The Japanese ROM hacking community is very interesting. I find it funny that they have translation patches for games that were improved for the western release, like this one that turns Zelda 2 back into Japanese.
The Japanese ROM hacking community is very interesting.
I wonder how hard translating english to japanese for a jap ESL would be
They probably just use the original script.
Western Zelda 2 was pretty much a direct upgrade in many ways. It's not completely surprising to me. Although I will say that Western Zelda 2 still wasn't completely perfect.
What about Dragon Quest? Did that game have any upgrades or was it just story changes?
For starters, in the original Famicom version, your character didn't have sprites for facing different directions. He'd just sorta slide around while facing the camera.
>sprites (for both the hero and NPCs) can now face different direction
>due to the above, whenever you select the "talk" command in the Famicom version, you then have to select which the direction the npc you want to talk to is in. In the NES version, your character just has to be facing them
>save system no longer requires you to write down a huge password
>water tiles in the NES version have a big of beach sand where they meet the coast (pic related)
>there was an easter egg in the Japanese version where getting the infamous "bad end" gave you a password to start a "new game+". And by "new game+", I mean "same as the normal game, except your stats are always about one level lower than they'd normally be" (so at level 4, you'd be about as strong as level 3 normally is)
>old English
God I hate it
That's not old English.
>God I hate it
homosexual.
What are you, King James? That's old fricking English, you can tell by the fact that it still has a formal form and a casual form. Dumbass.
It's Early Modern English. I learned about that shit in high school. REAL Old English is practically a foreign language.
Eat a dick. It's old and nobody has used it for centuries. I don't care what you want to call it, that doesn't change the fact that it's old and it's not modern.
But it's not Old English. Learn the history of the language you're typing.
Anything that hasn't been used for centuries is old. Learn how to use the language you're typing in.
Did you know that Americans are bound by Japanese copyright law?
That's an entirely different thing. You can walk into mainstream electronic stores in Japan and buy emulation hardware and dumpers. you don't have a single clue what you're talking about.
>Did you know that Americans are bound by Japanese copyright law?
As far as Nintendo is concerned, yes.
It's not a matter of Nintendo. It's actuality due to an agreement signed by both countries. Congrats, you're subject to Japanese law.
>Congrats, you're subject to Japanese law.
Frick that, I'm still making my own emu whether Japan likes it or not.
Emulation isn't illegal in Japan; that's why you can go into mainstream electronics shops and buy devices that use emulation to play games.
>that's why you can go into mainstream electronics shops and buy devices that use emulation to play games.
The japanese have chinkhelds too? Who would've thought.
I wasn't referring to those, but yes those are popular here. So are the Funny Playing screen kits and Analogue Pocket. Even MiSTer has a following in Japan. Hell, even Polymega does.
For some reason, I think Japan is based now. Good on them for staying up with tech.
Japan is half based and half baked. On one hand wives don't mind or encourage their husbands to sleep with prostitutes, but on the other hand there are tons of NEETS who rarely leave their houses and are the reason for the decline in the birth rate.
As long as I can get laid, It's no problem.
Cheap 3rd generation Korean hookers, only in the hidden brothels of Osaka.
>hidden brothels of Osaka.
Sounds like the setup to a hentai, but well worth it.
>wives don't mind or encourage their husbands to sleep with prostitutes
That's not based. That's just sad. But I know most anons on Ganker nowadays are gooner morons so what the frick ever.
I'm polyamorous, so it's no difference to me lol.
Japs are weird. They cheat on each other all the time but if it's with a "host" at one of those bars it's no big deal for some reason.
They weren't built off puritanical colonialists, so they're objectively far more sex-positive.
The rate of infidelity is on par with western countries
I hate poorgay thieves like you
You sound like a r*dditor
>and are the reason for the decline in the birth rate.
That's not the reason why
Americans are dealing with the same thing
Downspiral of bullshit i say
When I was there around 2006 or so, you could pay (a lot) to have someone in akiba softmod your PSP to play emulators
>It's actuality due to an agreement signed by both countries.
This Berne Convention nonsense again?
Just stop with this crap you moronic ESL
>Anything that hasn't been used for centuries is old.
But "Old English" is an established term. You mean to say "archaic" instead. I don't even see the (nonexistent) problem with a fantasy using such a dialect. Straight up brainlet shit.
