1

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Hack ideas: for those without the skill but with all the ideas.

« on: March 27, 2020, 08:53:53 pm »

Idea: Take this romhack http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4474/ and add the music from the original prototype game (with the John Williams theme), maybe program other music from the movies, such as you find in the Superman Taito arcade.

2

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Hack ideas: for those without the skill but with all the ideas.

« on: June 07, 2018, 07:51:11 pm »

A 60hz NTSC hack of Flink (Genesis) that keeps the game speed and sound pitch (it runs too fast on NTSC and is harder).

A hack of Ninja Gaiden Trilogy to change the button layout (so that Y and B are attack and jump, instead of B and A).

3

News Submissions / Re: Translations: The Legend of Fuma arises... again!

« on: March 14, 2018, 05:40:18 am »

Too bad it doesn't run on Nestopia. Does it run on an everdrive? I assume the nestopia problem is some special chip issue, needs an entry in NstDatabase.xml. Only a blank screen comes up when trying to use the same entry for the original unpatched. Anyone know what the parameters for this ROM are, or better yet a custom NstDatabase.xml entry?

4

News Submissions / Re: ROM Hacks: Stand Guard 6.2 Released

« on: September 28, 2017, 11:26:40 am »

Does this apply on a previous rom hack or something. It doesn't work only any NOINTRO rom, or with headers added, and the checksums posted don't match. Applied anyway, it just starts with a blank screen and music. It's probably better to make the patch for a clean unheadered rom.

5

News Submissions / Re: Translations: New Translations Added to the Database

« on: May 30, 2017, 07:09:43 pm »

Nice Spanish translations, just too bad they don't have accented letters.

6

Gaming Discussion / Re: Am I alone on Breath of the Wild?

« on: May 17, 2017, 06:42:22 am »

Nintendo should quit hardware sales, or maybe stick with updating their traditional handhelds.

7

Gaming Discussion / Re: Am I alone on Breath of the Wild?

« on: May 17, 2017, 12:48:28 am »

The Switch is basically a mid-range nvidia tablet. That's why it happens.

8

Gaming Discussion / Re: Am I alone on Breath of the Wild?

« on: May 16, 2017, 02:14:22 pm »

Outside of loyal fanboys, it seems to be the consensus that the game is lukewarm, at best, and the switch is a dumpster fire.

I tried it at a friend of a friend's house.

Things I liked:
- The game design philosophy of being a huge open world. The illusion that it's a sprawling landscape full of secrets. As if it's the more realistic version of the compellingly contrived secrets in the classic Zelda games.

Things I disliked:
- Link's design does not interest me. Too generic blonde compared to the designs of the past. Seems like an un-ironic Finn from Adventure Time to me. Or just run of the mill aryan worship from nihon. (Fine when new, but now beyond played out)

- The portable vs docked mode of the game is shitty. 30 fps portable with gimped graphics, while average fps in the 20s when docked. And this is probably what takes people out of the game and its huge design philosophy. I've heard the N fanboys repeat the "not about graphics" mantra, but the problem here is that smooth graphics are required to not get in the way of the huge world illusion; that's my theory anyway.

On top of that, I've heard the stories of Switch hardware failures and nobody seems impressed by that. I will have to admit, as an anti-nintendo person, I am enjoying this 2nd failure in a row by that arrogant toy company. Maybe their theme parks will work out.

9

News Submissions / Re: Other: Castlevania 30th anniversary

« on: May 16, 2017, 07:24:41 am »

You need windows for this? wuuuut.

10

Gaming Discussion / Re: CRT gaming thread

« on: February 08, 2017, 07:17:33 am »

I run emulators on CRTs through s-video, if that counts. This is how I've tested emulation vs real consoles, to compare aspect ratio, colors, scanlines, etc.

Yeah, CRTs are better for old games, I am certain. Either they are objectively better because that's what the games were designed for, or it's the nostalgia of it.Either way counts.  (or both?)

Also, CRTs don't have the input lag problem of modern screens. There are some newer flat screens that supposedly help in that, but I haven't seen any tests done on that yet. Nor do I know if that's relevant with emulation.

11

Gaming Discussion / Re: People are "no longer interested" in snes translations

« on: February 03, 2017, 09:54:48 pm »

I should have made it more clear. By "glorified" or "cool" I was trying to mean the gamers who play competitively, get plenty of money and make a living out of it. Not just some random basement dweller who plays games. Hence why I cited S.Korea, since a lot of pros are from there.

