61 Frames Per Second : translation

Bare Knuckle 3 Translation Puts the Rage Back into Streets of Rage

Bob Mackey — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

While the Streets of Rage series is mostly a forgotten relic these days, Sega's answer to Final Fight is fondly remembered by many as the superior alternative to Capcom's brawler--especially since the home version of Final Fight didn't even have friggin' multiplayer. But it's recently come to my attention that the changes made in the translation from Bare Knuckle (the Japanese name for the series) to Streets of Rage are mostly unknown to the gaming public. So thank heavens we now have Twilight Translation's Bare Knuckle III translation patch in our lives to right Sega's 15 year-old wrong of inexplicably changing the game's story. Here's a brief excerpt from our friends over at Hardcore Gaming 101 to tell you just how Streets of Rage III differed from its Japanese counterpart:

The original plot from the Japanese release is completely different than what made it to the English version of the game. It begins with a place called Oak Wood City being destroyed in a nuclear explosion (!!!) by a "Rakushin" bomb. It then follows the heroes as they search for other bombs that they have been informed of, fend off Mr. X's thugs, and look for the recently kidnapped military officer General Petrof. Dr. Zan later reveals that Mr. X intends to start a war with all of the bombs that he has stolen, and that General Petrof was kidnapped because he posed a threat to this plan. Then we find out that Dr. Zan and is a former acquaintance of General Petrof from the military, and that his real name is Dr. Gilbert, the discoverer of Rakushin.

If you're a Streets of Rage fan, I'm sure most of that made sense to you. But if not, you should at least takee comfort in the fact that Bare Knuckle III is far less cheap and much more playable than Streets of Rage III, despite having such a stupid name. I mean, my knuckles are bare right now and I'm not feeling particularly tough. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?

Related Links:

Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete
The End of Time and the Beginning of Fan Drama
Do You Translate When You Emulate?

The Mother GBA Translation: Tomato is a Crazy Mofo

Bob Mackey — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

No, not that Mother translation. I'm talking about the first Mother: released in Japan in 1989, translated by Nintendo of America, abandoned, discovered, and re-released by the ROM hacking community in 1998 as Earthbound Zero. Mother was also ported to the Game Boy Advance along with its sequel (AKA Earthbound) in 2003; unfortunately, this game fell victim to Nintendo's policy of Earthbound fans not having nice things. Fortunately we have dudes like Tomato, whose amazing hacking/translating skills will one day give us the privilege of playing the first Mother on the go. Here's a video of his progress so far:

Of course, this isn't quite as monumental as the Mother 3 translation--after all, an English script for this game already exists--but Tomato plans on making quite a few interesting changes this time around. And here they are, taken right from this blog post:

Some of the things you can expect from this retranslation:

* A retranslated script. The EB0 ROM has a good number of changes and mistakes/issues with plot details. The EB0 script is also very dry, because of limited resources. This retranslation can allow for a lot more text, and censoring/changes won’t need to be done.

* Expanded text boxes, allowing for more dialog text at one time, meaning the text will be nicer and easier to read.

* Expanded battle text boxes, allowing for more text than before. I still need to actually edit the text to use the new space though.

* I added an “Easy Ring” to Ninten’s basement, for those who don’t like to grind for experience and money. The item, when equipped, doubles the exp and money you get from enemies. It makes the game much less of a chore.

* Things like the status screen are a little fancier and more verbose.

* You can use the L Button in this game much like you can in EarthBound. It makes talking to things/checking things a little quicker.

* I plan to make a few changes with the font and the window borders to be more like EarthBound.

* Many of the little EarthBound / MOTHER 3 connections will be left intact in this translation, so fans of the series will surely enjoy that. The EB0 translation changed a lot of things, which broke some of these connections.

* Translations into other languages will be incredibly easy to do.

