Tengai Makyou Zero translation project

[Cargodin]

Soft subtitles, eh? Talk about thinking out of the box. That's a really nice idea.
(...)
Fubuki? Or the mother's doppleganger?

I'd love to see a soft-sub approach to the cutscenes, especially if it meant having all 3(pardon, 4) games from the pce collection in one bundle.

Also, thanks for catching that! I spaced out on adding the title of the game! Until Dawn had the scene in question, not Manjimaru.

[Tom]

Yeah, I really think soft subtitles is the way to go... Having the game fully translated would help the push for such a feature to be added. All in good time! Ziria first! I want them to get them out in the proper order!

But wow, the PSP Apocalypse was censored too, huh? I wasn't aware! Ugh, that's depressing! There should be an uncensoring patch for that one, as well... I own the Saturn version and PSP versions, but I don't have a Saturn to play on... I should probably download a Saturn emulator again, when I have more time. I prefer the PSP's battles now since they're slightly more interactive with the timing bar, but if the Saturn's uncensored, I should give it another spin.

As for modern day Japanese censorship, I refuse to buy any western game release in Japan. They always censor them and rate them Z... And in the case of Infamous: Second Son (which is rated T in America)... They obviously didn't need to censor it, but... "Well, it's an American game, and it has violence, so... Stick a Z on there anyway." (Meanwhile, Ryu ga Gotoku gets a D...) I really wanted to get Until Dawn, but I knew better, and I'm glad I didn't get it.

The debug SRM file you offered is a godsend, especially the jumping to the credits feature, because DDStranslation would have to wait until he beat the game to reach them, otherwise. (The credits will be a doozy to hack... Top to bottom, right to left, Japanese style... And instead of scrolling from top to bottom, they scroll from left to right...) I've translated them all in a text file already, but I still shudder when I see them play out.

But... I'd kinda feel bad about having him watch the credits before he's beaten the game. The credits are hilarious (it's probably the best credits roll I've seen in ANY game - very charming), but I feel that the impact would be lost if he saw them without having beaten the game and gotten to know all of the characters, so maybe I'll let him wait until he's beaten the game anyway.

Still, it will be good to have this save so we don't have to beat the boss every time to access them!

I'll fix up the debug menus so the windows display everything properly and everything's lined up with the cursors just right in English. I've been wanting to do that ever since I translated the debug text, and now I finally can get it aligned, thanks to you! 

[Recapnation]

Even if I don't have the time to play these games anymore nor ever was I myself a huge "RPG" fan, I'd like to thank all the people involved in getting the Tengai Makyou series translated into English to help it get the acknowledgement it deserves in the West. I bought and played Daiyon no Mokushiroku at its release date without any knowledge of the Japanese language and was in awe from the beginning to the end. It was for being a Tengai Makyou game (or a game with Yoshiteru Tsujino's designs, most likely) what made me bite and never regretted it despite my opinions on the genre and little understanding of the story.

So I can't encourage you enough to give this game a try to let the people know once and for all what they (we) missed. Hopefully, in its original Sega Saturn version. It's a game designed for it and tiny screens such as PSP's just make it lose much of its impact. I'm aware not many have a SS these days, much less a CRT TV to play it how it should be, but still. Censorship is another reason, of course, even if they added new scenes a tweaked a bit the combat in the toy version to compensate.

Anyway, Manjimaru is most likely a priority and, even if I never played it, it's a crucial game in the genre's history, so I can sympathize with that.



Did you know they did a remake of the remake for Ziria?



http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/374294.html

Not sure if that would be the ultimate version for those not caring about inches! (Not kidding.)

[Merr Man]

Tom:

Optional stuff? Tell me more! One thing that has intrigued me is that screenshot showing a one on one giant robot battle with tallies as health. It's always nice to hear of the deviations from the standards that I'm used to. Also those screenshots I saw were very interesting, with what looks like automated battle plans, how hard is the game?

I like "Far East of Eden", besides the fact that it is named after one of my favorite books of all time, but it is also a very clever pun on that book's title. Maybe that could be the title to a spiritual successor KS (Somewhat East of Eden) if nothing is still done with the property in a year or two, although we could run into a Mighty No.9-like fiasco.

