ROM Hack Rockman ZX (Mega Man ZX) - Full Undub

geo-kun

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Hello guys!

Everyone knows Mega Man ZX had all the awesome voice acting removed from it during localization.

Until today, we had only one option to play the game while enjoying the removed voice acting: the Magic Fish mix (man, that thread is 10 years old).

Unfortunately, that modification of ZX has a flaw: it was essentially just a file swap which put some English text and graphics from the American version into the Japanese one. While that worked to some degree (you could at least successfully play the story with voice acting), the game crashed under a lot of circumstances like talking to NPCs or checking the database. This was mainly due to the bigger size of the English text files, which the Japanese ROM didn't allow for. To stop the crashing, all the text files that caused it were restored to their Japanese versions, which resulted in gibberish in all texts aside from main story. This was taking away a huge chunk of the game by making it impossible to understand, and was very disappointing. And that's why I don't consider the Magic Fish mix a good way to play the game.

I was looking for a way to fix it and finally play Rockman ZX the right way for a long time, and finally, about a year and a half ago, I stumbled across a project of pt-BR translation of this game. To my surprise, the guys behind it (Solid One and DiegoHH) have done a magnificent job hacking the game and producing a text-editing tool. What's even cooler, they found a way around all the problems and crashes, and their hacked ROM allowed for bigger size of text files!

Of course, I immediately contacted Solid One, and he agreed to help me on my quest of making a full undub of the game.

That's how the story began. Next, over the course of 2016 and 2017, we were working simultaneously: Solid One worked on his pt-BR translation, and I was modifying the game's text and graphics to produce a full undub using his tool and DiegoHH's hacking solutions. The road wasn't perfect: a lot of new features and fixes were implemented during this process, we helped each other a lot and did a lot of testing. Despite all difficulties, this was a pleasant and new experience for me (I've never done anything related to game hacking/modification before).

Finally, it's done.
So there you have it:

Rockman ZX: Full Undub
Technically not an undub: instead of transferring Japanese audio into American ROM, we transferred English text, graphics and some more features to the Japanese ROM



- Every piece of voice acting is present;
- No crashes, game should be playable in every aspect;
- Magnificent ASM hack from DiegoHH: a subtitle feature originally present only in the European version was added to the game's FMV cutscenes;
- All in-game terminology is restored to original;

I know some of you guys won't be very happy to see "Rockman" and "Irregulars" instead of "Mega Man" and "Mavericks", but my goal was to make a full undub including such changes.
- The undub was tested and confirmed fully working on DeSmuME and Acekard 2i flashcart;
- We know for sure it won't work on old R4 flashcarts from 2008, and unfortunately this is impossible to fix.

Also, not a problem or a bug, but you should be aware: due to English game script being much longer than the Japanese one, not all dialogue boxes ended up having an associated voice clip. It doesn't mean some clips are lost. It just means that some blocks of text which fit into one box in Japanese, now have to be split in two due to a longer text (Japanese text is much more compact than English). The voice for such two split blocks plays during the first of them, so if you wanna hear everything, don't scroll the dialogues too fast. Technically, this is fixable by completely rewriting all the game's text to fit the original number of blocks, but no volunteers so far.

Tools used:
Solid One's Mega Man ZX text dumper/inserter tool for dealing with game text scripts
DiegoHH's tool for unpacking and repacking subtitle files from ZX/ZXA
Tile Molester for editing graphics
DSLazy for ROM packing/unpacking
jEdit for convenient text editing
Crystal Tile 2 for uncompressing and recompressing the arm9.bin
HxD and Translhextion for some hex editing

Credits and thanks:
Solid One for his great help and support, and also tools he wrote for modifying this game
DiegoHH for useful tools he developed and impressive ASM hacking that has made this whole project possible
Geo a.k.a. illuminor (me) for putting this together, which took much more time and effort than it may seem, even though I had a lot of help

A .zip file containing the patch is attached to the post. It includes a README, which you should read.

