to be.

Let's look at the title logo for Ebisumaru's game here:




Now imagine it rendered as a complete sentence. Would you put the comma in the box above Ebisumaru, even with heart after it, just to have it as a complete sentence? Would you remove the box on the top to make it look better as a complete sentence? Why insist that it must be a complete sentence there, anyway? It's not like there's an exclamation point after Ebisumaru.

You say that it's because the first game rendered it as a full sentence, and yes, it did... But look here:



There's no exclamation point after the name anymore. The title wasn't treated as a full sentence, unlike the very first game, and that was back in 1989. It separated the title logo into chunks.

How would you even render it as a full sentence with the 2?

Would it be "Go for it, Goemon! 2" or "Go for it, Goemon 2!" Both of those would come across as odd, and neither would work well with how the title is rendered.

You seem to insist that the entire thing has to be rendered as a full sentence because of the first game in the series... but even the Japanese developers didn't share that perspective. Why should the translations act like Goemon is part of a full sentence like the first game when the Japanese releases stopped doing that since 1989?

I maintain that the translated titles do not actually contain any grammatical errors. These translations, much like every Goemon game since the second Famicom release stopped treating Goemon's name as the last part of a full sentence.

But if it's any consolation, if I ever translate the very first entry on the Famicom or the MSX, I would definitely keep it as a full sentence, just like the Japanese game does, and put "Go for it, Goemon!" on the title screen, with the comma and the exclamation point there.

As for Tengai Makyou, I chose to leave Tengai Makyou romanized rather than translated due to the lore surrounding the game, to delineate the difference between "Far East of Eden" and "Tengai Makyou," which is explained in further detail in some of the manuals. (I haven't translated them yet, though.)

[Dzumeister]

wait, what's odd about Go For It, Goemon! 2?

[Tom]

The number two would feel like it's totally dangling, right after a complete sentence. I'm pretty sure that's why they didn't continue writing it that way after the first game.

[snatcher1996]

Sure, but again, what's odd about 2????

[Tom]

You want me to explain why "Go for it, Goemon 2!" is also odd?

For starters, the syntax would not be as clear that way, because it sounds like they technically might be telling "Goemon 2" to go for it, which obviously isn't the case.

Also, take another look at the Famicom title screen for Goemon 2 I posted earlier... See that big number two on the bottom? Try putting an exclamation point after that number, and see how it looks.

It would look terrible that way, if you ask me.

Sure, the design could be totally redone, if you were dead-set on having the full title be a complete sentence, but the Japanese developers clearly didn't feel that was necessary, and neither do I.

[Uberdubie]

I watched the Twitter drama along with what happened here from a safe distance -- Tom never should've had *any* of the hate he did.  It was nothing more than super-aggressive, highly-cancerous, childish trolling.  And a few others legitimately then fell victim to thinking it was real, as if Tom was ever guilty of trying to be malicious or any other wrong doing.

Can we just stop harassing those incredibly talented and kind people willing to share their gifts with the world?  This is how a good things come to an end, when needless drama keeps up and passion-projects aren't fun anymore. 



I don't know if people are jealous of Tom (along with others) or they just want to kill-off romhacking in general.  But the hate needs to end already.  These projects are done out of love, passion, and generosity -- anyone who doesn't understand or can't appreciate that needs to just step away and do something more productive with their time.

[Tom]

"Tom's stated that Go for It! and Goemon belong to different "sentences."

The English title screen does not treat Goemon as part of a different "sentence." It treats it as one part of the logo, a logo which is split into distinct segments. What goes into each segment is not set in stone. It could be rendered in many different ways. Segments can be moved around, altered, or totally reworded.

I said this before, too. There are many ways the title could be rendered in English. None of these patterns are inherently incorrect. I've never been all that prescriptive about it. Avster understands this. I saw that in his version of the title screen for the second Goemon game on the SFC, he removed the number 2... and that's not an unprecedented or incorrect choice. Look at how Seiken Densetsu 3 became known as "Trials of Mana." Is that a translation error? No, it's intentional. Is it productive to say, "Well, that's not what Seiken Densetsu 3 means! That's an error!" I don't think it is.

You said earlier that the majority of people will feel that the title contains a grammatical error, but I haven't seen any other people making that complaint. I think most people can see it for what it is, and even if they didn't at first, I think a good number of them would understand the explanation that I've given.

Regardless, you've heard my reasoning, and I've heard your complaint. I'm sorry to hear that my explanation didn't satisfy you... but at this point, you've said your part, and I've said mine. There's not really anything more that needs to be said. I want to thank you for your passion on this issue... and I also want to thank everybody here for their time, their supportive posts, and their interest in the translation.