[FlamePurge]

I know Kajitani-Eizan fixed the porn mag and Ragnarok in his TOPEUKE patch. The patch I made changed the shady guy to a "lady of the evening". Just gotta track it down! In the meantime, I guess Kajitani wouldn't mind me sharing TOPEUKE...

http://www.bwass.org/bucket/ToPEUKE001.zip

Major menu text update for EU version of ToP. Combine with Dragonsbrethren's font patch for maximum effect. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/130/

Edit - Looks like I won't be able to track down that mod after all, sorry guys. TOPEUKE is just as good IMO, though lacking in a few parts like most of the dialogue

[John Enigma]

February 11, 2019, 08:02:09 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

GBA version has various problems..
1. the dub is just plan out terrible
2. overly bright palettes
3. gameplay is slow and lacks ps1 versions 8-way movement in field
7. Cress's mystic arte is impossible to pull out
4. the translation is bad
5. music is butchered
6. no skits at all, not even in the japanese version

The best version is the one included in Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X (remake of the gbc sequel), best version thats in english is the ps1 version.

Considering that Bregalad wants to try restoring the OST of the GBA version, I think is safe to say that it's much better to just overhaul the game with QoL changes and whatnot, just to "de-suck" the game in favor of the player's experience. God knows if there are other Tales Of games that were remade for the GBA that suffer the same fate.

Games that I think deserve their OST restored would be Super Mario Advance 2, 3, & 4 (Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario Bros. 3, respectively), Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2 (someone in here mentioned that DKC 3 had an original, but cool soundtrack), and whatever cool RPG (that happened to be a GBA remake) in existence everybody liked.

Games that I wish had their OST restored, but haven't been translated yet, would be Kessakusen! Ganbare Goemon 1•2: Yukihime to Magginesu (however, everybody should know that Avicandriya is still working on the Ganbare Goemon 2 translation), the remakes of both Shin Megami Tensei 1 & 2 (1: https://r.mprd.se/GBA/boxart/0933.jpg, and 2: https://cdromance.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/1189.jpg), and last, but not least, Mother 2 GBA, of Mother 1+2 (although, tbh, I kinda wish Mother 1 GBA's OST also got fixed, but nobody knows how). Also, only one member of the team so far has worked on the OST of M2GBA, but has since halted, because 1. is a crapload of songs, and 2. there are still so many inconsistencies on how to insert the songs inside.

So there you have it.

[YourAverageGamer]

The game isn't as awful as people say tbh. Quality wise, it's easily the worst version. I prefer it to the SNES version in a gameplay sense.
I don't really see anyone jumping to play a sound restoration of it but it would be interesting.

[Bregalad]

God knows if there are other Tales Of games that were remade for the GBA that suffer the same fate.

What are you talking about ? Isn't Tales of Phantasia the only game of the series ported to GBA (and awfully so) ?

Games that I think deserve their OST restored would be Super Mario Advance 2, 3, & 4 (Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario Bros. 3, respectively), Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2 (someone in here mentioned that DKC 3 had an original, but cool soundtrack), and whatever cool RPG (that happened to be a GBA remake) in existence everybody liked.

[...]
So there you have it.

I'll take note of this and see whether any of those is possible.

Also, I'm quite interested at the idea of sound-restoring Tales of Phantasia PS1 with SNES soundtrack, but I'd need other people to help as I'm extremely un-knownledgeable about how to make and distribute hacks for a CD-based platform (I'm only used to ROM-based platforms).

[tc]

Compare the music for Disney's Magical Quest.

[Granville]

Compare the music for Disney's Magical Quest.

The first game was a near launch title for the GBA and the sound quality reminds me of Capcom's other early ports on the system with the Breath of Fire games. A lot of the SNES instrument samples were just swapped out with Gameboy Color channels instead, so it lost its orchestral style for a very 8bit chiptune vibe. I far prefer the SNES original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtVpkfYrlsk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpNFCxr1MFg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW6Aag8lqAo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBNRC6FRFJ4

The game also got two sequels which also got GBA ports, and the sound (while perhaps a bit better) is still pretty botched. There was also an Aladdin SNES port. At least these all had a SNES color palette option though, so kudos to Capcom for that at least!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UbBothFYeM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsXPnhNwnW8

Bregalad mentioned in his documentation for his Breath of Fire restorations that the only SNES instrument samples were still inside the GBA roms, but that Capcom just decided not to use them in favor of Gameboy Color instruments instead. I wonder if Capcom did this with the Magical Quest ports as well. Then again I think he said he looked in Megaman and Bass and found that the SNES samples were missing, so perhaps it was just a thing they did with the BoF ports.

[Bregalad]

Bregalad mentioned in his documentation for his Breath of Fire restorations that the only SNES instrument samples were still inside the GBA roms, but that Capcom just decided not to use them in favor of Gameboy Color instruments instead. I wonder if Capcom did this with the Magical Quest ports as well. Then again I think he said he looked in Megaman and Bass and found that the SNES samples were missing, so perhaps it was just a thing they did with the BoF ports.

Indeed, the approach done by Breath of Fire ports and Megaman&Bass port are completely opposite. Breath of Fire had everything from the SNES version ready to use, but the musical track uses gameboy instruments on purpose. Sound effects are replicated exactly what they are on the SNES.

