ROM Hack Translation [Release] Jet Impulse - English Translation

[MegalithAce]

​

Notes

Hello, it's a pleasure to be here.
For a long time, there has been attempts to translate this game, with no avail due to the lack of interest in flight games (I know, it's a niche game genre), but for those who've played Ace Combat previously, must've had the curiosity to play other AC-like games that could've been made for other platforms.
And so, a group of people and me, managed to translate the game ALMOST on its fullest! The main campaign has been translated completely, and there has been a lot of changes since the very start of the translation attempt for the game, around 2017-ish.

A lot of roadblocks happened during the translation of the game, such as the padding of the font being too big, to cutscenes being too fast for the translated text.

There is still some work to do, but so far, I prefer uploading a patch once I believe the translation gets to an almost perfected state (including translation of graphics via Crystaltile.)

Translation files are placed onto my Github. https://github.com/Megalith9/Jet-Impulse-Translation-Project

Game Description

For context, this is a flight arcade game released in Japan, around February 8, 2007. It was developed by Gevo Entertainment, an independent group that separated from Genki Co., Ltd.
It was planned to have a release for North America under the name of "DS Air", as it was presented on the E3 of 2006, but got ultimately cancelled.

Here's a video about it.

​

It contains several aircrafts of choice, every single one being fictional fighters with similarities with irl aircrafts as well. Also has around 19 missions total, and some extra missions that can be accessed through the "Free Play" tab on the menu.

Official webpage of Jet Impulse: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/awgj/index.html

How to download

1. You must obtain the .nds file. The hash data goes as follows (Use https://rapidtoolset.com/en/tool/rom-hash-checker)

MD5: 6f3fddedb479d0fb36f143aa16bfba78
SHA-1: 8c74f7f4417ddad351411175318fb693a9548989
SHA-256: 3f1612c82fb60ccb4908ff03554d6d95c816b03c13d309246d22ee89034d9e57

2. Jet Impulse (English Patch) - v1.3

https://github.com/Megalith9/Jet-Impulse-Translation-Project/releases

Use either those tools to patch the file:

• https://kotcrab.github.io/xdelta-wasm/ (online patcher)
• https://github.com/marco-calautti/DeltaPatcher (software to patch the ROM)

3. Enjoy!

Changelogs

v1.0
- Initial release.

v1.1
- Some issues related to the text in pre-briefings (mission 05, 06) have been fixed.
- Re-translated some small radio texts.

v1.2
- Better readability in the briefing and in-game exit screens.
- Better formatting on the aircraft extended stats.
- All references to "Aircrafts" have been replaced to "Aircraft"
- "Option" changed to "Options"
- "Air Plane" changed to "Aircraft"
- "Record" changed to "Records"
- "Control" changed to "Controls"
- In-game "Mission" tab in the options changed to "Objectives"

v1.3
- Font modification, quotation marks and spacing
- "Inmediately" changed to "Immediately"
- Some small fixes in texts of mission 00A, 00B, 04 and 08

Screenshots

Credits

All credits goes to the following people:

• Normmatt: A person I've meet in romhackdoting who managed to find a workaround in terms to accelerate texts through cutscenes, which also applied to briefing texts and others.
• Woojin: Managed to find out the padding of the game font and did several adjustments to it, allowing more text per sections.
• Provare: He managed to create a font that will be used for the graphical editing of texts.
• tkmt_aniki, CaptainKendoran, RowdySunstrider: They managed to help in terms of the gramatical aspects of some texts, giving context to words used in several scenarios.
• letonvignec, juankenstein: The original team. They managed to ignite the project many years ago, and they helped me into my first steps to translate the game.
• You, the person who is reading this: For finding an interest to this small project. Makes our work worth it, thank you.

Status

Texts: 100%
Graphics: 100%?​

Tools used

• CrystalTile: Used for hex editing and graphical editing.​
• Notepad++: Since it allows for a proper editing of text files, a normal notepad couldn't do. Also, the files use a special character for spacing (ideographic space), normal spacing doesn't work.​
• dslazy: Allows for the packing and unpacking of ds games.​
• Imhex: Used sometimes in order to point out patterns in .mdig files and edit their representation in decimals without having to manually do calculations each time.​
• NFTRedit: Font modificationt tool.​
• NitroPaint: Handles NSCR editing better than CrystalTile.​

 

[Provare]

I'm excited about this project.

