Author
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Topic: Article on translation hacking (Read 1142 times)
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Neil
Romhacking.net Staff
Full Member
Gender: 
Posts: 223
Circuit Rider
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teenage melodrama wasn't really referring to sd3, but pretty much to
every other Square game ever fan translated. Treasure Hunter G,
Romancing Sagas, Final Fantasy 2,3,4,5, etc. |
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Szczepaniak
Newbie
Posts: 13
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I’ve done it again, coming up with FAR too many questions. If they bore
you, then just ignore them. Many only require one or two line answers,
and are purely to gather some hard facts (like the system with highest
% of translations. I’m guessing it’s the SFC, right?).
These
are preliminary questions, which I might later follow up with others.
Perhaps asking about certain points raised with these.
Since
this isn’t an officially commissioned article yet, these questions are
more like guidelines, and the article can freely shift in various
directions.
Just have fun discussing these topics. I won’t be
able to use everything, so this doesn’t need to be rigid. I want to try
and collate a selection of people’s thoughts, along with hard facts.
1)
What are some of the earliest examples of unofficial fan translations,
that involved actually changing a game’s code? Is it best to referance
the deleted Wiki? Is there any one specific example that you can say
was the “first time” someone created a fan translation? If so, what was
the game, group, people involved etc. If there were any particular
pioneering figures involved, I’d be interested getting a few quotes
from them.
2) Is the motivation to create translation
patches simply to allow people to play games in their native language,
or are there other reasons? Has money ever been offered or supplied for
a fan translation? Also, do many people start projects and then grow
disinterested over time, never finishing them?
3)
Apart from translating games from Japanese to English, what other
languages are worked on by such communities? In various ROM archives,
I’ve seen unofficial Dutch, French, and German translations. Are these
groups very active?
4) Are there any examples of translating English only games into Japanese?
5) Did the game copiers of the early 90s, such as those for the SFC/SNES, which allowed
games
to be dumped, traded via BBS, and run from floppy disks, enable the
playing of fan translated games prior to the huge boom in PC emulation?
6) Which system has the highest percentage of translations?
7)
Can you give me some idea of how long it takes to create a final patch?
Perhaps give examples where it’s been done quickly, and where it’s
taken a long time.
Eight) Are there many examples of
fan translations being done for games that have already been localised?
The only two that spring to my mind is Castlevania 3 (FC) and Metal
Gear 1 (MSX).
9) I’ve seen people talk about “OMFG
teenage high drama” and related antics (SD3, FFV, FF3j, Treasure Hunter
G, etc.), and someone even mentioned a “Romancing Saga curse”. Can you
guys elaborate on these tales of melodrama? What did they involve, the
causes, the people, etc.
10) I’ve seen a few topics
on this, but what is the ratio of old games being translated compared
to new games? Is there a serious movement for GBA, PSP, and current
generation consoles? (I’ll only be describing this very briefly in the
article)
11) While I have my own ideas, what would
you guys say were the 5 biggest, most anticipated, or most influential
translations produced? The article is likely to dedicate at least half
a page to five important examples, so I’m curious to see others’ views.
12)
Many people say they dislike emulation, “except when it’s to play
translated games”. Does the community feel that the act of creating
translations, in some ways legitimises ROMs, emulation, and dare I say
it, “piracy”? Is this a concern for people?
For the record, I
fully support emulation since it’s the only guaranteed method of
archiving gaming history. I also have the utmost respect for
communities such as this. You guys have enabled me to joy enjoy games
that I would otherwise never be able to experience.
But I want
to find out people’s opinions and reactions to such things. Does the
community get much flak for providing a service, which if we’re being
honest, is derived from the illegal distribution of ROMs? Are there
ever any legal problems regarding distribution of patches? Do you find
yourselves having to legitimise your actions to others?
------
I
also once read a fascinating explanation on how patching actually
occurs. At a later date I'll write up a concise explanation based on my
understanding, and if there's any errors you can point them out.
Thank
you for time, and thoughts. Please feel free to elaborate on anything,
even if not specifically asked. I'm just an outside fan looking in, so
may have missed asking about something vitally important. 
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Gideon Zhi
Full Member
Gender:
Posts: 241
Ruins Chaser
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1)
What are some of the earliest examples of unofficial fan translations,
that involved actually changing a game’s code? Is it best to referance
the deleted Wiki? Is there any one specific example that you can say
was the “first time” someone created a fan translation? If so, what was
the game, group, people involved etc. If there were any particular
pioneering figures involved, I’d be interested getting a few quotes
from them.
I -think- that's Final Fantasy 5, with the
variable-width font. People will tell you that it was already in place,
but it really wasn't; there were some low-level mods that had to take
place. They also had to code in a 24-bit lookup for the text, although
they didn't do a very good job of it.
2)
Is the motivation to create translation patches simply to allow people
to play games in their native language, or are there other reasons? Has
money ever been offered or supplied for a fan translation? Also, do
many people start projects and then grow disinterested over time, never
finishing them?
For me, my chief motivation is to allow
-myself- to play games in my native language, as well as to draw
attention to nifty, underappreciated gems. I have never taken money for
projects, although DeJap and RPGOne have solicited donations; I'm
considering asking for some extra hardware, but I don't think I'd ever
really want to take money.