Please don't ask for ROMs or links to download them.

P.S. Even though the patch has been thoroughly tested, there's always a possibility for new bugs, problems or mistakes to be discovered. Please report them here.

Enjoy playing!

Also check out the undub of Rockman ZX Advent.

Sep. 26, 2019: Updated to ver. 1.01. See here, what's new.
Zero 3/4 bosses patch credit goes to @Prof. 9: https://github.com/Prof9/MMZX-Slot2-Patch
 

Attachments

  • zx_undub_1.00.zip
    6.5 MB · Views: 2,355
  • zx_undub_1.01.zip
    6.4 MB · Views: 745
  • zx_undub_1.01_zero_bosses.zip
    5.9 MB · Views: 803
Last edited by geo-kun,

Solid One

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That was a great project we developed and tested together. Now we can have the best of both worlds when playing Megaman ZX on NDS. Congratulations for your release, Geo.

And now I'm looking forward for ZX Advent's undub.
 

Pablitox

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Oh man, this looks great!!

Looking forward to playing it, and ZX advent awesomeness too!!!

thank you so much!
 
Z

zeropain

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Thank you for this release.

But it seems like that there is an undub for ZX Advent (even for the European version), i even found the patch file. But i cant tell if its a complete one or contains any errors and such. But i dont know who the original author is.
 
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geo-kun

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But it seems like that there is an undub for ZX Advent (even for the European version), i even found the patch file. But i cant tell if its a complete one or contains any errors and such. But i dont know who the original author is.

I'm interested. Can you provide a link?
 

geo-kun

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Thanks. Just tested the "undub" you sent me. It just removes all the voice clips and makes dialogues completely silent. It doesn't restore Japanese audio.
 
Z

zeropain

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Haha, never played this game, so i never knew that the dialogues had voice clips at all (checked it now via youtube). But at least the cutscenes are in japanese (the patch file i sent you). Sorry for the trouble.
 

geo-kun

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Out of curiosity, what other things were removed from the localized versions?
Probably bad phrasing on my part (just edited it to be more clear). I consider the removed voices to be "a lot of stuff".
As far as I'm aware, nothing else was removed. Although the localized script changed a bit of stuff to be softer (getting rid of the word "die" and so on).
 
Last edited by geo-kun,

Rikua

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I just would like to thank EVERYONE involved! This is a pretty big accomplishment when it comes to 3ds undubing. Thanks a TON for this, gonna be playing this on my Wii U later.

PS- I personally prefer Rockman and Irregulars over the other, so this is indeed PERFECT to me. Thanks again!
 
Last edited by Rikua,

geo-kun

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I just would like to thank EVERYONE involved! This is a pretty big accomplishment when it comes to 3ds undubing. Thanks a TON for this, gonna be playing this on my Wii U later.

PS- I personally prefer Rockman and Irregulars over the other, so this is indeed PERFECT to me. Thanks again!
You're welcome! Though it's a DS game, not a 3DS one ^^'
 

geo-kun

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I think you should just try.
I only currently have Acekard 2i in my possession and can't test on anything else.
 

Solid One

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So this won't even work on R4 cards running Wood?

If I'm not mistaken, R4 w/ wood is more recent than the ones of 2008, and on that case, it should work.

I have one R4 w/ wood firmware that mimicks the layout of ak2i fw. When I tested it a few months ago, it worked.

The only problem I got was on an older R4 from 2008, with default firmware (and no support for wood). On that case, the game plays fine, but freezes on the first video. That is the problem we couldn't solve until now, and the solution is upgrading your flashcard.

Anyway, since it worked for me, I guess it should work for you too. Go test it.

Hey guys! The undub for ZX Advent is out as well.

Link:
Rockman ZX Advent Undub

Yay, now the real thing is out there! Congratulations!
 
Last edited by Solid One,

Reploid

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wowzers, I was looking for a release like a long time, and its finnaly here! Time to replay Megaman for Nth time!
 

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