>it's old therefore it's "old english"
No anon it doesn't work like that, labels have a meaning. By that logic we would have to start calling 6th gen retro too despite the fact it plays and feel nothing like the previous g... oh
lmao american education system at work, willfully ignorant.
No it isn't, illiterate moron. It's early modern English, hence why you can still easily understand it. This is old English.
>early modern English
I thought all the Thee and Thou and Shakespeare stuff was Middle English? Certainly a later form, but not quite yet Modern.
Thou and thee are old words derived from Old English. Middle English is Chaucer. Definitely more recognizable now that frogs raped it. The pronunciations, word choices, and grammar are still different enough from Modern English that many of the rhymes here are lost if you're reading the translation on the left.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170908210600/http://www.bremesoftware.com/Chaucer/index.htm
Early Modern English is Shakespeare and the King James Bible, which are easily understandable to most readers. It's called "early" for a reason.
I read Canterbury Tales back in Middle School and didn't think it was too hard to parse, but I suppose Shakespeare is a lot easier, and also it seems I was reading a Modern English version.
I guess Middle English was before they really standardized spelling for most things.
Standardised spelling didn't come into being until the late 18th century.
The "ye olde english" anon was complaining about is not Early Modern English of Shakespeare, nor is it the Middle English of Chaucer. It's a faux version of archaic English, bastardized from the above (and from the King James Bible) which gets referenced fairly often in pop culture. Ted Woolsey's version of Frog in Chrono Trigger is a good example of this. It can be cheesy & overwrought at times, but it can also have charm, depending on the context (and yes, anon is gay for complaining). It's certainly not the Old English of Beowulf, which is barely recognizable to a modern speaker.
I've heard those are good, especially the t-editions.
Any outdated English could be accurately described as "old English", what you're talking about is Old English (note the capital "O" since it's a proper noun).
Then what does that make African-American Vernacular, Nu-English?
this semantic game you guys are doing is stupid, and I hope you both die a painful death. You knew what he meant enough to be able to point out the actual name of the thing he was talking about, shut the frick up you moronic homosexual.
>t.
>literally derail an entire thread to have an off topic b***hing session about the definition of old english
>in a thread about Japanese people translating English games back to Japanese
who is the baby here
>here was an easter egg in the Japanese version where getting the infamous "bad end" gave you a password to start a "new game+". And by "new game+", I mean "same as the normal game, except your stats are always about one level lower than they'd normally be" (so at level 4, you'd be about as strong as level 3 normally is)
Actually, you can't play the game at all if you use the fake password as you don't get any keys to leave the throne room with.
Dragon Warrior actually lets you save, Dragon Quest you had to use a long ass moronic password
it came out 3 years later so yeah
We do this too, silly. Games that got dumbed down for white man often have English translation patches for the JP version that just apply the official localization while keeping the JP mechanics.
For me, it's interesting to see, because while obviously there's old-school hacks for the FDS as well as more modern things like "kaizo" Mario levels, the Japanese are notorious for their apparent fear of punishment over copyright infringement relating to videogame ROMs on the internet.
>kaizo
Please stop using words if you don't know what they mean.
Literally everybody on this board, including you, knows exactly what kinds of levels I'm referring to.
That doesn't change the fact that you're a moron.
huh? there's kaizo mario hacks for nes
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4144/
Japanese culture, including its nerdy fans, being so strict on worshiping the concept of "copyright" annoys the frick out of me.
I take after the Russians and say "frick it", because they never gave two fricks about copyright.
I mean, most people don't, but the Japanese seem to have this huge, adoring love for it, to the point where it's practically a fashion at this point. Like how FFXIV players will make screenshots and add a bunch of trademark and copyright info with Square-Enix's name in the corner to make it feel "official" and mention copyright. Or pic related, which are 8 screenshots I took from 8 different Japanese streamers that all felt the need to put in pointless copyright stuff for no reason whatever. I think they think it looks cool.
I guess if you don't do the things I mentioned and have an almost unhealthy love for the concept of copyright info, you're a "poorgay thief"? You guys might be mentioning Japanese sentiment towards emulation, but from what I've seen, it's far worse than that for even completely legally harmless things. It's weird, and seeing the Japanese community regarding copyright stuff brought up just reminded me of it.
I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, but what I see of some Japanese's obsession with copyright is very bizarre. Like they're literally fans of a company, not the works of the company and the people within the company who make the works, but the actual company itself. Like if some old, scrapped project is unearth, they start pearlclutching over how it being leaked online would be a terrible slight against The Company, so it must be stopped. I don't even think the creators themselves have such reverence for the corporate structure of the companies that used to employ them.
