******************************************************************************** * Yumimi Mix Remix * * English Translation Patch * * v1.0 (06 Apr 2022) * * * * Supper -- Hacking and Translation * * cccmar -- Testing * ******************************************************************************** In a town somewhere in Japan, there once lived a very average high school girl named Yumimi. Together with her best friend Sakurako and friend-cum-crush Shinichi, she enjoyed happy if very average days…until one fateful morning when, on the way to school, she witnesses a procession of ghosts(?) crossing the street before her very eyes! And then in the hallway, a girl suddenly latches on to her, tells her she has to "go stitch the holes", and – declares her love for her!? Suddenly, Yumimi's life isn't so average anymore, though she may soon be wishing it was… Yumimi Mix Remix is a 1995 adventure game for the Sega Saturn. A direct port of the 1993 Mega-CD game Yumimi Mix, it was created in a collaboration between developer Game Arts (of Lunar and Grandia fame) and well-known shoujo manga artist Izumi Takemoto, who wrote and storyboarded the entire game. A happy marriage of Game Arts' technical skill with Takemoto's cute, whimsical artistry and inimitably eccentric sensibilities, the game is comprised entirely of fully-animated, fully-voiced, full-screen cutscenes coupled with periodic multiple-choice prompts, creating an experience almost exactly like watching an anime while still making full use of the interactivity afforded by the game medium. This patch fully translates the game into English, subtitling all dialogue, songs, and important background text in the manner of a typical subtitled anime. It also adds new in-game options to show or hide Japanese honorifics, to partially or completely disable the subtitles, and to allow unimportant scenes to be skipped during gameplay. **************************************** * Table of Contents * **************************************** I. Patching Instructions II. How to Play III. Translation Options IV. Translation Notes V. Additional Notes VI. Author's Comments VII. Special Thanks VIII. Version History **************************************** * I. Patching Instructions * **************************************** To use this translation, you'll need to apply a patch to a disc image of the game. Unfortunately, patching disc images is inherently complicated because there are numerous CD image formats in use, as well as many ways that poorly-written disc ripping programs can mess things up and make a patch not work properly. As a result, this is a rather long section – sorry! But please read it over carefully before complaining that the patch doesn't work. Just to be clear: this patching process is designed to support every disc image format it reasonably can. Though a Redump-verified disc image is a definite plus, options are provided to patch pretty much any image so long as it has the correct data track. If you don't have a Redump image, just go ahead and try to patch whatever you have using whichever of the options below applies to it. Now then, here are your options for patching, approximately ordered from best to worst: A. Directly patch a single-file Redump-verified BIN or IMG image B. Directly patch a multi-track Redump-verified BIN image C. Automatically patch a BIN or IMG image via binpatch.bat D. Automatically patch an ISO+WAV+CUE image via isopatch.bat E. Manually patch These options are explained in the subsections that follow. IMPORTANT: If you downloaded this patch from Romhacking.net, only options C, D, and E are available. Due to restrictions on upload size, it's not possible to host the full-disc xdelta patch on that site, so only the ISO-based patching options are included. If at all possible, please download this patch from the web page specifically set up for it instead in order to have access to all patching options: http://stargood.org/trans/yumimi.php POSSIBLY IMPORTANT: This translation does not patch the game's region coding data. This is only relevant if you're going to play the game on real, non-Japanese Saturn hardware using a setup that doesn't include some sort of region bypass, as the Saturn BIOS will reject discs that don't match the console's region. If this is an issue, then after applying the translation patch, you can use external tools to modify the region data so the BIOS will accept it. Though I haven't tried it personally, Saturn Region Patcher will supposedly do the job: https://segaxtreme.net/resources/saturn-region-patcher.81/ ------------------- - BEFORE STARTING - ------------------- It should go without saying, but first, extract all the contents of the translation patch's ZIP to your hard drive if you haven't already. Before you start, you'll need to determine what format