I also just want to say that I fully intend to finish every project that I've started :p
3)
Apart from translating games from Japanese to English, what other
languages are worked on by such communities? In various ROM archives,
I’ve seen unofficial Dutch, French, and German translations. Are these
groups very active?
The French folks certainly are. I think
the Spanish scene is too. I don't really get into many foreign-language
scenes other than the French one, though.
4) Are there any examples of translating English only games into Japanese?
I seem to recall seeing a Japanese translation of Secret of Evermore somewhere, but can't confirm it.
5) Did the game copiers of the early 90s, such as those for the SFC/SNES, which allowed
games
to be dumped, traded via BBS, and run from floppy disks, enable the
playing of fan translated games prior to the huge boom in PC emulation?
Although I prefer playing my games on my SWCDX2 (or on my XBox via emulator), I can't really answer this. Sorry!
6) Which system has the highest percentage of translations?
I'm...
not sure. Either the NES or the SNES, certainly; I'm tempted to say the
SNES, because it's really easier to code for it than it is the NES.
7)
Can you give me some idea of how long it takes to create a final patch?
Perhaps give examples where it’s been done quickly, and where it’s
taken a long time.
Cyber Knight 2, a full RPG, took two months
from start to finish. On the other hand, Front Mission: Gun Hazard took
probably 3-4 years. It's really all over the map, depending on how
difficult to work with the game is, how quickly translators work, and
how little a toll real life takes.
Eight)
Are there many examples of fan translations being done for games that
have already been localised? The only two that spring to my mind is
Castlevania 3 (FC) and Metal Gear 1 (MSX).
I did an extremely
crappy Rockman 2 translation, but you can ignore that. I also did Cosmo
Genesis, which turns out to have been released in the US as
Star-something, never played it (oops). However, I also did Assault
Suits Valken, which came out over here as Cybernator - Konami had
literally removed about half of the text (and half of the text
-events-) as well as an entire scene in the final mission and speaker
portraits, so I felt that the retranslation was justified. J2E
retranslated Final Fantasy 4 for similar reasons.
RPGOne
retranslated Final Fantasy 6 for similar reasons, but I'll leave that
up to the discretion of the viewer as to whether or not it was worth it.
9)
I’ve seen people talk about “OMFG teenage high drama” and related
antics (SD3, FFV, FF3j, Treasure Hunter G, etc.), and someone even
mentioned a “Romancing Saga curse”. Can you guys elaborate on these
tales of melodrama? What did they involve, the causes, the people, etc.
I can't talk much about drama, but the Romancing SaGa curse
probably had to do with the nastiness in the way the games store their
text (inline with the event code), and its tendency to boggle and/or
frustrate hackers and translators. There was also a lot of schisming
and bickering amongst groups that wanted to work on the games. If the
curse ever did exist, I don't believe it's still in effect; I picked up
RS2 a while ago and while it hasn't really gone very far, I haven't
been killed yet
10)
I’ve seen a few topics on this, but what is the ratio of old games
being translated compared to new games? Is there a serious movement for
GBA, PSP, and current generation consoles? (I’ll only be describing
this very briefly in the article)
There aren't really many
projects for newer, current-gen games. Of all of the GBA projects, the
ones with the best chance of seeing the light of day are the Gyakuten
Saiban ones (Phoenix Wright), my own Slime Morimori Dragon Quest
project, maybe RPGOne's Zoids Saga patch, and the few that've already
been completed. I at least am still much more focused on older games
(which includes the PSX generation, I should add.)
11)
While I have my own ideas, what would you guys say were the 5 biggest,
most anticipated, or most influential translations produced? The
article is likely to dedicate at least half a page to five important
examples, so I’m curious to see others’ views.
The really big
ones, I hate to say, are probably the Square, Namco and Enix games -
Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 5, Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, and
Seiken Densetsu 3, although not necessarily in that order. They're big
because they were either the sequels we never got or were the games
that Nintendo Power pushed heavily in their old "Epic Center" feature
articles. Since Atlus has started giving us mainstream Megami Tensei
games with more frequency, however, the popularity of my own Shin
Megami Tensei patches has picked up. Since they're giving us Metal
Saga, I'm hoping Metal Max Returns will be big, and since they're
giving us some Super Robot Wars games (!) I think my SRW patches will
pick up in popularity, too. But they're still not as big as the earlier
five 
12)
Many people say they dislike emulation, “except when it’s to play
translated games”. Does the community feel that the act of creating
translations, in some ways legitimises ROMs, emulation, and dare I say
it, “piracy”? Is this a concern for people?
It really isn't,
at least not for me. I generally don't work on games that are new or
still in production, and I like to think that in the case of sequels
that are getting US releases (such as Metal Saga) I'm adding an extra
bump of enthusiasm for the game. Free marketting, maybe?
For
the record, I fully support emulation since it’s the only guaranteed
method of archiving gaming history. I also have the utmost respect for
communities such as this. You guys have enabled me to joy enjoy games
that I would otherwise never be able to experience.
