Metal Gear Remix (a.k.a. Metal Gear Redux) Version 1.995 rev.c Japanese to English translation for the MSX2 (06/06/2020) 2004, 2020 Takamichi Suzukawa, Jon Taylor, and Nekura_Hoka Readme by: Nekura_Hoka ----------------------------------------------------------- What is this? ----------------------------------------------------------- This patch is for the Japanese localization of Konami's Metal Gear for the MSX home computer. It translates the game to american english. Terms and Conditions ----------------------------------------------------------- This patch is freely available for non-commercial use. This patch must be distributed in its original form without modification to itself or it's parent archive (zip file). Contents of the parent archive must not be altered in any way. Do not distribute this patch with a ROM copy of Metal Gear. Features: ----------------------------------------------------------- -Faithful fan translation of all 155 messages from the original Japanese version of the game. The original United Kingdom release of the game did not include all the original messages. The current full script is 12210 bytes, and is compressed by 45% to 6693 bytes. -New font with lowercase lettering. This is not a feature available in any other version of the game. -Full compliance with details from other titles in the Metal Gear series. Usage: ----------------------------------------------------------- 1. The patch requires the use of an IPS patch utility. IPS.exe is readily available on the 'net. Personally, I use LunarIPS. 2. You need a properly dumped Japanese Metal Gear ROM for the MSX. If you have a cartridge of Metal Gear for the MSX, but not the hardware to dump it, then any of the Japanese ROMs available on the internet should do nicely. This patch will work on both the original Japanese rom, and the version that has been hacked to be region-free. If you are emulating the region locked rom, you will have to configure your emulator to emulate a Japanese machine. 3. Use the patcher to patch your ROM (back it up beforehand). If the ROM doesn't emulate make sure the original ROM you patched works to verify you have a good copy. If you're using an emulator that uses a database to automatically detect the MSX ROM type (blueMSX etc.), be sure it has detected it as a Konami PSG ROM ('Konami' in newer versions of blueMSX, 'Konami 4' in older versions). Notes. This patch will work with the VSYNC hack for Metal Gear. No issues that I've discovered. This patch should work with the disk Save/Load hack for this game, but might not with work with saves from a previous version. I recommend applying the translation patch first, then the Save/Load patch. Changes for 1.995: ----------------------------------------------------------- -With the use of an automated system to encode the script and calculate pointer values on-the-fly, I've fleshed out the script using Takamichi's original translation and information from later Metal Gear titles. The context and meaning of the original Japanese is maintained, but grammar, spelling, and expressions are adapted to American English speakers. It was very important to me on this go-around to make the game feel more natural. Prior versions were better than the UK translation, but space economy was always so critical that basic articles of conversational English were repeatedly shortened or lost. Everything felt abbreviated and we never wanted that for this translation. My hopes for this translation, ones that I never thought we could do, have finally been met. -Big Boss' playful messages regarding some items now includes Snake's characteristic ", huh?" I thought this would be a nice addition and it kind of signals to players of the series that they're in for a less-than-serious communication. -New font which is slightly larger than the 1.9 font. Some players had trouble with the small size of the prior font. Unfortunately, the font tiles are now part of the script compression system, so it is not possible to have an all capital font without reducing script size, but this one is easier to read. Changes for 1.91: ----------------------------------------------------------- -Fixed a bug with the final message after the end credits. The location address was off by a single byte, causing the message not to display. Changes for 1.9: ----------------------------------------------------------- -Heavily modified the font table. The original font table was used, but the capital letters had to be thinned so they wouldn't look out of place with the new lowercase ones. I tried a font with stencil lines in the lowercase, in addition to those in the uppercase, but the font becomes almost unreadable in my opinion, so it was scrapped. I toyed with the idea of using a completely different font altogether (I drew in OCR-A, of Crimson Tide etc. fame), but it didn't seem right to completely get rid of the essence of the original font in the