Translations: The Beginning is a New Moon

[RHDNBot]

Update By: vivify93

September 10th, 1999. Bishoujo Senshi Translations release their complete English translation of Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon: Another Story, allowing a whole generation of fans to play the game in English. However, as years pass, many notice it seems rather incomplete, and at times somewhat confusing.

June 6th, 2019. After 3 months of intensive work, vivify93 and mziab release a much-needed overhaul to the translation. It's time to experience Another Story all over again!

See the Readme for controls, changes, cheat codes, and more. Read the Liner for any questions about lore terms or the game's continuity. Plus, check out the other goodies inside...

A New Moon has risen. Become the champion of justice!

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[cccmar]

Just wanted to say that it was a great idea to give this translation a new coat of paint! I remember playing the old patch ages ago; probably not that long after its release. In all honesty, quite a few patches from that era (say, 1998-2005) had problems. Hopefully this paves the way for some more retranslations, whenever possible!

[B.B.Link]

I can't get this rom to patch. Tried everything,the usual sites, unheadered roms, everything. And when I patch, no changes.

[FlamePurge]

I can't get this rom to patch. Tried everything,the usual sites, unheadered roms, everything. And when I patch, no changes.

Hi, are you patching the original Japanese ROM with PSSMAS_T-Eng_v200.IPS? If so, what program are you using to patch the file with? Are you sure it's not a header issue? You can find TUSH in RHDN's Utilities section. https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/608/ It will tell you if a ROM is headered or not, and can remove or add one at a button press.

There's also a site-accessible ROM patcher https://www.romhacking.net/patch/ as well as a hasher, that will help with headers. https://www.romhacking.net/hash/

[Josephine Lithius]

I remember seeing a discussion for this on... Twitter, I think it was?  I saw it last month, but it could've been older than that.  Anyway, there was something in the old translation about one of the characters mentioning a "game center clown" and how the NPC hoped they would be funny... but, as was noted, the actual line was referring Game Center Crown, a key location in the Sailor Moon universe.  Pretty funny stuff... but, definitely a sign of the times and a lack of ability/utilities. (Or, ya know, just plain not knowing the source.)

Anyway, to those involved?  Thank you for your work.  You're making the dedicated fans proud and keeping confusion to a minimum for new fans!

[Vehek]

Yeah, I saw that too, via a retweet from Mato. It was the webmaster of a site called Tuxedo Unmasked. That person also pointed out errors in the intro sequence.

Edit:
This is the thread in question about the "clown" mistranslation.
https://twitter.com/t_unmasked/status/1124651660553273344

Here's the beginning of the playthrough/comparison that prompted the "clown" example, but they're not linked in a single neat thread, and I don't want to post a link to every tweet.
https://twitter.com/t_unmasked/status/1122533430804140032

[B.B.Link]

Hi, are you patching the original Japanese ROM with PSSMAS_T-Eng_v200.IPS? If so, what program are you using to patch the file with? Are you sure it's not a header issue? You can find TUSH in RHDN's Utilities section. https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/608/ It will tell you if a ROM is headered or not, and can remove or add one at a button press.

There's also a site-accessible ROM patcher https://www.romhacking.net/patch/ as well as a hasher, that will help with headers. https://www.romhacking.net/hash/

I'm a dumbass. I was patching the exp patch before the actual trans patch.  I got it working now. Thanks.

[akualung]

Thanks a lot! This is a snes rpg I had yet to play, and I was thinking about doing so one of these days. Lucky me I didn't, because now I can play a much better version.

[FlamePurge]

Thank you, everyone, for the kind words!

v2.01 is out now.

https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=28632.0

Several errors have been corrected:

- Fixed typo in conversation between Sailor Mars, Yaga Elder, and Phaleg
- Fixed issues related to the lengths of Ruin RaiderA and Ruin RaiderB's names
- Fixed issue where boss Eudial's "Fire Buster" tech was called "Dark Surge", and the "Need more EP" message was called "Fire Buster"

[mziab]

Yeah, I saw that too, via a retweet from Mato. It was the webmaster of a site called Tuxedo Unmasked. That person also pointed out errors in the intro sequence.

Edit:
This is the thread in question about the "clown" mistranslation.
https://twitter.com/t_unmasked/status/1124651660553273344

Here's the beginning of the playthrough/comparison that prompted the "clown" example, but they're not linked in a single neat thread, and I don't want to post a link to every tweet.
https://twitter.com/t_unmasked/status/1122533430804140032

Yeah, we fixed that pretty early on, along with the intro.

Another interesting thing that got lost in the old translation was an on-going gag with Minako messing up proverbs and someone correcting her. There are several instances of this in the Japanese script, all but one of them (AFAIR) glossed over in the BST patch. We've done our best to restore that and localize it as something that doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.

Speaking of Minako, one of her lines near the end of her chapter was changed by BST to have an Artemis avatar, for whatever reason. Probably to make it flow better?

Another interesting one is how in the BST patch two Tokyo NPCs say almost the exact same thing: "If you go east from here, you'll reach the Hikawa Shrine. And west of here is Juban Hospital.", but the second one in the original is in fact an observation on how it's weird that even though Mugen Academy is defunct, there is still a bus line going there. This might've been a localization decision, since the reference to the Sailor Moon S would've been unclear to the casual fan at the time.

