My PC-98 translation projects

[Aurelessa]

I cannot for the life of me use those special attacks. I do know of switching equipments but they either have no attack at all or another non-special attack.

Sadly I have a bigger problem, it seems that my playthrough has come to a premature ending. After that hard battle where you only control two characters there's another battle (7-2?) in a park, I can clear that stage also but I got an error just in the moment when I guess, for the change of music and delightfully cheesy narration, that that character from the previous battle wants, ahem, to "reward" Akira. The error is that I get a white screen that don't let me continue, not pure white there's also some lines and dots going down all the time.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Can you please send me your save ? I'll take a look. The park fight was the one that was missing from the original version, and we had to correct some bugs there. But it worked fine the last time I played it, so I'm a bit surprised.

Edit: crap, I have the same issue. There might be a faulty pointer somewhere... I'll check this at once and let you know.

Post automatically merged: Nov 17, 2022

Here's the faulty file, fixed. Just use diskexplorer to replace it. My sincere apology.

 

[Aurelessa]

Working fine now. Cheers. No apologies needed, modding an old game like this one has to be tricky.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

I still can't figure out what happened... This chapter 7 is cursed, I think ^^

By the way, the patch has been updated, both here and on the Internet Archive.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Updated video previews for both Lakers games are now online.

Lakers 1:



Lakers 2:

 

[Aurelessa]

Bravo! The one thing I like the most of those previews is that they (that is, you) taught me how to use the special attacks. It seems that I clicked everything but what I should. And just in time when I'm at the last battles of the game and there're enemies immune to all damage but special attacks.
On a more serious note, brilliant work as always. Surely this English patch will give a second life to this oldie but goodie. Pixel art, and more specifically the pixel art from PC-98 games, has a lot of charm.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

I'm working on a little Jast Memorial update (leading to a proper 1.0). It will include a translated "Three Sisters" intro, uncensored cg for "Runaway" and minor optimisations for "Sakura". Consider this as a Christmas gift before my sabbatical year ^^
If someone managed to reach the omake menu in these games, just let me know. It's referenced in the executables, and there is some unused text here and there, but I'm not even sure they actually exist...

 

[Nikokaro]

Hi pal @BabaJeanmel , I had another little request for you, and one that has been going around in my head for some time. Before you retire, couldn't you take a look at Mad Paradox, a semi-unknown dos "ecchi" RPG game available in english and originally for pc-98. Perhaps, as with the other 3 titles, with some tweaking here and there the english translation will be easily transferable from dos to pc-98. Just a simple idea and curiosity, obviously no commitment or obligation.
Not to mention Pro-Lesring: Ring-out or Knights of Xentar, but I don't want to push it too far.
With gratitude, yours truly.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

I've already checked Mad Paradox, but the PC-98 version uses a non-standard FAT that prevents quick file modifications. However, the FM Towns version has been modded to include the english script, and the patch author even made a lot of corrections in the process. It's runnable in Retroarch through MAME, but probably not on handheld devices. It works fine in Tsugaru on Windows, through.

Knights of Xentar/Dragon Knight III could be done, as we have very powerful tools to edit élf games along with a full script dump of the Megatech script, but the engines differences are huge between the two versions. It would require a tiring work of reformating and reinserting the text, not to mention a lot of menu tweaking - we're talking three or four months worth of work, assuming you put it a lot of dedication - all for a very average result (the english script is basically a joke). I was planning to make a full retranslation at a point, but honestly it's not a very good game, even if it has a big nostalgia value for me (Luna even was some kind of childhood crush when I was like 14 ^^) so I quickly became bored and abandoned it after doing the first town (around 3-4%). I'm not sure I even kept the files I did...

I took a quick glance at Ring Out. Data is organized in a similar fashion than W95 True Love : a big file packing all the scripts, which appear to be in a different format than the original PC-98 version. It would require extensive hacking I can't provide to extract the scripts from both versions and make some heavy copy-pasting between the two. BTW, I'm not even sure the original engine supports ASCII characters at all...

TLDR : not possible atm, sorry.

There are a lot of classics that could benefit for a script port... Nocturnal Illusions, Desire, Gloria, True Love, Amy's Fantasies, and a good dozen others. But most romhackers won't bother because the engines are pretty complex compared to the JAST or Lakers engines, and they already run fine on Windows with the help of a few fan-patches.

The JAST memorial was pretty much the only exception to the rule, as the DOS and PC-98 versions are almost perfectly compatible. Except for changing headers in image files and adding punctuation support by re-enabling a couple calls, everything was already served upon a plate so to say.

