Are there any tools you can use to help translate famicom games? If not, how would you go about it?
Same way you go about translating other games, just with a NES emulator (FCEUX is probably what most would suggest, and it has one of the best), NES hardware docs and knowledge that being 8 bit and space at a massive premium (the way the devs worked around this was to use so called mappers, https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/List_of_mappers so be aware of that one, technically you can change mapper but it is not an easy task) then you might not have as easy a time as say the GBA where you have a lot more options and more space than you are likely to ever need. At the same time the simplicity of at least some aspects of the NES also attracts a lot of people bored of fiddly stuff elsewhere.
Just like other games on other systems you will get to learn about table files, formatting codes and pointers to edit text, tiles and palettes for graphics (and fonts), music hardware for music and general approaches to code and data representation for editing levels and adjusting the game flow. There are usually a million different ways to approach problems in coding so every game is unique, save perhaps some sequels and often between regions, so there is not and will never be a universal tool short of some kind of super AI.
Ah, okay. Thanks for the explanation! I'm mainly interested in translating the bootleg Chinese games fron nanjing and waixing. They somehow managed to get 16 bit characters into their games
Are there any tools you can use to help translate famicom games? If not, how would you go about it?
Best way is to go to this:
http://www.romhacking.net
They are the best for you and they can help answer your questions better than here.
That gets slightly more fun as many lists will have HK mappers, that being short for Hong Kong mappers. This being mappers used by various China based fans and pirates that do their own thing somewhat and might have some interesting abilities. Fundamentals of encoding, pointers and fonts still apply though.Ah, okay. Thanks for the explanation! I'm mainly interested in translating the bootleg Chinese games fron nanjing and waixing. They somehow managed to get 16 bit characters into their games
That gets slightly more fun as many lists will have HK mappers, that being short for Hong Kong mappers. This being mappers used by various China based fans and pirates that do their own thing somewhat and might have some interesting abilities. Fundamentals of encoding, pointers and fonts still apply though.
8 bit CPU does not mean 16 bit text is not possible, quite easy in fact. Not as common when they can get away with it as space was at a premium and when they did they are more likely to have a very odd scheme between screens (though one I could still imagine seeing on a Switch game tomorrow -- I was still getting DS games have it routinely). What ostensibly modern fan games will have done is a different matter entirely.
Afraid I have not seen much discussion of the encoding schemes but there are a few people that did various things with these games as far as translating them already (saw the various Sonic in whatever efforts and Final Fantasy 7 NES edition discussed at points).
The main issue I'm having is that I can't find a hex editor that can read them. FCEUX doesn't help either as it just keeps jumping around