But I want
to find out people’s opinions and reactions to such things. Does the
community get much flak for providing a service, which if we’re being
honest, is derived from the illegal distribution of ROMs? Are there
ever any legal problems regarding distribution of patches? Do you find
yourselves having to legitimise your actions to others?
To be
frank, none of us actually distributes ROMs. We distribute IPS patches
- each of which contains a list of changes to a binary file, and in no
way contains original data from the game, just the data we've changed
and is uniquely ours. I've never really had to "legitimse my actions to
others"; it's either free publicity for upcoming games by getting fed
old games, or it's new games that people may have never seen before and
ought in no reasonable way to impact the sale of current games (and if
it does impact the sale of current games, developers need to do better.)
------ I
also once read a fascinating explanation on how patching actually
occurs. At a later date I'll write up a concise explanation based on my
understanding, and if there's any errors you can point them out. Thank
you for time, and thoughts. Please feel free to elaborate on anything,
even if not specifically asked. I'm just an outside fan looking in, so
may have missed asking about something vitally important.
Hope that helps!
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Szczepaniak
Newbie
Posts: 13
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Very helpful, thank you.
You
also jogged my memory on something, patches for PS1 games. Russian
friends of mine have spoken about how at open air markets, you can find
pirate copies of PS1 games that have been localised into
Russian/Polish/etc. Though not always of a high quality, sometimes the
job is terrible in fact. Or so I'm told.
Can anyone comment or elaborate on this, or anything else to do with creating translations for CD based media?
EDIT:
Speaking of which, can anyone list any interesting examples of SegaCD/PS1/Saturn/Dreamcast translation jobs?
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D
Sr. Member
Gender:
Posts: 397
Annoying Grammar Nazi
Location: Xicheng, Beijing, China
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1. Whichever game Oasis first did back in 1993 would be the first fan
game translation. Their work was pretty primitive and generally did
nothing but change letters within an existing font. When ROM graphics
hacking sprung up, I think that's when things shifted and the idea of
fan translations was rekindled (1996). I'll agree with Gideon on this
one. Barubary (now Myria), the hacker for Final Fantasy V, was the
first person to do any serious modification to a game's code. His work
on Final Fantasy V was done entirely with Tracer (a very basic
disassembler by Y0SHi) and a hex editor. No emulators at that time had
debuggers. Actually, no emulators at that time really had sound, either
... The Final Fantasy V translation was first started by some people in
Kowasu Ku with SoM2Freak. Several months after they disbanded, both I
(then Shadow) and David Timko e-mailed SoM2Freak since his was the only
address on Archaic Ruins's Pi�a Consolada page, where his and Demi's
work on Final Fantasy II and III was shown off. He sent both of us the
table file Kowasu Ku made for the 8x8, X-Late 1.0 (utter dog shit, it
was faster to use Hex Workshop) and X-Char 2.0, a tile editor. I
remember X-Char was so clunky I used SNES Sprite Editor by Quatch and
Lord Pinto, two guys who had attempted a translation of Dragon Quest
I&II before disbanding. Timko and I worked separately, and there
was a whole lot of drama and controversy about that. Eventually we
picked up a few other people who helped us, including Hooie, Thermopyle
and MagitekKn which formed the group RPGe. Timko left shortly after and
just vanished. In the summer of 1997, SoM2Freak re-appeared wanting to
help us with FF5. This is when he brought on Barubary who redid the
entire group's hacking on the game and also the assembler modifications.
If
you want more details on this, you'll have to contact me directly. I
had written up a short bit on it (probably less than this) on a Wiki
page for RPGe, but I don't know whether or not it still exists. I live
in China and Wikipedia is blocked here.
I do know the actual
names of all the people involved in RPGe, but I think given the nature
of the articles you write, maybe it's better to use aliases. David
Timko never had an internet handle when he was in RPGe and before.
Everyone just called him "Timko."
2. Usually, that's the
motivation. Some people have gotten into it for recognition. Yes, money
has been, and remains something I've been at odds with the scene about.
I really don't like the idea of money contaminating the hobby, but some
people are OK with it. Everyone has to make his or her own decision
about whether to accept money or not. The earliest thing I remember,
and this is hearsay, was that Taichou, a #romhack guy from British
Columbia and who I believe was earlier in Pendragon Translations (the
group that gained fame for stealing the layout of Zophar's Domain,
which today ... one would wonder why they hell anyone would want to
copy that page), paid Neill Corlett some chunk of money to get
Seiken Densetsu 3 hacked. You would have to talk to a first-hand source
to confirm any of this. This was during my off-years. If people have
PayPal links on their site, fine, that's their business, but I get
furious when some "well-meaning" anus decides to randomly PayPal money
to my email address. I've several times had to register an address with
PayPal just so I could return their money to them. Lastly, more
projects are started and abandoned than are finished. These things take
a long, long time to complete, and often it's hard to maintain the
stamina and enthusiasm to see something to completion.
3. Talk
to someone in this area. Gideon had a good answer, but maybe you could
find out more from Skeud or someone in the French/Spanish/Portuguese
scenes.
4. One time, for fun, I translated the original Super
Mario Bros. into Japanese because the Japanese release was actually in
English. Other than this, I don't know of anyone translating English to
Japanese.
