Metal Gear Remix (a.k.a. Metal Gear Redux) Version 1.9 Japanese to English translation for the MSX2 (8/26/05) ©2004, 2005 Takamichi Suzukawa, Jon Taylor, and Nekura_Hoka Readme by: Nekura_Hoka ----------------------------------------------------------- What is this? ----------------------------------------------------------- This patch is for the Japanese localization of Konami's Metal Gear for the MSX home computer. It translates the game to english. Terms and Conditions ----------------------------------------------------------- This patch is freely available for non-commercial use. This patch must be distributed in its original form without modification to itself or it's parent archive (zip file). Contents of the parent archive must not be altered in any way. Do not distribute this patch with a ROM copy of Metal Gear. If the holder of legal rights to the game Metal Gear (Konami) wants to correspond regarding this patch, visit my website at http:/www.geocities.com/nekurahoka/ and contact me via email. Features: ----------------------------------------------------------- -Faithful fan translation of all 155 messages from the original Japanese version of the game. The original United Kingdom release of the game did not include all the original messages. New! -New font with lowercase lettering. This is not a feature available in any other version of the game. -Full compliance with the few details about the game from the Previous Operations section of Metal Gear Solid. Useage: ----------------------------------------------------------- 1. The patch requires the use of an IPS patch utility. IPS.exe is readily available on the 'net. Personally, I use LunarIPS. Both of these are available in the utilities section of zophar.net. 2. You need a properly dumped Japanese Metal Gear ROM for the MSX. If you have a cartridge of Metal Gear for the MSX, but not the hardware to dump it, then any of the Japanese ROMs available on the 'net should do nicely. 3. Use the patcher to patch your ROM (back it up beforehand). If the ROM doesn't emulate make sure the original ROM you patched works to verify you have a good copy. If you're using an emulator that uses a database to automatically detect the MSX ROM type (blueMSX etc.), be sure it has detected it as a Konami PSG ROM ('Konami' in newer versions of blueMSX, 'Konami 4' in older versions). Changes from 1.0: ----------------------------------------------------------- -Heavily modified the font table. The original font table was used, but the capital letters had to be thinned so they wouldn't look out of place with the new lowercase ones. I tried a font with stencil lines in the lowercase, in addition to those in the uppercase, but the font becomes almost unreadable in my opinion, so it was scrapped. I toyed with the idea of using a completely different font altogether (I drew in OCR-A, of Crimson Tide etc. fame), but it didn't seem right to completely get rid of the essence of the original font in the game. -Game now utilizes MCE (Multi Character Encoding) This means sometimes the game has more than one character per font tile. On average only 2 per tile if one character is thin (like "l" or an apostrophe). There is one that includes 3 characters "'ll". This process saved a load of space and allowed for the lowercase script (before it would have been impossible without cutting the script or game reassembly) and some other things. -No longer uses the Literal/Modern different patches. Beretta and Ingram are properly spelled in this one, regardless of how they were in the original Japanese. (Ingrum and Belleta) -Changed Big Boss' title from simple "commander" to "commander-in-chief". This was a space-saving consideration in the original patch and isn't necessary anymore. "commander-in-chief" jives with Previous Operations and Takamichi's original translation of the game's script. -Added Diane's "...Bye" to one message that was erroneously missing it. You may notice that there are other messages that don't feature a sign-off from the characters, but this is in sync with the original script. This instance was just a mistake by myself. -Added "Find ammo and don't waste it." to BB's description of the Beretta. Takamichi pointed this out a couple of times before the 1.0 release, but I'd mistakingly thought it wasn't in the original script. I was wrong. -Miscellaneous formatting changes because of the new tiles. -Changed "Are they moving their houses?" to simply "Are they moving?". "their houses" sounds translated and overcomplicates a simple and extremely common idiom. I originally kept 'their houses' in v1.0 becuase I was being overly cautious about whether the player would understand what was meant by it. The more I played the game after the original patch's release, I realized it wasn't really necessary to the fluent english speaker. -Changed "schoolgirl's uniform" to "sailor's suit". The original translation reads "sailor's clothing" and is a reference to japanese school uniforms. It's intended as a jab against the soldiers and indirectly to Solid Snake, becuase he's gonna wear it. I figured "Sailor's suit" was a more natural way to bring up the right image in westerner's heads, while staying close to the original translation. -Includes translation project members names in the game's final credits. -Changed the mention of "rank" in the script to refer to "class". I wanted these two to match and since "Class" has always appeared in the HUD, I changed the script end of the pair. Also, while dumping MGS3's subtitles, I noticed that "Colonel class" is mentioned rather than 'Colonel rank', so I figured the change could also be a neat way to sync with the series. -Changed 'Trans' item to 'Bug'. Makes the item synchronus with the script mention and I thought it would be better to have a full word for the item name in the select screen rather than a fragment of one. "Bug" is a bit informal, but there are plenty of item names in the various installments of the series that are at least as informal as this. Things I'd like to do for a future update, but probably won't: ----------------------------------------------------------- -Find the code controlling how wide each tile should be displayed in the message box so that the lettering can be compacted to look a bit more natural, rather than monospaced. Some of the tiles are set with shorter widths (like the apostrophe and tile 98 if I remember right), so it'd look neat to have the font look more polished. Credits: ----------------------------------------------------------- Takamichi Suzukawa - Translator Jon Taylor - Proof-reader Nekura_Hoka - Coder Thanks: ----------------------------------------------------------- msx.org Forums - For tolerating a new person's request for aid. Many forums on the net seem to have devolved into an arena for pummeling new posters, this one hasn't as far as I can tell. Ola Andersson - Got Takamichi in touch with me and got this project rolling towards completion. Also had some good questions and suggestions that helped more than he (she?) will ever know. Junkerhq.net - The text dumps available here led me (Nekura) to begin looking for a way to dump the script for Metal Gear, which began my interest in doing the coding for the script insertion. There's an abundance of info on all of Kojima's games and a good set of forums. Hideo Kojima, Noriki Hibino, and Harry Gregson-Williams- For a great game series and for Kojima's Red Disc collection soundtrack remixes as well as the Original Soundtracks for MG 1+2 and MGS1, 2 and 3. This music kept me at least halfway sane and motivated during the table readdressing process. (which I did essentially manually) Raihan Kibria, Pabs, and Gerson Kurz - For frhed 1.1.0 an amazingly powerful and useful FREE hex editor. This is primarily what I used for the script insertion. http://www.kibria.de/frhed.html Microsoft - For the XP versions of Calculator and Notepad. Calculator for the hex value conversions and Notepad for finally having a 'Replace' function, thereby making switching to wordpad unnecessary and finally at least equaling the over 12-year-old edit.com program in capability. ;D Squaresoft - For making Final Fantasy IV with the DTE (Dual Tile Encoding) script system which gave me the idea to do a similar thing for MG and save a lot of space.