ROM Hack Translation [Release] Jet Impulse - Italian Translation (with a predisposition for translation into Spanish, German, French and more)

Provare · Mar 12, 2026

Notes

Hello, it's a pleasure to be here.
For a long time, there has been attempts to translate this game, with no avail due to the lack of interest in flight games (I know, it's a niche game genre), but for those who've played Ace Combat previously, must've had the curiosity to play other AC-like games that could've been made for other platforms.

After contributing to the English translation of the game starting in December 2025 (the discussion of which can be found here), I then dedicated myself to the Italian translation; in this case, different choices have also been made to accommodate the specific needs of the Italian language, which requires the use of letters with accents.
Furthermore, localization (translation and adaptation) aims to avoid Anglicisms, Itanglese and Doppiaggese as much as possible; at the same time the use of terms that are more appropriate to the context and the events represented is promoted, also making use of uncommon, disused, specific, technical and specialist terms.
I would like to avoid as much as possible the problem that plagued Neon Genesis Evangelion with the 2019 re-dubbing.
The use of full-thickness letters is given greater emphasis, which are used both for commands (Ａ, Ｂ, Ｘ, Ｙ, Ｒ, Ｌ), but also for acronyms, as they allow these elements to be identified more easily, making them stand out in the text.

Patch released as Beta, I will wait for reports of any errors or problems (please report them promptly, so what, where, when and under what conditions).
While I wait for your feedback, I will continue optimizing the .NCGR (Character Graphics) and .NSCR (Background Screen) files,

and reorganizing the text within them.

Therefore, this work will facilitate any future corrections and translations into other languages such as Spanish, German, French, etc.
For Spanish, German, French, and other languages, I have already set up the relevant accented characters and punctuation.
The original .NFTR file is already set up for the Greek and Cyrillic (Russian) alphabets.

PS: As for the apostrophe, I used both the typewriter (straight) and the typographic (curved) ones and used them in different conditions; In the case of elision, the typographic (curved) sign is used; while in the case of apocope (truncation) it requires the apostrophe, In this case, it will be of the typist type, in order to emphasize the difference between the two situations (this is my choice and signature of the project).
There are no apheresis in the game, otherwise I would have used the typewriter apostrophe there too.

Translation files are placed onto my Github.

How to download

1.download the translation patch
Jet Impulse (Italian Patch)

2.Use either those tools to patch the file:

https://kotcrab.github.io/xdelta-wasm/ (online patcher)
https://github.com/marco-calautti/DeltaPatcher (software to patch the ROM)

3. Enjoy!

Changelogs

v0,9β 4 June 2026
- Character alignment in Alphabet.png
- Removed files not useful for translation
- Final refinements, corrections, and optimizations to .NCGR files
- Added some diacritical marks to LCfont_12 universal smal (universal).NFTR and LCfont_12 universal smal M2m (universal).NFTR

v0,8β 8 May 2026
- Removed parts that did not affect the actual translation.
- Optimization of .NCGR and .NSCR files completed (cleaned of unused portions and in the case of similar .NCGR files, such as mission vignettes, made dimensionally homogeneous to facilitate the adoption of longer titles; made unused areas visible in .NCGR files that have auto-selected portions, such as mission titles in the results screen.).
- Improved some raster texts.
- Some typos have been corrected and some translations have been revised.
- The two accent symbols have been swapped to optimize handling, making typing faster and making it easier to use the available space.
- The project is ready to serve as a basis for translation into Spanish, French, and German.
- Further optimization of typefaces to improve readability without altering the original style e latest fixes on .NFTR (font) files and made them more consistent with each other
-Fixed a glitch that occurs in 3-player VS mode with the battle royale rule.
- Improved and fixed some translation tools (now integrated into the translation along with the fixed files, in a .zip file)

v0,7β 2 April 2026
- Fixed screen translations for online play.
- Fixed some typos.
- Changed the space management system and consequently rearranged the text (very limited changes).

v0,6β 26 March 2026
- Translated some text (raster) that was still in English (especially in "Duello" mode).
- Removed parts that did not affect the actual translation.
- Aligned raster text (especially mission titles).

v0,5β 22 March 2026
- Initial release. Work at a very advanced stage, requiring final checks and adjustments; the entire optimization phase of the game's graphic text files is still missing. I notice that I'm starting to not see the errors anymore (predictive reading).

Screenshots

Fixed bug inherited from English translation 1.3

Credits

All credits goes to the following people:

MegalithAce: For carrying out and completing the English translation.
original staff: Normmatt, Woojin, tkmt_aniki, CaptainKendoran, RowdySunstrider, letonvignec, juankenstein
You, the person who is reading this: For finding an interest to this small project. Makes our work worth it, thank you.

Status

Texts: 99%₍₁₎

Graphics: 99%₍₂₎

the parameter or file that allows its translation has not been identified.
the character rank text is handled by the game engine which retrieves decoded portions of a specific .NCGR file.

Tools used

DSLazy: Allows for the packing and unpacking of ds games.
Notepad++: Since it allows for a proper editing of text files (You need to set the file display to Japanese format Shift-JIS), a normal notepad couldn't do. Also, the files use a special character for spacing (ideographic space), normal spacing doesn't work.
HxD: Used sometimes in order to point out patterns in .MDIG and .MDIG2 files
NFTRedit: Font modificationt tool.
NitroPaint: Handles .NCGR and .NSCR editing
graphics suite Corel Photo-Paint: To edit the graphics extracted using Nitro Paint and create the vector file for the Jet Impulse font (Useful for creating some raster texts), then reworked through Inkscape to make it usable with FontForge and be able to create the font

Provare · Mar 22, 2026

Habemus Papam

I've finally managed to make the first version of the translation available. The work isn't finished; I still need to optimize some files, and I still have some doubts about some portions of the text. I'm not entirely convinced, and they might still be too long, making it difficult to read (unfortunately, the dialogues scroll without waiting for the player's approval).