I blame the Yakuza.
I may be wrong since I don't know much about it, but this attitude seems healthy for a nation like Japan. They have a not exactly enormous market that supports a huge and in come parts idiosyncratic entertainment industry. I guess they feel that respecting copyright lets it function even without selling to foreigners. It's a responsible approach that takes the interests of the community into consideration, not just the corporations' interests. When I look at the East Euro games market in the 90 to early 00s, when creativity was wild, had there been a similar popular and encouraged "don't pirate, no gray areas, just buy it" attitude, it could've supported more developers which could've made more interesting games.
>I may be wrong since I don't know much about it
And yet you kept typing anyway.
Kuso thread.
>Like how FFXIV players will make screenshots and add a bunch of trademark and copyright info with Square-Enix's name in the corner to make it feel "official" and mention copyright. Or pic related, which are 8 screenshots I took from 8 different Japanese streamers that all felt the need to put in pointless copyright stuff for no reason whatever. I think they think it looks cool.
Why post about things you have ZERO understanding of?
All of these people are covering their asses. You're forced to do these things in Japan, something as basic as streaming a game requires you to read a press release on important things like "what do I have to put in my bio/title for me to not get taken down" and "can I even LEGALLY play this game and have someone else watch me?".
That's not a joke, by the way. Plenty of games are ILLEGAL to record footage of in Japan. A guy went to jail for uploading Steins;Gate footage last year. Westerners don't know any of this shit, just like none of you know that Nintendo successfully lobbied for game rentals to be banned in the 80s, you can go to jail if you let someone play on a public famicom in your bar, and that game prices have never had any standardization so some games are 20 bucks and some are 200.
On the one hand you have stuff like that, and on the other hand NND has full rips of Hollywood movies. Just straight up whole actual unauthorized uploads of feature films with ~100k+ plays. And the comments are full of people just enjoying the film, not crying about reporting the uploader to Warner Bros. like anti-piracy westerners do. I mean, uploads do get taken down over time, so maybe the Japanese simply silently report it? Still, the stereotype you get from threads like these is that ALL Japanese people are inherently vehemently anti-piracy and that even Japanese otaku are all about respecting rights holders and so on. But also they're okay with watching Sixth Sense on NND for free and posting memes in the chat about Bruce Willis being bald.
So maybe it's just about Japanese stuff? Uploading gaijin entertainment illegally is OK; nippon stuff is verboten. But aren't MADs all "unauthorized" uses of anime or game footage from Japanese rights holders? And yet they're a huge part of the culture.
On-topic, there are also NND uploads of retro game music collections with hundreds of thousands of plays each. These are submitted by random people, not official publisher accounts or anything like you sometimes see on YouTube. Yet these too are considered perfectly acceptable by the wider userbase despite also being unauthorized and unlicensed. (They do get taken down on occasion, but much less frequently than the movie uploads). Streamers and the like will openly talk about listening to and enjoying these NND music compilations but would rather be shot than admit to playing a game on an emulator. But both are instances of copyright infringement.
On top of that, I remember some fandom thinking that even livetweeting about a concert, even in text only, was also piracy.
>A guy went to jail for uploading Steins;Gate footage last year.
A monetized (in other words, profiting off of their work) playthrough of a VN, a kind of game that is entirely reliant on its text and visuals rather than its gameplay. You don't get the experience of playing a platformer by watching someone play it, but if someone reads a book for you while showing you the pages, you've pretty much read that book.
>Like how FFXIV players will make screenshots and add a bunch of trademark and copyright info with Square-Enix's name in the corner to make it feel "official" and mention copyright.
That's added by the game's own screenshot button, dude. You think the millions of FFXIV players out there are all painstakingly editing copyright markings into the bottom right corner of every screenshot they post on twitter?
Freeware/shareware culture originates in western left-leaning colleges, is why. It's tied to anarchist ideology, which obviously is extremely fringe in Japan.
or hacks that take the english rom as base and modify it to JP stats/mechanics.
I know the gba fire emblem games got that treatment
Dumbed down, made harder or changed in general. There's a translation for Akumajou Densetsu because the Japanese cart used a custom Konami mapper chip with enhanced audio that the US version of Castlevania 3 wasn't able to use because Nintendo didn't play nicely (and there's also some gameplay changes to make the game harder, naturally).