I hate if this sounds uninformed but I am curious is it easier to patch in a fan dub, or a sub?

Personally, any game that includes a greater interactive battle element is worth listing at some point, even if I don't remember loving it, I spent hours and hours on "The Legend of Dragoon", possibly a little bit with the battle system.

You all should have a name, like the "Far East of Eden" team or "Tengai Makyou" team. Would make it more official to viewing audiences, just a thought of course.

Cargodin:

Welcome to the thread, one thing I've noticed about the PC-Engine CD, at least, is in how few games were even released in the west. I wouldn't be surprised if companies felt that localizing titles for the thing was going to be very unprofitable, even though you had Cosmic Fantasy II, for example, over on the console.

Ghanmi:

Just one question, is there a drop of quality between the DS and PSP/PC-Engine CD versions (Manjimaru) or is the DS version better?

[elmer]

I think the Xanadu translations are going with a fan-dub for the voiced cutscenes because they just couldn't fit coding for subs.

Actually, it was always supposed to have a fan-dub, and subtitles are/were a secondary goal, with a textfile for the scripts as the backup.

The idea has always been to offer an optional localization-dub, for those that want it, to get the end-product as-close-as-possible to what would have been done if it had been brought to the US back-in-the-day.

That's only really possible for us because Falcom released the *entire* background music to both games on CD, so that we've got clean tracks to overlay the new voices onto.

I don't know if you've even got the same option available to you, however much extra work it is, and whether you approve of fan-dubs at all.

Back when Zerogair (PC-FX) was being translated, when no one could think the lead programmer could pull off the feat of actually re-encoding parts of the MPEG FMV to have subtitles added, I think the emulator developer behind mednafen offered to add support for soft subtitles just for this kind of situations.

Yeah, I've gotta assume that that was before EsperKnight and SamIAm found the PC-FX Developer SDK online with the video compressor tool. That must have been back in 2012-or-so before the project got rebooted.

Anyway, from what I've been told, the subtitling system is already built into Mednafen.

Here's the basic info from one of the guys at PCEngineFX ...

It's possible (I have a build of mednafen that has a 68k core running as accessible via ports on the PCE hardware bank).
...
It actually had its own bitmap display the overlaid the PCE display. Ports on the hardware bank, which is always mapped, was used to communicate with it and the PCE processor. The idea was that initially you load a script file, and code block, to the 68k via these ports. Then when the game runs, when it receives a special command - it displays an overlaid subtitled script for length of time. The idea was to hook all CDPLAY and ADCPLAY routines to write the sector arguments to the ports as well, which would hash into a lookup table to start the overlay script - instant subtitling for cinemas and ADPCM parts of Japanese games.

There was also 1k of ram for the PCE hack/hook code to use, mapped in the hardware bank open bus area as well.

If both PCE Xanadu games and this were being worked on, it could generate enough interest for this feature to be incorporated in that emulator and the soft subs called whenever specific bits of audio are being read off the disk. It's time all those fancy HUD in emulators are put to better use than just chat.

Well, if someone else is going to use the feature, then I might have to get off my lazy behind and use it too.

If I've not gone stir-crazy after spending XX months trying to fix up the lip-sync in the cutscenes to match the new dub. 

[Lentfilms]

If I've not gone stir-crazy after spending XX months trying to fix up the lip-sync in the cutscenes to match the new dub. 

Hopefully the actors/actress you guys get will be able to lip-sync to the preexisting lip-flaps good enough that that work will be unnecessary. I remember with the Ys IV dub that my brother was able to get some performances that matched up pretty well while others had to be massaged a bit.

[Tom]

Recapnation: Well, PSP games can be played on a full screen with an adapter. They can also be played via emulator in full screen (and look really good). I believe that you can even get any PSP game running on a Vita TV in full screen now. I don't think it's right to dismiss it as a "toy version." I think it's a perfectly valid way to play. Although I do have a newfound respect for the Saturn version now, knowing that it is uncensored.

