This project started way back in 2006, somewhat between August and September. If I can remember correctly, the reason why it started was one of InVerse's posts about this game, which said that it was a bitch to most hackers around at the time.
I went out for exploration and tried locating string data in memory, looking at the configuration menu (it's one of the few to have English captions). Surprisingly enough, that part was in ASCII, and the rest of the text wasn't hard at all to find, even on the disc.
So, when I was sure to be able to hack it, I started looking for a translator, and that's where Tom came into action. He revealed to be very fast and accurate, so he was my man for the job. He did the whole main story dialogues in like 1 months, but unfortunately Japan killed his spare time, so he had to stop for almost a year, and I slowly started losing interest in the project because Japan was doing the same to me as well.
Almost a year after these events, two of my works were released, so I was looking for an older translation to complete. My forum was getting more and more visitors posting in the Innocent Sin thread: it was a good occasion to resume that.
This led me to open a blog about the project, to see if people were actually interested in this, but I guess I would have worked on it anyway. Still, it provided to be a very powerful weapon, and in fact I got some aid on the translation side, as well as a brand new title screen.
About a month after the project started again, I had the occasion to contact Tom, who was back from Japan and ready to translate again. Unfortunately his laptop broke up. He had to buy a new one, and fortunately Mansoor gave him a help on that.
When the team was back again, I extracted the last series of missing text dumps and gave them to Tom. After a while, I tried to edit some of his old translated dumps, to discover that the crappy utility that I coded for editing was absolutely uncomfortable. I had to expand it and make it look like a decent clone of Windows' Notepad. I spent about 3 days on it and the operation was a complete success: the editor actually revealed to be more interesting and useful than Notepad.
That done, the project proceeded smoothly until the beta testing period. Tom translated the remaining, huge amount of text with the editor (called Rhadamathys), while I completed the rest of the hacks necessary to make everything fit as planned.
Beta testing was pretty intense and we had to do a lot of typo/bug corrections. We also had a couple fatal crashes, which were fortunately very easy to fix.
It took us two years and a couple months to release this, but damn if it's worth the time we spent on it!
In order to fully understand this procedure you have to know a little about backup copies, otherwise go Google (especially to find the necessary programs) and then come back here. That said, let's go for the procedure:
If the patch is not compatible with your ISO, the patcher will produce an error and it will halt the procedure. The patch cannot be applied on an altered ISO, so please don't even try to "update" an already patched version of the game. And please, do not try to patch unsupported image files like .nrg (Nero Burning Rom). THEY ARE NOT IN THE BROWSE DIALOG FOR A REASON!
First things first: this game was a massive, gigantic mess to hack. I think I wrote this pretty much everywhere, but I've got to say it again: Satan himself worked on the game engine, no doubt about it. Wanna know why it's so complicated?
Part 1: string size reduction. This game is one of the very few to treat text as arrays of 2 byte symbols, which means that EVERYTHING that is part of a string, whether it is text or special codes, takes at least 2 bytes. This wasn't really suitable for a translation that needs a lot of space, so it had to be fixed by reducing the amount of space used for both text symbols and special codes. Some things were pretty easy to fix, given that I could work on the whole routines, instead of just hacking a few spots (unfortunately spasm, the assembler I was using at the beginning, doesn't allow that). On the other hand, there were A LOT of very hidden spots in the code that had to be changed as well so that the reduction could be complete, and not crash/bug the game for whatever reason. This was probably the most annoying part of the whole hack, especially the damn subroutines used to manage multiple choices!
Part 2: implementing a not-slow-or-super-unstable variable width font. The original code to allow VWF was only a few line hack, which altered the horizontal spacing for sprites and made it so that the routine for letter rendering would read 1 byte characters (it's part of the reduction hack, yup). This was working until only a few things were in English, but then Tom gave me more material for insertion and the problems start to come to surface. The first issue was with random crashes, which happened when there was a lot of text to append to the GPU list, something that made *every* dungeon dialogue lead to terrible crashes, as well as in Personal Data and battle menus. The second issue was with speed on the Ps2: the way the original game sends data to screen works fine on the original console, but for some reason is terribly slow on the Ps2 (and it was the same for all builds of Pops before v4.00). I had to do something about the crashes, so I went and tried to analyze the print routine, succeeding! At that point all I had to do was rewriting the font system to use images taken from a VRAM image used for HUD elements, instead of uploading the whole array every time for each frame. This fix also took care of the slowdowns, which means double victory to me.
