Startling Odyssey 2 translation patch released!

[esteban]

Some real Field of Dreams shit right there.

Ha!

I hear ya'.

I don't mind, though. I'm sure these folks wouldn't have been able to tackle much more, since the necessry skills/time/energy would be significant.

I want a non-sanitized localization of Drop Rock Hora, myself. It turns out that many aspects of the NA release were censored/changed.

[Arkhan]

I've heard the excuse that some of these things are done as "tests." Tests for what, I'm not sure, nevertheless, the people doing said "tests" never seem to actually go on and do anything else. They'll show up out of nowhere, translate all two strings of Japanese in a game like Puzzle Boy, and then disappear back to wherever they came from, never to be seen again.

Some real Field of Dreams shit right there.

This made my friday morning 100x more enjoyable. 

It also made hot chocolate come out of my nose.

[arromdee]

romhacking.net lists:

Blue Blink
Bubblegum Crash
Crest of Gaia, The
Lady Sword
Lode Runner: Lost Labyrinth
Maison Ikkoku
Märchen Maze
Photograph Boy
Puzzle Boy
Shanghai
The Tower of Druaga
Wonderboy in Monster Land

(CD games:)
Motteke Tamago
Super Daisenryaku
Xak III - The Eternal Recurrence
Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys

Wonderboy, of course, is Bikkuriman World; I have no idea whether it's just called that on romhacking.net or whether the translation patch actually renames anything to the Wonderboy versions in the game.  Sonson II is on romhacking.net as unfinished, because the ending wasn't translated.  Dracula X is listed as unfinished because of graphics hacking.  This leaves Die Hard and Startling Odyssey 2.  I personally wouldn't count SO2 because it's not really translated (and worse yet, this sort of thing usually discourages anyone else from doing a real translation later).  No idea about Die Hard.

[SignOfZeta]

Not really translated? I've only ever finished it in Japanese, but I played the English hack for several hours and it seemed pretty translated to me. Is it not complete?

[nat]

Wonderboy, of course, is Bikkuriman World; I have no idea whether it's just called that on romhacking.net or whether the translation patch actually renames anything to the Wonderboy versions in the game. 

It doesn't change the titlescreen, but all in-game text makes reference to "Monsterland" and the same locations (Bora Bora Island or whatever, for example) as the English version of Monsterland.

[arromdee]

Not really translated? I've only ever finished it in Japanese, but I played the English hack for several hours and it seemed pretty translated to me. Is it not complete?

My point is that a machine translation is likely to have a number of problems that nobody could ever notice without the ability to translate it manually.

[SignOfZeta]

...who cares? Now we're grading games based on their language competency? If that's the case then there are a fair number of officially released NES games that are "untranslated".

[HercTNT]

Exactly, golgo 13 for the nes comes to mind.  I could care less how exact it is, as long as its close enough. After all for those of us that dont speak japanese, we can enjoy the game now. 

[spenoza]

Machine translation couldn't be much worse than early Japan-origin translations. Many early game that came out over here were translated by someone on the Japanese team and simply handed to the US publisher or publishing division for release. Current machine translation probably has an advantage over that.

[BigusSchmuck]

Just read this thread and all I have to say is wow! I'm glad we are getting a few more rpgs translated, but its still a small list compared to how many super famicom games that have been translated by fan groups. It would be kind of interesting to see how many rpgs are on the super famicom vs the pce engine cd.

[SignOfZeta]

Its probably pretty close to the same. RPGs were the most popular genre in the early 90s (with fighting and, of course, sports) and the PCE did just as good of a job as the SFC (although in a completely different style).

[Arkhan]

Its probably pretty close to the same. RPGs were the most popular genre in the early 90s (with fighting and, of course, sports) and the PCE did just as good of a job as the SFC (although in a completely different style).

according to some people here, RPGs weren't very popular at all.

[Necromancer]

according to some people here, RPGs weren't very popular at all.

They weren't all that popular in the US - Japan is a different story, of course.

[Arkhan]

America blows.

If we didn't, you would have been released in the US!

[incrediblehark]

I don't know if rpgs weren't as popular in america or game companies just thought they weren't as popular, marketable, etc. I grew up playing rpgs and all of my friends who played video games did too.