Manjimaru is not the priority for me, even if it is the most popular. The priority is Ziria. I think that the series should be played in order. Oriental Blue is an offshoot and Zero is a reboot. They were intended for people who were new to the series, so I don't mind translating them first... But for the main series, I think skipping titles would be a disservice, because it's always hard to go backwards into a series' history.

The Ziria remake for cell phones DOES look great. Beautiful graphics. It's a shame that it was not a one-time download. It was one of those games were you had to "phone in" for the next chapter whenever you completed a segment.

Merr Man, there's a ton of optional content that I don't want to spoil, some of it relating to the real time clock, but most is available all year long. You can sometimes find an arcade dealer that will let you play the robot battle mini-game that you mentioned seeing (either in one-player or two-player mode)! There's also an arcade machine like the old "Snake" game where you keep eating and getting bigger. There's also a shooting game, a timed maze with multiple goals and prizes, a treasure hunt, gambling, and a whole bunch more. Again, I don't want to spoil too much. I want to save some surprises for when you play the game.

The battle plans are customizable auto strategies to make battles go by without as many button presses. Most games make auto default to melee attacks, but in this game, you can customize each strategy with exactly what you want the character to do. If you see a bunch of weak enemies, go with an all-melee plan. You can put spells and skills into another plan for when you encounter stronger enemies... Or have a balanced plan. Using this, you can beat battles with far fewer button presses, so it's a good idea to make use of them. It's entirely customizable, so you can make certain characters move automatically while others are still controlled manually, if you wish... You hold the B button to cancel whatever plan you're using.

The game is paced well, so there's little need to grind if you're exploring everything. It's not that hard, though the boss is a doozy without the ultimate summon... The problem is that the ultimate summon looks really goofy, so using it against the final boss really spoils the mood of the final battle. A true Tengai Makyou Zero fanatic will try to beat the game without relying on the ultimate summon, and that would be truly hard.

I'm all for a spiritual successor. I would call it "Far West of Eden."

As for a "team name," I don't think it's necessary, because it's not like the four of us are planning to collaborate on something else afterwards (not ruling it out either, though). Mainly, a team name would take emphasis away from the contributions of others like Lost Templar and byuu, who do deserve a share of the credit. I think this is just a case of individuals coming together for the greater good, and it should remain that way.

[Merr Man]

Tom:

The optional content, in the game, does sound a little bit inventive for its time almost creating that "persistent open world" vibe before games like Majora's Mask arrived on the market, in fact I don't know if any other 16-bit JRPG had as many mini-games as what you just described, certainly not any game that was released in the west (even FFVI just had that coliseum), although what really makes my mouth water, in terms of optional content, would be optional bosses and dungeons, but that is just me.

That actually sounds very convenient, I usually don't do "auto" in any RPG I play for fear that the characters will just waste whatever magic, or items, that they have. I think that reading what you've been writing makes me understand why this game is held in high esteem, it's not a grindfest, in fact it is convenient, and has a lot of stuff to do, that works within its own unique mechanic.

"Ultimate summon", so there are summons in this game? I really hate spoiling the game for myself, but this all sounds very interesting, I don't think that I could take the challenge, but it is good to know that there are two options to dealing with the big baddie.

[Tom]

I wouldn't call it a "persistent open world." It's is a fairly linear traditional JRPG experience, especially at the beginning when your options are limited. There aren't really optional dungeons in Zero, but there are optional towns (as in, towns that never need to be visited in order to beat the game) and there is an optional boss. The location of that boss isn't really big enough to call a dungeon, though. Maybe you could call it an optional dungeon, I guess. It's just a very, very small optional dungeon.

The game's not a grind-fest at all. You can actually walk straight to the first boss and second boss without stopping to gain levels or even build your equipment up (you'll burn through all of your healing items doing that, but it's possible).

There are summons in the game, but the game doesn't call them "summons." As for what they really are, well... Wait and find out in the game. By the way, they're mentioned in the very first town in the game, so it's not much of a spoiler, I think.

