Brandish 2: The Planet Buster English translation errors

[BitMasterPlus]

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right section again, so forgive me and if need be, move it to the right section.

The SNES English patch for Brandish 2: The Planet Buster has some serious errors. Not translation wise, as far as I know, but some major game glitches that do need to be fixed. The problem is, I tried to email the person/team who did the translation, but it seems the email may be outdated, which is not too surprising since the date for when the translation was submitted was in 2009. But the problem is, who do I ask to help fix these problems? I'm not sure who to go to, or to ask someone here to help?

Here's the translation in question: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1442/

And here's the glitches that I found while playing, as follows from minor to  major:


First glitch is, after you escape the first island in the game and are on the second island, as soon as you enter the cave area, the whole area glitches. Instead of blue, it's mostly yellow with dots of other colors I think. This glitch is the easiest and only one to fix since all you need to do is exit then re-enter the cave area and it's normal, but I thought I point it out anyways.

Next glitch is NPC dialogue. I first encountered this in the first town area, where you fight the giant octopus, and it occurs the rest of the game. Some NPC's will have their regular dialogue, but others, instead of what they're supposed to say, you talk to them and a text box appears telling you how much gold you have. A weird glitch that NPC's tell you the amount of gold you have.

Third glitch is, certain bosses when you approach them, the battle ends as if you already fought them and won. This doesn't happen to all the bosses, but the two I remember off the top of my head are the woman who shoots lighting at you at the end of the first cave area on the second island, and the giant octopus you fight in the first town. There are others I think but I can't remember now.

Final glitch, and this is the biggest one, is saving. No matter where you save or how far you get into the game, even if you save right after you get control of Ares, it'll say it saved, but when you restart the game and try to pick continue, it will say the save data is corrupted and will delete all your progress, forcing you to start over. The only reason I got as far as I did was because I was playing on an emulator with save states.

These are the glitches I encountered. I only got to the second to last area of the game before I stopped playing since I felt like I was missing out on some stuff, plus saving doesn't work. I got as far as I did thanks to save states, but since I didn't complete it all the way, I don't know if there are any other glitches in the last two areas of the game that have yet to be discovered. For now, these are the one's I've encountered.

I hope someone experienced in hacking can help fix these issues if they so wish to.

[goldenband]

Please write a review with this information! This is a fairly old hack and I don't know if or when anyone will help fix these issues, but in the meantime it's important to document them so that other players know about these bugs, which in the case of the save corruption issue is quite serious. 

[Pennywise]

What emulator are you using? Could make all the difference in the world.

[BitMasterPlus]

Please write a review with this information! This is a fairly old hack and I don't know if or when anyone will help fix these issues, but in the meantime it's important to document them so that other players know about these bugs, which in the case of the save corruption issue is quite serious. 

Okay, just made a review. Need to wait to get it approved now.

What emulator are you using? Could make all the difference in the world.

I tried it with one or two different emulators and the issues still persist, unless I need to try more, but it seems like it won't make a difference.

[Jorpho]

I tried it with one or two different emulators and the issues still persist

It would be vastly helpful if you specified exactly which ones rather than saying "one or two different emulators".

It's conceivable that it might work properly in ZSNES.

[mziab]

It would be vastly helpful if you specified exactly which ones rather than saying "one or two different emulators".

It's conceivable that it might work properly in ZSNES.

Indeed, some old hacks rely on the emulation deficiencies of old emulators like ZSNES or ancient versions of Snes9x, usually related to VRAM writes being allowed when they shouldn't. Most of the issues mentioned here don't seem related to that, but it won't hurt to check if using ZSNES fixes anything.

The original authors seem to have moved on, so they're unlikely to fix any issues, so unless a willing and capable party steps up, the translation will likely stay broken.

[goldenband]

Okay, just made a review. Need to wait to get it approved now.

It's up! Thanks very much for doing that.

[BitMasterPlus]

It would be vastly helpful if you specified exactly which ones rather than saying "one or two different emulators".

It's conceivable that it might work properly in ZSNES.

Apologies, let me be more specific. I used the SNES9x and Retroarch PocketSNES emulators and neither worked. I could try the Retroarch CATSFC and Retroarch CATSFC Plus to see if either would work as well.

[Jorpho]

Apologies, let me be more specific. I used the SNES9x and Retroarch PocketSNES emulators and neither worked. I could try the Retroarch CATSFC and Retroarch CATSFC Plus to see if either would work as well.

You did look at the readme, didn't you?

Snes9X is smooth, but music can be grainy.
ZSNES can be choppy, but music is perfect.
BSNES seems decent overall, but wasn't extensively tested.
Surprisingly, SNES emulators for PSP & XBOX run Brandish 2 nicely.
Always enable VSync! Otherwise you'll ecounter some intense tearing.

You will probably want to try to track down whatever version of SNES9x was current 14 years ago, as it has likely changed substantially in 14 years of development.

[BitMasterPlus]

You did look at the readme, didn't you?

Indeed I did, and I still think it's a serious flaw for it to work on a few emulators and not others, especially since it's been at least 14 years since the translation has been done and technology has evolved and a lot more emulators have been made since then.

You will probably want to try to track down whatever version of SNES9x was current 14 years ago, as it has likely changed substantially in 14 years of development.

Let's just say I did some modifications and I'm playing it on my 3DS. Good news is I got it to work thanks to the Retroarch CATSFC Plus emulator and I haven't encountered any of the glitches so far, but I still think it's worth looking into trying to fix it to at least work on more modern day emulators and not just ones for the past.

[BitMasterPlus]

Well, I did get it to work on the Retroarch CATSFC Plus emulator and was able to play it from beginning to end with no glitches in sight, but I still believe that this should be tested in as many SNES emulators out there and try to fix it on ones that can't play it correctly. I understand if a game can't play on some emulators, but it shouldn't just work on very few emulators, it should at least try to work on most if possible. I've edited my review to reflect this.

[Jorpho]

As CATSFC is apparently based off a very, very old version of SNES9x, that would be consistent.
https://github.com/ShadauxCat/CATSFC
https://www.snes9x.com/news.asp

It is probably feasible to try the different versions of SNES9x since 1.5 and thereby pinpoint what changes in the emulator broke the patch, even though such changes were probably for the best in terms of achieving overall emulation accuracy.

It would be particularly useful if the patch would work on original hardware via a flashcart (a much more reasonable target than "most emulators"), but that would indeed require a "willing and capable party".

[Krokodyl]

I was curious so I tested it myself.
I applied the patch using Flips 1.31 (I got a message saying that the patch might be scrambled or malformed but it was still applied).
I then tested the patched game on the following emulators:
- bsnes-plus v05
- Snes9X v1.51.ep10r1
- Snes9x v1.61

I walked outside the first room, saved and reloaded the game and could continue the saved game without any issue on all of them.
I can't test the other glitches easily but I've not managed to reproduce your save game glitch.
Both loading from the "Continue" option on the main menu and loading the "Load" menu in the game itself work fine for me.