ROM Hack Retro Game Exam

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

If anyone followed along in the old Retro Game Challenge 2 thread, in the last few pages (...Page 56, I see), I threatened the world with a translation of the Namco NDS game "Retro Game Exam" (Or literally "TV Game Exam")

http://tvgame-kentei.namco-ch.net

It is a bit like Retro Game Challenge 2 in that it is made up of a lot of mini games, but the catch here is that they are taken from old Namco games, so you do have things like Xevious, Galaga, Rally-X, etc. stages. I do find going through the menus to be a bit slow at times but it's an interesting game for those into the retro scene or minigame...games (made in wario-esque games)

Progress: I was working a bit with Subnetpie on this. He was able to figure out some of the graphics, though unlike Retro Game Challenge 2, there aren't folders of files to easily browse; there are a few overlay files and that is pretty much it. All of the gfx data is crammed into those, and all of the text, too (with some of it in arm9.bin). Size-wise, the game is fairly tiny. Your character can "talk" to random Namco game characters but nobody has much to say, and the majority of the remaining text is for the challenge descriptions. There is a romance/dating simulation minigame and a detective-like minigame that has a bit of text, but even then, not much overall.

That being said, I was able to use CrystalTile2 and find the text easily enough in SJIS format. I put what I could find into an Excel file for reference, but as of yet I have no tools to properly extract or reinsert the text. From what I can find, half-width characters are not supported. I don't mind double-byte roman characters, though due to space limitations I am probably going to have to expand the number of dialog boxes at times.

Here, rough work ahoy! (Just to show what we're up against) : http://aaronin.jp/shashin/tvgameexam/tvgametext.xlsx

Is anyone here interested in lending a hand with this? Yes, I'm still involved with the Digimon LE project but this is a fairly small game so if I could just get some help in extracting/inserting the data properly this could be a relatively quick project.

Screenshots:

 

[DjoeN]

Would love to see a translation of this!, but i can't help :/ sorry

 

[Sliter]

I could help editing graphics, but I'm not good at messing with the files :x

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

This looks to be like a Namco edition of a game for Wii U (and soon 3DS, from what I heard) called NES Remix.

I would love to help, but considering all of my help with Retro Game Challenge 2 kind of fluttered down to nothing at the end when I got stuck on Guadia Quest Saga, I don't know if I should... I also have very little knowledge of how to insert/extract information. I replaced a couple of images in a ROM once, but that's it, and it only happened because the images were in a basic JPG format.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

What I may end up doing is going through and translating all the text first (since there isn't *that* much in the whole game relative to a lot others out there, being mostly a fast-paced collection of mini-games that are themselves mostly action) and start messing with programs to reinsert some of the text pieces at a time until it gets to a point when I could insert all the text in the game in one fell swoop.

For the graphics, there aren't too many, but some of the challenge text is actually graphics so I might post up screenshots and ask any pixel experts to make mockups in English that could be put in the game.

 

[hippy dave]

Can't wait

PS: Let us know when you're ready to take on GameCenter 3 (for 3DS)

 

[richterw]

Aaron is on fire.
If i could suggest others game to translate, would that be "Machi-ing maker". Its not really retro, but a sim-city clone, with text in some dialogues and menus, but is a good game.
Thanks for your work, waiting for the release.

 

[ederenzi78]

Aaron, do you have any news about Retro Game Exam? You've been quiet lately :-) Thanks a lot for all your efforts!