[dejan07]

I'm all for a spiritual successor. I would call it "Far West of Eden."

Yeah, a western RPG with kabuki playing both as a cowboy and indian. One female companion with a coyote, oil salesmen as a protagonist...

As for a "team name," I don't think it's necessary, because it's not like the four of us are planning to collaborate on something else afterwards (not ruling it out either, though).

How about descendants of Dr. P.H. Chada? Chada's Jipang initiative? Orientals clan?

The guy who translated Mother 3 is translating TM 4 - Apocalypse live on Twitch.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/111683256

[Recapnation]

Recapnation: Well, PSP games can be played on a full screen with an adapter. They can also be played via emulator in full screen (and look really good). I believe that you can even get any PSP game running on a Vita TV in full screen now. I don't think it's right to dismiss it as a "toy version." I think it's a perfectly valid way to play. Although I do have a newfound respect for the Saturn version now, knowing that it is uncensored.

You (everybody) should find a way to play it on a RGB CRT monitor. It's miles away from any of those solutions you mention, which always involve upscaling. Scaling and 2-D visuals, particulary dot art, should never go together (unless it's part of the game's design itself), and Daiyon no Mokushiroku's dot art deserves the best of the attentions.

But yeah, I know.

Manjimaru is not the priority for me, even if it is the most popular. The priority is Ziria. I think that the series should be played in order. Oriental Blue is an offshoot and Zero is a reboot. They were intended for people who were new to the series, so I don't mind translating them first... But for the main series, I think skipping titles would be a disservice, because it's always hard to go backwards into a series' history.

Again, I can agree. Ziria is a seminal piece, even more than the sequel, being the first "RPG" with full caracterization thanks to the redbook audio and animation-style cutscenes -- those were already a thing on the PC side, but never before with the magnitude of Ziria's. Always thought of Daiyon no Mokushiroku as an offshot too, with just some characters related to previous games and little else. But I can understand why it won't be touched until even Fuu-Un Kabuki Den is done. Best of the lucks in any case, sir; it's an overwhelming labor and everybody should respect and appreciate.

The Ziria remake for cell phones DOES look great. Beautiful graphics. It's a shame that it was not a one-time download. It was one of those games were you had to "phone in" for the next chapter whenever you completed a segment.

That's too bad. Seems Tsujino wasn't involved at that point, so well, there's that.


I'm reading a Kabuki Rocks mention here and indeed it was never part of Tengai Makyou. It even has more Atlus' staff than Red's, who essentially created the scenario and some character art (by Kennosuke Mizutani, of Tengai Makyou fame) as they used to. Tengai Makyou is at least as much a Hudson product as it is a Red one.

[Merr Man]

Tom:

Still, all of that content does get me very excited, for some reason I thought that it was town, dungeon, town, dungeon with very little in between but I was wrong, also very nice to hear that there is an optional boss, and that you may not have to fight in a huge dungeon to get to it. This is all making me pretty excited for the game.

dejan:

Would be the closest thing to a new Wild Arms game.

As far as the Twitch stream goes for "Tomato", loved his work on Mother III, and the fact that he is livestreaming "Apocalypse" is pretty helpful. I wonder what will happen, once he is finished, he did revive some basic hacking helpers for Tomato Adventure after that livestream.

[Tom]

Recap: I heard that the Apocalypse graphics were recreated for the PSP, not scaled... So you see more on the screen at one time than you would have seen on the Saturn. (The fact that they were recreated let them censor the graphics while they were at it, it seems.)

Merr Man: Tengai Makyou Zero has a variety of regions. Some of them are linear, while some of them are open-ended. It mixes things up pretty well, and each location in the game has its own distinct feel, not just in terms of the graphics, but also in how things are spread out.

[KingMike]

It's obviously way far in the future if ever happening, but if Apocalypse happened, would it be after Namida, which I'm guessing is the last "main" game?

[Recapnation]

Recap: I heard that the Apocalypse graphics were recreated for the PSP, not scaled... So you see more on the screen at one time than you would have seen on the Saturn. (The fact that they were recreated let them censor the graphics while they were at it, it seems.)