 

[Nikokaro]

@BabaJeanmel , I make one last attempt, hoping not to challenge your patience, before your sad departure: Power Dolls. I think it's the last remaining title, ported in the 1990s from pc-98 (jap dos) to western dos and translated into english (except maybe a fighting game that I don't care for). It is a tactical-rpg game, well-known for being slow and tedious, but with nice anime girls, and I don't even think there is much dialogue in it (maybe none?). Something tells me that the translation can be ported back to pc-98 without difficulty: it would be your swan song, so to speak....

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Sorry, Power Dolls DOS uses a totally different data format than Power Dolls PC-98...

And don't worry, I'll be back on some translation projects later... just not right now

Post automatically merged: Nov 25, 2022

...Alright, I'm doing this before 2022 ends. Just because I have the right tools and it's a pretty easy port (7% done already). And because the game is so infamous it's worth it.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Update on Amy:
- More or less 10% of the script done, including some PC-98 exclusive lines (mostly related to save/load operations) that were hardcoded for the most part.
- Kirinn B once again cracked the graphics format. As a result, I've redone all the english graphics (the existing ones from the Win version were either in the wrong size, untranslated, with inconsistencies and/or blurry text, so I did a lot of edits) . Here is the new title screen as a preview.
- I'll also add the uncensored graphics from the Win version to the final patch.
- Still needs testing, but you should be able to use the PC-9821 soundtrack with an optional patch.

Only the actual script reinsertion remains, and it's a cakewalk compared with what I did for Yu-No. Expect a quick release, probably first half of December.

 

[Nikokaro]

@BabaJeanmel , thank you for yet another, welcome surprise: your sabbatical year will have to wait, I'm afraid.

Side note: I don't know if you follow soccer and World Cup, but many kudos to Les Bleus, dynamic and entertaining choral play and great players. We have much to learn from you all.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

JAST Memorial updated to 1.0. They're now complete, with an English intro for Three Sisters Story and uncensored CG for Runaway City. They also have been playtested, including on real hardware.

If you want to keep your savegames, just extract the GDATA* from your existing disk images and reinject them into the new version. Send me a DM if you have no idea in how to do that.

BTW, Amy now has full translated graphics and uncensored H-CGs. Script insertion is around 40%, so expect a fast release.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Amy 99,9% done.

The english script is pretty weak. It is accurate plotwise, but makes a lot of shortcuts and removes basic character characteriziation (Sumire's speech for instance). It honestly feels like a MTL, except it's from a time MTL didn't even exist ^^

The english-translated omake content was even weaker than the rest of the script. I made a few corrections and restored entire chunks of dialogue removed because of otaku references the translator clearly didn't get at the time. There's even a full 20kb worth of text that had been simply cut off (a pretty silly developer's talk, full of puns and other references) and is now fully restored. I did my best to keep the puns as authentic as possible.

I've also made a couple corrections here and there in the main script, but I honestly won't be retranslating the whole thing. It's just not worth it for a game like this. However, it still manages to be entertaining by its totally batshit insane plot and dumb jokes, so if you didn't play it yet, you're in for a wild ride.

There is still one single game crashing-bug near the first h-scene (triggered only by a specific choice) that I'm investigating. As soon as it's corrected, I'll release the patch. I hope to have it sorted for this weekend.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Amy's Fantasies released! Download it here.

 

[BabaJeanmel]

Also, @jackdbs just released another script port from Windows to PC-98, this time for "Love Potion". If you like old school ero ADV games, make sure to give it a shot! Downloadable here.

 

[Nikokaro]

@jackdbs , thank you too for this nice unexpected surprise, and welcome to join us.
I take this opportunity to mention May Club (V.R. Date): has anyone looked at it yet? Is the translation difficult to port to pc-98? It is a fun non-linear, multi-branches, multi-endings dating sim.

Note to Love Potion: Using NP2 you must set GDC to 2.5MHz, to avoid an initial error message. To do this you must "reset with help Key", set the value as pictured below, and then exit the japanese menu (last option).

 

[BabaJeanmel]

I looked at May Club and Nocturnal Illusion as they are both included with the limited edition of the JAST memorial collection, but unfortunately they both use a different engine/data format than their pc-98 versions.

 

[Nikokaro]

I looked at May Club and Nocturnal Illusion as they are both included with the limited edition of the JAST memorial collection, but unfortunately they both use a different engine/data format than their pc-98 versions.

Yeah, you had already told me that about the second title but I was hoping for better luck about the first one. That's okay; you have already done so much for all of us. So, as you foretold, happy sabbatical year (unless there are more surprises in store).