SpaceBooger wrote:So I am having a blast playing with this thing. I purchased three Japanese games and have applied the patch to play them in English. I do find it odd that it changes everything - i.e. When I play Lufia 2 original Japan game it starts with at Tatio splash screen and when I apply the US patch it has a different splash screen that says Natsume. So I do think there is something more than translation going on.
With that being said, there are some US games that are better in their original Famicom state, Castlevania 1 with it's easy mode and Contra being examples. I am wondering if it is possible to apply patches to change Castlevania and Contra to the US versions to make them equal to their Japanese Famicom games.
I'm assuming you're using patches from my database (the mediafire link on the first post) that I made. When you use a patch for a japanese game that has a US counterpart chances are that patch was made by me simply taking the japanese rom and us rom and making a patch to convert from one to the other using a program like lunar ips (there's some more prep work prior to this on snes games but this is the basic process). Unfortunately this method is an all or nothing kind of thing, you can't pick and choose what's converted over (the translation) and what's not (a title screen, a publisher splash screen, etc...). I'm simply just taking advantage of the fact that a game exists in the US and converting from one region's rom to another. I could make patches to convert every game into Shaq Fu if I wanted.
Basically you're seeing your patched SFC Lufia 2 cartridge load up with a different splash screen because it's literally changed into the US rom and Natsume is who published the game in the US.
That said what I'm doing isn't magic honestly. I can only fix or make patches based on what already exists out there. If there's a game/rom that's in english I can patch whatever else into that and i can do some creative stacking of multiple patches as well (take seiken densetsu 3 and not only fix the patch that translates to work on the retron 5 but combine the secret of mana 2 title screen and 3 player patches into one is a good example) but that's about where my abilities end.
SpaceBooger wrote:So I am having a blast playing with this thing. I purchased three Japanese games and have applied the patch to play them in English. I do find it odd that it changes everything - i.e. When I play Lufia 2 original Japan game it starts with at Tatio splash screen and when I apply the US patch it has a different splash screen that says Natsume. So I do think there is something more than translation going on.
With that being said, there are some US games that are better in their original Famicom state, Castlevania 1 with it's easy mode and Contra being examples. I am wondering if it is possible to apply patches to change Castlevania and Contra to the US versions to make them equal to their Japanese Famicom games.
I'm assuming you're using patches from my database (the mediafire link on the first post) that I made. When you use a patch for a japanese game that has a US counterpart chances are that patch was made by me simply taking the japanese rom and us rom and making a patch to convert from one to the other using a program like lunar ips (there's some more prep work prior to this on snes games but this is the basic process). Unfortunately this method is an all or nothing kind of thing, you can't pick and choose what's converted over (the translation) and what's not (a title screen, a publisher splash screen, etc...). I'm simply just taking advantage of the fact that a game exists in the US and converting from one region's rom to another. I could make patches to convert every game into Shaq Fu if I wanted.
Basically you're seeing your patched SFC Lufia 2 cartridge load up with a different splash screen because it's literally changed into the US rom and Natsume is who published the game in the US.
That said what I'm doing isn't magic honestly. I can only fix or make patches based on what already exists out there. If there's a game/rom that's in english I can patch whatever else into that and i can do some creative stacking of multiple patches as well (take seiken densetsu 3 and not only fix the patch that translates to work on the retron 5 but combine the secret of mana 2 title screen and 3 player patches into one is a good example) but that's about where my abilities end.
That's cool, I'm just happy to play these games. So is this how it works with all games, or is there way to just patch dialog? I am 100% happy, and appreciate what you have made, I am just curious.
BLOG | BST Systems Owned: Atari 2600 & 5200, NES, Game Boy (OG, Pocket, Color, GBA & GBA SP), DSi, 3DS, SMS, Genesis, Sega CD,
Nomad, SNES, Saturn, PS1, Dreamcast, XBox, PS2, Gamecube, Nintendo DS, Wii, PSP, PS3, WiiU, XBOX, 360 XBONE & Switch.
No there's no way to patch just dialog unless someone has already made a patch for that (in that case I can fix it to work on the retron 5), otherwise its all or nothing like I said
R9delta wrote:No there's no way to patch just dialog unless someone has already made a patch for that (in that case I can fix it to work on the retron 5), otherwise its all or nothing like I said
That explains why some patches I've found, to explore gb roms, did not work.
I'm loving your updated Tecmo Bowl patch and many other of the conversions you shared. Are these hard to make? I only ask because I now see a possible purpose for all those unplayed yearly sports game.
BLOG | BST Systems Owned: Atari 2600 & 5200, NES, Game Boy (OG, Pocket, Color, GBA & GBA SP), DSi, 3DS, SMS, Genesis, Sega CD,
Nomad, SNES, Saturn, PS1, Dreamcast, XBox, PS2, Gamecube, Nintendo DS, Wii, PSP, PS3, WiiU, XBOX, 360 XBONE & Switch.