5. There really weren't any major finished
translations before emulation achieved reasonable speed and sound. A
build of Snes96 released in very late 1997 was the first to have sound.
I remember it was a beta circulated in EICN #emu. Once ZSNES was made,
this was no longer an issue. The original ZSNES achieved full speed in
most games on even my old P90 system, made in 1995.
6. Check this site. The answer is either SNES or NES. You may have a different answer depending on whether you mean completed translations or not.
6.
It depends on the kind of game. A platform game or shooter could take 3
hours. I think that's how long Demi spent on Twinbee. I did Sonic
Eraser in maybe 4 hours, and that was just playing with formatting. Kid
Niki 2 took a weekend. Akuji the Demon took two days. These are not
text-heavy games. For heavier text, there are other issues. Langrisser
I PC I translated and hacked in 14 days because I had the awesome
support of Moon Knight in constantly beta-testing my work and telling
me who's line sounded wrong. I'd say a realistic time frame for an RPG
with 300KB - 500KB of text is about two years depending on how much
time the translator(s) have available, and how much time is spent
editing and play testing the game. If the people making it work full
time jobs, this is a pretty fair guess. Many projects take 3 - 4 years.
Der Langrisser is just hitting year 5 next month. Longest ever? Ask
when Romancing SaGa was started ...
8. Castlevania III was not
the same as Akumajou Densetsu. The Japanese release contained special
hardware to have superior sound that was cut out of the American game.
It's similar to how Final Fantasy IV had extra features left out of the
US translation, which was based on the easy type game. I believe
someone attempted a retranslation of Final Fantasy IV easy type. RPGOne
retranslated Final Fantasy VI (III) over alleged dialogue changes, not
missing features. Gideon also did a translation of Solbrain, which was
released here as Shatterhand. The only difference was the main
character's sprite was a cool guy in a jacket in the US version, where
he was a robot in the Japanese one.
9. You are so going to need
to narrow this question down. You should also direct it at specific
people. I can tell you about FF5. Old school #romhack people probably
know more about SD3. Nightcrawler is the guy to ask about FF3. I was
totally unaware of drama surrounding Treasure Hunter G. As for the
Romancing SaGa curse, it's just notorious for never being finished.
There's always a real life problem or similar issue that blocks the
people serious about it from finishing, and the less serious wander off
or quit after 6 - 12 months. As for -OMFG teenage high school drama-
(see, -I- use -these marks- to show -important phrases- just like
-Xenogears-), bear in mind that through 2001, I think most people in
the scene were teenagers in high school. Yes, people graduated and
moved on various years before then, but I think through 2001 was really
how long it took before everyone did. Drama was rampant--pretty much
every kind of drama you could think of. You could consider it amplified
by people (myself very much included) not knowing how to ignore trolls
who were just looking to poke and provoke even more. Generally, the
typical drama cycle was as follows: someone says something to someone
or makes and announcement to piss someone off; scene news sites
(lacking news to report) report on drama; pissed off person decides to
take his toys and leave; trolls further rib pissed off person; pissed
off person announces he is going to quit; pissed off person quits;
pissed off person returns six months later. Some might disagree with
me, but I think that the translation scene as a whole has always put
very little effort into dispelling drama, and intead tends to embrace
it, fan its flames, and then bitch about it for the next year after
realizing how stupid it was.
10. The translation scene tends to
be very myopic and focuses primarily on NES and SNES games. This may be
due to the nostalgia factor (most people in the scene grew up with
these two systems) and that emulators for these systems generally
feature the best debuggers, making high quality work easier. During
2000 - 2004, I was pushing pretty hard to get people to look at other
systems, and started a few projects (then abandoned them) to show real
results were easily achievable on other systems too. I don't know if I
inspired anyone to play with other machines, but after that, BT-Axis
finished all the Farland Story games on PC-98, and a couple PC-88
translations popped up. Still nothing on Dreamcast, though I pretty
much finished Hanagumi Taisen Columns 2 before a malloc() bug I
couldn't tackle made the game always break after changing windows
several times because it buffered in too much text. Most of my pushing
was for old Japanese PC systems, and for desktop PC games. I think my
bitching was what finally got The Whirlpool to add a section for PC
translations (at the time, I just translated a whole lot of software
instead of games, but eventually got to finishing Akuji and Langrisser
I). I've also tried to push for working on games in other languages,
because many countries besides Japan make video games. When Magna Carta
came out, I started a project for that after my friend's dad brought
the game back from Korea. I could never get a Korean translator though,
and rather than sit on a dead project, I handed it off to Talbain.
Talbain and Venatyr at Lakuuna translations are pretty much the only
people working on Korean games. Prior to teaming up with Jacky to work
on Xian Jian Qi Xia Zhuan, I think I was the only person working on
Chinese games (Heroine Anthem I and II). I don't know who the first
person to tackle a PC-Engine CD game was, but I can tell you
CyberWarriorX was the first guy to make any headway into the Sega
Saturn. Prior to him, I was still over-powering the lens of its CD
assembly to get my Saturn to read CD-RWs to work on Sentimental
Graffiti. He wrote a lot of documentation and software on how it can be
done much easier. As for new systems ... well ... stuff without an
emulator is tedious to work on. I'm sure the next generation of
translation people will latch onto newer systems since those are the
ones they grew up with.
