[goldenband]

Auryn, the English/Latin font looks like a match for the "PUSH START BUTTON" font from the title screen.

bLind, do you have any Japanese-language skills?  This definitely looks like to be an advanced project, and I think this is way too tough for your first ROM hack -- it'd certainly be far beyond me -- but if you wanted to help keep the ball rolling, you could try to chip away at translating the game's script, or even just transcribing it (if you can handle hiragana).  I used Nciku to identify the two kanji in the excerpt I posted, cross-referencing with Wiktionary so that I could copy the character from the Japanese fontbase (I don't know how Unicode manages it, but I figured it'd be safer that way).

RedComet, is there anything else in your preliminary notes that might be useful?

EDIT: Looks like there's a webpage here with some item names and so forth.

There might be something useful here, since this site appears to have at least some of the game's script,  That's where I ended up when I Googled one of the lines of dialogue I transcribed:

この辺りの奴らはみんな信長の手先じゃ.

Which is spoken by the guy in the fourth (?) building in the first town, and which Google Translate renders as "Well, guys in this area [are] all minions of Nobunaga."

The site also appears to have most or all of the text from the opening splash screens.  Could be a gold mine for someone attempting a translation.

[bLind]

I see progress (not from me ) !
I read that IDA Pro could help disassamble sega roms !

bLind, do you have any Japanese-language skills?  This definitely looks like to be an advanced project, and I think this is way too tough for your first ROM hack -- it'd certainly be far beyond me -- but if you wanted to help keep the ball rolling, you could try to chip away at translating the game's script, or even just transcribing it (if you can handle hiragana).

It's hard for me to handle hacking this rom tho' when I played (hacked) with a NES rom, it looks like a piece of cake !
Well I can handle hiragana ! What I don't like in the Japanese language is that it doesn't have space between words, they just come in a long continuous string of chars, and another thing is that Japanese is too ambiguous ! But with some dictionary's help I can handle translating (but it will take some time to do it) !

[LostTemplar]

Well, usually Japanese uses Kanji as some sort of delimiter between words/particles. In texts with few to no kanji they often do use spaces. But anyway, it's just practice :)

[bLind]

Damn it ! Most programs that I downloaded like asm68k, nemesis searcher, and others, just don't work on my PC, they just open command prompt for some fractions of a second and nothing happens !

[Auryn]

well, if this are your problems, then this project is sure not for you!
http://bit.ly/HkL3jK
http://bit.ly/HkLjzh

I am sorry but I am out of here, I don't have time for babysitting.

[bLind]

^LoL^

[goldenband]

bLind, I don't think you have the technical knowledge to hack this ROM, but maybe it'd be helpful if you could put together a well-organized document with all the Japanese-language text you can find in the game.  It won't be the same as a script dump directly from the ROM, but it's a place to start.

You can use the websites I linked earlier, which have item lists & some of the text, and also use nciku.com to draw kanji (it's a Chinese website, but worked for almost all the kanji I tried).

It'd just be a pity to lose the (tiny) bit of momentum we've gotten, since this seems like a nifty game well worth translating.

[bLind]

^ I said form the start that I don't have any hacking "skills", and this is in the newcomers board, isn't it !? And learning programing languages now... well... now I can't ! Tho' I understand what he meant, and apreciate what he's done... I don't like Auryn's attitude, it's not like anyone forced him do to anything !

[goldenband]

bLind, the thing is, there are a lot of people who come through a site like this, say "I want to hack a ROM!", but who don't have technical skills, foreign language skills, or the willingness to work hard and figure stuff out for themselves.  If you have at least one of those three things, then people are usually supportive, but otherwise it ends up being "Hack this ROM for me!"

Not knowing how to use a program that runs in DOS is a little like applying for a job as a mechanic, and then asking "What's a carburetor?"  It's a very basic task.  It's OK not to know that -- we all have to learn sometime -- but if you're giving up in frustration so quickly and saying "It doesn't work on my PC", then it suggests that you're not really willing to put the hard work in to learn.  And it's usually a waste of time to help someone if they're not willing to work hard.

