Hacking PSP Tenchu Games Translation Mystery

[DU0]

Hi all. First of all, forgive me if this is the wrong place to post this. I'm quite new here, and to this whole romhacking thing, so I'm still finding my feet.

So it has recently come to my attention that Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven and Tenchu: Fatal Shadows exist for the PSP, but only in Japanese. After looking around for a while, it appears that there are no translations for this game, even though English versions exist for the PS2.

So I started messing around inside Ninja Katsugeki - Tenchu San Portable's ISO file and found out that there are lots of stuff from the English release of the game still in there... Including what appears to be scripts for the entire game in English, German, Italian, French and Spanish. Some screens are still there too, like the options screen having a OPTIONSE and OPTIONSJ variants in there, which I presume could be versions in English and Japanese of the same asset.

This is where things started going over my head, though. While I've managed to extract the ISO, mess with it using UMGen and export to the PSP, it stopped working once I tried to swap the English and Japanese title screens around, as the game hangs after the intro movie. Reading further, it seems that the PSP has a sort of file allocation table of sorts called LBA which keeps track of where each file is and what it is, but I couldn't find an easy way to edit this.

This is where I ask for your help. Is this doable? I'm guessing somebody else would have done this eons ago if the files are already in there, so am I missing something? Thanks in advance.

 

[Malckyor]

When I searched for any translation I only found this for Tenchu: Fatal Shadows:



While it's cool to have at least the menus and items translated, I still prefer to play on my PSP which I can play anywhere at anytime (no, I hate touchscreen and I don't like to do anything in my phone). Anyway, I don't know why anyone translated this game yet, is there any major issue with it or is it that no one cared about it?

 

[DU0]

Yeah, I have this in English for the PS2 and Return From Darkness on Xbox, but I'm intrigued to see if it's possible to just restore the official translation for these games. Also, being able to play it on the go is a big plus.

Anyway, I don't know why anyone translated this game yet, is there any major issue with it or is it that no one cared about it?

I'm not sure either. I mean, there appear to be files from the English release already inside the game's ISO, meaning it's probably just a matter of making the game load those files instead of the originals. There's a way to translate stuff onscreen using the PPSSPP emulator as well, so the images are already translated too. It'd be just a matter to, again, changing the assets in-game somehow, but it's hard to find anything about it online.

Also, I just took a peek at Tenchu Kurenai (Fatal Shadows), but it looks like it only has the JP text available, which is a shame. Tenchu San appears to have lots of leftovers from the original game, including a mysterious Xbox related file, which was very surprising. Maybe there's a way to import some stuff from the PS2 release to the Fatal Shadows Portable ISO and get it working?

I found some stuff online about LBA editing earlier today. Guess It'll be my weekend plans.

 

[Snake4490]

Yeah, I have this in English for the PS2 and Return From Darkness on Xbox, but I'm intrigued to see if it's possible to just restore the official translation for these games. Also, being able to play it on the go is a big plus.


I'm not sure either. I mean, there appear to be files from the English release already inside the game's ISO, meaning it's probably just a matter of making the game load those files instead of the originals. There's a way to translate stuff onscreen using the PPSSPP emulator as well, so the images are already translated too. It'd be just a matter to, again, changing the assets in-game somehow, but it's hard to find anything about it online.

Also, I just took a peek at Tenchu Kurenai (Fatal Shadows), but it looks like it only has the JP text available, which is a shame. Tenchu San appears to have lots of leftovers from the original game, including a mysterious Xbox related file, which was very surprising. Maybe there's a way to import some stuff from the PS2 release to the Fatal Shadows Portable ISO and get it working?

I found some stuff online about LBA editing earlier today. Guess It'll be my weekend plans.

Hi Du0,
I found your post when trying to know if there was some ongoing project with translating Tenchu 3 for the psp.
Did you follow up on your effort ?

 

[Stellar]

Aww, phooey. This was the most promising google search result