11. In no order, Final Fantasy V (first
major RPG and first to get popular recognition), Seiken Densetsu 3 (one
everyone wanted to play, and the first one to get a magazine mention),
Tales of Phantasia (huge internet following and everyone remembered
seeing it teased in Nintendo Power's Epic Center as a kind of "Ha ha,
you gaijin can't play it!"), Dragon Quest V (Enix scheduled it to come
out in America, then killed it, denying fans any further Dragon Quest
games till VII, many people had actually pre-ordered it in 1991 and
never got it), and ...? Maybe someone else can give you a good fifth.
12.
Sadly, I no longer give a shit about this one. I'll leave it to someone
else to answer. The only thing that infuriates me is when someone tries
to sell a fan translated game that they do not own the rights to. If
someone wants to license a game for domestic release, hire a staff to
translate it, then sell the result--fine. That's a business move. The
only time I have ever had to legitimize myself to anyone was when, once
upon a time, my mom was certain I would be arrested for doing this kind
of thing. Then again, she thinks Windows messages that say "Illegal
command/input" mean the F.B.I. is about to bust down her door, so take
that as you will. Maybe other people can agree with me on this, but I
tend to never talk about my hobby in real life. I find people
completely switch off when you mention something like this to them.
Most people either find it extremely strange, or think that you're
trying to brag, so I just don't talk about it. If someone I know
stumbles on my website and asks me about it, then I'll answer any
questions they have, but I never open the topic on my own.
Patching,
assuming you mean IPS patching, cannot be more basic. You first have a
value that tells the address in the file, then you have a value telling
how much data has been changed at this address, then you have the
changed data. The patch file is basically a big list of these sets. All
that happens when you patch is the "patcher" goes to these address in
your file and inserts the new data.
Edit: I can tell you that
here in China, a lot of low-quality hacks are done of PSX games and
sold on CD together with a PSX emulator. When I was here two years ago,
I found a partial Chinese translation of Langrisser IV. I ended up
doing a comparison against my Japanese disc to create a patch file for
the Chinese, which is now hosted at the Clouds of El Sallia web site.
Most of the older cartridge games are very poor translation hacks done
in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The mainland is making most of the good
translations for new systems. I also have a fascinating Chinese fan
translation of Terranigma that was initially released on the internet
in ROM form rather than sold on cartridge (meaning it was likely a
hobbyist project instead of a pirate).
I have some screenshots
for my old Saturn and Dreamcast work that I never finished. For PS1,
check out Cless's Phantasian Productions. CyberWarriorX is the person
to see for Sega Saturn. |
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Szczepaniak
Newbie
Posts: 13
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Wow, love those answers D. Good fiery stuff. 
I
like what you mention about China especially. As part of my monthly
work for Retro Gamer, I also write a 2 page "Global Gaming" column that
covers a different country each month.
Here's Germany, though it's a bit dull compared to ones I've done on other places.
Page1
Page 2
Would
you be interested in helping me with some information on Chinese gaming
at a later date (like in a few months, assuming I'm still writing for
RG)? I'd of course credit your full name in the article.
Otherwise
I'm really liking what I'm reading so far. As I thought, there is some
great information here, that I'm certain our readers will find fresh
and exciting. At least, I find it exciting!
Since this is
looking like something with real potential, I'll speak to my ed again,
and will keep you guys updated on what happens.
Otherwise, do continue to answer questions and discuss points raised.
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Nightcrawler
Administrator
Hero Member
Gender:
Posts: 909
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I'm going to take a stab at answering these as well...
First, here's some excellent additional reference material:
March 2005 Interview w/ Nightcrawler. (This is what's this hobby is really all about for me folks.)
FF3j Translations Wars Article
1999 Interview with Nightcrawler regarding FF3j Wars (God did I write terribly then.)
1.)
I would say the first fan translation to change game code(that means
assembly mods to me) would either be FF5 as Gideon and D said or FF2.
The Final Fantasy 2 translation was also one of the first to use
assembly. However, assembly modifications aren't always necessary in a
project and we've had plenty of great projects released over the years
without.
A bunch of people worked on and abandoned FF2 and
Demi during the real early years. He would probably know when the first
assembly mod on FF2 was done.
For the actual history and first
translations, the Scene History Wiki is certainly good material.
The wiki was a collaborative work by many of us and we generally agree
on everything in there. Plenty of people were announcing projects
and releasing patches left and right. I would have to say though
according to the info and memory, Final Fantasy V was the first console
fan translation that was actually COMPLETED. Does anybody refute
this or know otherwise? FF2 was not yet complete at that time. The
Oasis work in 1993 is also very sketchy. We currently have no
concrete details on dates and if the patches were 100% completed
then.
2.) Motivation for fan translations comes in
many forms. I've seen people do it for fame, do it for
themselves, do it to shut up the public, do it to allow others to play
a new game, or shine some light on a mostly unknown game. I've
even seen a decent handful of people try to do it for money.