Unfortunately, the image where I put the whole font also contained static names for characters used in menus and battles. These new issues were pretty hard to fix because most of the code that renders them and its very crappy solutions. For menus, I turned all the names into actual test, just like the game used to do for Tatsuya's. As for battles, those are always rendered using graphics, even for Tatsuya's. This was probably the most problematic fix in the whole game because of the way the Playstation manages sprite primitives. I can't even remember all the mess that I had to do to have only a few strings to show perfectly. Damn you, battle programmers.
Of course, there are also other issues that I had to take care of in order to hack some parts of the game, like compressions or archive management. But they really minor stuff when you have a game this evil to deal with.
(How's it going, everyone? If you want to contact me about the translation, let me know! If you want an interview for a magazine or a website, or just want to say thanks or whatever, feel free to send me a message!)
Hey! Thanks for reading my reflections on this awesome game. I hope you enjoy the ride... I'm sure you'll agree that it's been long overdue. This translation has taken a long time to finish, and I'm proud of all the hours we've spent to bring it to you. I want to say thanks to all of the folks who gave words of encouragement. You guys really motivated me to finish this thing as quickly as possible. To the nitpickers - I am sure you'll find stuff to complain about, despite all of the work we've done... But I am also sure that you'll enjoy playing the game regardless of all that. Have fun! To the folks on the boards who whined or trolled - I hope you'll have fun too, anyway... Because this translation is my little gift to everyone: the loyal fans, the casual, the curious, the rabid, the psychotic and the trollish... You've all made it a fun ride, and I hope to be a part of many more translations to come.
I am sorry if any of you were offended by the so-called "delay" of the release. I was just as surprised as the rest of you. Unfortunately I saw a lot of emotional reactions from people responding to Gemini's delay announcement... There was a disturbing amount of name-calling, but I realize that it's only because people are so excited about being able to play this game.
All that I can say is that this has been for fun. When you're not having fun, you need a break from the project. Gemini took a break, but he had no intention of "punishing" all of you. I've had a great time working with Gemini. He's a good guy with a silly sense of humor. In the end, I think he deserves our thanks and respect. My hat's off to Gemini.
I also want to thank the makers of this game... They've made quite a memorable story. It really is one of the greatest RPGs ever made. I also want to thank Atlus USA for being so understanding and not trying to shut down this fan translation. I hope that a few of the staff members there check this translation out, too. (I'm sure some of them will!)
I've written a reflection on the translation for anyone who's interested. It spoils some stuff... Even if you've already played the game before in Japanese, I really recommend waiting until you've beaten our version of the game to read ahead!
What are you waiting for? Play it! :D
Okay... Are you done? Alright, then! Let's move on!
Persona 2: Innocent Sin is the best RPG on the Playstation, and one of my favorite RPGs of all time (matched only by Tengai Makyō: The Apocalypse IV). I'm honored to have translated it... I hope that you'll be pleased with the end results, but feel free to read on if you're interested in a behind-the-scenes look on what went on before and during the translation process.
The story begins long ago, before it had even been released in Japan.
I'd played Persona 1 in English... I bought it after reading an article about it (by Shidoshi of Gamefan magazine). That was my first introduction to the series. I didn't like the game that much. It had formations, dual weapons, action based experience, card fusions, and regenerating magic... It was unlike anything I'd played before. Back in those days, there wasn't a wide selection of Playstation RPGs, so I bit the bullet and played it until the end... About ten hours into it, I realized that I wasn't just playing out of boredom. I really started to enjoy it.
By the end, I had become a total fan...
It was around that time that I went to Japan to stay with a host family. My host-brother also owned Persona (the Japanese version) and showed me that (as well as some of the Shin Megami Tensei games). I didn't really care for SMT at that time, but I was fascinated by Persona. Back in those days, I had to struggle to make any sense out of it, but my host family helped me out... I ended up buying the Japanese version for myself as well. (In fact, I even still have an unfinished direct-to-text translation of the Snow Queen Quest.)
When Persona 2: Innocent Sin was first announced online, I scoured the internet to make archives of the pictures. I knew from the very beginning that it was going to be something special, and I was not disappointed when my pre-ordered package showed up in the mail. I hadn't selected priority shipping, so other people had been playing it a few days before me... But finally, I got it and began playing it.
