Translation Chou Soujuu Mecha MG full translation release

[Supper]

So maybe someone out there remembers my partial translation patch for this game from a couple years back? Well, as much to my surprise as anyone else's, it's now a complete translation!

Download Patch (v1.1)

Credits:

• Supper -- Hacking
• Phantom -- Translation and Additional Art
• cccmar -- Testing and Editing

Read the game's tie-in manga


Watch footage of the patch in action

After I'd long given up hope on picking up a translator for this project, Phantom came out of nowhere and just started translating it! It was an offer I sure wasn't going to turn down, so, months later (mostly due to me holding things up endlessly), here we are with a 100% complete translation of the game. It's been extensively playtested on both emulators and real DS hardware and has no known issues, so if you have even the slightest interest in giant robots, check it out! In fact, check it out even if you don't, because I didn't before I played this game and loved it anyway.

So, what is this game?

In a world where giant robots known as Marionation Gear, or "Puppets", are artisanally handcrafted in workshops, a certain boy serves as an apprentice at the Galouye Workshop, dreaming of becoming a "Puppeteer" (mecha pilot) and opening his own workshop with fellow apprentice Kay. But their peaceful daily life is shattered when the autonomous Puppets known as the Automen begin going on berserk rampages around the world. Together with new apprentice Anne-Marie, the hero and Kay are pulled into a conflict that could change the course of Puppet history...

Chou Soujuu Mecha MG is a 2006 mecha action game developed by Sandlot, the studio behind the Earth Defense Force series, and published by Nintendo. It combines the developer's aptitude for larger-than-life spectacle with one of the most innovative and fun uses of the touch screen in the DS library: in addition to standard movement with the D-Pad, each of the game's 100+ playable mecha has its own unique "cockpit" controlled with the touch screen. Players can pull levers to swing their robot's arms and hurl buildings at the enemy, flip a switch to transform into a car, punch in launch codes to fire missiles, and countless other imaginative setups. With well over 100 missions, ranging from battle to racing to destroying burger joints, every mecha has a use.

It's quirky, it's gimmicky, and best of all, it's loads of fun.

For patching instructions, see the readme file included in the download. Short story: it's a standard xdelta patch.

I also wrote up some extensive comments and translation notes for the readme, so check it out if you want additional insights into the translation.

As linked above, Phantom was kind enough to scanslate several chapters of the game's tie-in manga adaptation! I've set up a little site where you can view them here.

Massive thanks to Phantom for translating this game's enormous script. Thanks also to cccmar for finding all the typos I couldn't, and TheMajinZenki for advice and support. And of course, thanks to the many authors of the tools that made this project not a complete pain to work on, including armips, ndstool, CUE's compression utilities, and desmume. Finally, thank you to everyone who played the original partial translation patch. I hope this'll be a treat for you.

Enjoy!

 

[raylgo]

Awesome thanks for this.

 

[GeekyGuy]

Very cool. Many thanks.

 

[tomrev]

Great job. Thank you.

 

[Supper]

Thanks to everyone who's playing this! Hope you're having fun. It's really an awesome game that more people should know about

Crossposting from RHDN: I've just been informed of a bug that can occasionally cause the game to crash after visiting a shop that's completely sold out. I believe I've fixed the problem, so once I've tested more to make sure the fix doesn't break something else, I'll put out an updated patch. In the meantime, be sure to save before you visit a Puppet shop. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hopefully the update'll be out sometime tomorrow.

 

[Supper]

It took a bit longer than I'd hoped, but v1.1 is now out. Check the OP or download it here.

This fixes the shop freezing issue, changes some poor formatting on Kay's maintenance warning message that looked bad for long Puppet names, and makes a few minor text tweaks. Thanks to Delta for reporting the shop bug and helping test the update, and my apologies to anyone who was affected by the crashing issue.

 

[Amici]

Thanks to you and Phantom and everyone involved in this lovely translation. This game has become one of my favorite games ever, speaking as a mecha fan. I got so inspired playing the game I'm shilling it on reddit with a review/rant, since it went a bit under the radar. The game, and your translation, are way too good and too well-done for it to go unnoticed; more people need to play it

 

[RikuKH]

Thank you so much for this translation. I had already bought a copy from ebay a couple years ago and played for 25 hours and got to mission 87, but the lack of translation just made it less enjoyable in the long run and I stopped playing it. I finally beat the game, and it took me another 25 hours to complete most missions on super hard.
I've got a tip to others who haven't completed the game yet: you'll enjoy the game much more if you play each mission on either hard or normal. Because if you want to beat them on super hard as soon as possible, you have to rely on only a couple good mechs, and you'll just miss out on the best part of the game, which is experimenting with lots of different mechs and setups. Don't save your money for the more expensive mechs (both in shops and blueprints), just buy whatever looks interesting and fun, ones that cost around 1000 to 10000.