I know what you meant, but I hold by what I said. There are 'pro gamers' in the US and Germany, too, but gaming is still overall seen like a banality, maybe slightly above going to the movies or watching tv, at this point. Maybe. But maybe not. An infinitesimally small amount of people are "pro gamers". I'd say the wave gamers have been riding much more is the rise of "nerdism", where some ethereal notion of "nerd" conflating gaming, anime, and other hobbies like that, with intelligence. Few people are even aware or even care that there are "pro gamers" or game competitions for money. Even I tried watching a dota 2 competition and got bored. I listen to a few game related podcasts and youtube channels and not a single one has raved about spectator gaming. The advocates of spectator gaming do often say that the audience has gotten bigger than the sports audience, but the thing is that it's not really true in global standards. What size is the (association) football (soccer) audience? Sports watching in the US is plummeting and it's easy to overtake it at this point, especially when compared to a global audience.



Where are the shades and power glove? Not cool at all.

Only those residing in the contiguous United States in 1988 through 1990, of an age range to comprehend it, can truly grasp the magic nes brought to a generation.

From one point of view, yes. I agree that in the gaming world, the nes was a turning point. This is why there is a big audience for it. So, the point is that we can only assume the snes could be just as popular, if not more, which refutes the OP quote. But my main point before that was that outside of gamers, video gaming was still only seen as playing with toys, and sometimes even aggressively opposed in various ways. I hear about all these 8-bit and 16-bit era kids having dads, and sometimes even moms, buying and playing nes games along with them. That amazed me and I would have loved if that was my experience, but those are only a bubble. Most parents wished kids stopped playing their nintendo tapes so much, because it was worse than watching tv all day, for some reason. Some parents, like mine, made no qualms about it. My dad was kind of snarky about it and didn't think it was serious or good for anything, and my mom was downright naggy about getting me to quit.

And I very distinctly remember a joke in middle school, where one nerdy kid got asked what his favorite sport was; he hesitated for a moment and some other smartass kid asked "nintendo?", and then everyone laughed. Well, it was kind of funny. And, no, I wasn't the kid. It was some kid named Greg.

And then high school. Oh boy. It was a mortal sin to talk about video games.

12

Gaming Discussion / Re: People are "no longer interested" in snes translations

« on: February 03, 2017, 07:06:45 pm »

And look at video games now. It has become serious business and as mainstream as it can get. Any average joe plays them. "Gamer culture" is mostly glorified and even seen as something cool,

Eh. I wouldn't go that far. It's glorified by itself but that's about it, imo. I would say it's more precise to say the gamer population has reached critical mass and it can't be so easily belittled anymore. I haven't been in a high school in a long time, so I might be wrong, but I seriously doubt the gamer nerds in HS are getting with the cheerleaders. I'm pretty sure the star athletes are still the ones getting glorified. Gaming is more seen like an everyday, banal thing these days.

especially in places like South Korea. Little do they know how things were back in the day.

I would say again this is not exactly true. I think that if you're a "pro gamer" you'd get some admiration, for obvious reasons. If you're just some random gamer at an internet cafe, your parents will still be telling you to stop being a layabout and wasting your life.

I do know that in Japan, games are still seen as childish and an avid adult male gamer is "otaku" (which is not a word that has been "taken back" like "nerd" in the west). Online gaming is almost non-existent in Japan, in the form that it exists elsewhere.

And you're right. Brazil had plenty of this whole "culture of honor" as well, so gaming was seen as something childish. Whether it was the Master System or SNES or whatever else.

Pretty much the entirety of Latin America, with few exceptions, such as Mexico City. There's a lot of it in the US as well, around half the people are wired that way, the south, the southwest. There's an interesting Norwegian documentary that touches on it called Hjernevask, episode 4.

13

Personal Projects / Re: Un-Worked Designs: Working Designs minus bullshit difficulty (Latest: Exile II)

« on: February 03, 2017, 03:44:34 pm »

Yet for some reason, Nintendo of Europe, Atlus, P-Cube and Level-5 still manage to have their translations very close to the original meaning without conflicting with it, replacing it with subpar writing, or making stuff up against the intentions of the original writers.

This seems like a mix of speculation, subjective opinion and some truth. But the point is that the difficulty of making something good out of a localization, while still staying "accurate", is going to vary greatly depending on the content.

People make a big deal out of Breath of Fire 2 as an example of fixing a localization, but I've heard of plenty of people that don't like the re-working. You can't please everyone. On top of that Bof2 is not even an example of "changing stuff around", just poor writing.

I don't know much about everything WD localized, so I won't comment on that, but I've yet to see something they did which I hated. Even Parasol Stars on TG16 was great. But the example I would go back to is Popful Mail on Sega CD, since it was in the OP. It's a goofy game no matter how you sllice it. Just look at it. Never mind any of the dialogue. I try to imagine a more "accurate" localization and it seems worse than what was done. I imagine the "accurate" version as literally a story for small children, but too corny for anyone else, except characters are wearing typical anime fantasy battle lingerie, for some reason. And if you'd argue you know better, that's an impossible claim to prove.