I don't know how many hours I spent playing it, but the clock was maxed out long before I moved on to other games. I was extremely disappointed as I watched and waited for Atlus USA to announce Innocent Sin in English. I'll never forget finding out that Atlus was releasing Thousand Arms instead... Sure, I had already played the game... But I still wanted Innocent Sin in English (my native language).
Eventually, they released Eternal Punishment in Japanese. I played it, but it didn't have the same charm as the first one. The main characters did not share a common bond, and I felt that it was just a rehash... It's a good game, but Innocent Sin was clearly the better half. I purchased the English version of Eternal Punishment out of blind fandom, but my heart still wasn't in it. I wanted Innocent Sin in English... I mainly wanted everyone else to share the joy. Most people didn't seem to know what they were missing. I wanted that to change.
Throughout the years, I worked on a few ROM translations here and there... My first translations were not very good. I tried too hard to rigidly repeat what was said in Japanese... That was a mistake. Some translators take the extreme opposite and try to forsake the original text completely to try and make something that sounds "cool" in English (and in the process completely disregard what the game originally said). I think both of these styles are inappropriate. I have taken the middle ground and have created a script that reads like natural spoken English while staying true to the meaning of the original lines.
I was lucky to meet up with Gemini, although I admit I can't remember exactly when we started working together. I punched out a few files, and Gemini enjoyed the style and gave me the okay to continue. It turned out that we had very similar ideas about the tone and style that should be present in the translation. I knew from the start that we'd make a good team.
I knew what I was getting into before I actually started working on Innocent Sin... I'd translated RPGs before, so I knew it'd be huge... Still, this is the biggest game that I've ever translated. The story, the rumors, and the enemy contacts were all massive projects. There was a pause in the translation when I was out of the country, but I sent Gemini the files I had done up until that point, and he knew that I was still devoted to the project. Once I returned home, I finished the translation as quickly as I could.
The beta testing and board fiascos were a mess... But here's the bottom line: It's done... And I think it's a game that you will want to play again and again. If you want to ask me any questions about the game, feel free... Be sure to drop me a message... But I will say up-front that I can't distribute the script for derived translations. (That'd be like making a copy of a copy...)
I really hope to bring you more translations of these long-lost games. Good things are definitely in store for you later. You'll have to stick around to find out what's next! I'm not saying anything... yet.
With any translation, you can't please everyone. In the following section, you can read about some of the controversial elements to this translation (in which I respond to a lot of comments that I've received over the message boards).
This is NOT based on the "Oracle of Maiya" text translation in any way.
They didn't want their script used in a hack, and it has not been. I have looked at parts of their translation because others had pointed it out to me, and it was obviously done with love... But it's incomplete and some of the choices were iffy. Don't get me wrong, though; five different translators will give you five different translations. The main point here is that my translation was done from scratch. Please don't look at this as their translation slapped into the game. It's not.
Yeah, you can't please everyone... Even though the translation is great (in my book), there are points which I should address when it comes to the terminology we've used, because I know that some people will disagree...
Everyone's got an opinion on this one...
The skill names were written on the tarot cards in the Japanese game (in English)... We have made those our standard rather than adopt the official US translations. These are the names that were chosen by the developers of the game. There's an old saying... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it..." There's nothing wrong with the names that the Japanese developers chose... We're sticking with the Japanese names for the characters as well.
...So, no Nate Nanjo?
That's right. We're not trying to conform to any of the official translations, so we don't have to stick with the English names for the characters either. We've got no reason to try to hide their true names. I know that a lot of you have played Persona 1 in English several times over. (So have I...) You'll get used to the Japanese names.
The biggest uproar when it comes to names has been over "Michelle..." Michelle's a girl's name! How can you give Eikichi a girl's name!? Well, it's somewhat common for Japanese guys to assume a feminine look while retaining their masculinity... Especially since Eikichi dreams of being a visual rock performer. (There's also a common style in Japan called gyaru-o, which is like saying gal-guy.) It has nothing to do with wanting to be a girl or a transvestite. It's just a style... It's a trendy way to look cool... And hey, Michelle's got the word "hell" in it this way! Rock on, Michelle!