I'd
estimate 75% of all announced projects end in abandonment because of
disinterest. The majority of these failures are usually because
the person/s started the project for all the wrong reasons. While
there are many forms of motivation, only a few will actually see a
project to completion. I think you also need to be a certain type
of person to actually finish a project of large magnitude.
Many
people hide behind the excuse that they don't have the time to do
it. But I am a personal example of why I believe that excuse
doesn't fly and is actually a mask for the real reason which is
disinterest. I hold down a full time job, have a girlfriend of 6
years, maintain a social life, and have other hobbies. I don't
have oodles of time, but if I can devote a only half hour per day, I
can move forward and progress. If you really LIKE the hobby,
you'll find a way. It might take a long time, rather than some of
the 2 month projects, but that's what adult life is all about.
Time management.  There is NEVER enough time.
3.)
Oh yes. Fan translations are being done in most major languages of the
world in which their society has video games and PC's capable of
emulators! French, German, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Russian, and
Portuguese are just SOME of the languages I have first hand knowledge
of the fan translations that are going on. We hope to expand this site
to cover foreign translations down the road. The Polish
translation of Dual Orb 2(which I translated to English) was just
released recently. I had been in close contact with the group
responsible for this over the past year or two. There are plenty
of larger foreign translation communities that work just as hard as our
English speaking one. Sometimes, they are even MORE active than
our own community.
I could provide some links if you were interested in exploring this further.
4.)
I'm not really aware of many English to Japanese translation
specifically, but I will say many English released games are certainly
translated to other languages in the communities I've described in
question 3.
5.) The copiers of the 90's WOULD have
allowed fan translations to be played before the boom of emulation,
however before the boom of emulation there were no fan translations.
A good number of people including myself however, have been
playing fan translations all along via copiers on our real SNES
systems. I still use my copier fairly regularly for translation use.
6.)
According to our site which currently has one of the largest archives
of English video game translation patches in the world (Thanks to The
Whirlpool):
SNES Translation Patches: 245
COMPLETE SNES Translations: 80
NES Translation Patches : 222
COMPLETE NES Translations: 118
So,
technically, the NES has the highest percentage of translations.
However, the average SNES game has more text and takes longer to
complete a translation for.(In general.), so it's a difficult thing to
really compare.
By using our database search functions, you can can come with all sorts of interesting statistics if you want to.
7.)
I think D answered this question extremely well. Games very to a great
degree on the amount of text, and complexity to hack. Then you
need to factor in the authors available time. Some college
students have been known to spend more hours working on a translation
than a full time job! Obviously those people will complete projects
much more quickly than those that are already working full time jobs,
paying their bills, and have a family.
As
stated projects have taken anywhere between just a few hours to a good
number of years. I would have to agree with D's average of about 2
years for the average translation. It's so hard to draw an average
though when there's so many variables.
8.) There has
actually been quite a few 're-translations' as we call them. Gideon and
D named quite a few. The first extremely popular 're-translation'
type hack that stands out in my head was J2e's Final Fantasy IV
re-translation. However, as D stated, many times the Japanese
original is quite DIFFERENT than the version we got.
The
other reason re-translations are done aside from getting all the extras
is simply because the official English translation was BAD. This
may have been due to space and money limitations or poor
translators Whatever the reason, fans of these games wish to
ensure they receive a proper translations and have done re-translations.
See
Breath of Fire 2 as an example of a BAD official translation. d4s
is currently working on a re-translation and overhaul of this game.
In
general, I'd rather see hackers and translators spend their time on
games we don't have, but that's me. I can still understand their
reasons for wanting to do a 're-translation' ( except Chrono Trigger
and FFVI  )
9.) See the good reference reading material links I provided at the top! hehe
10.)
There has been a slow movement toward newer generation systems.
GBA hacking has certainly moved along a bit in recent years. Generally,
newer consoles can be more difficult to hack for than older consoles,
so it's in turn more difficult to jump right into those systems as your
first hack. However, there are many games for newer systems that are
EASIER, so they could be done.
I think as D stated, one reason
for the lack of movement to newer consoles is many of the experienced
people are from the 8-bit/16-bit era and those are the games and
systems they hold dear to them. Many people such as myself have no want
to move on to newer consoles despite having the skills to do so.
Another
big reason is tools and information. If you look in the Documents
and Utilities section on this site, you'll see information on NES/SNES
far outweighs newer consoles. A wealth of information and good
tools makes the translation job MUCH easier and sometimes you need less
skill to be able to do one. Because of that, newer systems can be
intimidating to work with and you may have to make your own tools or do
more self research because none is available to you.
I think
it's only a matter of time before the younger hackers or those who were
split between the 16-bit 32-bit era start to make the tools, write the
documents, and start doing translations for the newer systems.
HOWEVER,
there are much LESS games that don't get released here today than there
were for the 8 and 16-bit eras. I personally think that has just
a little bit to do with our fan translations. : )
11.)
Well, I think we're all in agreement here. In no particular order
1. FFV 2. Seiken Densetsu 3 Tales of Phantasia 4. Star Ocean 5. Dragon
Quest V.
