Hacking Epic Mickey Japanese version to English version Guide

Truner · Dec 23, 2017

Merry Christmas everyone!
This guide is for making the Japanese version of Epic Mickey English. Why would you want to do that? Simple. When Nintendo released the game in Japan, they got Junction Point to get in some extra fixes. Among these are camera positions, making parts of the game a lot better, as well as better camera controls: D-Pad camera movement is faster and pushing the C-button (center camera) when running doesn't stop Mickey.
You can now also skip Projectors you've been through.

To do this, you are going to need the following:
- A rip of the Japanese version of the game
- Wiiscrubber or any other tool that can extract and rebuild Wii ISO files - https://filetrip.net/wiiu-downloads...scrubber-kit-with-multiloader-1-40-f4399.html
- A hex editor - https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/
- VGMToolbox - https://sourceforge.net/projects/vgmtoolbox/
- The RAD Video Tools - http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm
- ShowMiiWads - https://code.google.com/archive/p/showmiiwads/downloads

Optional:
- A rip of the English NTSC-U/PAL version of the game

First things first, the ISO. We recommend using your hacked Wii to rip the disc. If you happen to be one of the lucky people on earth to have a compatible LG drive, use that.

Almost every file you need to do this are located on the Japanese disc.

-In-Game Text-
Now that you have the disc ripped, open it up with Dolphin or Wiiscrubber to see the file list. Go to Partition 1/packfiles and locate any of the following files:
- Danish.pak
- Dutch.pak
- English_NTSC.pak
- English_PAL.pak
- French_NTSC.pak
- French_PAL.pak
- German.pak
- Italian.pak
- Norwegian.pak
- Spanish_NTSC.pak
- Spanish_PAL.pak
- Swedish.pak
Open your file with a hex editor and replace the file name starting at 0x45 (for example "ENGLISH_NTSC_RVL.dct") with "JAPANESE_RVL.dct" and then make sure to add or take 00 bytes so DICT starts at 0x60, meaning you add 4 for ENGLISH_NTSC, but take 2 for GERMAN.

Congratulations, you have the game playable in your selected language. Now all you need to do is take your new file and replace Partition1/packfiles/Japanese.pak! Anything beyond this point is for those who want to go out of their way to make the game fancy.

-Main Menu-
Go to Partition 1/Movies and extract the following items:
- FE_Mainmenu_In.bik
- FE_StartScreen_In.bik
- FE_ StarScreen_Loop.bik

Replace these files with the ones in Partition 1/Movies/Localize/Japanese
This will make the title screen logo English.

In addition, you can take your NTSC-U/PAL iso, go to Partition1/packfiles, take "MainMenuTextures.pak" and replace the one in your Japanese ISO. With that, the main menu logo will be replaced too.

While you are there, "MainMenuEffects.pak" and "MainMenuEffects_Standard.pak" can be swapped up to get back the English animations for the logos.

-Voice Acting-
Go to Partition1/Movies and extract "fmv_attract.bik".
Open VGMToolbox and go to Misc. Tools > Stream Tools > Video Demultiplexer. Select "BIK (Bink Video Container)" in Format and check "Split Audio Tracks". Now pull your "fmv_attract.bik" file in and it'll produce some files.
"fmv_attract_0000FFFF.video.bik" is the video, "fmv_attract_00000000.audio.split.bik" is the English audio track, and "fmv_attract_00000006.audio.split.bik" is the Japanese audio track. Now swap the filenames.
OPTIONAL: take "fmv_attract.bik" from the English version and extract that. The numbers go from 0 to 9 (excluding 6, which is the Japanese voice acting). Rename them to 00000006 to have your preferred voice acting in the video.

Now open up RADVideo. Select "fmv_attract_0000FFFF.video.bik" and click "Mix in sound". Browse for your new "fmv_attract_00000006.audio.split.bik" and open it. Now click Mix. Take the new file and replace "fmv_attract.bik" on the disc.

If you've done everything right, your Opening cutscene should be in the language of your choice.

Now go to Partition 1/Audio/Wii/Localize/Japanese. You'll see four files:
- 150226260.ogg
- 316069044.ogg
- 1014241695.ogg
- 634292726.ogg

The first two are Japanese audio files for the voice acted cutscenes, the other two are English ones. Rename "634292726.ogg" to "150226260.ogg" and "316069044.ogg" to "1014241695.ogg".

You can also take your NTSC-U/PAL ISO, go to the same folder and look for your prefered language's voice files and replace the Japanese ones with those.