Mother isn't exactly the most modern game, but I'm considering playing through it again aftering seeing the changes Tomato plans on making. This is a project that's definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Related Links:

The Reason Why Mother 3 Never Came to America
Earthbound and Back Again
THE MOTHER 3 TRANSLATION IS OUT

Do You Translate When You Emulate?

Joe Keiser — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

All of our incessant conversation about Mother 3 (it’s worth every word, believe me—I’ve read essay anthologies about less meaningful, layered work than this game) seems to bring us inexorably back to the pros and cons of emulation. John and Mackey have covered the bases on this pretty well—though I do want to add for the record that hacking an Xbox Classic and getting one of those Street Fighter Anniversary controllers with the awesome d-pad will square you for pitch-perfect couch-based emulation.

But let’s talk more about emulation’s wonderful translation scene. Mother 3 is without a doubt the most high profile fan-created ROM translation ever, but it’s not the be all and end all by any means. The translation scene is perhaps the best thing to come out of rampant internet-based ROM sharing, as it has allowed plenty of games to be rendered enjoyable for people that previously would not have been able to play them. And this doesn’t just mean English speakers finally can play the craziest Japanese Famicom RPGs, either—it’s also given South American and European non-English speakers games we’ve been enjoying for decades.

You’re probably concerned about the English stuff though, and there’s plenty of it. Romhacking.net, probably the best resource for this kind of thing, records no less than 46 complete translations being made this year. And it’s not all crap, either. There’s no beating Mother 3 for quality and relevance, but unfortunately overshadowed by that mammoth release was a complete translation of Persona 2: Innocent Sin, the precursor to Eternal Punishment that Atlus never felt fit to bring to these shores. Mackey’s told you about it, and after fiddling around with it I have to say it looks like good work.

Then there’s Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart, widely considered the best game in the DQM spin-off series. Japan-only SNES classic Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem was also rendered fit for western consumption by crazed fans this year. So was PlayStation Rez precursor Internal Section, and a variety of interesting Langrisser games. Ever been curious about Famicom Wars, the first game in the series that spawned the beloved Advanced Wars titles? Now you can check it out for yourself.

Individually, this may just come off as the obsessive work of a few bilingual zealots working way too hard for fairly little payoff. Together however, they’re doing something great. With so much of gaming’s incubation stages taking place in Japan, it’s inevitable that the west would lose some of that region’s important early works. Translation Hackers are saving those games, allowing people like you and me to have a more informed understanding of the totality of the medium.

Or, you know, we could just have fun with finally being able to understand Bahamut Lagoon. So, do you translate? What’s your favorite non-Mother 3 translation? Me, I was charmed by the pictured Gunman’s Proof.

Our Emulation Habits

Bob Mackey — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:30:00 GMT

A long, long time ago (actually, it was just this past Friday) fellow blogger and 61FPS boss-man pined over his inability to emulate. I'm afraid that I'm a bit less romantic than John, even though my feelings about emulation have changed slightly over the years. But when I first started emulating--man oh man--it was like some sort of amazing technology I dreamed about but never thought would exist. As is the case with most people who caught onto emulation, I got hooked on NESticle back in 1997, and spent the copious amounts of free time I had (I was a dork in high school, after all) downloading all the games from my past I was dying to play again.

If I'm not mistaken, I think this was also the year that SNES emulators--a baffling proposition at the time--first started to support sound. I remember downloading a .wav file of the Chrono Trigger opening song as played through the soon-to-be released SNES9X and sitting there completely awestruck. Yes, even then I realized how nerdy I was.

Really, the late 90s-early 00s were a very fruitful time for emulation, and during this short span of years we saw some of the most notable translations: Final Fantasy V, Seiken Densetsu 3, and even a ROM dump of Nintendo's own aborted attempt at releasing the first Mother game. If emulation has served me any good, it's come from being able to play games I would've never been able to play otherwise. The translation scene is much quieter these days, but every once in a while there's a huge release, like the PSX version of Tales of Phantasia or Mother 3, which we can't stop blogging about.

