Puyo Puyo 2 System C-2 Translation Patching

[Keroro1125]

Is it possible to patch Puyo Puyo 2 to be in English? I know it doesn't REALLY need a translation being a puzzle game and all that, but would still be cool to see an English version of the game to put into a US-style cab.

That being said, I know altering anything in the game is most likely going to trigger the anti-piracy measures within it so that'd have to be dealt with too. Some things should be easy to add in like the character descriptions at least, since those have already been translated in the Sega Ages Switch release (although not in-game).

Either way, as a Puyo Puyo fan, it'd be kind of a fun project to tackle.

 

[GeeDee]

I had no idea there wasn't already an english arcade version of puyo tsu, just considering how many ports of it there are.

I've been looking to doing a little translation on a psx game, since just for fun/practice I like to play and translate my way through JP console games and figured I may as well try my hand at making actual changes to a game- if even just to keep for myself for the fun/practice of it all. I'll have to look into this sometime to see how the text is formatted in the game my puyo tsu has admittedly become a bit of a "testing" board- something I throw in cabs to bring up the color and grid tests but iirc, the text is rather large, so I would imagine single characters are stored and displayed as many tiles grouped together. It could be a little cumbersome to convert that to english letters if so, but I would need to look at how they're laid out and stored to really tell...something I shouldn't be contemplating starting at ~2AM for my own good

To get a better idea of the process, you may be interested in This Read about the english translation of Valkyrie no Densutsu that's been floating around for a little while.

 

[Keroro1125]

As far as I know, the only Puyo Tsu translations I've seen are Super Puyo Puyo Tsu on the Super Famicom and Puyo Pop on Neo Geo Pocket Color.

On the pre-battle enemy descriptions, I wonder if it's possible to take the English text sprites from Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and put them into the game for that.

For example they would be the ones at the top of the sprite sheet.

Other instances of text may be more difficult and would have to be completely redrawn from what I've seen in other parts of the game.

 

[GeeDee]

It's not really going to be that simple. The majority of the JP text that would need to be translated is going to be made up of many tiles combined into one space to create one character. Whereas if you look at the sprite sheet you've found, for example, the "ones at the top" are much smaller- probably only taking up a single tile. The arcade version of Puyo 2 also already has an English table used for words like "ARLE" on the battle screen. You can view and search the rom files in a hex editor to confirm, but just from a quick peek, your generic single-tile table for these letters is going to look something like this:

Spoiler: Table order

41=A
42=B
43=C
44=D
45=E
46=F
47=G
48=H
49=I
4A=J
4B=K
4C=L
4D=M
4E=N
4F= O
50=P
51=Q
52=R
53=S
54=T
55=U
56=V
57=W
58=X
59=Y
5A=Z
-------
61=a
62=b
63=c
64=d
65=e
66=f
67=g
68=h
69=i
6A=j
6B=k
6C=l
6D=m
6E=n
6F=o
70=p
71=q
72=r
73=s
74=t
75=u
76=v
77=w
78=x
79=y
7A=z

I would recommend looking up making table files for romhacking and translation to learn more about that (I'm still green on it myself), though this is only particularly useful if you were able to simply replace one tile (i.e. character/letter) for another, which you arent /really/ able to do with a game like puyo tsu with its multiple different fonts and font sizes being used all at once on some screens.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though you can view the GFX or tilemap for this title via mame the usual way; just the pallets. So no luck finding any kind of EZPZ table for the kana, though tbh that was expected since the font most often used for dialogue is much much larger than the provided english text anyways. When I have some more time I'll see if I can dig any further into the tilesets with some other older programs, but I've already let myself look at this for too long tonight lol.

 

[Keroro1125]

I guess the existing English table lettering could be used. My brain completely skipped over that since I can't seem to find complete sprite sets for Puyo Puyo 2, especially ones of the fonts.

But yeah. Looks like this isn't going to be anywhere near as simple as I thought it'd be. Looks like I have a lot to learn, but I'm at least willing to learn along the way.

 

[rtw]

A long time ago I was involved in a translation attempt from Puyo Puyo 2 (Win95) Japanese version to English.

The game uses a proprietary compression format in the GFX files called: .CNS

The end result was two tools which can convert cns to bmp and back.

No idea if the arcade version uses the same format. If there is any interest I can upload the .cns files from the Win95 game and you can compare the files ?

 

[Keroro1125]

If there is any interest I can upload the .cns files from the Win95 game and you can compare the files ?

I'd greatly appreciate it. Who knows? It could potentially be a massive help in this.

 

[rtw]

Here is an archive.

https://we.tl/t-K9IdwuaBQa

All the converted files are in subfolders named: bmp I inluded the logfiles as well.

Truly a blast from the past

cns2bmp, ver 1.02 -- Copyright (C) 2002 rtw

 

[Keroro1125]

Awesome! Thank you very much. Looking at some of the Japanese text and it's kinda funny how I think it's implied that Satan's tower is making a spitting sound when Arle gets ejected from Satan's tower in the bad ending.

 

[Keroro1125]

So from a conversation with a friend, the green text in the bad ending translates to "Aim for the top, Satan-Sama!" with the small orange text on it possibly being furigana since it reads "teppen" or "top". Then the yellow text under Arle is a spitting sound effect of "peeeh". The orange text at the bottom just means "The End".

 

[Keroro1125]

So from looking at the game, I realized that what's normally the option screen in the console versions is a "waiting for players" screen. The green text says "Searching for Participants" and the white text in Carbuncle's mouth basically says "To Join" and when there's enough credits there's text flashing over the one on the right that says "2P Press Start Button". Then the Carbuncle on the right displays the same text as the left one when player 2 is ready.