That's right, if by "recreated" you mean this:



(they just expanded the visible area to keep the 1 : 1 graphics)

The port was made with love and care in this regard, though having such a large visible area also goes against the visual impact, since the sprites look tiny while they're actually quite big originally for an "RPG". Old fart-sounding arguments, mine, I know (I only play on CRTs in 2017, after all), but... the game is indeed old. And what they did to the PSP version, despite being the best solution for the system, is still an amendment.

Anyway, what I meant is that any solution which consists in displaying the PSP game full-screen on a flat panel involves upscaling, since it's originally a 480 x 272 screen. That would ruin some of the most charming graphics you'll find in the 32-bit systems, no matter how you try to alleviate the effects aftermath.

[Tom]

From what I heard, they didn't have access to all of the original material from the Saturn days, so they had to remake stuff, not just reuse it. But I don't have any source for that... And it might have just been an excuse to censor the graphics you spoke of...

Still, the graphics don't appear to be exactly the same, even in the pictures you provided. Compare the water in the fountain, for instance. It doesn't appear as pixelated, and the blade of grass seem to be more distinct and a slightly different shade of color (darker, maybe?) Then again, this might just be differences in how the images were saved. I don't know enough about image editing to say, and I'm not a very visual person.

I appreciate the dedication to pixel-perfect displays, though. I agree further we get from the originals, the worse it gets. It's a gaming visual tragedy what's happened with the smartphone versions of Final Fantasy VI, for instance... And while the effect of the Apocalypse PSP port is not that noticeable to me in comparison, there's something about the PSP versions of Final Fantasy 1 and 2 that I just can't accept.

So yeah, I totally understand anybody who would reject it.

But going back to TM Zero, here's an update...

There are more debug options that aren't available in this debug save that was sent over. If possible, I'd like to see some of those other, "less interesting" rooms, because I'd like to check the formatting of the other debug menu options.

That said, the festival area jump option will really help for extracting shrine booth and event graphics... And testing the text more easily!

I realized that the festival events won't really carry over well to other countries. In Japan, people would say... "Oh, it's time for Setsubun... I wonder what sort of event TM Zero is doing now..."

But in general, people from other countries won't have this inclination (most not even knowing what Setsubun is), and the holidays will just seem like random events that they happen to stumble onto. If they want to experience the festivals, they'll have to make specific plans to visit a shrine on a certain date after hearing an NPC mention them.

It's a small consolation that there's a character in the game whose sole purpose seems to be explaining what happens, and where, on whatever date.

Fortunately, the game also does a pretty good job of explaining what each festival means, and showing what sort of things happen... So it can actually teach people something about Japanese festivals, I guess! Well, "Jipang's" festivals. (There are a few differences.)

[Cargodin]

From what I heard, they didn't have access to all of the original material from the Saturn days, so they had to remake stuff, not just reuse it. But I don't have any source for that... And it might have just been an excuse to censor the graphics you spoke of...

Still, the graphics don't appear to be exactly the same, even in the pictures you provided. Compare the water in the fountain, for instance. It doesn't appear as pixelated, and the blade of grass seem to be more distinct and a slightly different shade of color (darker, maybe?) Then again, this might just be differences in how the images were saved. I don't know enough about image editing to say, and I'm not a very visual person.

It's possible they were able to rip their own assets and convert them or just rebuild them from scratch. The water looks like it has a different opacity, as the stones in the bottom of the fountain are hardly visible in the PSP shot. I don't know anything about retro graphics and sprite utilization, particularly between two consoles but I imagine it's a hardware thing. The color contrast also took a hit, although I agree the PSP port is still particularly sharp looking in the town maps.

More on the final dungeon in TMA4 though. I never noticed anything missing from the PSP version in the final dungeon on the graphics front, but there is one cut line in the game. It's the only one I ever spotted, but it'd be worth a side-by-side play to see what of the NPCs were changed considerably, save for the "Indian -> Red Men" term swap.