 

[Deleted member 706757]

Looks cool, good work on the translation!

 

[The Catboy]

How did such a game not come to the US? It looks like something that would have sold!

 

[SDA]

I like how this translation patch looks so far. Looking forward to the final release!

 

[MegalithAce]

I lied a bit.
Basically the text files are all completed, but due to changes in the font, improvements in my basic japanese and several people who also speak japanese giving me a hand, I had to reformat grand part of the texts.
Currently there's one folder named "WORLDDESC" that needs to be done from scratch, because I really hate how I did it a while ago.

After that, the graphical texts of "About World" and "How to play" might need changes, which might complete the translation of the game in a 100%.
Currently trying to fix some bugs reported on my discord server.

Post automatically merged: Jan 9, 2026

Edit, all text files have been completed. Yipee now graphical texts remain.

 

[Provare]

How did such a game not come to the US? It looks like something that would have sold!

They started, but then they gave up, I don't know if for political reasons.

In fact, the game contains some components of what was supposed to be the American version.

 

[The Catboy]

They started, but then they gave up, I don't know if for political reasons.

In fact, the game contains some components of what was supposed to be the American version.

That’s actually quite interesting. I wish I knew what happened, ngl

 

[MegalithAce]

The graphical editing is going smoothly, some issues here and there but nothing that can't be handled.
I believe Nitropaint handles the editing of NSCR?

 

[MegalithAce]

The game has some sort of encyclopaedia and instructions about the elements of the game. Their graphics have been translated (Thank god Nitropaint exist) and now I'll move to the rest of graphics, I believe there's just a few of them, and some dont really need a full-on translation because they're already with English texts embedded.

Post automatically merged: Jan 11, 2026

This is gonna be fun now

 

[MegalithAce]

I said February? Well damn, It's ready for release.
Here's some image comparisons.

Doing the graphics was not difficult, however I feel there are some sections that can't be translated because there's some stuff that is hardcoded and I have no idea how to deal with. If anyone here's a hacker or so, please contact me for further context.
I just think the translation is ready for release.

 

[111112oo_]

Huge congratulations on getting this translation out!

Regarding the hardcoded "sections that can't be translated", what do they pertain to in the game? Like how important are they?
Also, on the screenshots above. "About World" and "Air Plane" seem like weird translations. Is Encyclopedia not an accurate translation there, and shouldn't Airplane be without a space? Same goes for "Option" instead of "Options".

Otherwise, awesome!

 

[MegalithAce]

Huge congratulations on getting this translation out!

Regarding the hardcoded "sections that can't be translated", what do they pertain to in the game? Like how important are they?
Also, on the screenshots above. "About World" and "Air Plane" seem like weird translations. Is Encyclopedia not an accurate translation there, and shouldn't Airplane be without a space? Same goes for "Option" instead of "Options".

Otherwise, awesome!

Oh, those points you've mentioned are already a vanilla thing from the game itself, they werent modified to be like that. The graphics that went changed are the About World content, How to Play content, the aircraft's extended stats in the hangar, and the titles of the stages when you continue the campaign.

I could think about retranslating them in a next patch or so.

Related to the unstranslated sections, actually there is one. When you check your own name after you click on "Story", there is a 2-character word that show the player rank. Such graph adapts according to how many points (The game calls it Ace Points or AP) you get. I can recognize the NSCR and NCGR files that makes it show there, but theres a programming or something that moves the tiles of the NCGR to display a different 2-character word, which I was unable to find.

 

[111112oo_]

Oh, those points you've mentioned are already a vanilla thing from the game itself, they werent modified to be like that. The graphics that went changed are the About World content, How to Play content, the aircraft's extended stats in the hangar, and the titles of the stages when you continue the campaign.

I could think about retranslating them in a next patch or so.

Related to the unstranslated sections, actually there is one. When you check your own name after you click on "Story", there is a 2-character word that show the player rank. Such graph adapts according to how many points (The game calls it Ace Points or AP) you get. I can recognize the NSCR and NCGR files that makes it show there, but theres a programming or something that moves the tiles of the NCGR to display a different 2-character word, which I was unable to find.
View attachment 551219

Oops, didn't catch they were the same in Japanese. I guess "About World" could be intentional then, "Option" definitely not though lol.

Is that rank display the only untranslated thing?

 

[MegalithAce]

Oops, didn't catch they were the same in Japanese. I guess "About World" could be intentional then, "Option" definitely not though lol.