Aside from my early years(teenage drama and doing
things for the wrong reasons), I have take the approach of purposely
staying away from influential or popular games. I prefer focusing
on obscure games that people generally don't know about and shine some
light on them to give players a chance to experience something they
never would have the chance to do if it weren't for me. With popular
games, everybody wants to work on them. For more obscure games,
you have a bit more self worth in my opinion that you helped bring
something to the English audience that nobody else would probably have
done. You've helped let people know about a the good people who created
the game you translated and have really brought something new to the
table rather than a popular sequel or prequel that everybody
already knows about.
12.) You can like or dislike
emulation and call it piracy or whatever you want. I really don't
care. I enjoy my hobby of learning the intricacies of classic
games. I share my work with the world to cater to my target
audience of people who are grateful for the opportunity to play a new
game they would have had no chance to play otherwise. I cater to the
people that DO appreciate this line of work. For the rest of the
people, they don't need to play my work, come to my page, or anything
else. They really don't matter to me.
As a representative
of our community, I would say nobody here feels that anything
legitimizes ROMs or changes the law books. We all understand
what's going on here. But we also view it as preservation of
classic games and many times the ONLY chance we can have at playing
some great games never released here that, quite honestly, many people
feel we were robbed of. I know I personally feel that by a
company deciding that the U.S. audience was too stupid to handle
complex RPGs or won't notice it by changing numbers(*cough* Final
Fantasy*cough*), or break their promises(Dragon Quest V+VI anyone?), I
have been robbed of an opportunity. The reasons I just presented are
real reasons many games were not brought here. I still have my 'Warrior
World' newsletter from Enix promising me Dragon Quest V was ready for
release...
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TransCorp - Home of the Dual Orb 2 SFC/SNES Translation
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Starscream
Newbie
Posts: 44
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Wow, love those answers D. Good fiery stuff. Here's Germany, though it's a bit dull compared to ones I've done on other places. Page1Page 2
When did you write that? It's pretty old I guess, judging from the references to the "Videogames" Mag there.
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D
Sr. Member
Gender:
Posts: 397
Annoying Grammar Nazi
Location: Xicheng, Beijing, China
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I believe demi previously stated FF2 at that time had no asm hacks. You
would have to ask him. The work done at that time was really remedial
before they disbanded, and that's when demi started learning more to do
the kind of advanced work that would be needed to finish the game.
(Someone correct me if I am way out in left field here)
Final
Fantasy V was NOT the first completed. Sydra's FirePro Wrestling
translation was finished first. Also recall that the ending dialogue
screen with the crystals was never translated in the first patch
release. It was a full year later that a patch translating this screen
saw the light of day. Don't forget Toma's Sumo game either.
I'm
kind of sketchy on considering Star Ocean one of the landmark releases.
It certainly had a lot of drama surrouding it, but once you strip away
the drama ... I don't know. Tales of Phantasia was definitly a major
one.
I don't know if it's available anywhere, but if you can
find the 1996 - 1997 archived of the FFML (Final Fantasy Mailing List,
not FanFic), I recall making a lot of postings to it regarding progress
onf Final Fantasy V. Maybe you can even unearth some of the drama. The
website, hosted at netins.net/showcase/RPGe (maybe there was a tilde in
there somewhere?) was provided by Thermopyle. It may still hold the
record for "most frequently hacked translations scene website." I don't
think archive.org still contains any mirrors. The logo was this stupid
ice-effect I recall making with Photoshop 3.0 and its Crystallize
filter.
Some of us (cough-not Nightcrawler-cough) tend to redeisgn things more than once a decade.
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Szczepaniak
Newbie
Posts: 13
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When did you write that? It's pretty old I guess, judging from the references to the "Videogames" Mag there.
It
was published last month. Retro Gamer deals with the history of
videogames, so my modus operandi is always to look for the oldest
examples possible. I also thought that specific mag was very
reminiscent of the British mag "Superplay", or USA mag "GameFan", hence
why I covered them.
Also,
thanks for the links nightcrawler. I notice a weapons seller in that
one game has the name nightcrawler. Did you take the nickname from that
game, or as part of your translation, did you add your own persona to
it? If you added your own persona, well... I quite like that! It makes
the translations very personalised, kind of like having a signature
inside it.
Btw, assuming the article gets the green light, how
do you guys want to be mentioned when I'm quoting you directly, and
listing you in the thank you section?
Anyway, I seem to be
working after 10pm again, so I'm going to call it quits for today.
Speak to you all tomorow. And thanks again for being so helpful with
your answers. |
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RedComet
Romhacking.net Staff
Sr. Member
Posts: 315
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Seeing as how I haven't really been around long, I only have answers
for a couple of these questions. Hope they help, nonetheless.
1)
What are some of the earliest examples of unofficial fan translations,
that involved actually changing a game’s code? Is it best to referance
the deleted Wiki? Is there any one specific example that you can say
was the “first time” someone created a fan translation? If so, what was
the game, group, people involved etc. If there were any particular
pioneering figures involved, I’d be interested getting a few quotes
from them.
2)
Is the motivation to create translation patches simply to allow people
to play games in their native language, or are there other reasons? Has
money ever been offered or supplied for a fan translation? Also, do
many people start projects and then grow disinterested over time, never
finishing them?