Mega Man & Bass has entierely new instruments sets, and the music also use gameboy channels, but in a more consistent way and it works much better. Sound effects are just lazily recorded off the SNES and played back, they are not replicated. The result is that they sound closer to the originals but takes more ROM.

[KingMike]

Magical Quest a near-launch title? It was released well over a year after the console.

[Granville]

Magical Quest a near-launch title? It was released well over a year after the console.

You're right, I was mixing up the GBA port of Breath of Fire. My bad. GBA was released in June 2001 in the US, and Magical Quest was released in August 2002. "Near launch" for me is a game released within a year of the system's release. But Magical Quest was later.
February 13, 2019, 06:55:49 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

Indeed, the approach done by Breath of Fire ports and Megaman&Bass port are completely opposite. Breath of Fire had everything from the SNES version ready to use, but the musical track uses gameboy instruments on purpose. Sound effects are replicated exactly what they are on the SNES.

Mega Man & Bass has entierely new instruments sets, and the music also use gameboy channels, but in a more consistent way and it works much better. Sound effects are just lazily recorded off the SNES and played back, they are not replicated. The result is that they sound closer to the originals but takes more ROM.

Speaking of MM&Bass, I think we somewhat agree that the at least some of the songs in the GBA port have better instrument choices. But would there be any audible improvements to implementing ipatix's "faster and higher quality" sound mixer you mentioned in the readme for some of your other hacks?

[Kallisto]

Personally I'm kind of surprised there isn't much concentration on the PSP version considering it is the current canon to fit alongside with Narikiri Dungeon X.

[Bregalad]

But would there be any audible improvements to implementing ipatix's "faster and higher quality" sound mixer you mentioned in the readme for some of your other hacks?

It could reduce noise for DirectSound channels but this alone doesn't justify a romhack.

[Dragoonglue]

Personally I'm kind of surprised there isn't much concentration on the PSP version considering it is the current canon to fit alongside with Narikiri Dungeon X.

Well, it was being translated by Absolute Zero until one day they just decided to stop making translations altogether. Since then nobody has shown any interest in translating it, though.

[J^P]

Well, it was being translated by Absolute Zero until one day they just decided to stop making translations altogether. Since then nobody has shown any interest in translating it, though.

yeah, nobody want to translate tales games, not Namco, not fans.
Absolute zero is also bizarre one, they somehow finished joke translation from the scratch of an known bad tales game nobody asked for over better one that they had good chunk progress into .

[mariosmentor]

yeah, nobody want to translate tales games, not Namco, not fans.

Yep, seems like the only way to truly enjoy these games is to know Japanese.

[Granville]

The PSP port looks really good. I think the enhanced battle sprites are a big improvement over previous versions. And the enhancements to the combat system also look really fun too. Like that there's a more robust basic melee combo system. And spells and summons not freezing time looks fun too. Sad indeed there's not a translation...

[Chronosplit]

I know Kajitani-Eizan fixed the porn mag and Ragnarok in his TOPEUKE patch. The patch I made changed the shady guy to a "lady of the evening". Just gotta track it down! In the meantime, I guess Kajitani wouldn't mind me sharing TOPEUKE...

http://www.bwass.org/bucket/ToPEUKE001.zip

Major menu text update for EU version of ToP. Combine with Dragonsbrethren's font patch for maximum effect. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/130/

Edit - Looks like I won't be able to track down that mod after all, sorry guys. TOPEUKE is just as good IMO, though lacking in a few parts like most of the dialogue

I'm late, but there was a ToPEUKE002.  You can find some scant info of what was updated in the Zophar thread, I have no clue about anything else: https://www.zophar.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7037

And here's a site with both, including a patch for the english translation of GBA Tales of Phantasia, which started day after it's release (pre-release GBA patches are kinda hard to find nowadays, so whoopee!): https://sites.google.com/site/blade2187/

[FlamePurge]

That's good to know in case I feel like picking my GBA text cleanup project back up again.

Edit - That's "TOPUSKE", which I assume is a patch for the US version. Looks like Dragonsbrethren of 2006 got a little confused. Applying it to the European version results in a crash at the title screen. Thanks for finding it anyhow, Chronosplit!

[Kallisto]

The PS1 and PSP versions of Tales of Phantasia are still considered the best.

The GBA version doesn't have much interest going for it due to poor translation, and some content got cut if I recall.

[Masaru]

A problem i have with ToP GBA is how in the american version removed literally various thing like the vocal intro and the sound mode from the japanese version

And again i recall, the only thing ToPGBA needs, is an undub, an Intro+Voice Actors Restoration and a Sound Mode restoration, and i doubt that would be possible because they obliterated everything from the american/european rom

[justin3009]

And again i recall, the only thing ToPGBA needs, is an undub, an Intro+Voice Actors Restoration and a Sound Mode restoration, and i doubt that would be possible because they obliterated everything from the american/european rom

The undubbing is at least very, very possible. But adding in the intro with the proper vocals and the Sound Test would be an absolute mess. The intro song itself might actually still exist and they just disabled it from playing though I have no clue for sure on that. The Sound Test... yeah that would be something much harder to fix.