PC-Engine Translations by Dave Shadoff
Introduction
OK, I just got the bug to do some translations and other hacks
for the TurboGrafx/PC-Engine consoles.
And maybe the PC-FX eventually, you never know.
I did a couple of quick tests on a couple of HuCard games, and a couple of
CD-ROM games, and I have been in contact with
NightWolve
of #TurboDuo on DALNet, who has given me some good ideas and information.
I also did a quick test on Lunatic Dawn, a PC-FX game. While searching for
text and translating it to english could be a tough job, at least it appears
that PC-FX games can accept ASCII for more compressed text messages, without
the same trouble that PC Engine games usually have.
Shanghai HuCard
After searching for a simple game to do as my first translation, I decided to
do Shanghai because:
- It is only 1 megabit
- Only the menu items needed translation
- All Japanese was stored as katakana, so it was easy to translate
It went pretty fast - it only took about a day and a half.
I redefined the 8x12 graphic font with alphabetic characters instead of kana,
but I couldn't easily get it print regular ASCII text - so I had to use the kana
bytecodes for my english text.
I even had to define a few custom tiles with compressed versions of some words
so they would fit in less space. Yeah, I was just too lazy to find and alter
the pointers to the text.
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Lode Runner Lost Labyrinth HuCard
I did Lode Runner Lost Labyrinth because it was a fun little game and
a quick thing to translate. Not too much text, and an interesting technique
of switching between hiragana and katakana in the middle of a phrase.
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Motteke Tamago Super CDROM
I've been working on Motteke Tamago for a little while now... it was more
difficult than I first expected because of extensive use of graphics,
the replacement of 2 fonts, and a compression technique which I needed to
reverse-engineer. A nice challenge, but not enough to keep me down for long.
Big thanks go to Forrest Richmond who translated the bulk of the text.
I'm having enough fun doing this that I will probably keep doing this for
awhile, but I obviously can't plan dates or schedules. Any games I translate
will likely be PC Engine or PC-FX games, since I enjoy those systems and
there don't seem to be enough translations out there for them.
Downloads
- 2002/09/01:
- Translation of Motteke Tamago (Japanese Super CDROM).
It includes a choice of IPS patch or PPF patch, and instructions on installation.
The original CDROM can be found on eBay sometimes, or from collectors. It was included as a pack-in in the magazine "Super PC Engine Fan Deluxe", issue #2.
Please don't ask me where to find images of the CDROM - I won't reply to such requests.
- 2002/03/04:
- 2002/02/22:
- 2002/02/13:
(c) Copyright 2002 by Dave Shadoff
Last Updated: 2002/03/04 by Dave Shadoff