your disc image is in. At the very least, you must have an image in BIN+CUE, IMG+CUE, or ISO+WAV+CUE format; more exotic formats are not supported. It's unfortunately not uncommon to come across disc images that don't use the standard file extensions used in this section, or use them differently from normal, which makes things very confusing. Some tips: - One common way of distributing disc images is the "dual CCD/CUE" format. This consists of four files: a CCD, a CUE, an IMG (or possibly BIN), and a SUB. If your image is like this, you can throw away the CCD and SUB files, as they aren't needed for the patch. For our purposes, an IMG is the same as a BIN, so any references to a "BIN" below can also refer to an "IMG" or vice versa. - If your disc image has a CCD but no CUE, you may be able to patch it with method A. If that fails, you'll need to look into creating or obtaining a CUE file for the disc. - If your disc image consists of a CUE and a large number of BIN files, it's in the "split BIN" format. This format is particularly used by the distributions available on certain archival web sites. It's possible to patch this format as long as the BIN files represent one of the Redump disc images, just split up into its component tracks. - You're not likely to see them much these days, but old, lossy formats like ISO+MP3 are not supported. -------------------------------------------------------------------- - A. Directly patch a single-file Redump-verified BIN or IMG image - -------------------------------------------------------------------- Use this method if at all possible. While not as simple as the auto-patching method described later, it gives the most reliable results. You can patch using this method if your disc image *exactly* matches the verified "good" image as listed on Redump.org, and if all the tracks on the disc are combined into one single BIN or IMG file. First, check that your disc image contains a single file with the extension ".bin" or ".img". If it does, verify that that file matches one of the following specifications. (If you don't know how to do that, just go ahead and follow the steps listed below; if you get an error, your disc image is wrong.) Redump name: Yumimi Mix Remix CRC32: 8c291ee5 MD5: d8661e29c0b882afc09f8c9fb42b06ab SHA-1: 77793fe43f10ccb19a724e78d16ac4fdb7c711b3 Consult redump.org for full details: http://redump.org/disc/43000/ If your disc image is a match, all you need to do is apply an xdelta patch to the BIN or IMG file, then rename it and pair it with the CUE file provided in the download. 1. Extract the "redump_patch" folder from the translation ZIP and open it. 2. Run "DeltaPatcher.exe", which should be present in that folder. This is the popular Delta Patcher program for applying xdelta patches. If you're not using Windows, you'll need to obtain an alternate patching program for your system, such as the command-line "xdelta3" program. 3. Locate the .xdelta patch file in the "redump_patch" folder. 4. Use Delta Patcher (or another xdelta patching tool) to apply the patch to the BIN or IMG file. If you get an error, you'll need to try one of the other patching methods below. 5. If your disc image came with a CCD or CUE file, delete it now. DO NOT USE THE OLD CCD OR CUE FILE WITH THE PATCHED IMAGE! Also get rid of any SUB file if it exists. It's not needed. 6. The "redump_patch" directory should contain a CUE file with a name like "Yumimi Mix Remix EN [v1.0] Redump.cue". Rename your patched disc image so it has *exactly* the same name as the CUE, except with a .bin extension instead of .cue. IMPORTANT: If the file you patched was originally an IMG file, make sure that you change the extension to .bin. The CUE will not work if the extension is .img. 7. You're done! Make sure you have the CUE and BIN in the same directory, then open the CUE in an emulator. Or burn it to a CD and play on your appropriately modified Saturn (though see the earlier note about patching the region coding), or use whatever other wacky solution you've got for playing custom Saturn games on real hardware. ------------------------------------------------------------- - B. Directly patch a multi-track Redump-verified BIN image - ------------------------------------------------------------- One common distribution of the game found on certain archival sites uses the Redump-verified disc image, but splits it up into separate tracks instead of combining them into a single file. This is easily recognized by the presence of 4 separate BIN files and a single CUE. Before patching: - Make sure that your disc's CUE file has a name like "Yumimi Mix Remix (Japan).cue". - Make sure that the BIN files are named like this: Yumimi Mix Remix (Japan) (Track 1).bin Yumimi Mix Remix (Japan) (Track 2).bin … Yumimi Mix Remix (Japan) (Track 4).bin To patch: 1. Copy the CUE file and all BIN files into the "splitbin_patch" directory. 