Top 10 Japan N64 Titles requesting to be translated

[fabio_rosendo]

Here's the Dreamcast Bangai-O (Bakuretsu Muteki Bangai-O) - Full English Playthrough.
For someone that want to translate the Nintendo 64 version of the game.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZllCtGuuRaM

[Gh0st]

It was mentioned once before, but I would really love to see a translation of Shiren the Wanderer 2 (or Fushigi no Dungeon: Fūrai no Shiren 2: Oni Shūrai! Shiren-jō! as the full title goes). It's a roguelike (A dungeon explorer, the only one of its kind for the n64) with some of the best graphics on the N64

Just check out this gameplay video and see for yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijS9ui1cF-M

More info on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiren_the_Wanderer_2

I haven't seen any interest in this title anywhere else before. I wouldn't imagine translating the text boxes would be too difficult, maybe requiring VWF unfortunately, but I have no expertise.

Also, before you ask, this is a different title from any of the DS English rereleases. The Game Boy Color edition is the one that got remade, not the n64 one.

[ozidual]

It was mentioned once before, but I would really love to see a translation of Shiren the Wanderer 2 (or Fushigi no Dungeon: Fūrai no Shiren 2: Oni Shūrai! Shiren-jō! as the full title goes). It's a roguelike (A dungeon explorer, the only one of its kind for the n64) with some of the best graphics on the N64

Just check out this gameplay video and see for yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijS9ui1cF-M

More info on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiren_the_Wanderer_2

I haven't seen any interest in this title anywhere else before. I wouldn't imagine translating the text boxes would be too difficult, maybe requiring VWF unfortunately, but I have no expertise.

Also, before you ask, this is a different title from any of the DS English rereleases. The Game Boy Color edition is the one that got remade, not the n64 one.

Looks pretty cool.  If there were a translator interested in it, I'd take care of the hacking part.

[Shellshocker18]

I've actually gotten to the final dungeon of the main story(there are 4 more after the story which are true rogue-like dungeons), which I hope to get back into in Janruary. People have all this mystique about Shiren 2. It is a good game though. The first Shiren on Super Famicom is translated into to English if anyone wants to look into that.

[binkers87]

Shiren is compressed which make things more difficult. I'd be down for it if someone could decode the text table and look at the compression methods used.

[ozidual]

It looks like Yay0 is the main compression, which Universal Game Decompressor can do.  I think I also found HVQ in there, which is a weird compression used by the Mario Party games.

That's just at a glance.  I did some quick searches for SJIS text format, but found nothing.  It was not very thorough though.

[Gh0st]

Here's the finished Custom Robo v1 patch

Enjoy!

https://www.startrinket.com/custom-robo

I've been playing the story mode with the translated patch, works amazingly. I found one small prompt that is untranslated (It's from the annoying red shirt kid, forgot his name, maybe Fushigi?. It's when he asks the character what his worst quality is during the second tournament)

Also, there's a freeze (may be present in the original game too) where if you press a to accelerate through Shin's text box before the tournament when he realizes he has the wrong tickets, the game will lock. You can still reset to save your progress, and the text box is fine if you never hit a.

Overall awesome translation, thanks for the effort you've obviously put into this!

[Shenhulahula]

I would love to play a translated version of Nushi Tsuri 64 (some kind of fishing RPG with SNES-like graphics). I haven't played it much and I don't understand a thing, but I love the music!

[binkers87]

Yes there is a few issues with freezing if you accel through text too fast. But I'm working on an update patch that will address a ton of the bugs.

Oz I will build a file table for Shiren, if you can decode the text or at least make a table to what each characters hex value is we would be off to a good start.

[binkers87]

Also oz has the HVQ compression been successfully decoded? I know it's how hudsonsoft stores it's images. If we could figure out HVQ it would open the door to quite a few games actually....

[ozidual]

I'll take a look.  Based on the research from Mario Party's HVQ, there may be multiple versions of HVQ out there.  I'll see if I can find the code in Shiren used to decompress its specific version of HVQ.  Maybe from there we can make a converter.  I will be the first to admit that I am horrible at C and other modern programming languages, so I may need to work with someone else

[ozidual]

It's using a text format that I'm unfamiliar with, which could be its own format.  Characters are either 80-EF or F#00-F#FF I believe.  0A is line break, 00 is read end.  The first few text boxes appear at 801613E0-80161418 in RAM.  This changes when the game loads.  At least for this intro, standard ascii english letters (20-7F) don't appear to load.  It loads a 1 in that initial text box, but that is F0D0 for 1, F0D1 for 2, etc. 80-8B seems to be punctuation.

The full text appears to be at 179560 in the ROM.

[binkers87]

Nice find. So I've been researching HVQ and i found a compressor in n64 devkit 5.0. However there is no decompressor/decoder, just sources files in C. Hows your C programming?

[Gh0st]

Yes there is a few issues with freezing if you accel through text too fast. But I'm working on an update patch that will address a ton of the bugs.

I think this situation was due to a movement script, as the text comes much more slowly than normal and the box shakes after the delivery is finished.

Also, I gotta say, that Mammoru fight is HARD. Took me no less than 20 tries I'm sure. I did finally beat him at full strength though, using the Rayfall gun (stay far away and in the air while firing, keeping him at a distance is key)

[ozidual]

Nice find. So I've been researching HVQ and i found a compressor in n64 devkit 5.0. However there is no decompressor/decoder, just sources files in C. Hows your C programming?

Awesome!  Nope, I suck at C.  I can make minor changes, but nothing serious.  It would be worth testing the compressor just to make sure it creates the same header as the HVQ in Shiren (just do a text search for HVQ in the ROM).