Really, the inauthenticity of emulation really doesn't get to me, because the differences from the real hardware are--in my eyes--imperceptible; and I'd rather play something great with minor imperfections than not play anything at all. The only trap I've ever fallen into has been the dreaded "emulation fatigue," which happens when you have a lot of ROMs but not a lot of patience. It's easy to judge and dismiss a game in moments when you've got hundreds more sitting on your hard drive; most people suffering from this disorder try out games for roughly eight seconds before deciding to never play them again. But I've found that if I actually pay money for emulation, usually via the Wii's Virtual Console, this problem disappears entirely. I still have a bunch of games I've never finished sitting on my Wii, but I feel compelled to go back to them because they actually have a dollar value. Not sure if that makes me a hypocrite, but that's my typical behavior.

So I'm going to go ahead and say "Huzzah for emulation!" as long as it isn't hurting anyone. I honestly don't see the point in ethical hand-wringing over games we'll probably never see on any platform again; sure, Capcom may not see a dime from you downloading a DuckTales ROM, but the great money chain for that game was broken about 18 years ago. That doesn't make you entitled to play it, but in the end, who the hell cares?

Related Links:

Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Emulate?
THE MOTHER 3 TRANSLATION IS OUT
The End of Time and the Beginning of Fan Drama

The Mother 3 Strategy Guide: Fandom Done Right

Bob Mackey — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Since I've had the chance to play it all weekend, I can say that I've been completely impressed by the Mother 3 translation project--so much so that the kind people at 61FPS are probably going to have to send people to my house to get me to stop blogging about it (this also happened with Mega Man 9). But until hired goons show up at my door, I'd like to write about the upcoming Mother 3 strategy guide, which shows just as much devotion, hard work, and obsessiveness (the good kind) as the translation itself.

In keeping with the theme of the amazing (though mostly unecessary) strategy guide originally bundled with the American release of Earthbound, the fine people at Starmen.net and Fangamer have been working on a Mother 3 strategy guide in a pseudo-travelogue format--though this is no paltry .txt file uploaded hastily to GameFAQs. We're looking at a full-color, roughly 200 page tome of Mother 3 goodness, fully illustrated (and clay-modeled) by devoted fans, that won't ship until early next year. And if you've got a small amount of disposable income like me, you can head on over to Fangamer's Mother 3 handbook page and give up a mere twenty dollars to make yourself happier in the future. As a bonus, you'll also get a Franklin Badge keychain that probably won't ward off lightning. I wouldn't try it, anyway.

Believe me when I say that I am not being paid in cash, goods, or services to promote the Mother 3 Handbook; this is an item all Earthbound/Mother nerds need to have in their home, lest they be judged by stronger nerds. On Friday, I was so drunk on Mother 3 madness that I even went and added one of these kickass t-shirts to my order; so the next time I'm out at a bar, an attractive woman can tell me "Hey, it's that video game I never played!" while I spill beer all over myself and others. Thanks, Fangamer!

Related Links:

THE MOTHER 3 TRANSLATION IS OUT
What I'm Playing This Weekend: Mother 3. Doi.
Earthbound Saga Pt. 4

THE MOTHER 3 TRANSLATION IS OUT

Bob Mackey — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I have to apologize for posting about the Mother 3 translation project twice in one week, but this post contains actual news, as opposed to just speculation. Today--right now--you can finally grab the Mother 3 translation patch; though how you choose to use it is entirely up to you (Note: it cannot possibly be used for evil). Here's the newest trailer, in case you still need convincing:

I can't think of a better way to end this post than with project lead Tomato's comments about this project finally wrapping up:

After more than 13 years of waiting, the sequel to EarthBound is now in English! I hope fans of the series, new and old, will find MOTHER 3 to be just as unique and interesting as its predecessors. We tried our very best to make a worthy translation, and I think we came close to hitting that mark. With any luck, the translation will seem just as "strange, funny, and heartrending" as the original Japanese version.