For me, I started out of frustration with an
existing patch. I distinctly remember playing the, at the time,
"complete" Dragonball Z: Assault of the Saiyans patch, and the last
fourth of the game was in monkey gibberish. I said something akin to
"hell with this, I'll translate it myself". So, that first project for
me was fueled by frustration and "pissed off chi". The ones since
then have been more to play games that I've always wanted to, but
couldn't due to my being Japanese illiterate (really, who cares about
Dragonball Z and Gundam games, right? ).
At the same time, it's the thrill of the chase: here's a game that was
intended to do something this way (for instance, Japanese games with
vertical right-to-left text), how can we make it do something another
way (horizontal left-to-right text)? I've gained a LOT of experience
and understanding hacking and it further fuels my interest to continue.
I think, as a lot of other people have stated, if you don't start a
project for the right reasons, you're more than likely not going to
finish it. I'm sure a lot of people who do finish their projects get
burned out from time to time (I know I do), and take breaks, however.
3)
Apart from translating games from Japanese to English, what other
languages are worked on by such communities? In various ROM archives,
I’ve seen unofficial Dutch, French, and German translations. Are these
groups very active?
The aforementioned patch for Dragonball Z:
Assault of the Saiayans has been translated into Portuguese, so there's
certainly other non-English translation communities and efforts going
on. If you check the news archive, I believe there's even mention of an
Italian patch being released in the past coupel of months.
4) Are there any examples of translating English only games into Japanese?
Not that I'm directly aware of.
5) Did the game copiers of the early 90s, such as those for the SFC/SNES, which allowed
games
to be dumped, traded via BBS, and run from floppy disks, enable the
playing of fan translated games prior to the huge boom in PC emulation?
6) Which system has the highest percentage of translations?
My
vote would be for the early Nintendo family. It's a shame really, since
there's a lot of games for other systems that go unheard of.
7)
Can you give me some idea of how long it takes to create a final patch?
Perhaps give examples where it’s been done quickly, and where it’s
taken a long time.
As others have said, there is no definitive
amount of time that goes into a patch. Some, like Cless' ToP
Playstation project, have been going on for 5 years, while others get
finished in a couple days. Certain things contribute, obviously: ASM
hacks needed here, scripts need translating, translated scripts need
polishing/editing/formatting, play testing, hacker is sideswiped by
real life and sits on the finished scripts for years; lots of things.
Eight)
Are there many examples of fan translations being done for games that
have already been localised? The only two that spring to my mind is
Castlevania 3 (FC) and Metal Gear 1 (MSX).
I feel asleep. :p
9)
I’ve seen people talk about “OMFG teenage high drama” and related
antics (SD3, FFV, FF3j, Treasure Hunter G, etc.), and someone even
mentioned a “Romancing Saga curse”. Can you guys elaborate on these
tales of melodrama? What did they involve, the causes, the people, etc.
I can't say much on this since it was before my time, but
I can say there's a lot, or at least seems to be a lot, less drama in
the current community. There's some tension, I think, between Acmlm's
Board (why, I don't know) and RHDN, but that's pretty much it for
drama. Everyone seems to respect everyone else enough not to go
snatching projects and shaking their boom sticks in someone else's
porridge.
10)
I’ve seen a few topics on this, but what is the ratio of old games
being translated compared to new games? Is there a serious movement for
GBA, PSP, and current generation consoles? (I’ll only be describing
this very briefly in the article)
The difficulty and the
nostalgia factor really isn't there. I grew up on the Genesis/SNES and
the first Playstation, so I'm not really interested in NES games, as
others that grew up with it are. In a couple years when those Next-Gen
kiddies grow up, we'll probably start to see more in the way of
Next-Gen/Current-Gen translation development. My focus is really on the
16 and 32 bit eras, and I don't see that changing.
11)
While I have my own ideas, what would you guys say were the 5 biggest,
most anticipated, or most influential translations produced? The
article is likely to dedicate at least half a page to five important
examples, so I’m curious to see others’ views.
12)
Many people say they dislike emulation, “except when it’s to play
translated games”. Does the community feel that the act of creating
translations, in some ways legitimises ROMs, emulation, and dare I say
it, “piracy”? Is this a concern for people?
We're all aware
that ROMs aren't exactly legal, but at this point we're not hurting any
of the proprietary companies for it to be that big of a concern. If
anything, we're promoting their products for them for free. They should
be THANKING us! 
But
I want to find out people’s opinions and reactions to such things. Does
the community get much flak for providing a service, which if we’re
being honest, is derived from the illegal distribution of ROMs? Are
there ever any legal problems regarding distribution of patches? Do you
find yourselves having to legitimise your actions to others?
There
have been a few cases where companies have threatened to take legal
actions. Someone more familiar with those instances could probably help
fill in the blanks. I'm pretty sure only the Maker series and Pokemon
series were involved. |
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Neil
Romhacking.net Staff
Full Member
Gender:
Posts: 223
Circuit Rider
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You guys actually think the DQ5 translation was a milestone? To me the
entire thing has always been more of an embarassment than anything. |
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