 

[Fel]

Thank you so much for this translation. I had already bought a copy from ebay a couple years ago and played for 25 hours and got to mission 87, but the lack of translation just made it less enjoyable in the long run and I stopped playing it. I finally beat the game, and it took me another 25 hours to complete most missions on super hard.
I've got a tip to others who haven't completed the game yet: you'll enjoy the game much more if you play each mission on either hard or normal. Because if you want to beat them on super hard as soon as possible, you have to rely on only a couple good mechs, and you'll just miss out on the best part of the game, which is experimenting with lots of different mechs and setups. Don't save your money for the more expensive mechs (both in shops and blueprints), just buy whatever looks interesting and fun, ones that cost around 1000 to 10000.

What's the difference between the difficulties? Do enemies have more HP or do they use different tactics?

 

[RikuKH]

What's the difference between the difficulties? Do enemies have more HP or do they use different tactics?

I think they have more HP, do more damage, and most annoyingly they block more. They're probably more aggressive too but I'm not sure of that. Some battles take way too long even with the few strong mechs you have, and it's just not fun to fail one at the end and do it multiple times over.

 

[Supper]

Just a heads up -- Phantom recently gave me quite a shock by scanslating the remaining chapters of the game's promotional manga on the sly and presenting the whole thing (over 200 pages) to me in completed form. So now, you can read the manga in its entirety right here! Check it out (and the game too if you haven't already, because seriously, it's great).

This was a ton of work for a single person, so big, big thanks to Phantom for putting so much effort into things. It's the kind of work ethic we should all aspire to... especially me

 

[Deleted member 514389]

After all this time...
Unreal.

I played the heck out of this game, superb fun.
(Only missing a few robots).

Makes great use of the DS's touchscreen.

 

[PhantomGhost]

Wow, that's impressive! Glad you enjoyed

 

[Amici]

Just a heads up -- Phantom recently gave me quite a shock by scanslating the remaining chapters of the game's promotional manga on the sly and presenting the whole thing (over 200 pages) to me in completed form. So now, you can read the manga in its entirety right here! Check it out (and the game too if you haven't already, because seriously, it's great).

This was a ton of work for a single person, so big, big thanks to Phantom for putting so much effort into things. It's the kind of work ethic we should all aspire to... especially me

This is so cool, I never thought it'd be ever completed. Thanks for the heads-up! I still replay your translation every so often and it's still one of my favorite fan translated games of all-time

 

[PhantomGhost]

That's such a lovely thing to hear, thank you Hope you enjoy the manga too!

 

[Prime_Zero]

Thank you so much for everyone involved with translating this game!

As a huge mech fan this is one of my dream games, and my top wanted game for a translation. Its an amazing game and thank you all again for the time you spent and hard work you put in!

 

[dayjay]

The patch seems to be buggy, the game just hangs on a white screen whenever I try to run it on my iEDGE.
Other xDelta eng patched games have run fine on it before and the unpatched ROM works fine too.

 

[PhantomGhost]

@dayjay Does your patched game run on an emulator? If so, it may be a compatibility issue with your flashcart.

There's not a lot that can be done if that's the case unfortunately I can only suggest checking that you have the latest firmware for your cart installed. You could also consider installing TWiLight Menu++ on your cart, and running the game with nds-bootstrap rather than the iEDGE firmware.

 

[dayjay]

But why though? Literally every other translated DS game I've played never had this issue on my iEDGE.

 

[overyoz]

Hello, I am a fan of this game from China, and I am currently translating it into Chinese. Your English translation has given me a lot of inspiration. My translation is almost complete, but since this is my first time translating the game, I have some questions:

1. I noticed that the mechas in the game are all saved in the "data/robo" folder. I am very interested in the parameters of the mechas, and I want to add the attack power of various weapons to the introduction text. I know that there are some relevant data in the wiki, but it is not complete. Is there any way to read the parameters in the game data file?

2. I tried to replace the player's Puppets with the file of the enemy Automan in the "data/robo" folder, and successfully drove the Automan. I saw a post in the forum that someone added the Automan to the hangar by modifying the save file. Is this feasible? How to do it?

3. In order to improve the problem of inconvenience in finding specific levels in the game, I drew a pixel map for the game. I put it on the association's page. I also made an English version, which can be used if necessary.

My E-mail is "2232201346@qq。com". Looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your help!