MOTHER 3 is filled with secrets and rarities. Characters say new things after even the tiniest of events. Take your time to explore the game's intriguing world - you won't be disappointed! And when you're done, be sure to come back here, because we've prepared many more goodies for fans to check out and enjoy post-game!

Enjoy your time in the world of MOTHER 3!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to waste a significant portion of my Friday. Go and grab the patch HERE if you didn't do so immediately.

Related Links:

Earthbound and Back Again
Earthbound Saga Pt. 4
Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete

Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete

Bob Mackey — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:30:00 GMT

With the Mother 3 translation looming on the horizon that is Friday (or Saturday), this is looking to be a great week for the fan translation scene. But Mother 3 isn't the only Japanese game to receive obsessive attention from devoted fans; yesterday marked the release of the translation patch for Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Due to their general size and complexity, very few PSX games are fan-translated (the most notable one being Tales of Phantasia), so this is quite a feat. But I'll let the trailer say more than my words ever could:

The story behind Persona 2 is an interesting one; we actually got one of the Persona 2 games, Eternal Punishment, in the States back in 2000. For whatever reason--probably the low profits involved in localizing a niche RPG on a dying system--Atlus opted to bring out the second Persona 2 game, leaving Innocent Sin to the same fate as the last two chapters in the Shining Force 3 trilogy. Now, thanks to the work of a few devoted fans, we'll finally get to play one of the missing chapters in a series that's really picked up steam in the US since Persona 2's release.

I gotta say, if you love video games, hobbyist translators are possibly the best people in the world. It's strange; the translation scene doesn't feel nearly as large or productive as it did back in the late 90s/early 00s, but every so often there's a huge release that proves they aren't going away anytime soon. And if they're taking requests for any future projects, might I recommend Marvelous: Another Treasure Island? Something about not getting to play a Nintendo-developed SNES RPG directed by Eiji Aonuma (who's basically been head honcho of Zelda since Ocarina of Time) makes the world seem much more horrible.

Related Links:

The End of Time and the Beginning of Fan Drama
TVTropes' "Woolseyisms"
The Mother 3 Translation is Coming (For Real This Time)!

The Mother 3 Translation is Coming (For Real This Time)!

Bob Mackey — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:30:00 GMT

It may be hard to believe; and yes, I know I've posted about it before. But the Mother 3 (AKA the sequel to Earthbound) translation is actually coming out at the end of this week! Could this news possibly be correct? After all the heartbreaking delays by the dedicated Mother 3 Translation Project, how do I know that they're just not yanking my chain, as so many Earthbound-based promises have yanked it before?

Rest assured that the evidence is stacked in our favor. A simple message, posted yesterday on the translation team's blog, says a lot in just a handful of words:

The patch will be out at the end of this week.

I can barely contain myself, and you should honestly feel the same way; if you're an Earthbound fan like me, then you've probably been eternally dicked over. Not only did we have to wait eleven years for a true sequel, we also had to suffer the anguish of knowing a game that we wanted to play existed in a language most of us were too lazy to achieve complete fluency in. Now, thanks to the kind folks in the translation scene--the same subculture that wrangled an officially-translated prototype of the first Mother over a decade ago--our dreams will finally come true. All that's left is to wait just a few more agonizing days. I think we can make it.

Related Links:

The Mother 3 Translation: We're Not Worthy!
Earthbound 2/Mother 3 Fan Translation Nears Completion
Whatcha Listening To: The Earthbound Soundtrack

The Mother 3 Translation: We're Not Worthy!

Bob Mackey — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Ever since Nadia Oxford started writing about the Earthbound soundtrack, something keeps popping up in my mind that I've been trying to supress out of sheer impatience: the unofficial translation of Mother 3--for you non-Earthbound fanatics, that's essentially Earthbound 2. From all of my lurking in Earthbound fandom over the last decade, I can tell you that the translation couldn't be in better hands; it's being guided by a fellow with the hacker alias "Tomato" who--along with a few other folks--basically orgazined the online Earthbound fanhorde just as the Internet started taking off.