The bigger point is that you can't please everyone, and you will usually fail when you try.
February 03, 2017, 04:02:54 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

I'd imagine that was abusable. From what I had read of stores' return policies on receipts as a kid (yes, I was a bored kid) certain items such as games were only returnable if defective, and then only for replacement.
Return a used game as "defective" to get a new copy and then return the new copy.
Although I'm sure stores have gotten wise to that, such as I think Target does track returns.

From what I can tell, it varied a lot from store to store. I remember some place called Kay-B Toys around here, which is the first store I remember selling games like hot cakes. They took returns of opened games only for a few days. That name is relevant because that's how vgames were sold in those days. They were toys for kids, as far as commerce was concerned. Kids are not savvy by default, and the amount of adults trying to scam stores was not bad enough to affect them, I guess.

Later, I also heard stories from friends of games being returned to Toys-R-Us. But, yes, abuse of returns is probably what transitioned store policies to be more strict with game sales, to the point where they only took back unopened games, or opened games only on the day of purchase after some haggling by an adult with the clerk.

I never returned a game to a store as a kid. I would have been too embarrassed. And neither of my parents would have humored a request that they return a game for me that I didn't like. I think I only ever returned one game rental, because it was the wrong game. So, speaking of game rentals, that was the real threat, since stores nipped the return gimmick in the bud pretty quickly.

14

Gaming Discussion / Re: People are "no longer interested" in snes translations

« on: February 03, 2017, 03:09:27 pm »

That probably depends on where you're from.
It was pretty even split between the Genesis and SNES in America (well, I know in sales Genesis was a bit higher, but SNES was hardly a "niche" console.)
Now if you were playing TurboGrafx or Master System, then yes.

It depends where you are from, mostly in the sense that different places have different cultural priorities. I don't mean it was niche among video games. What I meant is that video gaming, itself, as an identity or hobby was a niche. It was notch above tabletop games, if that, at least compared to today. And that seemed especially true among places with a "culture of honor". Where I grew up, young men only mattered if they played football or engaged in other activities meant to train their future prospects as a protector and provider to someone. Although, in truth, not even the heart of Japan ever celebrated young men playing video games. That was an old narrative that only in recent years I realized was a myth. Despite what Nintendo Power tried to push, video games were historically seen as toys for children, and anyone else engaging in it, to any significant degree, was stepping out of the norm and was widely seen as the comic book guy from The Simpsons, at least after the initial fad of the late 70s and early 80s wore off.

The region I know less about gaming history is Europe, but I know that while the US was playing and forgetting about the Atari 2600, the UK was doing the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. And other regions seem to have followed their own little parallels with different consoles, such as Brazil with the Master System. But by the time the SNES rolled around, it seems like things became pretty uniform, anywhere there was fandom: It was kids stuff. I doubt hardcore gamers of the ZX, C64 and Brazilian SMS were ever presumed to be anything but kids, like the SNES gamers were.

15

Gaming Discussion / Re: Are some PCE-CD rips broken or are the original releases poorly tested?

« on: February 03, 2017, 07:02:29 am »

"(so that ebay sellers get your money and the developers not a red cent)"

What possible claim do the developers have to any money exchanged for those games? If they wanted some they would still sell copies, or invest in the platforms that do.

Yeah, you're right. People that insist on buying "real games" on ebay to support developers are morons. That's me for buying some disc on ebay (which might be a real-looking pirate copy and I would never know). And ebay is the only place to get them since at least one of these publishers doesn't exist anymore and it seems nobody knows who even owns the rights to the IP. And AFAIK there is no virtual console version anywhere.

But I digress. I found a 'better place to rip the game' so that's done.
February 03, 2017, 07:04:43 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

I also can't understand who you are blaming exactly,

try some japanese importer instead.

Link one. (this should be good)

16

Gaming Discussion / Re: People are "no longer interested" in snes translations

« on: February 02, 2017, 06:28:18 pm »

Someone mentioned that snes was always niche. This is true. In it's height, if you were into snes you were an uncool dork and not something you were encouraged to be proud of.

But I just want to make one point with a rhetorical question and answer. Is the nes older than snes? Is the nes still popular as a phenomenon? Did the NES Classic Edition sell out or not?

17

Gaming Discussion / Are some PCE-CD rips broken or are the original releases poorly tested?

« on: February 02, 2017, 06:05:16 pm »

So, for those of you 'ripping' your $300 ebay CDs (so that ebay sellers get your money and the developers not a red cent), do you find that a lot of these rips come out with audio tracks out of sync with the game? I found two in particular that are horribly bad: Mugen Senshi Valis and Xak III. In many cutscenes with speech, the audio is a couple of seconds late, which looks really bad, like a bad kung fu movie but worse, since it's not even in English. It bothers me so much that I am going to attempt to try to resync these tracks manually, to look as correctly as I can (but that's hardly a hacking job so I didn't post it in that section).

