PS1/2 Translation Tetsujin 28-Gou: English Menu Translation

[Lazlo52]

I was about to play this game after leaving it sitting around for so long when I suddenly remembered games like this tend to have menu text in their executable. It was true, so I got to work on it just so the game's easier to navigate. I was gonna write everything out in full‑width, then I tried half‑width just to see what happens and saw this game has a (only kinda ugly) font support for it. At that point, I really felt the motivation and here we are now.

That sounded cool to say, but this is just a simple menu translation. The game is very easy to navigate now, but a big chunk of details like mission and skill descriptions, as well as the dialog itself, cannot be edited because they are in a compressed VFS archive file. I hope someone else gets inspired by this awesome game and can pick up where I left off (and maybe fix my own translation, I'm sure some of my choices are off the mark). While a lot of things couldn't be edited, I did put in a bit of effort to translate the other menu stuff anyway. These can be found inside the "Extra Translations" folder in the download. You will want to read those after playing the game a bit to better understand special moves and some mid-game Challenge scenarios.

Also, the half‑width font doesn't condense well at native resolution. At least a 2x resolution in PCSX2 will improve readability of squished texts, but only if you turn off Manual Hardware Fixes in the game's Rendering properties (a recent update made a sweeping fix to all Sandlot games and it doesn't look so great here).

This patch was built off an ISO with a CRC32 of 7FC33BA7.
The data track's CRC is C7589551.
Should be compatible with real hardware, but I don't have a way to burn it back onto the PS2 myself.

Download mirror (on MediaFire, watch for ads):
https://www.mediafire.com/file/lcqgz2ig6zo0ty2/T28Gou_English_Menus.7z/file

Images and main download should be in attachments:

 

[ITSMRFOXY]

I am thrilled to see this! As a tetsujin fan i had hoped this would come. I tried this in real hardware, i have a PS2 fat with a modbo chip, playing it through USB with the game broken up into pieces with the help of USBUTIL, but the game either fails to start completely or crashes when i try to play any game mode (i tried the 28 vs 27 mission). Is it something related to the english patch? Am i sourcing the wrong version of the rom? If you could link to me your file on google drive or the like so i can try it in my ps2 i would be eager to tell you if it works or not.

 

[Lazlo52]

I am thrilled to see this! As a tetsujin fan i had hoped this would come. I tried this in real hardware, i have a PS2 fat with a modbo chip, playing it through USB with the game broken up into pieces with the help of USBUTIL, but the game either fails to start completely or crashes when i try to play any game mode (i tried the 28 vs 27 mission). Is it something related to the english patch? Am i sourcing the wrong version of the rom? If you could link to me your file on google drive or the like so i can try it in my ps2 i would be eager to tell you if it works or not.

Hmmm. Since I used xdelta, it shouldn't let you patch a mismatched file, and if something went wrong, I can't imagine it letting you into the menus at all. Are you able to play the unaltered game with that method? The patch only applies to the game's EXE (SLPS_253.62), so if you're sure you can run the game, maybe I can put that somewhere.

 

[ITSMRFOXY]

Hmmm. Since I used xdelta, it shouldn't let you patch a mismatched file, and if something went wrong, I can't imagine it letting you into the menus at all. Are you able to play the unaltered game with that method? The patch only applies to the game's EXE (SLPS_253.62), so if you're sure you can run the game, maybe I can put that somewhere.

the unpatched game runs alright. i use the same file to play it, it's just that something goes wrong in the patched version. I can use all the menus correctly, but the game freezes in the title card for each mission.

 

[Lazlo52]

the unpatched game runs alright. i use the same file to play it, it's just that something goes wrong in the patched version. I can use all the menus correctly, but the game freezes in the title card for each mission.

Hmmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmm. If the menus work fine, then the patch had to have worked. It's a very clean patch, no data shifted around... Hm, I have a hunch that maybe the hardware dislikes edits to the skill names. That section has a few optimizations that make certain things impossible to translate, and that's one of the few things that get referenced in gameplay.

When you say 'title card', you mean the loading screen with Tetsujin and Shotaro on a filmstrip? That's where I see the skills getting called in the PS2 console, and the same calls show up when the game boots. But, that wouldn't explain why it sometimes lets you in and sometimes doesn't.

Well, I have attached a version of the patch without the skills menu. See if this works.

 

[ITSMRFOXY]

Hmmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmm. If the menus work fine, then the patch had to have worked. It's a very clean patch, no data shifted around... Hm, I have a hunch that maybe the hardware dislikes edits to the skill names. That section has a few optimizations that make certain things impossible to translate, and that's one of the few things that get referenced in gameplay.

When you say 'title card', you mean the loading screen with Tetsujin and Shotaro on a filmstrip? That's where I see the skills getting called in the PS2 console, and the same calls show up when the game boots. But, that wouldn't explain why it sometimes lets you in and sometimes doesn't.

Well, I have attached a version of the patch without the skills menu. See if this works.

By title card i mean that right after you click to start a mission the film reel cutscene is where the game freezes up. I will try this patch and tell you if it works, thanks!