R9delta wrote:No there's no way to patch just dialog unless someone has already made a patch for that (in that case I can fix it to work on the retron 5), otherwise its all or nothing like I said
That explains why some patches I've found, to explore gb roms, did not work.
I'm loving your updated Tecmo Bowl patch and many other of the conversions you shared. Are these hard to make? I only ask because I now see a possible purpose for all those unplayed yearly sports game.
I wouldn't say it's hard to do, no. I think it could be easy for a lot of users here actually. Here's an example of what jpn to us game conversion entails (pasted from another forum I frequent):
1. Download both the Japanese rom and the US rom for The Goonies II, making sure they are both the verified good dump of both (not a pirate version, bad dump, etc..)
3. Put Lunar IPS and both roms in the same directory on my computer
4. Run Lunar IPS and click create patch. Choose the japanese rom of Goonies II as my source rom/original unmodified source. After that choose the US rom as my ending/modified result rom. It'll create the patch and that's it.
Pretty simple. This is how I do all my patches. These instructions mostly apply to NES roms but can be used for any system although it can be a bit more involved for stuff like the SNES (requires some prep work before making your patch).
Another example. This also demonstrates that the process can be (slightly) more complicated based on what you're trying to do:
This last one is me taking a copy of Tetris Attack (US) for the Super Nintendo, converting it to Panel De Pon (the japanese ver. of Tetris Attack)...and then stacking a translation patch for Panel De Pon on top of it to create one patch. This may seem kind of backwards to you but this is because Panel De Pon is pretty different from Tetris Attack even though the base game is the same (a lot of things were changed during localization besides script/dialog). Someone has already created just a translation patch for Panel De Pon which is why I was able to do this. Anyway included in the description for the video is a link to instructions that explains what I did in depth.
R9delta wrote:No there's no way to patch just dialog unless someone has already made a patch for that (in that case I can fix it to work on the retron 5), otherwise its all or nothing like I said
That explains why some patches I've found, to explore gb roms, did not work.
I'm loving your updated Tecmo Bowl patch and many other of the conversions you shared. Are these hard to make? I only ask because I now see a possible purpose for all those unplayed yearly sports game.
I wouldn't say it's hard to do, no. I think it could be easy for a lot of users here actually. Here's an example of what jpn to us game conversion entails (pasted from another forum I frequent):
1. Download both the Japanese rom and the US rom for The Goonies II, making sure they are both the verified good dump of both (not a pirate version, bad dump, etc..)
3. Put Lunar IPS and both roms in the same directory on my computer
4. Run Lunar IPS and click create patch. Choose the japanese rom of Goonies II as my source rom/original unmodified source. After that choose the US rom as my ending/modified result rom. It'll create the patch and that's it.
Pretty simple. This is how I do all my patches. These instructions mostly apply to NES roms but can be used for any system although it can be a bit more involved for stuff like the SNES (requires some prep work before making your patch).
Another example. This also demonstrates that the process can be (slightly) more complicated based on what you're trying to do:
This last one is me taking a copy of Tetris Attack (US) for the Super Nintendo, converting it to Panel De Pon (the japanese ver. of Tetris Attack)...and then stacking a translation patch for Panel De Pon on top of it to create one patch. This may seem kind of backwards to you but this is because Panel De Pon is pretty different from Tetris Attack even though the base game is the same (a lot of things were changed during localization besides script/dialog). Someone has already created just a translation patch for Panel De Pon which is why I was able to do this. Anyway included in the description for the video is a link to instructions that explains what I did in depth.
Just to see if I could do it, I followed your directions and turned a useless Menacer cart into Battletoads.
Thanks for the info.
BLOG | BST Systems Owned: Atari 2600 & 5200, NES, Game Boy (OG, Pocket, Color, GBA & GBA SP), DSi, 3DS, SMS, Genesis, Sega CD,
Nomad, SNES, Saturn, PS1, Dreamcast, XBox, PS2, Gamecube, Nintendo DS, Wii, PSP, PS3, WiiU, XBOX, 360 XBONE & Switch.
Does anyone know whether it is possible to transfer save states from other emulators over to the Retron 5?
A friend of mine has lost his 12hr Final Fantasy IV save by rebooting too quickly after it not loading the first time (?) and was wondering whether he could use the one from here to transfer it onto the Retron:
Yes, you can patch your US games to Japanese equivalents. I played my Contra cart with the Famicom version special effects, cutscenes, and map. It was even translated to English.
SpaceBooger wrote:So I am having a blast playing with this thing. I purchased three Japanese games and have applied the patch to play them in English. I do find it odd that it changes everything - i.e. When I play Lufia 2 original Japan game it starts with at Tatio splash screen and when I apply the US patch it has a different splash screen that says Natsume. So I do think there is something more than translation going on.
With that being said, there are some US games that are better in their original Famicom state, Castlevania 1 with it's easy mode and Contra being examples. I am wondering if it is possible to apply patches to change Castlevania and Contra to the US versions to make them equal to their Japanese Famicom games.