18

News Submissions / Re: Translations: 3x3 Eyes: Juuma Houkan English translation

« on: February 02, 2017, 03:28:45 am »

Looks like a fine game, at least very nice looking. I'll have to wait and see, but if someone says they 'beat it in 3 hrs' and used cheats, they didn't really beat it, did they?

I was a fan of the series, so I remember trying a rom of this in the early days of emulation and getting lost. Still looks great but it does seem a little cumbersome to play.

19

Personal Projects / Re: Un-Worked Designs: Working Designs minus bullshit difficulty (Latest: Exile II)

« on: February 02, 2017, 01:37:04 am »

In any case, they kept doing the difficulty changes very consistently, for many years, for games licensed from many different publishers, so I doubt it was just due to their hands being contractually tied.

I doubt it was some kind of contract, but more like implicit nods. You tend to go in the direction that your employer suggests you go. Also, different publishers doesn't necessarily make a difference. I'm sure some didn't care, but the overall business trategy from Japan game companies was to disturb game rentals. It tended to not apply to sprawling RPGs and adventure games that could not be beat in a day, but only to things like Popful Mail. Although I wouldn't say that it was just western publishers being told what to do. They probably also tended to agree with the strategy for the same reasons. Look at the western games on SNES. Just as many were hard as hell to the point of not fun, such as B.O.B. No Japanese company told EA to make it that way. So, I guess another way to look at is that game rentals were seen as a threat as a whole.

As far as returning games to the store, where I was from that wasn't even allowed stating from the late 8-bit era. They gave you store credit up to a couple of days after buying it, at best. After that, the game was yours forever.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that translates as:

The "joke" is that Ruby loves fish, see? Not very funny, I'll grant you (though it does help set up a much later scene). Here's what the line becomes in the US version:

Now, I don't know more than the absolute rudiments of Japanese, but I can certainly tell you that there's no secret hidden cultural reference in the original text that the US version is trying to convey the spirit of here. The new joke is just there to "make it funnier". Depending on your sense of humor, maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but that's not the point. Regardless of whether it's "better" or not, it simply doesn't match the original dialogue by any stretch of the imagination, and I can tell you from having looked that the majority of the jokes in the US version are "made up" in this fashion.

Yes, the jokes are made up, but as you said, the original jokes are not funny (unless maybe you know the cultural references, if that applies).

I am bilingual and have had many arguments about this particular topic, about language authenticity in translations. In my view, it's impossible to translate the intent of certain things with precision, and humor is probably the worst offender. So, if it can't be done, might as well "make stuff up". I don't mind if that's done when it doesn't affect the plot and is really only minor details, as in who ate what where. Now, if they had done a total parody in, for example, Popful Mail, where she is a feminist on the hunt for male chauvinists, or something, that would be problematic. But the intent of the story in all these WD games (AFAIK) remained intact.

I would argue that if someone seeks the purest form of a foreign language media, they need to learn the foreign language and the culture for any hope of an authentic experience. Anything else will be sub par, so might as well go for the less worse. I'm not saying it's not possible to balance things out better than what has been made, either. I'm just saying it can be just as bad when going to much in the other extreme, of being "accurate" (emphasis on quotes).

20

Personal Projects / Re: Un-Worked Designs: Working Designs minus bullshit difficulty (Latest: Exile II)

« on: February 01, 2017, 11:11:00 am »

Sounds like a good project, but it's not accurate to pin this on Working Designs. It's highly unlikely that Working Designs just arbitrarily pulled out difficulty edits out of their ass. If you know about that part of gaming history, very often the Japanese licensers compelled the localizations for the US (and perhaps even Europe) to ramp up the difficulty as a strike against rentals. The Japanese game industry lobbyists failed to ban game rentals in the US as they did in Japan, so the difficulty screwups were an attempt to combat game rentals. Sega was particularly bad in this respect (just look at what they did to Streets of Rage 3), but not the only one. Look it up if you don't believe me.

As far as the goofy dialogue, I think it's an improvement as an English localization. If you think the original games contain no goofy humor or pop culture references, you are not very informed. But it's not funny at all if you don't get the humor or references, so might as well change things. Re-translations can go too far the other way with literal translations that make no sense, or just pretentious BS like calling General Leo "Shogun Leo", as in the patch of FFVI I slammed. Also, the difficulty in these Working Designs games was high but not unplayable. NES games were tougher. You might argue the Japanese originals were too easy, but they had more money to burn on a ton of games at the time, or more willing to, similar to how today's games are easy to the point where they have a tutorial to teach you how to move.

But as I said, these patches are still a worthy project for those interested.