No. Things like -san, -tan, -chan, -sama... will not appear. They are not English words, and this is an English translation. Some people wanted us to include these so that the text would "seem" more Japanese... I say, if you want it to seem like it's in Japanese, play the Japanese version to your heart's content... But this is an English translation. To leave these words in Japanese for the sake of immersiveness is about as appropriate as leaving in the Japanese sentence particles, and ending each question with "ka?"
Yes. The sushi chef says "'rasshai" when you enter. While that may seem like a double standard, they actually do this in sushi restaurants in America... So I'll chalk it up as being a borrowed word like dojo, karate or karaoke... Some names of places have been left in Japanese... Katatsumuri translates to snail, but we have left it as Mount Katatsumuri because it is a proper name.
From dictionary.com:
Definitions 1 and 2 don't apply here... Personas are masks, an assumed role... So they fit definition # 3, and the plural form for #3 is "personas," not "personae." To say "personae" instead of "personas" would be applying the wrong plural suffix. (And why would you want to use it, anyway? It sounds so stiff and scientific... Using "personae" is what happens when people try so hard to use proper grammar that they end up using the wrong grammar.)
The official translation of EP may have mentioned the "Oracle of Maia," but it also translated "foreign song" as "tongue of stranger." Again, we're not trying to be true to the official translations. (It's not Maia... Maia is Maya's Persona. Maiya is another planet where god-like aliens lived.) The Maiyans made an oracle. It's the Maiyan Oracle. Think of it this way... If you're talking about movies that were made in America, would you say "movies of America" or would you say "American movies?" I want the dialog to flow smoothly and naturally.
There's swearing in the game... For a game that deals with concepts as heavy as this one, you shouldn't mind. I personally hate swearing, but people do it... And people in this game do it. We're not trying to appease the ESRB with this translation. It's not very frequent, anyway.
In the Japanese version, the high-schoolers came up with a pun to insult Kasugayama High School... Kasu-kō. The pun doesn't translate well into English... I guess you could call it "Scum High," but it sounds like a seven year old came up with that (and it's not even a pun anymore). K'ass-u-gay-ama sounds like the kind of pun-insult that a teenager would make up to insult the name "Kasugayama."
It might seem insulting, but it's intended to be insulting... Besides, I doubt anyone who's a fan of this game is homophobic. I think that we're all mature enough to deal with (and certainly expect) immaturity from high school kids.
Captain? Of what, a football team? Or a ship? Eikichi's the leader of a gang... The delinquent students of Kasugayama High... "Banchō" doesn't mean "captain" in any sense of the word. He's a gang leader. He became the leader of his gang because he'd pull down people's pants and humiliate them by showing them in their underwear... The Japanese word "pantsu" is used to describe underwear (even though it sounds more like the English word "pants"). That's why I chose "Underpants." It seems silly, and that's what it was intended to be. Lisa was trying to make fun of him. Some of the lines in the game (specifically in the Zodiac) wouldn't make sense if this term hadn't been used.
This game is written using American English grammar... So, why is the punctuation done in the European fashion? Well, I would have preferred to write the translation using the American punctuation format, but Gemini is trying to make all of his projects use a standardized punctuation format... Tales of Phantasia used that style, and Innocent Sin will use it (as well as any other future projects).
There may be other nitpicks, but I haven't seen them myself. I've taken everything that everybody has said into consideration, and I think that this is probably going to be as good as it gets. There may still be typos in there somewhere, but I hope you'll agree that this is one of the best fan translations around!
If you've just finished playing the game, congratulations. I hope you enjoyed it.
Thanks to everybody who made this game a reality, especially everyone's favorite hacker - Gemini. There are many people who can translate, but there are not many people who have his hacking abilities.
Spread the word about Innocent Sin... And definitely tell us what you think! I'm open to any questions you might have (except perhaps the next project - you'll have to wait for that one)!
All bugs found during beta testing were completely fixed, although there may be some on emulators, but in that case it's not our fault. Blame the vely blokken emulators, not us or the translation. The patch was meant to run on real hardware. But if you find something that doesn't work quite right on your Playstation, please contact us!
These are a few of the most frequently asked questions about the project. Some of them are already answered somewhere else in the readme, but they are here anyway for quick reference.
Project blog news: http://tsumi.wordpress.com
Project page: http://www.crosser.altervista.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=80
If you have any reports for bugs, crashes, or typos with the translation, contact us on our board or send an email to: geminimewtwo@gmail.com.
If you would like to contact Tom, send an email to: translatortom@hotmail.com.