2. Drag-and-drop the CUE file onto "binpatch.bat". 3. If all goes well, this should produce a new, single-track format disc image in the same directory. (This works by simply combining all the tracks together and then applying the same patch as in method A.) 4. Use the CUE file in the "splitbin_patch" directory to play the game. -------------------------------------------------------------- - C. Automatically patch a BIN or IMG image via binpatch.bat - -------------------------------------------------------------- If your disc doesn't match the Redump image, or you otherwise couldn't get method A to work, it may still be possible to patch it. If your disc is in BIN+CUE format or IMG+CUE format, and you're using Windows: 1. Make sure that your BIN/IMG and CUE have the same base name (e.g. "yumimi.bin" and "yumimi.cue", or "yumimi.img" and "yumimi.cue"). Note that if you rename the BIN file, you will need to open your CUE in a text editor and make the same change to any occurrences of the name inside the file. 2. Copy both the BIN/IMG and CUE into the "auto_patch" directory. 3. Drag-and-drop the BIN/IMG file onto "binpatch.bat". 4. If all goes well, this should produce an ISO+WAV+CUE format disc image in the same directory. ---------------------------------------------------------------- - D. Automatically patch an ISO+WAV+CUE image via isopatch.bat - ---------------------------------------------------------------- If your disc image is already in ISO+WAV+CUE format, you can perform a procedure similar to patching via binpatch.bat: 1. Copy all the disc image files to the "auto_patch" directory. 2. Drag-and-drop track 2 of your image onto "isopatch.bat". 3. If all goes well, this should produce an ISO+WAV+CUE format disc image in the same directory. --------------------- - E. Manually patch - --------------------- You can also attempt to apply the xdelta patches in the "auto_patch" directory to the ISO of an ISO+WAV+CUE image manually. Pretty much the only reason to do this is if you're on Linux and can't or won't use Wine. If that's the case, then presumably you're smart enough to handle it yourself, so you're on your own here. **************************************** * II. How to Play * **************************************** While I wish I'd been able to translate the game manual's own explanation of how to play, as it consists of a combination of gorgeous full-color comics by Izumi Takemoto and amusing dialogue from the game characters, I unfortunately only have access to the manuals for the Mega-CD and PC versions, and it'd be pretty silly to include either of those with a translation for a completely different platform. I'm afraid you'll instead have to make do with this much shorter and less personality-filled overview I wrote loosely based on the other manuals. Honestly, though, the only things you really need to know are that you can save by pressing B at dialogue prompts and access the translation options menu by pressing Start pretty much any other time. It's a very simple game to play, and everything else should be obvious. @~~~~~~~~~~@ | Overview | @~~~~~~~~~~@ Yumimi Mix is a "command selection" (multiple-choice) adventure game. As the story progresses, you'll periodically be prompted to make choices that will affect how it develops. @~~~~~~~~~~@ | Controls | @~~~~~~~~~~@ START BUTTON Used to skip the opening scene and to pause. In this translation, pausing brings up a menu with additional options – see the "Translation Options" section. D-PAD Used when selecting commands. A/C BUTTONS Used to confirm commands, and can be used to skip scenes in Replay Mode (or in normal gameplay if scene skip has been enabled – see the "Translation Options" section). B BUTTON Cancels commands, and accesses the Save/Load menu when making choices during gameplay. Other buttons are not used. This game also supports the Shuttle Mouse peripheral; it can be used in place of a standard Control Pad for both regular gameplay and the Yumimi Puzzle bonus game. Also note that in most situations, pressing and holding the A, B, C, and Start Buttons simultaneously will perform a soft reset. During normal gameplay, this will reset the game to the introductory scene; otherwise, it will return to the console's Multiplayer. @~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@ | Saving and Loading | @~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@ The game can be saved by pressing the B Button at choice prompts during regular gameplay. Up to five save files can be saved to the Saturn's internal backup memory; if a RAM cartridge is inserted, an additional five files can also be saved to it (select between the internal memory and the cartridge using the "Internal"/"Cartridge" option at the lower-right