For those that have never played one, the Sorcerian games by Falcom:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/sorcerian/sorcerian.htm

Released on a whole bunch of systems, but only officially translated for DOS. Now, the biggest language hurdle are the menus, since the game is mostly action/adventure, with only some minor dialogue IN GAME.

From what I can tell, the PC88 version's menus are identical to the DOS translation, same with the Gen, Turbo Duo and remade PC versions. All of them also have a built-in Roman font.

I've been playing the DOS version a lot, and I love it.

Now, getting past this initial screen is the most difficult part:


Since you need to create characters, attribute stuff, send them to town, buy equipment, then band them together before you can go adventuring. Oh, and the village menu options too are a bit tricky but all standardised.

I was thinking it should be easy to make some patches, using my basic Japanese knowledge and the DOS game as a ref, that translates the menus and commonly used words (such as item names). I'm no expert, but this looks likes an afternoon's worth of work, which would render a lot of really cool games playable on a basic level, without needing to break out DOSBox. Some in-game text explains the puzzles, so this would be tricky, but any kind of start would be good - especially since there's only a very basic patch for the Gen version at the mo.

The thing is, how would I do this?

Is it a case of finding a hacker who can rip the scripts and provide them as a text file, which I can translate and hand back to him? The Gen rom is easy to find, but the PC88, Turbo Duo and PC versions are a bit trickier.

Versions to consider:
PC88
PC98 (same as PC88 - a port)
MSX
Genesis
Turbo Duo
PC Win

I'm willing to do the monkey work of changing the text, if I'm given files which show the Japanese originals and it is easy enough for me to type the new stuff in. I can also provide the PC88 disk files if needed.

Is this really naive thinking, or would it be possible to get this off the ground?

I just submitted a patch for the Genesis version that translates everything except the town and quest dialog since that uses some weird pointer system I can't figure out.  I assume the Turbo CD version is close to the same so if I can find a version of that I plan on inserting the text I've done so far since supposedly it has awesome music.

Also the Genesis version uses two identical fonts, one you can TILE edit and is used for town/dungeon and one that is apparently compressed that is used for the menus so I couldn't insert a lowercase alphabet to make it look nicer.

Thanks! I think I might have Sorcerian figured out, but I have a couple other games I want to finish up before I go back and try to finish it. I'm pretty new to this so any pointers that aren't in the easy 088A 098A 0A8A (for example) format are proving tough for me to find but I'm sure I'll get them eventually.

No I have no interest in the PC88 version personally since the DOS version is better and already in english. The Genesis one has nice graphics and scenarios unique to it so that one interested me the most out of all the versions. The Turbo CD one looks really nice too and I believe has some of the same scenarios as the DOS version but with a few new ones also. I would like to buy a cheap one on ebay and take a look at the disc, but Turbo CDs use some weird file system so you can't view the contents like you can with Mega CD games and extract individual files which makes it harder for me.

About the PC Engine (ie. "Turbo CD") version, hang in there a bit...

EsperKnt and myself are on a bit of a kick to rip text out of as many PCE games as possible, and we'll hit this one pretty soon.  Not sure how easy/hard it'll be, but don't worry about that.  It'll be fun.

As a note, there is no "filesystem" on Turbo CD's; sections of code and data are loaded from a big binary track as needed, but controlled by the programmer - so each game has a slightly different approach.  Being the first CD-based system, they didn't rely on the ISO filesystem being ratified in order to get this product out the door -> they basically treat the data track as one giant ROM which needs to be paged in, one piece at a time.

One note: Falcom games tend to use a lot of control codes to change things like font color/boldness/width, and hiragana/katakana... you don't mind getting a script with those codes embedded (and being required to preserve them when translating), right ?

Something like:
"text text [font color="blue"]more text[NEWLINE]
more text[WAITKEY][CLEAR][TOPLEFT]"

OK, I was able to give a quick look to Sorcerian on the PC Engine.

...Not enough to grab a large amount of text, but enough to write an extractor for the first menu, and figure out a bit about the menu special codes.  Pulling the text looks pretty simple so far; plain 2-byte SJIS, no tricks with the text itself.

