Final Fantasy IV WonderSwan Color English Translation*

[pkt_paladin]

A few weeks ago, I wanted to play Final Fantasy IV on the WonderSwan color. I was surprised to see that the only translation that exists is a partial translation by MottZilla from 2004 here: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/801/. This translation primarily translates menus and text you would see routinely (shops, inns, after battle text, etc).

I know very little about actual romhacking, and I am not fluent in Japanese. What started as me figuring out how the game works became me inserting the script from the Pixel Remaster into the WonderSwan color version of the game. This technically makes it not a translation of the game, but if someone wants to do that, I'm happy to give any notes I have to help!

...Or, the name I'd prefer is the

Final Fantasy IV: Pixel DeMaster

Same charming pixel graphics and brand new music that's worse than you remember!


...Joking aside, I wanted to share some screenshots from the translation to show some progress.

Screenshots in spoiler with some of my comments:

Spoiler

Most of the text in this game uses two hexidecimal values to display text (e.g., [82][52]=ら). However, the necessary letters for English only require one hex value (e.g., [79]=c). I'm still figuring out how to center this particular text to make it look a little nicer.

Large chunks of English script fit comfortably in dialogue windows. Most of the time, I can fit the text verbatim from the Pixel Remaster without worrying about pointer tables.

Enemy names have been expanded to 8 tiles. Spell names are 7 characters (each include the symbol preceding the name of the spell). I used squish tiles for Silence and Shell. Job names are capped at 7 characters or they overflow on these menus. Names of items and equipment have been all expanded to 8 characters.

Sometimes this game draws menus as giant walls of text that have spaces and line breaks. This makes it incredibly easy to add tons of text to things like the Status screen. The limitation, though, is that the actual variable values themselves are on a separate layer and just superimpose themselves over the text. I haven't figured out where the display of the values is stored, but that could theoretically declutter some of what's here.

[close]

All of this is a rough draft, but I'm relatively confident that the entire game can be translated in this way with much of the text faithful to the Pixel Remaster's script.

As of this post, I've found (and completed):

Spoiler

Enemy Names 100% expanded, 10% translated
Item Names 100% expanded and translated
Equipment 100% expanded and translated
Menus 90% expanded and translated
Battle Dialogue found
Script through Baron Castle is translated
   (I'm in the process of locating this still, but I've completed the hiragana table).
Magic Names 90% expanded and translated

[close]

Any advice, comments, excitement, or general lack of apathy towards this post would be enjoyed!

[FlamePurge]

Hey, cool stuff! It's nice to have this version preserved in English.

I do know FFI and II WSC never really got finished, either. If you do this one it'll be the first.

[Titney]

Nice! I just started the translated FFI on Wonderswan a little while ago so this is great news. Looking forward to see the progress.

[mikeprado30]

The best of luck to this effort!  Makes me feel like a fool not to help in any way because I have zero knowledge for romhacking and stuff.  But I could contribute if there's need in betatesting.

[Rodimus Primal]

A few weeks ago, I wanted to play Final Fantasy IV on the WonderSwan color. I was surprised to see that the only translation that exists is a partial translation by MottZilla from 2004 here: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/801/. This translation primarily translates menus and text you would see routinely (shops, inns, after battle text, etc).

I know very little about actual romhacking, and I am not fluent in Japanese. What started as me figuring out how the game works became me inserting the script from the Pixel Remaster into the WonderSwan color version of the game. This technically makes it not a translation of the game, but if someone wants to do that, I'm happy to give any notes I have to help!

...Or, the name I'd prefer is the

Final Fantasy IV: Pixel DeMaster

Same charming pixel graphics and brand new music that's worse than you remember!


...Joking aside, I wanted to share some screenshots from the translation to show some progress.

Screenshots in spoiler with some of my comments:

Spoiler

Most of the text in this game uses two hexidecimal values to display text (e.g., [82][52]=ら). However, the necessary letters for English only require one hex value (e.g., [79]=c). I'm still figuring out how to center this particular text to make it look a little nicer.

