Hacking Translation [ES/EN Fan Translation - Complete] Twilight Syndrome: Kinjirareta Toshi Densetsu (NDS)

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Gurple_Puy

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Hey everyone,

Sharing a finished Spanish AND English fan translation of **Twilight Syndrome: Kinjirareta Toshi Densetsu** for the Nintendo DS — the urban-legend/horror mystery game where high schoolers trade creepy stories about their town (Kokkuri-san, Hitori Kakurenbo, Hanako-san, and several legends original to this game). As far as I know, this is a standalone entry in the Twilight Syndrome series with no prior English or Spanish translation (unlike Tansaku-hen/Kyuumei-hen on PS1, which already have active translation projects elsewhere).

**Status: both translations are complete and submitted.**

- Full script (6653 lines of dialogue) extracted, translated, and reinserted in both languages.
- Custom Latin font built from scratch: the original NFTR font only ships kanji/kana glyphs plus a handful of pre-existing Latin letters, so a full A-Z/a-z/Ñ/ñ alphabet plus accented characters (á é í ó ú ¿ ¡) and punctuation were designed and injected, matching the game's pixel style.
- Text reinsertion problem solved: the game embeds the whole script directly in the ARM9 binary with hardcoded pointers and no length field, so longer translated lines don't fit in place. Solved with a pointer-relocation scheme into unused RAM space.
- Inventory items (38 item description screens) and character name tags, which are baked directly into tile graphics rather than the script system, redrawn per language.
- In-game menus with text burned into tile graphics (story/ending selection menu — 45 cards across 6 story arcs with fortune results and gameplay hints — and the save/load menu) reverse-engineered and redrawn per language too.

Edit: Both submissions are now approved — updated the links above to point to the final translation pages instead of the pending-review queue:

- Spanish: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7749/
- English: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7750/

Both apply as a BPS patch (e.g. with Floating IPS) over a clean Japanese ROM.

Source, tooling, and the full script CSVs are up on GitHub if anyone's curious about the technical side or wants to reuse the pipeline for another language: https://github.com/Secabel/twilight-syndrome

Happy to answer questions about the ROM-hacking side (font/NFTR structure, pointer tables, RAM layout, the tile-graphics menu redraws) if anyone's curious or working on something similar.












Edit: Both submissions are now approved — updated the links above to point to the final translation pages instead of the pending-review queue:

- Spanish: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7749/
- English: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7750/
 
Last edited by Gurple_Puy,
UPDATE (2026-09-28) — Version 1.1 released

- The phone mails are now translated: all 12 mailbox sets (around 24 different mails, including Nanashi's chain mails and the "problem" riddles), redrawn with a new font that imitates the phone's LCD style.
- Patches are now available as a GitHub release: https://github.com/Secabel/twilight-syndrome/releases/tag/v1.1 (romhacking.net has been updated too).

If you're updating from 1.0: your in-game save keeps working, but don't load emulator savestates made with the 1.0 ROM, or old text may reappear.

Still in Japanese: a few short phone screens (sending a mail, call history, audio playback, "page not found") and the mail photos shown in some cutscenes.

Versión 1.2 (parche en español; el parche en inglés no cambia respecto de la 1.1):

- Se agregaron vocales con tilde y signos de apertura a la fuente del juego (á é í ó ú Á É Í Ó Ú ü ¿ ¡), construidos a partir de las letras existentes para mantener el estilo original.

- Se revisó todo el guion en español (más de 4.200 líneas): tildes, ¿ y ¡ de apertura, y algunas ñ que faltaban.

- Se corrigieron unas 40 líneas cortas en español que en la 1.1 seguían apareciendo en japonés por usar caracteres que la fuente no tenía.

ROM parcheada en español: 116.149.448 bytes, CRC32 231527A8, SHA-1 90dc5dde9dd277cb0d3c704875e90317fd11057f

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7749/

https://github.com/Secabel/twilight-syndrome

ENG_1.png
ESP_1.png
 
For the past two years, I’ve rekindled my interest in DS games—something I hadn't touched since childhood.

And since then I’d always wanted to play this game, but playing it with screen translators and the like was a huge hassle, and I don't even know Japanese too. But then I stumbled upon this post the other day and immediately patched the game! I’ve already played through and finished the first mystery, and I really love the translation overall.

Tho I actually downloaded the initial version, so things like the phone interface aren't translated—LOL. But that’s no big deal, of course. Maybe I’ll download the fixed version later on :3

ANDD THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH—kudos for all your hard work!! I can't even describe how happy I am that this got translated 😭
js a little req but pls translate more games like this—whether it's horror games, niche titles on ds... Just keep up good working; we'll be here waiting. 💕
 
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I'm glad you're enjoying it. Ultimately, my goal is to make a small contribution to the community and bring attention to games that don't get much exposure due to the language barrier. I'm currently working on another horror game (PSX), but if you come across any bugs or have suggestions, please let me know, and I'll try to fix them as soon as I can in my spare time :D
 

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