Chrono Trigger Retranslation: kWhazit's Final Cut

[Zeality]

I'll definitely chime in too that the "literalness" of KWhazit's initial run-through was very much desired; it was a feature, not a bug. Ted Woolsey had a couple missteps due to his crazy schedule that greatly affected some interpretations of the plot, like Janus and Schala being step-siblings. We were able to wring all the changes out in this article: https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Translation_Differences.html (though in some places, the original Japanese makes less sense than what Woolsey was able to spin up)

Whether that kind of translation is enjoyable to play is definitely up for debate, but yeah, we were happy to have a total start-to-finish dissection of the original script.

[wakkoswami]

Don't forget to fix the jury.  There's a bugged one in Crono's trial which is easy to fix.

The bugged guilty juror is caused by talking to the girl at the fair before bringing her cat back, so would deleting this line fix it?

[ThegreatBen]

I forget how it was fixed on Chrono Trigger Plus, but it involved moving a line further up not deleting it. You can just check it there if you want.

[TheChristoph]

I think that's trying to read a bit too much into it, personally. the original localization didn't want to bother to normalize language in the period, even though they should have. If you are a weird Frog that speaks Sheakspere-esque, you aren't going to blend in, it's just going to make you stand out more and be ridiculed, if you ask me. Kind of the same effect of meeting an overly serious cosplayer somewhere in a totally out of context situation in the middle of the street. That kind of ridicule.

Chrono Trigger+ by TheGreatBen has the right approach, and normalizes 600 AD to Frog's speech pattern.

Oh, it's *definitely* reading more into it than is there. But I kind of enjoy letting my imagination work out a detail from a character's perspective rather than a writer's perspective. I just find it fun and generally more positive. Frog's going to stand out anyway, why not be extra polite to make people think you're civilized and intelligent rather than a savage monster?

I did play CT+ a couple years ago, but I don't remember how it was handled there. I should give it another spin.

Both are silly? sure, I guess I can agree, but silly with a reason is better than silly without; it is about patterning. The food puns are a little inside joke as a homage to the creator of the artwork of the game, Akira Toriyama. Dragon Ball and many of his works are rife with such puns. An inside joke involving... I think it's Guns n' Roses? I don't really care for most kinds of music, and considering said band had zero involvement with the game (I'm thankful for that), the joke has very little appeal. It's not like a band is more universal than food condiments.

I'm biased; I liked the rock star names as a teenager, I was into that kind of music, and I thought calling them "Tone-deaf, evil fiends" was hilarious. My personal problem with the food puns is that they only work if you know about Akira Toriyama. If you don't know him, then you wonder why on earth there's a villain named Vinegar. Without context it seems random for the sake of random. If you don't know about rock stars, Slash is a guy with a sword, which makes sense. Ozzie is a funny name for a funny guy, and Flea...well, you got me there. There's nothing Flea-like about that character.

The rock star thing just seems more "readable from a distance" to use a metaphor. Do we agree that both versions are better than Larry, Curly, and Moe from Final Fantasy 6?

(Ozzie, Flea, and Slash are unassociated rock stars. Slash is the guitar player from Guns N Roses. Ozzie is Ozzy Osbourne, a singer. Flea plays the bass for Red Hot Chili Peppers. It occurs to me that they need a drummer. Maybe Magus should have been named Lars or Bonham...just kidding)

[Red Soul]

Oh, it's *definitely* reading more into it than is there. But I kind of enjoy letting my imagination work out a detail from a character's perspective rather than a writer's perspective. I just find it fun and generally more positive. Frog's going to stand out anyway, why not be extra polite to make people think you're civilized and intelligent rather than a savage monster?

I did play CT+ a couple years ago, but I don't remember how it was handled there. I should give it another spin.

You aren't wrong ^.^ but I guess I'm highly pragmatic when it comes to such things - to me there needs to be proper consistency when a script approach is chosen, and in the vanilla game it is not consistent. I like Frog's exaggerated speech, actually, but it feels incredibly silly and tone deaf to me when the rest of the populous is just "eh, whatever, frog dude".

I'm biased; I liked the rock star names as a teenager, I was into that kind of music, and I thought calling them "Tone-deaf, evil fiends" was hilarious. My personal problem with the food puns is that they only work if you know about Akira Toriyama. If you don't know him, then you wonder why on earth there's a villain named Vinegar. Without context it seems random for the sake of random. If you don't know about rock stars, Slash is a guy with a sword, which makes sense. Ozzie is a funny name for a funny guy, and Flea...well, you got me there. There's nothing Flea-like about that character.