Here's what I got (sorry it's a bit long):
There is a set of pointers at offset 0x251a6-0x251dd which point to the items on the initial menu of the game.  Each menu item has some special info preceding it, which I partially understand.  The interesting thing is that part of it allows navigation, by pointing to neighbouring phrases.  It seems that "Flags" may allow some items to appear or disappear under special circumstances (not sure yet).

Anyway, on to the text... oh incidentally, I can probably fetch the next batch of text if you can navigate me there; I am not really sure how to actually progress in this game.

(Note: I'm not sure why this menu appears to be duplicated, but it is.)


PTR ADDR: 251A6
PTR VALU: 91DE (251DE)
VRAM loc: [0400] Flags: [0140] index: [00]
Pointers: Left: [91DE] Up: [91DE] Right: [91FA] Down: [9214]
冒険に出発する

PTR ADDR: 251A8
PTR VALU: 91FA (251FA)
VRAM loc: [040B] Flags: [0140] index: [01]
Pointers: Left: [91DE] Up: [91FA] Right: [91FA] Down: [9232]
時間を進める

PTR ADDR: 251AA
PTR VALU: 9214 (25214)
VRAM loc: [0428] Flags: [01A0] index: [02]
Pointers: Left: [9214] Up: [91DE] Right: [9232] Down: [9252]
パーティーを見る

PTR ADDR: 251AC
PTR VALU: 9232 (25232)
VRAM loc: [0434] Flags: [01A0] index: [03]
Pointers: Left: [9214] Up: [91FA] Right: [9232] Down: [9274]
キャラクターを見る

PTR ADDR: 251AE
PTR VALU: 9252 (25252)
VRAM loc: [045C] Flags: [01D0] index: [04]
Pointers: Left: [9252] Up: [9214] Right: [9274] Down: [9294]
パーティーを編成する

PTR ADDR: 251B0
PTR VALU: 9274 (25274)
VRAM loc: [046B] Flags: [01D0] index: [05]
Pointers: Left: [9252] Up: [9232] Right: [9274] Down: [92B6]
キャラクターを作る

PTR ADDR: 251B2
PTR VALU: 9294 (25294)
VRAM loc: [0496] Flags: [01D0] index: [06]
Pointers: Left: [9294] Up: [9252] Right: [92B6] Down: [92D6]
パーティーを解散する

PTR ADDR: 251B4
PTR VALU: 92B6 (252B6)
VRAM loc: [04A5] Flags: [01D0] index: [07]
Pointers: Left: [9294] Up: [9274] Right: [92B6] Down: [92EC]
キャラクターを消す

PTR ADDR: 251B6
PTR VALU: 92D6 (252D6)
VRAM loc: [04D0] Flags: [00F0] index: [08]
Pointers: Left: [92D6] Up: [9294] Right: [92EC] Down: [9306]
町へ行く

PTR ADDR: 251B8
PTR VALU: 92EC (252EC)
VRAM loc: [04D6] Flags: [00F0] index: [09]
Pointers: Left: [92D6] Up: [92B6] Right: [92EC] Down: [9322]
職業を変える

PTR ADDR: 251BA
PTR VALU: 9306 (25306)
VRAM loc: [04EE] Flags: [00B0] index: [0A]
Pointers: Left: [9306] Up: [92D6] Right: [9322] Down: [9344]
ドラゴンと戦う

PTR ADDR: 251BC
PTR VALU: 9344 (25344)
VRAM loc: [0504] Flags: [0140] index: [0B]
Pointers: Left: [9344] Up: [9306] Right: [9362] Down: [9344]
今日はもうやめる

PTR ADDR: 251BE
PTR VALU: 9362 (25362)
VRAM loc: [0510] Flags: [0140] index: [0C]
Pointers: Left: [9344] Up: [9322] Right: [9362] Down: [9362]
続きをする

PTR ADDR: 251C0
PTR VALU: 9322 (25322)
VRAM loc: [052C] Flags: [00F0] index: [0D]
Pointers: Left: [9306] Up: [92EC] Right: [9322] Down: [9362]
サンプルキャラクター