of the file selection menu). Saved games can be loaded from the main menu, or during gameplay using the B Button menu described above. Saved games can also be used in the Replay mode (see below). If there isn't enough free space available to save the game, a warning screen will appear on startup. It's still possible to play in this situation, but saving and loading will be disabled. @~~~~~~~~~~~~~@ | Replay Mode | @~~~~~~~~~~~~~@ Replay Mode, accessible from the main menu when save game data exists, allows previously saved files to be rewatched exactly as they occurred, with events playing out automatically based on the player's previous choices during the game. In this mode, most scenes can be skipped by pressing the A or C Button (exactly like when the "Allow Scene Skip" option is enabled in the Translation Options menu). However, scenes in which the player would normally have to make a choice cannot be skipped and must be watched in full (even though the choice will be made automatically in this mode). Once the entire file has been replayed up to the point where it was saved, standard gameplay resumes, with the player once again prompted to make choices as they come up. @~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@ | Yumimi Puzzle | @~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@ As a bonus, Yumimi Mix Remix contains a new minigame not in previous versions of the game, "Yumimi Puzzle". It can be accessed by selecting "Bonus" at the main menu. As this isn't an official manual, I can readily inform you that this game is a clone of the popular tile-matching/"mahjong" (but not really) game "Shanghai", with Yumimi-themed bonus pictures. Pair up the tiles at the top of the stack one by one until they're all eliminated. Question mark tiles are wildcards that can be paired with any other tile, but make sure you don't accidentally get rid of a tile you need to finish the puzzle! If you do, select "Retry" to start over. In total, there are 40 stages of increasing difficulty. There's a special bonus for clearing them all, so try to make it to the end! As an aside, a few of the bonus pictures in this mode have Japanese text in the background. This has been deliberately left untranslated for aesthetic consistency with the main game. **************************************** * III. Translation Options * **************************************** In an attempt to please everyone, or at least displease somewhat fewer people, this translation adds a new options menu to the pause screen that provides the ability to toggle several features, mostly translation-related. Access it by pressing the Start Button at any time during gameplay *except* when a choice prompt is being displayed. (You might have to hold the button down a second for it to take; the game's input handling can be a bit dodgy.) Here is an explanation of each option: -- HONORIFICS -- By default, the subtitles will include Japanese honorifics: -san, -chan, you probably know the deal. Since I'm aware not everyone is fond of this, I've provided the option to disable it. This setting affects only two things: 1. When ON, honorific suffixes are present; when OFF, they're omitted ("Yumimi-chan" -> "Yumimi") or replaced ("Kojima-sensei" -> "Mr. Kojima"). It would probably also affect familial terms of address like "nee-san", except it so happens that this game doesn't actually have any. 2. When ON, Japanese names are presented using Japanese name order (last name before first name, e.g. "Yoshizawa Yumimi" instead of "Yumimi Yoshizawa"). This is because the name order is intrinsically tied to honorifics: "Morishita Rie-chan" is not the same as "Rie Morishita-chan". When set to OFF, the standard Western order is used. Nothing else is changed by this option. Particularly, I would like to note that disabling honorifics does not "Westernize" the names by which characters call each other. Yumimi refers to Shinichi as "Matsuzaki-kun" when honorifics are on and just "Matsuzaki" when they're off – never "Shinichi", even though we'd expect two students in a typical Western country to call each other by their first names. Some professional translations attempt to adapt the material in this way; personally, I find the effect incredibly jarring. -- SUBTITLES -- Sets whether dialogue subtitles (anything that appears at the bottom of the screen) are displayed. -- SIGNS/KARAOKE -- Sets whether subtitles for on-screen text are displayed, as well as whether lyrics for musical sequences are shown – in other words, anything that appears at the top of the screen. Note that not all visible text is subtitled, only that which is prominent or relevant to the plot. -- ALLOW SCENE SKIP -- As explained in the menu itself, setting this to ON makes it possible to skip scenes during regular gameplay by pressing the A or