Is that rank display the only untranslated thing?

Again, I could try to re-translate those graphics in a next patch, no biggie

Also thats what I believe, I dont think anything else lacks, just that rank.

 

[SDA]

Thank you for the translation!

I have a suggestion, though. I did notice that there seem to be a little discrepancies with the font (which, by the way, has been used in many other Nintendo DS translation patches AFAIK).

Namely, the apostrophe and the quotation marks are a little too small and the exclamation mark should be shifted one pixel closer to the last letter (see the screenshots where there are exclamations, where they are one pixel farther away than they should be?)

I've got a screenshot from another translation that uses this kind of font in the game, and that might help you adjusting the font accordingly.

Spoiler

 

[Provare]

This is an optical illusion, as the apostrophe is now exactly 1 pixel away from the letter, exactly as in the example you gave.
This illusion is created by the different shape of the apostrophe, which in Jet Impulse is decidedly thinner and lacks the upper blob.

can you put a comparison for the quotation marks?

 

[MegalithAce]

Thank you for the translation!

I have a suggestion, though. I did notice that there seem to be a little discrepancies with the font (which, by the way, has been used in many other Nintendo DS translation patches AFAIK).

Namely, the apostrophe and the quotation marks are a little too small and the exclamation mark should be shifted one pixel closer to the last letter (see the screenshots where there are exclamations, where they are one pixel farther away than they should be?)

I've got a screenshot from another translation that uses this kind of font in the game, and that might help you adjusting the font accordingly.

Spoiler

Honestly, I prefer not making another patch update just for that detail. I've recently updated the patch 9-ish hours ago, re-translating graphs.
However your feedback is appreciated, and I would suggest if you could play the game and try finding out some issues along the way. Don't forget to use the latest patch!

 

[SDA]

Honestly, I prefer not making another patch update just for that detail. I've recently updated the patch 9-ish hours ago, re-translating graphs.
However your feedback is appreciated, and I would suggest if you could play the game and try finding out some issues along the way. Don't forget to use the latest patch!

I know, I was going to tell you about this before the 1.2 patch came out but I didn't have enough time.

Of course you can keep this detail in mind for the next update. If I happen to find any more issues, I'll let you know.

Post automatically merged: Jan 16, 2026

... and sure enough, I found some.

Spoiler: Some issues I found

Right at the start, this is not how the word "minigames" should be written as.

This sentence shouldn't start with a capital letter, as it follows a previous sentence that ends in a comma (specifically: "In the aftermath of a war that laid waste to countless nations,".)

It's misspelled as "dont" instead of "don't".

That's a capital letter after a comma.

For some reason, Jasmine's nametag appeared like this. It kind of "fixed" itself after I switched to the following page with the R button.

Likewise, it printed an extra "a" for no reason whatsoever in between "The" and "aircraft".

And finally, in the difficulty selection, the word "comfortable" is written as "confortable" (well, not actually a misspelling, but writing it with a "m" is more correct). It's shown in one of the screenshots in this thread.

 

[MegalithAce]

I know, I was going to tell you about this before the 1.2 patch came out but I didn't have enough time.

Of course you can keep this detail in mind for the next update. If I happen to find any more issues, I'll let you know.

Post automatically merged: Jan 16, 2026

... and sure enough, I found some.

Spoiler: Some issues I found

View attachment 551499
Right at the start, this is not how the word "minigames" should be written as.

View attachment 551501
This sentence shouldn't start with a capital letter, as it follows a previous sentence that ends in a comma (specifically: "In the aftermath of a war that laid waste to countless nations,".)

View attachment 551502
It's misspelled as "dont" instead of "don't".

View attachment 551503
That's a capital letter after a comma.

View attachment 551504
For some reason, Jasmine's nametag appeared like this. It kind of "fixed" itself after I switched to the following page with the R button.

View attachment 551505
Likewise, it printed an extra "a" for no reason whatsoever in between "The" and "aircraft".

And finally, in the difficulty selection, the word "comfortable" is written as "confortable" (well, not actually a misspelling, but writing it with a "m" is more correct). It's shown in one of the screenshots in this thread.

I have no idea how to fix the last two things, it's rare to see it happen, as the texts are pretty much written properly.
The grammar will be fixed after more errors are found, i'll replay the campaign again and check as well, thank you very much.