The goal is to make the game fully usable on the original console, not just via emulator.

We welcome bug reports, observations, and suggestions, especially if they're timely and accompanied by examples.

For those using emulation, especially DeSmuME 0.9.13, perform the following settings (to reduce artifacts due to the emulation, not the game).
The settings I selected in Config=>emulation settings are:
*enable advanced bus-level timing
*enable game hacks
*use dynamic recompiler
emulator's internal firmware

For those using emulation, especially melonDS-1.1, please perform the following settings for single-player gameplay:
The settings I selected in Config=>emu settings are:
*in the General tab set Console type to DS
*in the CPU emulation tab use Enable JIT Recompiler
emulator's internal firmware

For local multiplayer "DS wireless" play (melonDS-1.1):
*Keep settings as single player
*Select System from the top menu bar, then select Multiplayer from the drop-down menu, and in the next drop-down menu select Launch new instance.
*Launch the exact same version of the game on both instances and perform the normal game actions to play a wireless DS game.

To download the new planes "DLC" (melonDS-1.1):
*Keep settings as single player
*make sure you are using the emulator's internal bios.
*Make sure the emulator is set correctly WiFi connection type by going to the top menu bar and selecting Config, from the drop-down menu select Wifi settings and make sure Indirect mode is selected.
*In the game go to the WiFi network configuration and set up a connection by selecting the "melonAP" access point and setting the DNS manually (both) to 172.104.88.237
*Once these steps are done, run the game normally to download the new planes.

PS: melonDS-1.1 tends to create more artifacts than DeSmuME 0.9.13, especially when we fast forward through the game's various briefing menus, interrupting running animations or entries to move to the next pages.

Provare · Mar 26, 2026

Version 0.6 Beta has been released.
It must always be applied to the original Japanese game.
No changes have been made to the main story text.

Provare · Apr 2, 2026

Version 0.7 Beta has been released.
It must always be applied to the original Japanese game.

The space management system has been changed, which now consists of 2 distinct types (similar to the original game), therefore short space and long space, in order to improve text management, increase the usable space available (in .MDIG/.MDIG2 files the space now occupies only 1 text box instead of 2), avoid spacing being inconsistent (previously the spaces differed by 1 px 4 against 5 px actual on screen, even if most were 4 px), now the reading is easier (the space between words has generally increased by 25% with 5 px spacing), furthermore the general appearance is much more adherent to the original one.

I'm taking a few weeks off; if you can send me any feedback or observations (here or on GitHub) in the meantime, I won't be offended.

SDA · Apr 3, 2026

Provare said:
The space management system has been changed, which now consists of 2 distinct types (similar to the original game), therefore short space and long space, in order to improve text management, increase the usable space available (in .MDIG/.MDIG2 files the space now occupies only 1 text box instead of 2), avoid spacing being inconsistent (previously the spaces differed by 1 px 3 against 4 px actual on screen, even if most were 3 px), now the reading is easier (the space between words has generally increased by 33% with 4 px spacing), furthermore the general appearance is much more adherent to the original one.

Will this spacing improvement be ported to the English patch as well?

Provare · Apr 3, 2026

SDA said:
Will this spacing improvement be ported to the English patch as well?

It's a choice that's beyond my control! I collaborated on the English project to have a more workable base, making it easier to translate into Italian (I don't know Japanese and haven't done any translations before). I posted in the English translation group's Discord to inform them of this detail and the portions that remained in Japanese.

Provare · May 8, 2026

Version 0.8 Beta has been released.
It must always be applied to the original Japanese game.

Numerous important changes, all aimed at improving both the current translation and the translation into other languages, such as the correction of .NCGR files to allow for more text and more easily. By unzipping the patched game you will also have a .zip file containing all the modified files and useful tools for translation such as the vector font for writing text and the raster font collection, as well as an .NCLR color palette that allows you to view and edit the various .NCGR files more easily.

In the first message, an example was added on how to insert accented letters based on the .NFTR file used and the encoding of the .txt files.

From now on, the game translated into Italian at version 0.8 Beta can be used as a reference for translations into other languages; there is still some finishing work to be done, but it will not affect other translations.

For the Italian translation, the raster texts need to be made more homogeneous using the alphabet collection from the "Alphabet.png" game. Furthermore, some choices need to be made for some solutions, so I would like to have a third-party opinion on this.

Zerokij · Saturday at 6:54 AM

sorry wrong post

Provare · 2026-06-04T18:06:20+0100

Version 0.9 Beta has been released.
It must always be applied to the original Japanese game.

The translation is basically finished, but for the final release (version 1.0) I will wait for some feedback or, at worst, find the time to replay the entire title.

I also updated the "universal smal" & "universal smal M2m" fonts to expand compatibility with more languages.

ROM Hack Translation [Release] Jet Impulse - Italian Translation (with a predisposition for translation into Spanish, German, French and more)

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Notes

How to download

Changelogs

Screenshots

Credits

Status

Texts: 99%₍₁₎​

Graphics: 99%₍₂₎​

Tools used

Attachments

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Texts: 99%₍₁₎

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