C Button during scenes that don't contain a choice prompt. In the original game, this was only possible in Replay mode (and is always possible in that mode regardless of this setting). This defaults to OFF so people who didn't read this readme – surely that's no one!? – won't accidentally miss scenes by hitting the button at the wrong time. As an aside, this was added to the game in part because the original Mega-CD version had a cheat code to skip scenes which was unfortunately not carried over to the Saturn version. That cheat had some strange issues with certain scenes disabling it permanently until the save file was reloaded, though, so this is a much cleaner alternative. **************************************** * IV. Translation Notes * **************************************** As you'll quickly notice, this translation does not attempt to localize the game's many references to Japanese culture, pop culture, Japanese pop culture, obscure Nordic cities, etc. etc. etc. Why not? Well, I think it's a distinct part of the game's identity, and I have no interest in trying to paint over it. Giving full explanations of every reference the game makes would fill a book, but in the interest of time (mostly my own), I've settled for doing a quick rundown of the most esoteric or Japan-specific ones here. I'd like to note my boundless gratitude to 司書 for creating a page specifically detailing most of these references as well as many more, saving me hours of trying to track down obscure references to 50-year-old Japanese TV shows and jazz bands. If you want more detailed information and can handle Japanese one way or another, check it out!: http://zattalib.yu-nagi.com/game/Takemoto.html *** Aoi-chan Panic! A 1983 manga by Izumi Takemoto. One of his best-known works, and one of those considered most representative of his overall style, this is the origin of "Tooktoop", the "Tombinai Fish", the term "Punyoomkin", etc. *** Keseran-Pasaran Also known as "Kesaran-Pasaran". A Japanese cryptid described as a small white fluff ball that is "said to float down from the sky and bring good luck to whoever finds it". *** Saburou Kitajima A famous Japanese enka singer. Quoth Wikipedia: "He is very popular in Japan partly due to his looks of a physical laborer, and he mostly sings in the spirit of Japan's working class and rural laborers." *** The Crazy Cats A Japanese jazz band and comedy group formed in 1955. Broke up in 1993, which was coincidentally the year of this game's release. *** The Drifters A Japanese rock band and comedy group formed around 1956, famed for their variety show appearances. *** That song about the moon The traditional Japanese song "Tsuki" (Moon). If you go looking, you'll find some considerably higher-effort translations of this song that attempt to produce singable lyrics, but as I have no interest in that, I opted for something more to-the-point. *** UNICORN/Dancing Turtle Yapushi UNICORN (flip a coin to decide whether their name should be all-caps or not) is a Japanese rock band formed in 1986. They released an album in 1990 entitled "Odoru Kame Yapushi" (Dancing Turtle Yapushi). Coincidentally, like the Crazy Cats, they broke up the year this game was released. *** "The Super Girl" "Choushoujo Asuka", a 1975 manga. *** "the wolf girls" The almost-certainly-fabricated "real-life" story of Amala and Kamala, two Indian girls supposedly raised by wolves who were claimed to have developed various wolf-like physical traits. *** "the Masked Beauty" "Bishoujo Kamen Poitrine", a 1990 tokusatsu series. It's said to have been an influence on Sailor Moon, and on the off chance you're familiar with the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna series, the "Ojousama Kamen Polylina" is a very obvious parody of this. *** "Pokopokopokodama" "Henshin! Ponpokodama", a 1973 TV drama. *** Piggyback Ghost "Onbu Obake", a 1955 movie and 1972-1973 anime series. *** Tyltyl and Mytyl The main characters of the 1908 play "The Blue Bird" by Maurice Maeterlinck. The play was adapted into an anime series with character designs by Leiji Matsumoto in 1980, which is probably how the reference to it in this game came about. *** Borlänge A city in Sweden. It's not a transcription error, I swear. *** "Itagaki may die, but liberty never" A famed quote from Japanese politician Itagaki Taisuke following an 1882 assassination attempt. In the way of famed quotes, he may not have actually said it. *** That song about miso sesame and tea jars and stuff The traditional Japanese song "Zui Zui Zukkorobashi". Here is a translation of an explanation of the lyrics, as given on the following page: http://www.worldfolksong.com/songbook/japan/warabeuta/zuizui.htm "In the Edo Period, in order to present the Uji tea that is the famous specialty of Uji City in Kyoto Prefecture to the