Somewhat maddening that some JP games were made harder overseas, some easier. Not to mention all of the various revisions and false sequels.
I thought nips didn’t play Roms
I don't know if it's some sort of performance thing or what, because the Japanese seem to be obsessed with clone consoles and bootleg games, but the second it comes to ROMs, it's all muh heckin' copyright and respecting the companies and all that. Seems like they'll buy a bootleg cart with a regular retail ROM on it before they'd acknowledge downloading such a thing from the internet.
>don't know if it's some sort of performance thing or what
Because of the laws, last dude whose company did Wii modifying under the table got fricked
>last dude whose company did Wii modifying under the table got fricked
This is why I don't trust Nintendo, or any journalist paid by Nintendo.
stuff like this is why lazy ROM collections are being sold on steam and switch
The scene is huge over here but people prefer to use real hardware.
They're obviously not going to be advertising it like we do when all of those Japanese game developers are only a stone's throw away from sending out their secret police and ninjas and shit, and those developers have a lot more power on copyright enforcement domestically compared to overseas.
I'm just glad we went the xdelta route. (Except for Sonic stuff, because SEGA is lowkey based like that.)
Not as much and not as vocally but they do.
They do but if they get caught they have to sudoku
>I thought nips didn’t play Roms
There is a number of nip chads
Believe it or not there is also a Japanese DOOM community
They do actually, PX68K, Neko Project II and Yaba Sanshiro (Yabause fork) were made by nips.
>Japanese DOOM community
Based
The first NES emulator was from a Japanese dev anon
They have a very active emulation scene, its just very much separated from the western scene, and a lot of it ends up focusing on old Japanese PCs
Probably some shit where if you asked them publicly they'd denounce it, but in reality it's popular.
Reminds me of when Sad Panda went down, and Japanese people were celebrating because "piracy bad", but someone revealed that a lot of the site's traffic comes from Japan.
the Japs had ROM hacks with custom ASM back in the early 2000's, maybe even earlier
it's just that back in the day they didn't have to worry about old suits trying to sue everyone
ONLY IN THE FAMICOM VERSION CAN YOU MAX OUT ATTACK BEFORE THE SECOND DUNGEON AND ONE SHOT homieS WITH RELATIVE EASE
This is neat but I do feel like it's probably worse for the balance of the game (even if it's through an optional specific strategy). Zelda II's difficulty is perfect as-is, it at least keeps you honest compared to the later games, while not being crazy
just make sure you don't ever die, lol
everything will reset to your lowest level
「 eat dick 」
I find their original rom hacks pretty neat. Shit like rockman no constancy, minus infinity or ffvi t-edition are head and above pretty much everything else. There's gotta be more shit like that out there that go unknown or are inaccessible.
Got any link to such communities? Do they have an equivalent to RHDN or is it just lone personal sites for each romhacker and "you gotta know" basis?
I know that the Mega Man / Rockman was really active. Puresabe had a website with bugfixes and lag-reduction patches for most Mega Man games which I used for the longest time and it took YEARS before he decided to upload (some of) them to RHDN.
Have you played the japanese version?
it's a lot worse
I played the Japanese version recently and it was ridiculous how easy it is to lvl up in that version. I was at lvl 8 on all 3 stats and only 60% through the game. No real grinding either, I only got smart to make sure the crystals gave me as much exp as possible when I got the end of a dungeon (I didn't leave the crystals to go back to them later either).
US version is better balanced. And better in pretty much every other way.
>US version is better balanced. And better in pretty much every other way.
Except maybe Dark Link's AI.
True.
Alas, poor Yorick!
he's still chillin.
People misconceptions of Japan are so baffling it's funny, always spreading the same bullshit for years without lurking. It's the same about their sarcasm. With one guy whining about some anti emulation shit, thread's went full moron really fast. Shit like this is why this board's quality keeps declining.
Zelda II and Dragon Quest 1 are the gigachad duology of NES games.
You're mistaken, clearly it was Action 52 and Cheetahmen II.
Do japs still care about SMW hacks?
Probably, especially Ganker
Where do they share their hacks?
I have no idea. Perhaps internet archive has some.
smwdb maybe?
Fair enough, since that's a dedicated site.