-Opening Logos-
To get back the old logo screen (which includes the Disney Interactive and Junction Point animations), take "fmv_logos_all.bik" from your NTSC-U/PAL ISO in Partition 1/Movies and replace it with the Japanese one.

-Save Icon-
In Partition 1/Save you can take "saveicon.tpl" and replace it with the one inside Partition 1/Save/Localize/Japanese for an English save icon.

-Wii Channel Animation-
If you want to go all out and edit the Wii Channel to English, take "opening.bnr" from Partition 1.
In ShowMiiWads, go to Tools>Unpack U8 Archive. After that, select Tools>Lz77 Decompress and inside opening_bnr_OUT/meta select "banner.bin".
Then use Tools>Unpack U8 Archive on "banner_decompressed.bin".
Finally, use Tools>Convert Tpl To Image on "EM_logo_0511_RGB.tpl" located in banner_decompressed_bin_OUT/arc/timg/.
Once you have the file, open it with an image editor and remove the Japanese bits. Save it as .png. You are now ready to track backwards.
Select Tools>Convert Image To Tpl>As RGBA8 (High Quality) and select "EM_logo_0511_RGB.png".
Now make sure there are no leftover files in that folder and select Tools>Pack U8 Archive>IMD5 Header ( Banner.bin / Icon.bin) and select the banner_decompressed_bin_OUT folder.
Next, use Tools>Lz77 Compress and pick "banner_decompressed_bin_OUT.bin". Rename it to "banner.bin".
Make sure there are no files inside the meta folder besides "banner.bin" and "icon.bin".
Go to Tools>Pack U8 Archive>IMET Header (00000000.app)
and pick the opening_bnr_OUT folder. Take the finished filed and rename it to "opening.bnr".
Now in a hex editor, open up both the new "opening.bnr" file and the old one. You are going to need bytes "0x00" to "0x600". Place those at the beginning of your new "opening.bnr" file and you are ready to replace it on the disc.

-Support-
If you want to thank anyone, thank Warren Spector and the former Junction Point developers for making sure that all the files were compatible with the new build of the game (and that they all contain localized lines for the new stuff). Without them making the game this cross-compatible with all the files, this wouldn't have been possible. If you want to support us, consider picking up Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two on Steam, PSN or XBL instead.

-Credits-
Dodongo
Truner - https://twitter.com/TrunerReisar

Deleted member 323844 · Jan 1, 2018

Binkmix crash when i try to mux Japanese intro video file with Spanish intro audio file (maybe related to Windows 10 Fall Update). Renamed to fmv_attract_00000006.audio.split.bik and with or without header.

The rest works fine, unfortunately the Japanese version doesnt seem to has special character support so there are lots of missing characters in Spanish, French and other languages. Of course it works right in English

Truner · Jan 1, 2018

stranno said:
Binkmix crash when i try to mux Japanese intro video file with Spanish intro audio file (maybe related to Windows 10 Fall Update). Renamed to fmv_attract_00000006.audio.split.bik and with or without header.

The rest works fine, unfortunately the Japanese version doesnt seem to has special character support so there are lots of missing characters in Spanish, French and other languages. Of course it works right in English

Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out a way to replace or edit the font. Even English sometimes messes apostrophes up (but not all the time, which is weird). I was hoping that it'd still be relatively readable for anyone. Weird that binkmix crashes for you. That said, I only fully tested this using the English version, while I selectively did some tests in the other languages. Not sure what's causing the crash, since there shouldn't be any issues. I'll try testing the spanish audio and see if it screws up for me as well.

SuperrSonic · Jan 2, 2018

The English font is right there in /HUDElements/Flash/cooked/
Either edit fontconfig.txt to use the en font or replace font_jp.gfx(and save some KB) with font_en.gfx

Notice how text even gets cut out when using the jp font.

->

I have a small addendum, let's say you want to use more than one language and wish to easily change between them without storing two copies of the game.
-First extract the game with Wiimm's wit and create a folder in the data root, name should be the same length as the packfiles folder, in my case I named it pakkfiles.
-Copy subtitles.pak into this folder, and the language pak you will be using(copy as japanese.pak). *subtitles.pak is only copied because it is read at startup.
-Make a copy of MickeyF241551.241553.rel and name it something else, in my case MickeyF241551.241554.rel, open the copy in a hex editor and change packfiles at 4CFDFFh to your new packfiles folder.
-There, now you can build the game with the new files.
-This is the hard/fun part, write a code that first changes the .rel to the new one, and then make a code that first checks that the new language pak has loaded and then change the rel back to the original to maintain compatibility with other files.