Yuno says thus when the final boss reveals their intentions:
インディアンの伝説にもある...
この世界は何度となく
洪水で 滅んでいると...
(There's an Indian legend... which states this world was destroyed by flood a number of times...)

In the PSP script document for the scene, the line is replaced with:
※ここの台詞はカット
(※This line was cut.)

There's a lot more "racier" content in the game that wasn't blatantly cut, so I'd only surmise it was cut for one of two or three things: because a.) it was just a meh line, b.)  someone didn't appreciate that it blended in too much with Christianity for their taste - given Christianity/Revelations is a big overarching theme, I don't think this is it), or C.) it fucked with the TM lore somehow. I guess because 10 years later someone figured it made less sense for the world to be annihilated on multiple occasions or whatever. Not enough water sports in Far East of Eden proper to support the claim?

[Tom]

I highly doubt the PSP is just incapable of showing visible stones below water, so I don't think it would be a hardware issue. It seems to me that the graphics were retouched, rather than a case of just porting them straight and widening the view field. My guess is that they had to censor the graphics as they were told by people higher up, and the artist who did the retouching got a little creative with some other edits, just because they liked the look of it.

Cargodin, I know you said that flood line was unlikely to have been cut because it was too Biblical, but I think that's precisely why it was cut. A lot of developers in Japan are whitewashing references now, like Square Enix removing the crosses from shields in Dragon Quest, and always having the word kami translated as "goddess." Even the "God" enemy was renamed "Numan" (which is apparently some obscure word for God in a language nobody knows) in their preliminary English translation of Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2 Professional, included (dummied) in the Japanese release. They later changed the name of God a second time into "The Almighty" (much better, but still kind of avoiding the word) in the 3DS release of Dragon Quest VII.

Namco Bandai also called God Eater "Gods Eater" for the first English release to sound less blasphemous. It's clear that Japanese developers are holding back as much as they can on account of avoiding international controversy.

TM Lore doesn't have to confirm Yuno's claim. She herself calls it an Indian legend. It's just a story that was passed down. Doesn't make it true. It's just food for thought.

In any case, what's clear is that Japan is a terrible place for censorship these days. I wish that they'd leave the old games alone, at least.

Either way, this thread is kind of turning into an Apocalypse thread. Maybe this is my cue to just focus on Zero.

[Cargodin]

I wouldn't doubt the PSP is capable of transluscent sprites, but I do think it appears in a different opacity by default after the hardware swap and the graphics team never had time/bothered to tinker with it to make it totally accurate or, like you suggested, did it to touch up on a whim based on personal aesthetic. Something just makes me wonder why the color contrast took a shot.

The explanation for religious censorship makes sense too. I'm curious as to why it is like that in a Japanese release of a game though, unless they considered it ahead of time in another shot at an English publisher picking the game up.

But you're right. Sorry for further derailing the thread. ": )

[VicVergil]

Sorry for the late reply:

I like "Far East of Eden", besides the fact that it is named after one of my favorite books of all time, but it is also a very clever pun on that book's title. Maybe that could be the title to a spiritual successor KS (Somewhat East of Eden) if nothing is still done with the property in a year or two, although we could run into a Mighty No.9-like fiasco.
(...)
I hate if this sounds uninformed but I am curious is it easier to patch in a fan dub, or a sub?
(...)
Just one question, is there a drop of quality between the DS and PSP/PC-Engine CD versions (Manjimaru) or is the DS version better?

A Kickstarter with Konami involved isn't something to look forward to.
Apparently they were to handle a localization for Namida (well, the PS2 retelling anyways. Original is probably lost forever but there's stunning concept art floating around, and Haruka, a short novella by the game's writer with the actual plot and different names to be copyright-friendly).
But something went really wrong in 2004 and they mishandled lots of their overseas releases, so Ninja Cop (Hudson) got a very limited release with little fanfare, and Boktai 3 and TM3:Namida were just cancelled (their English versions, I mean).