Back in 2006, I assumed that the translation patch for Earthbound would be out days after the game's release in Japan; but I had no idea how hard Tomato's team (one of a few who took a crack at the game) was working, or about the unhackable nature of Mother 3's code. If you check out their to-do list, you can see just how far the translation team has come in the last two years--all that's left to do is testing. Here's a video from Tomato himself showcasing some of the work they've done on the game so far. Note how faithful it is to the spirit of Earthbound's awesome localization:

If you're interested in knowing how thorough these guys are when it comes to translating, check out their most recent blog post:

Finally finished the sound hacking thing on the to-do list. Two tiny sound effects needed to be changed into English. One is when you use an item that tricks enemies into turning around. It says, “Look over there!” in a goofy, 0.4 second-long clip. The other is 1.2 seconds long and plays during an unusual version of rock-paper-scissors.

The game stores this sound data as 8-bit, signed, stereo raw PCM data at 8000-ish Hz with some extra info thrown in. In normal people terms, that means it’s low quality and sounds scratchy, as you can hear from the original Japanese clips here. I’ll refrain from posting the English clips, even though I’m happy with them, because for some reason people have a kneejerk reaction to stuff like this. Had there been actual, full-fledged voice acting in this game, like if this had been a Playstation RPG, I would have definitely found a way to subtitle it (hell, that IS what I do for a living :P ) but these are more like two quick sound effects that would otherwise make players go “wtf was that” and we’d have to translate it for them anyway. In fact, the people who did the Japanese voices didn’t even get credited for it (or if they did, they were just in Special Thanks).

I--I love them.

Related Links:

Earthbound 2/Mother 3 Fan Translation Nears Completion
Whatcha Listening To: The Earthbound Soundtrack
Earthbound and Back Again

TVTropes' "Woolseyisms"

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:20:00 GMT

It's rare that we give much thought to the good men and women who turn our video game text from "YOU LUCKY ARE WINNER!" to something dignified. But where there are exceptions, there is the potential for small wars. By far one of the most controversial names in game translation and localisation is Mr Ted Woolsey.

Ted Woolsey translated many of Square-Enix's best-known 16-bit works, including Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy VI and Super Mario RPG. To give you an idea of how divided gamers are over this gentlemen, consider that Woolsey hasn't done any substantial translation work since the death of the Super Nintendo but his name alone makes people jump up and down like testosterone-driven baboons.

TV Tropes has a long and rambling Wiki entry about Woolsey, his followers and his haters. For the sake of a quick crash course, Woolsey was (in)famous for adding his own voice to his translations. This "voice" gave us something to smile at in the place of Japanese puns we couldn't understand (except for purists who can't understand why we don't think sound-alike sushi name jokes are funny). His voice also added a good deal of depth to what was, for most of us, an epic story. Final Fantasy II US had an okay thing going with illegitimate moon brothers or whatever, but Final Fantasy III US--or Final Fantasy VI, if you prefer--took on themes that were unheard of and still go largely untouched by RPGs today. Woolsey had to convey Terra's identity crisis, suicide, unwanted pregnancy and the friggin' Apocalypse while keeping the game text family friendly.

Oh, and he wasn't allowed to make references to anyone dying, even though Kefka remains the only Square villian who killed people like bugs for the sheer joy of it.

Woolsey was especially grand at balancing his own jokes with the original source material. Working Designs' games, as well as some fan translations, often slash and burn the Japanese story for the sake of a cock joke. Excessive swears is usually a good indication of translators taking things a bit far. "Kuso" is an all-purpose Japanese curse that shows up everywhere, but it's relatively mild ("Damn" or "Shit", depending on your mood). Things rarely get raunchier than that. Contrary to popular belief, Japan is aware of which games and shows are meant for children, and it acts accordingly.