Sounds weird but it was the only way I could get it to work.
For the REL
2064B390 32343135 // Useless check
0464B350 31353534 // write a string with the same name as rel, probably useless
0464B394 35342E72 // write the new name

For the condition/revert
20801370 642F666F // If this addr loads font, we know we have to change things back
04CD1C60 61636B66 // changes "akkf" to "ackf" straight to the rel

Bring it all together and...
2064B390 32343135
0464B350 31353534
0464B394 35342E72
20801370 642F666F
04CD1C60 61636B66
E0000000 00000000

I've only tested this on dolphin, and only to get in-game, there might be problems if the game reloads the language during play, otherwise this should be pretty much perfect.
It's usually not hard to do this kind of thing, but for some reason Epic Mickey really needs the language file to be japanese.pak, otherwise things break, so that's why I put it in an alternate folder temporarily until it loads into memory.

There's a lot of things to play with it seems, cmdline.txt, ConfigFiles.ini, DynamicEars?! Wonder what happens if you turn that off..

Updated guide to get multiple languages in one copy of the game.

-Do wit extract.

-MickeyF241551.241553.rel, copy, rename differently, e.g. MickeyF241551.241554.rel

-Open rel in hex editor, change 4BB55Fh (ConfigFiles.ini) to something else, e.g. ConfigFilej.ini, change 4CCF2Dh(ConfigFiles.ini) again. Change 4CCE39h (Japanese) to the new name.

-Copy ConfigFiles.ini, name it ConfigFilej.ini, open it and change Language=Japanese, SupportedLanguages=Japanese to the new name.

-Open Audio/Wii/SoundbanksInfo.xml in a text editor, find entries with Language="Japanese", copy them below and change them to the new name. (There's two file entries to add, and one bank with the two file entries.)

-Find packfiles/*language-you-want.pak, copy it as the new name and open it in a hex editor, write the new name at 45h

-Open HUDElements/Flash/cooked/fontconfig.txt in a text editor, add a new section, [FontConfig "new name"], pick a font.

-Go to Save/Localize/ and add your new name folder with the icon of your choice.
-Go to Movies/StdDef/Localize/ same as above.
-Go to Movies/Localize/ same as above.
-Go to LoadingScreens/Localize/ same as above.

Optional:
-Copy the main.dol to the data root and name it whatever, hex edit 647482h for the new rel name.
-Repeat for other languages.

-wit copy to build game.
-Write code to rename rel, 0464B394 XXXXXXXX, where X is the modified rel name.
Or if using USB Loader GX, simply select the option to load a different .dol from within the game.

Truner · Jan 2, 2018

Weirdly enough, when I tried editing fontconfig or swap the gfx files, the game would either freak out and not show characters, show squares only or flat out crash. I gave up after a while, but with this, I might have to go back to it. The English text only got cut one time during the story mode IIRC, I imagine I could fix that as well.

Deleted member 323844 · Jan 2, 2018

Thank you Truner and SuperrSonic. Great research.

SuperrSonic · Jan 5, 2018

I should have known, the game already has multi language support. You don't even need to mess with the font stuff.

Open ConfigFiles.ini and change the language lines, like this:
Language=English_NTSC
SupportedLanguages=English_NTSC Spanish_NTSC French_NTSC Japanese

This is basically all you need for the game to work with different languages, since the NTSC System Menu only has three languages I only enabled those.
This will also use the English voice acting for the opening video/ending, default save icon, etc. Note that the opening will be mute unless English or Japanese is used, can be fixed with the info on op.

The game reads from a localize/ folder if it is available otherwise the game uses the files in the previous directory, kind of like riivolution.
For example: LoadingScreens/GuardianSplashScreen.dds doesn't exist, but it exists in the localize/japanese/ folder.

Because of this if you use a different language from Japanese the game won't find this texture and it will instead load the placeholder texture(solid magenta).
Simply copying this texture to LoadingScreens/ will make the game use it for all the languages.

The one thing that didn't change was the small logo that appears in the main menu but I think this is covered in the op.

Truner · Jan 6, 2018

Well lol, I was told that the configfiles.ini file is dummied out. Neat, basically my entire guide is useless now.

On the other hand, now I have to figure out how to make a multi-channel video file so every language is supported. Also, there's extra voice acting in the game near the end, so idk, those might need changing.

SuperrSonic · Jan 7, 2018

Truner said:
On the other hand, now I have to figure out how to make a multi-channel video file so every language is supported. Also, there's extra voice acting in the game near the end, so idk, those might need changing.