game. -Game now utilizes MCT (Multi Character Tiles) This means sometimes the game has more than one character per font tile. On average only 2 per tile. There is one that includes 3 characters "'ll". This process saved a load of space and allowed for the lowercase script (before it would have been impossible without cutting the script or game reassembly) and some other things. -No longer uses the Literal/Modern different patches. Beretta and Ingram are properly spelled in this one, regardless of how they were in the original Japanese. (Ingrum and Belleta) -Changed Big Boss' title from simple "commander" to "commander-in-chief". This was a space-saving consideration in the original patch and isn't necessary anymore. "commander-in-chief" jives with Previous Operations and Takamichi's original translation of the game's script. -Added Diane's "...Bye" to one message that was erroneously missing it. You may notice that there are other messages that don't feature a sign-off from the characters, but this is in sync with the original script. This instance was just a mistake by myself. -Added "Find ammo and don't waste it." to BB's description of the Beretta. Takamichi pointed this out a couple of times before the 1.0 release, but I'd mistakingly thought it wasn't in the original script. I was wrong. -Miscellaneous formatting changes because of the new tiles. -Changed "Are they moving their houses?" to simply "Are they moving?". "their houses" sounds translated and overcomplicates a simple and extremely common idiom. I originally kept 'their houses' in v1.0 becuase I was being overly cautious about whether the player would understand what was meant by it. The more I played the game after the original patch's release, I realized it wasn't really necessary to the fluent english speaker. -Changed "schoolgirl's uniform" to "sailor's suit". The original translation reads "sailor's clothing" and is a reference to japanese school uniforms. It's intended as a jab against the soldiers and indirectly to Solid Snake, becuase he's gonna wear it. I figured "Sailor's suit" was a more natural way to bring up the right image in westerner's heads, while staying close to the original translation. -Includes translation project members names in the game's final credits. -Changed the mention of "rank" in the script to refer to "class". "Class" has always appeared in the HUD and I wanted the script instance to match. Also, while dumping MGS3's subtitles, I noticed that "Colonel class" is mentioned rather than 'Colonel rank', so I figured the change could be a neat way to sync with the series. -Changed 'Trans' item to 'Bug'. Makes the item synchronus with the script mention and I thought it would be better to have a full word for the item name in the select screen rather than a fragment of one. "Bug" is a bit informal, but there are plenty of item names in the various installments of the series that are at least as informal as this. An example might be the planted "Bomb" in Snake's inventory. I think the philosophy of using an unambiguous name for the dangerous item is the right one. Credits: ----------------------------------------------------------- Takamichi Suzukawa - Translator Jon Taylor - Proof-reader Nekura_Hoka - Coder Thanks: ----------------------------------------------------------- msx.org Forums - For tolerating a new person's request for aid. Many forums on the net seem to have devolved into an arena for pummeling new posters, this one hasn't as far as I can tell. Ola Andersson - Got Takamichi in touch with me and got this project rolling towards completion. Also had some good questions and suggestions that helped more than he will ever know. Junkerhq.net - The text dumps available here led me (Nekura) to begin looking for a way to dump the script for Metal Gear, which began my interest in doing the coding for the script insertion. There's an abundance of info on all of Kojima's games and a good set of forums. Hideo Kojima, Noriki Hibino, and Harry Gregson-Williams- For a great game series and for Kojima's Red Disc collection soundtrack remixes as well as the Original Soundtracks for MG 1+2 and MGS1, 2 and 3. This music kept me at least halfway sane and motivated during the table readdressing process. (which I did essentially manually) Raihan Kibria, Pabs, and Gerson Kurz - For frhed 1.1.0 an amazingly powerful and useful FREE hex editor. This is primarily what I used for the script insertion. http://www.kibria.de/frhed.html Microsoft - For the XP versions of Calculator and Notepad. Calculator for the hex value conversions and Notepad for finally having a 'Replace' function, thereby making switching to wordpad unnecessary and finally at least equaling the over 12-year-old edit.com program in capability. ;D Squaresoft - For making Final Fantasy IV with the DTE (Dual Tile Encoding) script system which gave me the idea to do a similar thing for MG and save a lot of space.