By the way, Final Fantasy VI Advance did an excellent job touching up Woolsey's translation while keeping its friendly ghost alive. I recommend it because Woolsey was forced to cut a lot of the game text due to space constraints. Admittedly, there's some stuff there you could probably do without seeing...like Emperor Ghestal's suggestion that Celes mate with Kefka to produce magic-infused progeny for his new Empire. Go ahead and take that one to bed with you.

Related Links:

Know Your Final Fantasy IV Trivia. It Could Save Your Life.
Would You Play a Final Fantasy VII Remake? Hmmm?
Gaming on a Train: Final Fantasy IV

FMV Hell: Lunar, The Silver Star

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:07:00 GMT

Time once again for a brief look at the Sega CD games that made us women and men (if you're currently a twenty-something, I mean).

The full-motion video in games like Lunar, The Silver Star is unique stuff for a few reasons. First, it was an unfiltered assault of glittery, shojo-eyed anime during an age when most game localisers struggled to hide any cultural evidence that video games indeed come from Japan. Of course, Working Designs is still known for taking some, er, extreme liberties with their own translations and localisations, but by God that's another tome for another night. All you need to know is that Lunar saw its US release in 1993, ages before Pokemon made anime mainstream (bonus fact: anime became mainstream in Canada in 1996, thanks to Sailor Moon recieving an after-school time slot).

The intro for Lunar is also made special by its...lack of animation. Maybe we were too busy drooling on the television screen at the time, but when you watch Sega CD intros in today's age of a thousand frames per second, you begin to notice that the "cut scenes" that wowed us over a dozen years ago are little more than kindergarten-grade cut-outs with pinned, movable limbs.

I'm being a little cruel, however. Lunar might not be the best-aged RPG out there, but like Sonic CD, it contains a lot of heart. And the voice acting, though nothing spectacular, is still a few notches above the horrors that would assault us on the Playstation five years later.

Still, a friend of mine claimed that the singing practise scene in Lunar (about 5:40 into the video) beat the hell out of the opera scene in Final Fantasy VI.

I'm...I'm really not sure about that.

Related Links:

Sega CD on iPhone: I Like Where This Is Going
FMV Hell: Sonic CD

Earthbound and Back Again

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:08:00 GMT

If you've never played Earthbound, known to the pure as Mother 2, I sincerely hope you'll give it a try someday, somehow. Most of America overlooked the title when it was released towards the end of the Super Nintendo's lifespan: the world was awash with Playstation-Saturn-N64 hype and nobody had any time for a (deceptively) primitive-looking Crayola adventure. Having only just recently experienced Earthbound myself, I know that the love and care put into the game's characters, atmosphere and story won't leave me for a long, long time.

Seriously, I'll be rocking on the porch of Pine Box Acres and rasping for my grandson, Ness, to bring granny her cigarettes. I'll slowly draw one out and take a large drag after three shaky attempts with the lighter, producing nothing but sparks until I finally put flint to steel. And Ness will watch me patiently with his hands behind his back while I talk about the time his namesake took down three Krakens in the Sea of Eden. And then I'll die and Ness will steal my wallet and never look back.

If you're insane like myself, you'll want to check out Earthbound and Back Again. It's a list of the Japanese enemy names used in Mother 2 compared side-by-side with their english translations from Earthbound. The list is compiled by Tomato, the gentleman in charge of the Mother 3 fan translation project. Write to your local Pope and elect him for Sainthood.

Lists like this usually exist for American fans to get angry about shoddy translations, but Tomato's list has a different motive: it points out exactly how much work went into the translation for Earthbound. The enemy names for Mother 2 are definitely amusing, but they often border on the generic. Earthbound does a fantastic job with enemies like the "New-Age Retro Hippie" (known as "Carefree Guy" in Japan) and "Ramblin' Evil Mushroom" (simply called "Walking Mushroom" in its homeland).

Check out the list and gain a new appreciation for translators. Then hope for Earthbound on the Virtual Console.

Related Links:

Mother 3 Fan Translation Nears Completion