When you select "Mix in sound" you can write in the track number, I didn't bother finding what number matches what and just went overboard and filled it up to 9 with the English track.

The voice acting in the ending is a real problem for me because I can't access it in-game without a save, and using an out of region save did not work. It would be easier to look at the SoundbanksInfo.xml from the NTSC/PAL version and copy over the fmv_endgame_soundtrack stuff.

Truner · Jan 7, 2018

SuperrSonic said:
When you select "Mix in sound" you can write in the track number, I didn't bother finding what number matches what and just went overboard and filled it up to 9 with the English track.

The voice acting in the ending is a real problem for me because I can't access it in-game without a save, and using an out of region save did not work. It would be easier to look at the SoundbanksInfo.xml from the NTSC/PAL version and copy over the fmv_endgame_soundtrack stuff.

0 is English and 6 is Japanese. 6 is actually missing from the PAL release. It has 0-5 and 7-9 filled in. You could just add the Japanese VA to the PAL file and everything would work most probably.

CatMouse · May 8, 2019

Sorry for a necro-bump.

I finally have a modded Wii-U, and I was looking to play the JPN release with this English hack. I've followed SuperrSonic's post, but I am having an issue.

These are the steps I've followed:

Open iso in WiiScrubber, extract ConfigFiles.ini

Switch out the two lines that appear in SuperrSonic's post using Notepad.

Replace the file in the ISO with the edited one.

Put edited ISO onto my SD card, and put it in the modded Wii-U (both the Wii-U and vWii are modded).

Open the vWii menu, then Homebrew channel. Finally open WiiFlow Lite.

Refresh Cache, and load the game.

I am greeted with a black screen, and unsynced wiimote. I have to unplug the Wii-U to get it to shut down or restart.

I've tried a handful of things, but nothing seems to work. I tested other games, as well as the same ISO before making the changes, they all work.

Is there something I am doing wrong? Help!

SuperrSonic · May 10, 2019

CatMouse said:
Is there something I am doing wrong? Help!

The only difference is that I did it with wit, even though wiiscrubber should work. You could try to use Dolphin to test if it works first, it can also tell you the last file it loads.

The commands are simple:
wit extract SEMJ01.iso folder_name

Once you're done editing the files
wit copy folder_name SEMJ01.wbfs

I highly recommend using wit because you need to add a file to the image, otherwise certain loading screens will be blank.

CatMouse · May 10, 2019

It will currently work in dolphin, even when it will not work on the Wii-U's vWii. Just black screen no matter what I try. I will give Wit a shot though.

Which image file needs to be added?

SnackJr · May 11, 2019

WOW! Never knew the Japanese version was better! Great stuff!

CatMouse · May 11, 2019

Holy smokes! Wit worked. No idea why the same steps did not work with Wii Scrubber.

Which loading screen images were you talking about?

SuperrSonic · May 11, 2019

It's there on one of my previous posts, 'GuardianSplashScreen.dds' is in a folder that's only read by the game if the language is set to Japanese, moving or copying it to the "LoadingScreens" folder will make the image available for all languages.

CatMouse · May 11, 2019

Thanks! I was looking to make a patch file for others, but I was not able to do as much. If you or anyone else that is able to pull it off please post a patch, so future people don't have to bang their head against this for a week like me.

bluewarrior · Dec 30, 2020

can they make a tutorial i really want EM2 in japanese the voice are good

MyJoyConRunsHot · Dec 30, 2020

This is the first time I'm discovering this. Does this confirm my theory that the western release was rushed to completion?

EldritchPenumbra · Nov 14, 2022

So let me get this straight, the first thing I need to do is "Go to Partition 1/packfiles"
Open "English_NTSC.pak" with a HEX Editor.
Change the line where it says "ENGLISH_NTSC_RVL.dct", to "JAPANESE_RVL.dct" then save it and replace the "JAPANESE_RVL.dct" with the newly altered "ENGLISH_NTSC_RVL.dct".

When I do this, the in game text does change from Japanese to english, but it's a generic font and everything say "UI_" before it.
I presume I screwed up the naming? I noticed that the guide says "add or take 00 bytes so DICT starts at 0x60, meaning you add 4 for ENGLISH_NTSC", though I am not sure what a "00 byte" is or how to add it. Do I type four periods, do I hit the space bar four times? How do I add four "00 bytes"?

Thank you.

Signed confused.

Hacking Epic Mickey Japanese version to English version Guide

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