Large chunks of English script fit comfortably in dialogue windows. Most of the time, I can fit the text verbatim from the Pixel Remaster without worrying about pointer tables.

Enemy names have been expanded to 8 tiles. Spell names are 7 characters (each include the symbol preceding the name of the spell). I used squish tiles for Silence and Shell. Job names are capped at 7 characters or they overflow on these menus. Names of items and equipment have been all expanded to 8 characters.

Sometimes this game draws menus as giant walls of text that have spaces and line breaks. This makes it incredibly easy to add tons of text to things like the Status screen. The limitation, though, is that the actual variable values themselves are on a separate layer and just superimpose themselves over the text. I haven't figured out where the display of the values is stored, but that could theoretically declutter some of what's here.

[close]

All of this is a rough draft, but I'm relatively confident that the entire game can be translated in this way with much of the text faithful to the Pixel Remaster's script.

As of this post, I've found (and completed):

Spoiler

Enemy Names 100% expanded, 10% translated
Item Names 100% expanded and translated
Equipment 100% expanded and translated
Menus 90% expanded and translated
Battle Dialogue found
Script through Baron Castle is translated
   (I'm in the process of locating this still, but I've completed the hiragana table).
Magic Names 90% expanded and translated

[close]

Any advice, comments, excitement, or general lack of apathy towards this post would be enjoyed!

Very cool to have more Wonderswan stuff get translated for sure. Just an observation, DkKnght might be a bit more pleasing to the eyes. If you need to look at how I handled some of the lettering in Namingway Edition to get some extra space where necessary.

[spotanjo3]

Glad to see more WonderSwan games get translated. Nice done!

[julayla]

Agreed. The system is badly underrated, especially with Digimon and Final Fantasy games that I'm eager to try out on it

[pkt_paladin]

The best of luck to this effort!  Makes me feel like a fool not to help in any way because I have zero knowledge for romhacking and stuff.  But I could contribute if there's need in betatesting.

I absolutely will need this! Going to do the best I can with proofreading the script and making sure everything gets displayed correctly, but glitches are going to happen. Would be helpful to have some people to play test.

Very cool to have more Wonderswan stuff get translated for sure. Just an observation, DkKnght might be a bit more pleasing to the eyes. If you need to look at how I handled some of the lettering in Namingway Edition to get some extra space where necessary.

I haven't really settled on a lot of final names for some of the jobs, but I agree that my choice probably isn't necessarily the best. I'm going to come back to the job names when I see what I can do with remaining squish tiles.

Hey, cool stuff! It's nice to have this version preserved in English.

I do know FFI and II WSC never really got finished, either. If you do this one it'll be the first.

I can't guarantee that I will finish--but I will share what I have if I run out of steam to any willing hands. This version of the game has a special place in my heart, and I would love to play a translated version even if I'm not the sole person responsible for providing it!

[CDRomance]

Looking forward to this. Don't give up! 

[T92]

If you want, I can help you with the betatesting.

Also, check out Tomato's notes (https://legendsoflocalization.com/final-fantasy-iv/), they can be really helpful.

[KingMike]

Hey, cool stuff! It's nice to have this version preserved in English.

I do know FFI and II WSC never really got finished, either. If you do this one it'll be the first.

I'd imagine the release of the PS1 version heavily demotivated translation efforts back in the day (I mean, I'm sure ChrisRPG would've eventually gotten to it if he hadn't passed away. )

[Everything]

It looks like you've made some great progress, nice work! I have some notes on the WSC version that might be helpful.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/9e1lgx2l91scoq2/ff4-wsc.zip/file

There is a full disassembly with some comments, a partial ROM map, a tbl file, and dumps of the dialogue and battle dialogue. There is also my very preliminary attempt to match the WSC dialogue strings with the English dialogue strings from the GBA version (I only got through ~5%). I also included an IPS patch that allows you to enter the debug menu, more on that in this post: https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=34015.msg423868#msg423868