My PC-98 translation projects

[BabaJeanmel]

Hello people,

just a small thread to advertise my PC-98 translation projects a bit, as I know some of you might be interested

I'll include the age rating and eventual content warnings so you know what to expect.

All games are fully playable on real hardware and emulators alike.

ORIGINAL TLs

Shangrlia 2 (WIP - 75% complete) (Warning: adult content)

Another T-RPG by Elf. It's both beautiful and really challenging. I planned to do a simple menu patch, but the game is so great that I think it deserves a full patch. The script is short and is mainly composed of H-scenes, so it shouldn't be too much trouble.

Exciting Milk (August 2023) (All ages)

A short, 2-episode ADV game by Silence, with the same engine as Guynarock and Lime. Strong sentai vibes in this one. You get barely 20 minutes of gameplay out of the whole thing, but the animations are stellar.

Download 1.0 here.

Jewel Bem Hunter Lime (August 2023) (PG12 - Expect a bit of fanservice)

A collection of 12 short adventure games dealing with two demons trying to retrieve 6 power gems in order to save humanity from total destruction. These are pretty linear games, but have a gorgeous artstyle and excellent animations. And most of all, they're hilarious. Once again, Alpharobo made wonders in hacking the engine, and Kirinn B in hacking the graphics format.

Download 1.0 here.

Holy Girl Force Lakers II (November 2022) (Warning: Adult Content)

Sequel to the first game, and a huge step up from it. Better graphics, harder challenge, cheesier story, more variety in ennemies and available strategies. One of my personal PC-98 favorites.

Everything's translated so far. The cherry on the top is that half a chapter that was missing from the game because of an error has been restored, too!

Download 1.1 here.

Guynarock 2 (November 2022) (Warning: Nudity and body horror, not recommended under 16)

A translation project by Alpharobo I've been helping with. A short VN in a horror sci-fi setting, with awesome artstyle. The developers and artists would later become famous for the Viper series.

Download 1.01 here. (now with translated graphics, english credits and a brand new omake section !)

Holy Girl Force Lakers (May 2022) (Warning: Adult Content)

Cult classic T-RPG with an awesome art direction, cool music, and an awesome sentai-meets-magical-girls like atmosphere. Oh, it also has some interactive sex scenes. Replaces the menu-only version I published last year.

Download 1.1 here.

Run Run Concerto (March 2022) (Warning: Adult Content)

An early Elf action game, reminiscent of some very primitive version of Deshing Desperadoes. Except you lead a female runner team and there is a bit of strategy and resource-management involved (not to mention pathfinding for the later levels). Notable for being one of the few eroge that can actually be played in competitive 2 player mode.

Download 1.5 here (with a new and improved font rendering)

FOXY (February 2022) (Warning : Adult content)

An early strategy game by legendary eroge publisher Elf. Not their best work, but an interesting piece of history.

Download 1.0 here


SCRIPT PORTS

D.P.S (Dream Program System) (W.I.P - 80% complete) (Warning: fucked up adult content)

An early AliceSoft game that includes a virtual console and three games, each one corresponding to a different erotic scenario. Some elements were re-introduced in the Rance and Toushin Toshi series. Serves as a starting point for a bigger AliceSoft porting project. Will take a bit longer than expected, the original script needs some serious editing...

Amy's Fantasies (December 2022) (Warning: really fucked up adult content)

The infamous Hiroyuki Kanno unmarketable porn VN he did to troll C's Ware, his editor at the time. It's a pretty disgusting game, but it's so (intentionally) dumb that it manages to be hilarious at the same time.

Being a script port of the Himeya Soft Windows version, and with ready-to-use powerful editing tools at my disposal, it was a pretty quick project. The longest part was editing the graphics, then there was only 6-7% of untranslated or very mangled text I had to edit.

Download 1.0 here.

Jast Memorial Collection (November 2022) (Warning: Adult Content)

The official English JAST USA translations ported from the MS-DOS to the PC-98 version. Includes a brand new title screen for Season of the Sakura and uncensored CG for Runaway City for the very first time on PC-98!

Download 1.0 here.

YU-NO: A Girl that Chants Love from the Edge of the World (December 2021) (Warning : Adult content)

One of the most influential VNs of the 90's and Elf's most famous work. Based upon TLWiki's translation of the Windows version.

Download 1.03 here

Previously, I did some menu patches for Sei Shoujo Sentai Lakers III (adult content) and Tamashi no Mon: Dante no Shinkyoku yori (all ages)

They're not quite as polished as my later works, but at least they can help you if you want to play these games and don't know any japanese. They both come with a full walkthrough.

Sei Shoujo Sentai Lakers III menu patch

Tamashii no Mon menu patch (PC-9801 version)

Tamashii no Mon menu patch (FM Towns version)

I also did some bugfixes for two of the infamous Retronomicon translations (just bugfixes, the script is left untouched)

Dragon Knight

Dead of the Brain

 

[Nikokaro]

Hello , and congratulations on the release of the Foxy translation. For some reason this thread had gone unnoticed by me, partly because I was expecting an update to the old thread. I'll take a look at this game, but generally these older pc-98 games are very difficult and repetitive.
I eagerly await news about your other new projects, perhaps a complete translation of one of the Lakers series titles (but I'm afraid I'll be waiting in vain...).

