Phantasy Star II: Shilka's Adventure English Translation Patch History ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 070712 Initial release 070808 A script correction, thanks to Bernd 080628 Minor translation fix & changed a name (thanks to Ruben van Ophuizen) 100710 Script rewritten, code updated, minor graphics fix, a few bugs fixed Overview ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a translation patch for the Mega Drive Sega Net game entitled "Phantasy Star II: Shilka's Adventure". It sports a variable-width font engine with kerning and, as usual, it is a "dual-language" patch, meaning that it supports both Japanese and English, depending on the country code of your machine. Applying the Patch ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hopefully included with this document is a patch file in the IPS format. You can use any program that supports that file format to apply this translation patch to your ROM file. Playing the Game ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once you've patched the ROM file, simply load it up in your favorite Genesis / Mega Drive emulator, console copier, or flash cartridge. The game will detect the country code of your machine (real or emulated) and then switch to English or Japanese mode accordingly. Q & A ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: This patch doesn't work! What do I do? A: Make sure that your ROM file is not in an interleaved format. It's also possible that there is more than one version of the game, or that your copy is corrupt. Some emulators may also fail to run the program. Please make sure you try several of the most up-to-date emulators available. Q: It doesn't work with my copier / flash cartridge! Why not? This was tested on a real Genesis so you shouldn't have any problems in that respect. The most likely reason is that something went wrong during the patching process. See the previous question and try it in an emulator to see if that works. Another possibility is that you are using a PAL Mega Drive. This game was designed for NTSC systems and I didn't make any changes in that respect. It should still run (probably at the wrong speed), but you never know... Q: Why is the text in Japanese?!? A: This is a dual-language translation patch. If it detects that it is running on a Japanese system, it will use the original game script. If you are using an emulator, make sure the country code is set to USA. Translation/Transliteration Notes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The surnames are simply omitted, since there is no way to tell for sure how to properly transliterate/translate them. The katakana renditions are available at various places online, for the curious, but don't trust their transliterations. For example, "Kinds" is commonly misspelled as "Kainz", even though the latter is the most logical transliteration. So you can see why it's impossible to tell for sure. ERIOSA-RU was rendered as Eli Ossale. Ossale Kohta is a pseudonym for famed Sega developer Kotaro Hayashida, and he writes the first part in katakana as OSA-RU. It is not clear whether this was intended to be one word or two, and the first part of the name could be written several different ways. (Thanks to Ruben van Ophuizen for pointing out the connection.) Astute readers may have noticed that some of the monetary values in the text have changed from older versions. The literal values were divided by 100 in order to keep the currency system roughly consistent with the other games. Meseta (the Phantasy Star currency) more closely match a dollar system whereas the author of Shilka's Adventure seemed to be treating them like the Japanese Yen (which is roughly equivalent to a cent, exchange rates not withstanding), hence the decision to adjust the values to keep the numbers more in line with the other games. Hacking Notes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nothing interesting (fortunately). The usual techniques were employed and old code was modified and reused. The variable-width font engine was upgraded to handle groups and triplets (possibly a new invention in kerning technology). Other than that, there's not much to say here, except a very special thanks to a very special guest.