Anyway, I'll reiterate what I said before: if you want to see this game translated, then you can start by transcribing as much of the Japanese-language script as possible into a document.  I've been plugging phrases into Google Translate, and while it's no translation, at least now I know what the basic plot of the game is, and what the items are.  Don't try to "hack" the game;  it's too hard for you, and too hard for me.

Or, if you really want to get experience hacking a ROM, then you could try a simpler system like the NES or SG-1000.  I've translated two SG-1000 games (one well and one poorly), and it's much, much easier than this stuff.

[bLind]

Have you translated some of the games writings ? Do you have them in a .txt file or something ? Or you just used them as you said just for information about the game's subject ? I never said I'm giving up !
I'm having a hard time with the kanji's, because of the small size I can't identify the strokes (I'm gonna try the pages you recommended)... ow... and if some of them are names, I can't figure them out (the names, like Nobunaga's name I would have translated it as it's meaning not as a name... LoL ) !

[Auryn]

Thanks Goldenband for understanding me.

@bLind: my attitude is not to be an asshole or such but hacking requires a lot of time and the desire to inspect all aspects of a game. When you said the program just open and close, it made me see that you don't have this desire.
I can accept that you are new to this, that you don't know about your window being based on dos because you are too young but if you had that desire I was talking about before, you had at least tried to ask google "why does a program open and close in window?" or "command prompt in window". With the first one, about the 4rd answer is the answer you needed; with the second one it's the first answer. The lazy way would have been to ask in the forum: "why does the command prompt window open/close immediately??" (this probably would had created the same reaction by me because it shows you don't have that desire again).
Even if this is not my project, I spend more or less 2-3 hours trying the different compression the program i used in different points of the rom. In some cases the decompression was successful but nothing useful showed up.
The point is: why do I have to spend time trying to help you solve your problems if you are not ready to do the same??
Last but not least, if you really want to learn, the best way is to learn by yourself

[EarlJ]

For what it's worth, I've been around the community more or less as a lurker for over a decade, and that's about the gentlest I've ever seen that put.

As goldenband was saying, whatever you can make progress on, do that. Banging your head against a wall on stuff you can't get anywhere with is just going to cause frustration with nothing to show for it. At the very least, having a document with some translated bits in it will make playing through the game a little less obnoxious for you.

[goldenband]

Thanks for your posts, Auryn and EarlJ.

@bLind: Here's what I have in my notes.  All translations are from Google Translate, and should be taken with a big grain of salt.

The headings at the top of the screen:

left side - 銭 - money
right side - 体力 - stamina

In the first town:

Shop #1: いらっしゃいませ. 何かお求めになりますか?  (May I help you? Would you like to purchase something?)

If you choose no (いいえ):

ありがとうございました! (Thank you!)

If you choose yes (はい), then the shopkeeper asks 何かお求めになりますか? again, and your options are:

火 の 槍 - spear of fire
狼風の弓 - wind bow of wolf
昇龍剣 - rising dragon sword?
鎖帷子 - something else, not sure what

I didn't try to work it all out, but here are some "can't buy this" responses I got at various times:

お金が足りませんよ! - I don't have enough money!
あなたには装備できませんのでお売りできません. - not sure, something about selling equipment
もうお持ちになっ ていますよ! - something about having more?

I didn't check the shop in the third house carefully, but if you don't buy anything, the guy says:

またご利用下さい. (Is this "please come again"?)

The last house in the first town says:

この辺りの奴らはみんな信長の手先じゃ. - Well, guys in this area are all minions of Nobunaga.

Finally, as you're leaving town, the sign overhead says:

出口 - Exit

Meanwhile, there's all the text from the introduction, which is linked at the website I posted earlier.  I might edit my post to add those in a bit...

------

OK, here's the full introduction to the game, as gleaned from a combination of the two websites I posted earlier.  Again, all translations are very crude renditions from Google Translate, and await a qualified translator.