When the timer runs out and only player 1 is ready the green text changes to "Solo Puyo Puyo". If both players are ready it changes to "Double Puyo Puyo".

 

[Keroro1125]

Okay, looking over things now, it seems I have everything covered as far as the translating of text goes. Some lines could be altered to sound better for English-speaking players. Some lines can be perfectly understood through context, but it'd be nice to change them for consistency.

• Attract Mode Tutorial- The Sega Ages release provided a translation of the tutorial. I have screenshots of these from the Switch version.
• Title Screen- The title graphics need to be altered to "Puyo Puyo" but the "Tsu" kanji could be left.
• Mode Select Screen- Green text says "Searching for Participants, but could be changed to "Waiting for Players" to sound better. Carbuncle's mouth says "Joined" but could potentially be changed to "Ready". When there's more than one credit, there's blinking text over the Carbuncle on the right that says "2P Press Start Button". Then, depending on whether one or both players are ready, the large green text changes to "Solo Puyo Puyo" or "Double Puyo Puyo".
• Opponent Select Screen- The red text in the middle says "Select Opponent"
• Game Play Graphics- The flashing white text in the upper middle of the screen says "Intrusion Possible" but could be changed to "2P Can Join" to sound better. There's text that pops up for each combo that needs to be changed to "Combo 1", "Combo 2", "Combo 3", etc. And then the text for clearing the board needs to be changed to "All Clear". The text during VS mode for winning or losing could be changed to "ALL RIGHT!" and "OH NO..." similar to the English version of Puyo Puyo 1. The offset mechanic's text could be changed to "BLOCK"
• Pre-Battle Opponent Descriptions- Also given by the Sega Ages release. I have these in a document, separated by where the text box transitions to the next text.
• Nomi's Sprite Text- The little flea guy has an arrow with text saying "It is here"
• Bad Ending Text- The text behind Arle says "Aim for the top, Satan-Sama!" With "Top" overlayed above it and a spitting sound effect like "Peeeeeh" below Arle.
• Ending Credits Text- Some of it is in English and some of it isn't. Some of the English could be corrected. "Producer- Moo Niitani" "Programmers- Takayuki Hirono, Yasutoshi S. Akiyama" "Design- Riu S. Aya" "Sound & Voice- Tsuyoshi Matsushima (LMS Music), BA.M (LMS Music)" "Manual & Package- Fukusaburo Kido, Soncho Sawa" "Special Thanks- Kazuhiko Kitade, Kengo Morita (24)"
• Game Over Screen- The scrolling text at the bottom of the screen says "Do you want to continue?"

So, with all that being said, I think that's pretty much all the text for the game as far as I'm aware. So... past the first hurdle now.

 

[GeeDee]

tl;dr: imo, it's best that you don't get attached to a script until you actually know what/how to Physically change what's there already. Being very realistic about this kind of project, creative choices/"""perfect accuracy""" in translation may not matter in the slightest by the time you're able to actually make any progress on edits.

Spoiler: My long winded $0.02

This project really isn't going to go anywhere until some real work on the technical side of things happens first. Not being rude at all, I don't know how much experience you have in translation/romhacking, but assuming you're newer then even I am: if you take a look at the romhacking.net forums, you'll see very quickly that this where an insanely massive number of projects start and end for interested folks. Threads began with "Hi! I'm just getting started in romhacking, and I want to translate [insert niche game]. How do I change 'xyz' on [insert complicated/intricate system]?", they get linked the "list of required materials for new users" links explaining how to get started, then the thread quickly dies out ergo why the "Hacking ideas: for those with all the ideas but none of the skill" thread is so massive- it's just packed full of request after request for projects. Would love to see this project happen and do some work on it if possible; seems like a great learning opportunity, but worrying about what-lines-to-use-where is step 9 and this project is barely on step 1 or 2.

I haven't dug into this project much more then my last post with the English character table, but depending on how the art/tiles are "stored", it may very well be that none of these previous official translations will really matter to have organized/scripted at all. There's always the (strong) chance that, depending on how you're able to change the JP characters to EN letters, you're going to have to make A Lot of changes and concessions to the script along the way.

I'm only just recently getting my feet wet with the more technical hardware/software side of things as far as *making* translation patches/"versions" go, but the actual difficult part of this entire process is going to be "finding" where the tilesets are being stored/called from, extracting/editing those, then rezipping the testing in mame before getting anywhere close to burning roms for real hardware; hopefully not tripping the little copy protection there is in tsu in the process (i.e disabling the sousai/garbage puyo). If you read through the Valkyrie article I linked back in my first post, you would have seen that a large amount of the translation work there was able to be done in bulk through some simple hex editing after the table was made. With tsu, I don't really think it's going to be the same story at all given the multiple fonts and font sizes like I explained before.

I know the system C/C2 is apparently extremely similar to the megadrive in terms of hardware, so your best bet may be to do some reading through the megadrive development documentation that's out there (lots of genesis/MD hacks exist so you can find homebrew documentation that would probably be more clear than the older archived stuff), as well as reading up on the mame driver for the C2 system. Then of course, Information about the MAME Debugger.

I have a friend that's big into megadrive and saturn homebrew- I'll hit him up sometime and see if he can talk me through some things and give me a good idea on where to do some reading. Rocket science to me, but he's helped me out with some things in this area before. I haven't touched this project at all since my last post with the english character table. As far as the technical side of things, I only have a little experience with NES and only very recently PSX, so MD isn't my wheelhouse. I'll see what resources/wisdom they might have to share on this.

 

[Keroro1125]

No offense taken at all! I have almost no technical knowledge of doing any rom hacking, so I'll have to read up on it or else I'm pretty much stuck where I'm at. ;