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Thanks ! Fear not, Foxy is not a really hard game. Actually, the IA can be cheated quite easily, especially on the later missions. You can actually finish it in 4-5 hours (less if you enable no wait mode on an emulator). It's a cakewalk compared to later Elf strategy titles.

And you can already watch all the event scences except the ending from the sp disk menu, without having to play though the whole thing

I'll definitly return to Lakers at one point, but in the meantime I'll be working on some less text-heavy games. I've already got two current projects in the works, but won't announce anything before they're in a presentable enough state. I'm quite busy with some irl stuff atm and I don't want to generate some false hope for a fast release on either of them ^^

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Time to unveil one of my next projects, as it's about 75% complete ATM...

Run Run Kyousoukyoku (Warning: Adult Content)

Another early Elf game, first released for the PC-88, then ported on the PC-98. This time, it's an action game, reminiscent of some very primitive version of Deshing Desperadoes. Except you lead a female runner team and there is a bit of strategy and resource-management involved (not to mention pathfinding for the later levels). Notable for being one of the few eroge that can actually be played in competitive 2 player mode.

It's a pretty short game , very light-hearted and silly. It's also kinda sluggish, but can become perfectly enjoyable if you boost the CPU power a bit (say 2x or 4x to make it more of a challenge).

Expect a release quite soon. The testing phase may be longer than the translation itself ^^

BTW, the next project is still in the very early phase and will require a lot more work. But the wait will be worth it

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Run Run Kyousoukyoku is done! Download here.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Now working on Dragon Knight III. A little proof of concept here :

 

[Nikokaro]

Wow, that's just what a lot of us have been waiting for......So many great memories....
Maybe you could make it less difficult and stressful by increasing the experience points that are awarded. Would you be able to?

 

[BabaJeanmel]

I won't mess with the game data. But it will be easier to grind on emulator by enabling fast foward. Battles are automated in the PC-98 version, so the trick works nicely

 

[Levine91]

WOW! Keep up the great work man, always nice to see translations for hardware that us, "English speakin folk", never got the chance to experience.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

A quick glance at the Lakers 1 full translation I'm working on at the same time :

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Updated first post with my latest progress. Here is a video of the beginning of Lakers as a bonus.

 

[Aristeia]

Always nice to see the PC-98 getting exposure. I'm glad your translation projects are getting a boost too! I know that you post progress actively on discord (Probably the only English PC-98 community on there) but you'll definitely reach more people here.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Thanks ! I'm planning to do a little website to centralize everything, I'll let you know.
BTW, Lakers is more or less 35-40% done now. After finishing the text insertion, I think I'll send it to QC to a few testers while I work on DK3. I want to make sure the english text is clean enough before publishing it.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Just FYI I uploaded my finished patches there (oldies-retro/other oldies/games fixes & patches section) . They might be easier to find from outside this way

 

[BabaJeanmel]

I'm actively searching for a graphics editor to work on the title screen. It just needs the english title ("Holy Girl Force Lakers") to be inserted in a similar style than the original. Feel free to contact me if you're interested

EDIT: Done, here it is

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Lakers 1 in testing/proofreading phase. And actually, Lakers 2 has already begun! The same people (Anata and Kirinn B.) are involved on the graphical part and have done an awazing work, so I figured it would be nice to give you a little preview!

Menus are mostly done, all graphics have been edited, but hacking will be a bit more complicated, especially on the animation part. I'll begin to work on the script when these issues are sorted.

EDIT: Intro works! You can check it there:

 

[Stellar]

I love the aesthetic of these pc98 games, the pixel art is beyond gorgeous and I have long since lamented a lack of translation patches for the original ROMs since I much prefer playing visual novels on portable devices.

The Asenheim Project was our best bet until now, but this is much better! I don't know what your long term plans are, but if you can keep porting existing translations to the original pc98 versions that would be incredible

Thank you for all your work so far regardless.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Thanks!

I'm not planning to do any more script ports ATM. I'm more motivated in doing new stuff from scratch.

As for my future plans, I must first release Lakers 1 (should not be too long from now, tests are going smoothly), then I'll finish Dragon Knight 3 and do Lakers 2. Then we'll see

 

[Segger]

I really wanna play PC-98 but they’re usually the type that I would rather play in bed or when I’m out and about. Anyone have any luck with playing them on a handheld of any sort? Playing the Phoenix Wright trilogy on DS made me this way I guess.

I was actually considering one of those anbernic handhelds specifically for running visual novels but not sure if there’s a PC-98 core available for them, if anyone has one I’d be interested in hearing if these translations run.

Thanks so much for the Yu-No translation port. That will be my first go-to since I’ve wanted to play it for a while but was always annoyed that the Windows version’s graphics are worse in my opinion to the nicely pixel dithered PC-98.

 

[Nikokaro]

Anyone have any luck with playing them on a handheld of any sort?

Of course! You can play it on PSP via Neko Project 2: it has very good compatibility, very fast gameplay and near perfect sound. In contrast with Retroarch PSP, using NP2 core, the games are too slow and unplayable.
Pictured below: Dead of the Brain, a legendary horror-VN recently translated into english, which I highly recommend.

Spoiler: *mod edit* large image

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