I'm biased too, but in the opposite direction. I don't care for rock and bands, it it just doesn't work for me. As for not knowing Toriyama or not, one might not, at first, but again, the guy is all over the place in CT, you are literally looking at his work just by playing the game; the player is bound to find out more naturally.

(Ozzie, Flea, and Slash are unassociated rock stars. Slash is the guitar player from Guns N Roses. Ozzie is Ozzy Osbourne, a singer. Flea plays the bass for Red Hot Chili Peppers. It occurs to me that they need a drummer. Maybe Magus should have been named Lars or Bonham...just kidding)

See, that's some cool trivia and I had absolutely zero idea they weren't related directly. Again, Mega Man X5 rubbed me the wrong way massively with the rock puns (so much so the person responsible would, many years later, apologize for it) and Capcom actually retracted them in more recent iterations of X5, but ironically, as much as I dislike said puns, they make a lot more sense in the X series than CT, IMO, given the heavy rock influenced soundtracks.

[wakkoswami]

The update has finally been released, check the first post.

Probably 90% done at this point. 12000 BC, lavos fight dialog and some of the alternate endings are all that remain. 

[joje]

The update has finally been released, check the first post.

Probably 90% done at this point. 12000 BC, lavos fight dialog and some of the alternate endings are all that remain. 

 

[Heaven Piercing Man]

I have to be honest that the Masamune is my biggest gripe with CT.

I'm biased; I liked the rock star names as a teenager, I was into that kind of music, and I thought calling them "Tone-deaf, evil fiends" was hilarious. My personal problem with the food puns is that they only work if you know about Akira Toriyama. If you don't know him, then you wonder why on earth there's a villain named Vinegar. Without context it seems random for the sake of random.

Luckily, we're not sending these hacks back to the 90s. In TYOOL 2023, everyone knows about Akira Toriyama! It's a win-win scenario

The rock star thing just seems more "readable from a distance" to use a metaphor. Do we agree that both versions are better than Larry, Curly, and Moe from Final Fantasy 6?

FF6 is TW's magnum opus of tone-deafness.

[chronosomber23]

Love it so far! Any plan on finishing it? @wakkoswami

[wakkoswami]

Love it so far! Any plan on finishing it? @wakkoswami

Glad you like it! I'll definitely be finishing it as soon as the motivation to work on it hits me again. There's not much left to do, but the parts that are left are some of the most text-heavy areas in the game so I'm not exactly looking forward to it. I'll try to get a 1.0 out by the end of the year at the very least.

[chronosomber23]

Glad to hear it! Take your time, I'll appreciate your work

[wakkoswami]

The deed is finally done

Inserted all the text and did a final pass as well. All that remains is the playtesting to pick up whatever little issues that may remain. If you have any interest in this, go ahead and check out the first post to download and play it so the official 1.0 release can be the best that it can be. I'm going to leave this up at v0.99 for a while so as many people have a chance to test it as possible.

So, as I say under the download link, "Post anything that seems out of place, down to commas or minor grammatical errors if you happen to see any. Or anything you just don't like, let me hear about it. I'm aware that some of the timed dialog goes by a bit too fast so no need to report that, I'll adjust it as I play through."

Enjoy!

[chronosomber23]

Incredible!! Thank you for your hard work, and lastly, congratulations!!

[Maya]

Hi

There's a bug. Upon getting aboard the Epoch, where the time gauge should appear, the game freezes in a black screen. "Freezes", well, not technically, as far as the emulator is concerned the game keeps running, the music continues. But nothing happens and no amount of button presses do anything. I tried my save in the unpatched rom and the gauge shows up normally. Here's a save in the overworld with the party standing next to the Epoch if someone wants to try: https://files.catbox.moe/jy2ja7.srm

I tried in Bsnes and Snes9x. Just in case, the crc of the original rom I applied the patch unto is 2D206BF7. And the crc of the resulting patched rom is FD34AC1C.