時は戦国、権力者信長は重税と戦乱で民衆を苦しめていた。

(When Sengoku, Nobunaga those in power had suffered heavy taxes and the people in the war.)



ある日、羽尾の国の海岸に１隻の難破した南蛮船が漂着した。
その船の中に負傷した乗組員ジョンと３歳の男の子が生き残っていた。

(One day, barbarian ship was wrecked vessels on the coast of a country of Hao has been shipwrecked.
3-year-old boy John and crew were injured in the ship that it had survived.)



忍者 「影刃」 は2人を助けたが、
ジョンは「信長におそわれた。」
と言い残し死んだ。

("Ha" shadow ninja, but to help two people, John "was attacked by Nobunaga". Leaving those words and dead.)



それから１２年、影刃は子供を忍者「武雷」として育てた。

(12 years since it was brought up as a shadow blade "Takeshi thunder" Ninja children.)



影刃は年をとり、死を悟り武雷を呼んで言った。
「武雷よ、民を苦しめている信長を倒してくれ。」
「そのために協力してくれる３人の若者を集めた。」

(Shadow blade takes a year, he called the Lightning Takeshi death enlightenment.
"I thunder Takeshi, Nobunaga defeated me that afflicts the people."
"A collection of three young men who work together to that")



紹介しよう。
槍の達人　権平
弓の達人　玄番
武者　右近
みんなで力をあわせ「風の軍団」となり信長を倒すのだ。

(Trying to introduce.
Master of the spear right flat
Master of the bow Gen No.
Ukon warrior
Nobunaga next, defeat the "corps of the Wind" combined force with everyone.)



第一章　羽尾の国

(Hao country of the first chapter)



この国の人々は信長の手先に苦しめられています。

(The people of this country have been plagued by Nobunaga's minions.)



クリア条件
敵を全員倒して下さい。

(Clear conditions
Please defeat all the enemy.)

[RedComet]

@bLind: Trust me. This is one of those games that's gonna require a fair amount of assembly work to give it anything even remotely resembling a quality translation, which means having a skilled translator not a kid with a dictionary. No offense.

[Auryn]

Apart that google translate sucks with translations especially with asian languages and especially the longer the phrase is, the more it sucks.
Anyway, if you really have to use it, here 2 tips:
-go to a new line everytime you have an empty space in a frase.
-try delete characters one by one from the left (and check each new translation) and in a second pass from the right. Like this some keywords will probably pop up that let you then translate the phrase more correctly.

[goldenband]

Just to be clear, my posts above aren't intended as any kind of prospective translation, and I put no significant effort into "tweaking" the Google Translate results (Auryn gives good advice on how one might do this).

Like I said, these were just taken from my own notes, and the point was just (a) to get a rough translation for playing purposes (since I own the game!) and (b) to document a small chunk of the script, and prove to myself that I could clean up the transcriptions on the websites I mentioned (mainly restoring missing kanji).  My Japanese-language skills are minimal, though I can follow some of the semantic/grammatical structures -- especially when they start using a lot of のs! 

Using Google Translate to prepare a script for this game would be a travesty, though actually I'm not sure that it's all that text-heavy once you get the basics down.

[bLind]

Come on dudes, stop it... with the "unhelping" comments !
It's a fact that I don't have the knowledge, and it's a deduction that I won't be the one hacking this rom ! And I'm not a kid !
golden was just answering my questions, It's not like he submited that as an "official" translation !
PS: I think the Nobunaga from the last 2 images it's the one from the 1980 japanese movie "Kagemusha" !

[RedComet]

Come on dudes, stop it... with the "unhelping" comments !
It's a fact that I don't have the knowledge, and it's a deduction that I won't be the one hacking this rom !

Then you've come to the wrong place. No offense.

[bLind]

^And you're orbiting the wrong topic !

[KingMike]

It sounds like he's just telling you this game is not a good choice for a beginner to try hacking.
Sorry, but some games are just harder to hack (and requiring more experience) than others.

But if you have no desire to do any hacking OR translation yourself (is that correct?), then I think this topic should be closed.