Or there's one you can spot just after leaving Usagi's house: the middle-aged lady in the neighborhood. In the BST patch she says she'd like for Usagi to meet her son, who's very handsome. In the original, on the other hand, she mentions seeing Usagi out with a cute guy, with a wistful comment to the effect of "If only I were 10 years younger, you'd be in for some real competition". Maybe this seemed a bit creepy and desperate, so it was changed?

But to give credit where credit's due, BST did expand the explanation about the True Stones, elaborating on how the Four Heavenly Kings used to be Endymion's servants before becoming Beryl's lackeys. And they included a funny reference to the DiC dub and Makoto's... talent. Hacking-wise, the BST release was solid, only marred by the intro text glitch that I've fixed. And they did translate all the signs in the overworld. It was also one of the first SNES patches to implement a VWF, if memory serves me right. This alone was a monumental achievement back in 1999.

As you can see, there's lots to talk about here. And if you're hankering for more, Tuxedo Unmasked announced they'd be doing a thorough comparison of the Japanese and BST scripts in the near future.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Yay! No more Ginzoushou and umm numm numm crap.

I know BST were Anime fans but man was their translation weeb cringe worthy. I am an Anime, and a Male Sailor Moon fanboy as well, but keeping honorifics and not using Silver Crystal for Ginzoushou really pissed me off back in the day.

[FlamePurge]

Thank you so much, everyone, for the kind words!

v2.02 is now out. We hope it contains the last of the typo fixes, but we will always keep support for future revisions if more typos are found.

http://www.romhacking.net/translations/4654/

[FlamePurge]

v2.03 is out as of today: https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=28632.0 Contains what we hope are the last of the typo fixes.

[JosephSeraph]

Whoah!!! Sailor Moon means so much to me and this makes me sooo happy, it's great that this is out! :O Thanks for your hard work!
Still, I feel like this game could also heavily use a gameplay rebalance hack... Well, now I'll definitely for sure be able to enjoy the narrative side of the game (as well as the super lovely visuals this game brings) but it's sad that I feel the gameplay is a little bit underwhelming -- so much potential with the party techniques and whatnot, but a bizarre balance that, to me back then, fell flat. I hope someone tries to tackle this side of it too one day!

Anyway I'll have to give this a shot, great work! <3 

[sonictails01]

Can you release the tools so that other users can make their own translations / sprite image edits to sailor moon another story? Thanks!

[julayla]

Can you release the tools so that other users can make their own translations / sprite image edits to sailor moon another story? Thanks!

Gotta agree. It would be pretty interesting to see the game in other translations or parodies or such.

[mziab]

I have, in fact, helped get a few other translation projects for the game off the ground, including the German and French patches, with some more on the way soon hopefully.

But I'm afraid there are no plans to release the tools to the public, mostly due to the state they're in. Some of them date as far back as 2003. There's a lot of old cruft in there and a steep learning curve. It's not a nice GUI-driven utility, which anyone can fire up and tinker with. Some of the final tweaks to the graphics etc. were in fact done by hand. For a release to happen, I'd need enough free time to rewrite the whole thing to be something more user-friendly. There are no such prospects at this point. If someone is serious about translating the game to their mother tongue, they are welcome to contact me, though, and we may be able to work something out, time permitting.

[julayla]

I have, in fact, helped get a few other translation projects for the game off the ground, including the German and French patches, with some more on the way soon hopefully.

But I'm afraid there are no plans to release the tools to the public, mostly due to the state they're in. Some of them date as far back as 2003. There's a lot of old cruft in there and a steep learning curve. It's not a nice GUI-driven utility, which anyone can fire up and tinker with. Some of the final tweaks to the graphics etc. were in fact done by hand. For a release to happen, I'd need enough free time to rewrite the whole thing to be something more user-friendly. There are no such prospects at this point. If someone is serious about translating the game to their mother tongue, they are welcome to contact me, though, and we may be able to work something out, time permitting.

I see what you mean. Things like this do take a lot of time.

[sonictails01]

I have, in fact, helped get a few other translation projects for the game off the ground, including the German and French patches, with some more on the way soon hopefully.

But I'm afraid there are no plans to release the tools to the public, mostly due to the state they're in. Some of them date as far back as 2003. There's a lot of old cruft in there and a steep learning curve. It's not a nice GUI-driven utility, which anyone can fire up and tinker with. Some of the final tweaks to the graphics etc. were in fact done by hand. For a release to happen, I'd need enough free time to rewrite the whole thing to be something more user-friendly. There are no such prospects at this point. If someone is serious about translating the game to their mother tongue, they are welcome to contact me, though, and we may be able to work something out, time permitting.

Thank you for the information! I hope for the day the sprite and text editing tools for the game will be released!

[war3zlod3r]

Recently patched to play the new patch since I haven't played it in years, loaded up and got started but Chapter 1 showed up as "Chapter 1: Hell Destiny" isn't it supposed to be "Chapter 1: Her Destiny"?