Btw, first time playing Chrono Trigger ever. I was about to start a game when I heard of the "censoring" in the official translation and went looking for a "de-censoring" hack. There I learned about KWhazit, the new translations etc, etc and ended up here

Great work. I played some sections in both this retranslation and the official (since the saves are interchangeable) and the latter is pretty bad. It misses quite some info in places and sounds completely different in others. Some line here and there in the retranslation still sounds a bit awkward, but by far and wide it's much better. So far I'm up to when you discover the Epoch, I don't remember any errors and, that bug aside, I'd just go ahead and make it the 1.0 release. The fixes and changes you applied all seem like a good idea. Very happy to be able to experience the game for the first time with this.

[wakkoswami]

Hi

There's a bug. Upon getting aboard the Epoch, where the time gauge should appear, the game freezes in a black screen. "Freezes", well, not technically, as far as the emulator is concerned the game keeps running, the music continues. But nothing happens and no amount of button presses do anything. I tried my save in the unpatched rom and the gauge shows up normally. Here's a save in the overworld with the party standing next to the Epoch if someone wants to try: https://files.catbox.moe/jy2ja7.srm

I tried in Bsnes and Snes9x. Just in case, the crc of the original rom I applied the patch unto is 2D206BF7. And the crc of the resulting patched rom is FD34AC1C.

Btw, first time playing Chrono Trigger ever. I was about to start a game when I heard of the "censoring" in the official translation and went looking for a "de-censoring" hack. There I learned about KWhazit, the new translations etc, etc and ended up here

Great work. I played some sections in both this retranslation and the official (since the saves are interchangeable) and the latter is pretty bad. It misses quite some info in places and sounds completely different in others. Some line here and there in the retranslation still sounds a bit awkward, but by far and wide it's much better. So far I'm up to when you discover the Epoch, I don't remember any errors and, that bug aside, I'd just go ahead and make it the 1.0 release. The fixes and changes you applied all seem like a good idea. Very happy to be able to experience the game for the first time with this.

Well, well, I didn't think anyone was going to try it out before I uploaded the 1.0 version proper. Thanks for checking it out! I'm especially honored you'd use it for your 1st playthrough.

I uploaded the latest patch file (calling it .999) at the bottom of the first post. Apply it to a fresh rom like before and it'll fix the Epoch bug that you ran into. You can pick up and keep playing from your old save and finish out the game.

I'm at the end of my playthrough and only have a few more things to test out, I'll probably upload the 1.0 in the next week or so. If anyone else wants to give any feedback before then, then have at it.

Aside from the Epoch bug, I fixed dozens of little things that no one besides me would probably notice, and I threw in a few more gameplay changes for the heck of it. Mostly centered around making Marle more useful in the endgame, since I gave something to Frog before as well. See the 1st post for details.

[Midna]

I would make the gameplay adjustments an optional patch rather than bundling them in with the retranslation. Some people are going to want the raw, unaltered experience, regardless of whether the gameplay changes are actual improvements.

[wakkoswami]

I would make the gameplay adjustments an optional patch rather than bundling them in with the retranslation. Some people are going to want the raw, unaltered experience, regardless of whether the gameplay changes are actual improvements.

Yeah, I didn't think people would want to use this for a first playthrough, but it's not even out yet and that's already the case. I'll probably end up making a version with and without the changes.

Edit: It's out!

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7036/

And I did make the gameplay changes optional.

[Red Soul]

A wise move, for sure.
The more people can suit the experience to their tastes, the better, I'd say. I find the gameplay changes welcome, so that's what I'm rolling with.

[leoofthememes]

Does this translation patch include all the changes from the bugfix and uncensoring patch? And is there any chance of adding MSU-1 compatibility down the line? Thanks for the hard work!

[wakkoswami]

Does this translation patch include all the changes from the bugfix and uncensoring patch? And is there any chance of adding MSU-1 compatibility down the line? Thanks for the hard work!

Took a look through the documents for the bugfix patches and I think I pretty much got it all. 90% of the fixes are just dialog/text related anyway. I might've caught and fixed a few things they didn't as well.



I didn't add these in and don't know what to change for them. If anyone can tell me what to do I can include them if they weren't already added to the original retranslation patch:

- A special byte value which makes the ending where Crono and all the others are Reptites run automatically without you having to press the A button.

- The character shadows in the menu font (many were missing).

(Chronosplit's hack might already fix this?)- The character shadows on the time selection screen (if you press Y while in Epoch). They were horribly inconsistent.

- Fixed the Dragon Tank manual being behind the floor.



No plans for adding in MSU-1 support. You can try applying the patch for that before/after this one and see if it works, though. I'm not sure what changes it makes exactly.