About TM2:
Original PCE version is uncensored, but some battle screens and chiptune music really showed how lacking the hardware was. There's loading times before each battle too. And tons of flashing (probably why there's no Nintendo Virtual Console release?).
There was a remake on the GC/PS2, but it's a half-baked abortion, for the lack of a better word. Seems like the budget was slashed, so you get badly pixellated 2D enemies, cheaply animated cutscenes (the one that had the most effort put into it was because much of it was redone because of the violence), and 30 FPS low-poly 3D areas missing the cel-shading from the promo screens that was supposed to mask how ugly it was.
On the upside, they replaced the horrible chiptune music (which was in the PCE version just because of audio streaming limitations) with orchestrated stuff, and had high quality versions of the returning original recordings. DS version tried to fit all of that audio and voice acting in under 128MB so there's some tracks affected by this slight quality loss (still possible to import high PS2/PCE audio in the DS version) and is otherwise a 1:1 port of the PCE version minus some cuts (unless you're stuck up on the aspect ratio being pixel-perfect rather than crunched for CRTs).

About voice acting:
While in this game in particular, the original voice acting sounds really amateurish and comparable in quality to average-to-bad English game dubbing from that same era (though to its credit it's one of the first games ever to attempt voice acting in games, a novelty for its time), I'm not of the opinion that English voice acting would really fit such a Japanese game, but besides slight preference (I'm in no way feeling strongly either way about it) that it's not like any fan dub for this would be worse than the original.
And if the official English PCE release wasn't cancelled, it would have English acting much like Falcom's Legend of Heroes and other stuff released by NEC. Having the option between both (if only to appreciate Kabuki and Manto) would be nice though.

In the PSP script document for the scene, the line is replaced with:
※ここの台詞はカット
(※This line was cut.)

I knew the PSP version carried over the unused graphics from the Saturn version, but commented out lines is news to me.

Now with that out of the way, it would be better not to derail this topic any further, even though I'm dying to chat about this awesome yet obscure series. Back to Zero!

But going back to TM Zero, here's an update...

There are more debug options that aren't available in this debug save that was sent over. If possible, I'd like to see some of those other, "less interesting" rooms, because I'd like to check the formatting of the other debug menu options.

About that, each time the game saves, the SRAM area from $0260 to $0265 is overwritten with current objective data, as well as where the player spawns when loading that save.

$0260 (SRAM): horizontal scrolling center position, 1 byte
$0262 (SRAM): horizontal player position, 1 byte
Preferably the same, otherwise severe visual glitches.

$0261 (SRAM): vertical scrolling center position, 1 byte
$0263 (SRAM): vertical player position, 1 byte
Idem.

$0264 (SRAM): Map ID, 1 byte.

Some invalid map IDs load various other game screens often resulting in crashes, like the map screen, but also some early text-based versions of a very primitive Nethack-esque battle interface and overscan test screens. They have text of their own, but I doubt it's even worth it to translate (and it's the 8x8 font, meaning you'd have to do extra hacking work for something probably not even functional anymore - and according to some Japanese sites, it was spotted in early promotional footage but behaves practically the same as the final battle system except without the nice graphics, and sound, and stuff):

00 = grid + a transition test? no text
1D = same as 00?
1E = grid + some transportation BGM
1F = grid + hikage mura BGM (also 20,23,25,2F?)
2A = X menu prototype / glitch?
2B = the alpha battle interface, though it's stuck at the screen with "Win / Lose"
2C = glitch? black screen with the sound effects from the summons. (2D,2E are similar, but each has its different set)

Now for the interesting stuff:

22 = the test room you should be familiar with by now.
24 = another test room with a warp to a monster farm, some chests (unresponsive empty one, blue one, already looted one, 3980 ryo, and hoshi no hikari). Main shrine sometimes warps you to the expensive 10000 ryo inn, but more often to a festival arena.
26 = Set vertical position to 2C to avoid spawning in the scenery and getting stuck. A decorated room. No NPCs and unescapable. Probably cutscene-only or unfinished (maybe a Shounen Jump-ban exclusive?)
27 = Same entry method as for 26. Another decorated, yet unescapable room.
28 = Festival square with buggy exit. Might hold something of interest?
29 = Same entry method and observations as 26. This time it's an inn?