PTR ADDR: 251C2
PTR VALU: 937C (2537C)
VRAM loc: [0400] Flags: [0140] index: [00]
Pointers: Left: [937C] Up: [937C] Right: [9398] Down: [93B2]
冒険に出発する

PTR ADDR: 251C4
PTR VALU: 9398 (25398)
VRAM loc: [040B] Flags: [0140] index: [01]
Pointers: Left: [937C] Up: [9398] Right: [9398] Down: [93D0]
時間を進める

PTR ADDR: 251C6
PTR VALU: 93B2 (253B2)
VRAM loc: [0428] Flags: [01A0] index: [02]
Pointers: Left: [93B2] Up: [937C] Right: [93D0] Down: [93F0]
パーティーを見る

PTR ADDR: 251C8
PTR VALU: 93D0 (253D0)
VRAM loc: [0434] Flags: [01A0] index: [03]
Pointers: Left: [93B2] Up: [9398] Right: [93D0] Down: [9412]
キャラクターを見る

PTR ADDR: 251CA
PTR VALU: 93F0 (253F0)
VRAM loc: [045C] Flags: [01D0] index: [04]
Pointers: Left: [93F0] Up: [93B2] Right: [9412] Down: [9432]
パーティーを編成する

PTR ADDR: 251CC
PTR VALU: 9412 (25412)
VRAM loc: [046B] Flags: [01D0] index: [05]
Pointers: Left: [93F0] Up: [93D0] Right: [9412] Down: [9454]
キャラクターを作る

PTR ADDR: 251CE
PTR VALU: 9432 (25432)
VRAM loc: [0496] Flags: [01D0] index: [06]
Pointers: Left: [9432] Up: [93F0] Right: [9454] Down: [9474]
パーティーを解散する

PTR ADDR: 251D0
PTR VALU: 9454 (25454)
VRAM loc: [04A5] Flags: [01D0] index: [07]
Pointers: Left: [9432] Up: [9412] Right: [9454] Down: [948A]
キャラクターを消す

PTR ADDR: 251D2
PTR VALU: 9474 (25474)
VRAM loc: [04D0] Flags: [00F0] index: [08]
Pointers: Left: [9474] Up: [9432] Right: [948A] Down: [94C6]
町へ行く

PTR ADDR: 251D4
PTR VALU: 948A (2548A)
VRAM loc: [04D6] Flags: [00F0] index: [09]
Pointers: Left: [9474] Up: [9454] Right: [948A] Down: [94A4]
職業を変える

PTR ADDR: 251D6
PTR VALU: 94FE (254FE)
VRAM loc: [04EE] Flags: [00B0] index: [0A]
Pointers: Left: [94FE] Up: [9474] Right: [94A4] Down: [94C6]
ドラゴンと戦う

PTR ADDR: 251D8
PTR VALU: 94C6 (254C6)
VRAM loc: [0504] Flags: [0140] index: [0B]
Pointers: Left: [94C6] Up: [9474] Right: [94E4] Down: [94C6]
今日はもうやめる

PTR ADDR: 251DA
PTR VALU: 94E4 (254E4)
VRAM loc: [0510] Flags: [0140] index: [0C]
Pointers: Left: [94C6] Up: [94A4] Right: [94E4] Down: [94E4]
続きをする

PTR ADDR: 251DC
PTR VALU: 94A4 (254A4)
VRAM loc: [052C] Flags: [00F0] index: [0D]
Pointers: Left: [94A4] Up: [948A] Right: [94A4] Down: [94E4]
サンプルキャラクター

This game (PC Engine version) uses a few different storage systems, apparently.

On this menu, it can only show 2-byte SJIS, so one could either use English words encoded as 2-byte SJIS (which may be restricted by space), or the print function could be altered to allow ASCII directly.

Elsewhere in the game, I see 1-byte codes being used, including 1-byte kana for some error messages, and quite a bit of English for items and such.

I could certainly give it a try, reinserting whatever text is considered OK.

I don't have a print function at this time, but it may not be necessary initially.
I also always keep notes in a project folder just in case the project stalls or new people get involved.