Where do I find these Japanese rom hacking communities? Surely there's a patch that translates Dragon Warrior back in to Japanese, right?
site for the one in the OP: http://hlc6502.web.fc2.com/Kozakura.htm
puresabe (mostly rockman hacks): https://borokobo.web.fc2.com/
FF4 T-Edition, FF6 T-Edition, DQ 4 T-Edition:
https://jbbs.shitaraba.net/game/55803/
Not sure if there's a centralized site for japanese romhacks.
Arigatou my homie
any DQ1-2-3-4 romhacks?
Also note romhacks but I'll share something in return, a guy who dissamble several DQ games and gave many explanations on how the games work and shows some cool unused content
https://showa-yojyo.github.io/dqbook/index.html
looks pretty thorough, although I don't see any english option besides running it through translate.
DQ32, which takes SFC DQ3 and turns it into an expansive DQ2 remake.
You forgot the GOAT DQ3 hack
TRANSLATION WHEN AAAAAA
Translation never, frick EOPs
play it in Japanese or frick right off. We've seen what happened when that moron Legends of Localtroonslation shitfrick troonslated FFVI T Edition and it fricked the whole thing up and caused the creator himself to frick off. Leave K Mix the frick alone.
No, shut up.
>We've seen what happened when that moron Legends of Localtroonslation shitfrick troonslated FFVI T Edition
I never knew that but I'm sure a couple of people stepped in and fixed it up.
Also MTL-assisted by some hard core conservative DQ fans, just do it.
what did he do?
>caused the creator himself to frick off.
proof or stfu
Link pls?
https://retrogamehackers.net/downloadtop/
don't forget chronicle valeria for tactics ogre
https://web.archive.org/web/20180526211523/http://www.geocities.jp:80/kt_0t3wqu6irw/index.htm
Oh shit, I had no idea FF4 also has a T-Edition. Is it as good as FF6? I had a fricking blast with it.
haven't played it, but I've heard good things.
well yes, Ganker's history is inevitably woven into weebness.
there's a puzzle in Hexen where you have to put Yorick's Skull on a headless demon statue, in Gibbet.
>history is inevitably
you should read what you post before posting
to be fair the japanese version had loading times so it makes sense
Huh, a lot of people have been wondering this for a few years
Now the other thing, Seiken Densetsu 3 and a lot of games unreleased in NA or the West, has had some weird view around them, for good reasons. I wonder if the Japanese community talk of stuff like Star Tropics like we did the other games. Do they have any translation for these?
Great topic, I'd love to see more of these. Something a lot of people don't know is that while Conker never got an N64 release in Japan, its Xbox remake was fully translated and can even be played on a US copy. I've always wondered how feasible it would be to insert the JP script into the N64 version.
There is this one Japanese guy who has been tweaking and adding to his alt-history Fire Emblem 5 hack for years now.
https://fe5.jpn.org/en/
I cannot fathom being this obsessed with a country day in and day out, it borders on mental illness, it’s similar to European obsession with America, although it’s more positive so that’s a silver lining I guess.
anime website
More like weebsite!
>games that were improved for the western release
That's probably more common than you'd think. People often say
>back in the day there were no patches or updates, devs just made the game right the first time!
But that's not true. Games would release in their home country first, then they'd get feedback from players on bugs and the game itself that would get changed while they prepared versions for other regions.
People also say japanese games were dumbed down for the stupid, unskilled westerners, but the likely truth is japanese kids just thought they were too hard in the first place.
Consider games like Battletoads or Ecco the Dolphin which were made easier for the japenese version.
Seems like the easiest possible translation hack. 1) The script already exists in the original game data and can likely be copied to the exact same ROM addresses, and 2) Japanese uses less space than English, which is one of the biggest roadblocks for JP->EN hacks.
>can likely be copied to the exact same ROM addresses
They're not the same format.
It's a little more complex. The game's content is similar but the addresses in the ROMs are in completely different places. It's easier nowadays though thanks to decompilation projects.
that's cool. just remembered, Japanese has archaic samurai language, like the dono honorific, so that's probably equivalent.
wtf @ the gay mods deleting the convo. it was keeping the thread bumped, morons
Japan is weird because doujin is huge and it's worse than piracy. but about Japanese romhacking the problem is that SEA servers are difficult for westerners to access. if you're in SEA and have a good knowledge of Japanese (Chinese and Korean), you'll be able to access Japanese sites.
individuals from JP host their content on SEA servers anyways
cheaper than renting a server in Tokyo
Links please.