As for normal areas, here are some values of interest. Format is MAP ID (X, Y).
Useless warps, as in too glitchy to be of any use (no exits working, no NPCs, but signposts might still work) with just modifying spawn point in the save data, will be marked with *, but I'm including the IDs anyways just in case there's an alternate method to access them (probably with editing the ID in the RAM instead). As you can guess, much of the "useless" ones are places you weren't supposed to be able to save inside anyways.

(spoils some in-game events)

Spoiler

30 (0A, 1C) = Hikage Village
33 (0A, 1C) = Life Forest
35 (0A, 1C) = Reido's Ice palace, prisoner room, conveniently just before the first major boss fight
43 (09, 2F) = Weapon Shop in the Ice Mountain Village (for once, something that works!)
44 (09, 2F) = Same as 43, except the village is defrosted and Hisui already begun the ritual. (doesn't actually affect the story flags, so if you go out and come back, it's back to how it should be at that time, depending on whether you brought the hot water / felled Raido)
48 (09, 2F) = Fire Clan Village
4A (09, 2F) = Higuma Shrine
4B (0A, 2F) = Golden Castle, entrance. It's originally as buggy as the other "useless" warps, but when you hit an invisible cutscene trigger, the scene with Super Fortune Cat-king III pawning the party starts, except everyone is invisible. After that it kicks you out to the overworld of Inegami Province, but then the glitchiness is cancelled and you can explore with no side effects!
4C (0A, 2F) = Golden Castle, midway in the dungeon.
5C (0F, 1F) = Sakin Village (inegami province), shop.
5E (0F, 26) = Gold Lode village
5F (0F, 26) = Ootora Town (same interior as 26?)

[close]

Spoiler

*31 = Miners HQ, but NPC-less
*32 (seems to ignore coordinates) = Mine
*34 = Hisui's house
*36, *37 = more glitchy ice palace rooms
*38 = cavern where you choose the girl to get laid with
*39 = overworld. For some reason you spawn way offscreen in the sea. Using (30,50) you can get to the first continent just above Hikage Village, but no entrances are actually working. Also this is the whole overworld including even inaccessible areas.
*3A = buggy town (I think the same where Higan gets married?) Only egg shop works properly.
*3B = buggy animal spirit shrine exterior? (or another test room? I can't tell :3 )
*3C = ice mt. village where you get Subaru, but after the ice melted. Nothing works.
*3D = 3C when still frozen. Nothing works. Not even the ice on the lake is there, with visual glitches as a result.
*3E = 3C when still frozen, now with a transparent ice shell serving as the shitty stock video-game sliding ice puzzle (I hated that in IV too)
*3F = 3C when still frozen, now with a double serving of the transparent ice shell. Exit doesn't work, but the object telling you it needs some hot water to melt it is still there.
*40 = tunnel, related to 3C
*41 = fire clan village
*42 = inn
*45,46 = ice mt. village, ritual room
*47 = fire clan village, room where higan meets the felled king
*49 = sennin dou (how is that kanji even written?) - buggy wiseman cave/shrine/???
*4E = Inegami province overworld (3F, 2F is a good starting point). As buggy as the other overworld.
*4F = Gold Lode Mt.
*50 = Gold Palace, room with the golden statues. Nothing works.
*51 = buggy 4C?
*52 = buggy Golden Castle entrace
*53 = Golden Castle major fifth (?) boss room, except the boss is a no-show and nothing works. (0F, 1F)
*54 = Inegami shrine, exterior
*55 = Inegami shrine, interior
*56 = Ootora town
*57 = Inegami town
*58 = Hanamaru town
*59 = room with glitchy printer machine
*5A = devil waterfall
*5B = same as 5A?
*5D = three courtesans room (ignores coordinates, stuck)

[close]

I'll look at rooms (60-3E) later.
The buggy or apparently empty rooms might be that way because of how the room is loaded this way.
If you don't mind Tom, what was the test menu stuff you found about, besides that one room? (Considering it seems less and less likely to find it still intact and working in the game...)