Tokugawa shogun, a procession was held in which the tea was carried in a sealed jar. "Because, just as with the daimyo processions, residents along the highway routes (Tokkaido, Nakasendo) were compelled to prostrate themselves, it was called the 'tea jar journey' (お茶壺道中, ochatsubo douchuu), and it continued from 1633 until the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate. "This was a harsh era with a class system in which, if the common people crossed in front of the procession, women and children would be killed barehanded without a concern. It's said to contain the meaning of a warning that 'If the tea jar comes, slam your doors shut; no matter who calls, going outside is forbidden.'" The lyrics are vague and this interpretation has been disputed, but since it's effectively impossible to translate it without assuming some sort of meaning, my translation largely follows from this interpretation. *** Mount Hakkoda A mountain (range) in Aomori Prefecture. In the most lethal disaster of modern mountain climbing, nearly 200 soldiers died there in 1902 after becoming lost in a blizzard, a fact which may or may not be relevant to its appearance in this game. **************************************** * V. Additional Notes * **************************************** +---------------------+ | Version Differences | +---------------------+ What's the difference between the original game and this "Remix" version? Well, practically nothing. The graphics were not redrawn, so despite being on the Saturn, it looks no different from the original Mega-CD game. What few changes do exist are very minor and probably unnoticeable if you haven't played the original – think "an occasional extra fade-out here and there". A few small cosmetic improvements were made to the opening sequence, and a single scene in the middle of the game was slightly extended to match how it appeared in the FM-Towns port. Unfortunately, some small graphic bugs were also introduced, as detailed below. The game does benefit slightly from the more powerful hardware; there is no longer a screen blackout when changing scenes, and scaling and rotation effects run more smoothly and at a higher resolution. And naturally, the music no longer uses the YM2612 chip; the actual compositions are virtually the same, just with a much more MIDI-like sound. (Though whether that's an improvement or not may be a matter of taste.) Yumimi Puzzle is also new for this version. In short, this is a Mega-CD game running on the Saturn – nothing less and very little more. Try not to judge it by 32-bit standards, because obviously it's not going to measure up to games that were originally designed for the more powerful hardware. I didn't translate it because it was an amazing Saturn game, I translated it because it was an amazing game period. +----------+ | Bugfixes | +----------+ In a rather large oversight, when the game was ported to the Saturn, the developers appear to have forgotten to take into account that the Mega Drive's VDP renders sprites front-to-back whereas the Saturn's renders them back-to-front. As a result, most if not all sprite-based objects are actually layered in the opposite order, relative to each other, from what was intended. Due to the way the game typically composes its graphics, this actually causes surprisingly few issues. However, there are a handful of scenes where this results in sprite elements that were meant to be overlaid onto other sprites instead being hidden behind them; all known instances manifest as characters missing mouths and lip flaps that were present in the original game. This probably went unnoticed because the game's art style often intentionally omits mouths anyway. This translation fixes several specific scenes that suffer from this problem by changing the drawing order to place the overlay elements back on top. The underlying issue is not fixed, as that would require a major rewrite of the game's sprite generator functions, and I only discovered the problem at the very end of development, when I had no desire to hold up the release indefinitely to resolve it and retest the entire game for possible knock-on issues. Fixes made: - Yumimi's mouth in the early-game scene where Sakurako and Shinichi run by her in a cloud of dust - Yumimi's mouth as she and Sakurako walk down a hallway in one of the endings - Mouths of two students who walk by Yumimi and Shinichi in one of the endings I didn't do an exhaustive check, so it's certainly possible there are other instances of the issue that aren't fixed, but problems are rare and generally not noticeable anyway. **************************************** * VI. Author's Comments * **************************************** Vision, determination, patience, ambition, drive. You meet a lot of people with those qualities in the fan translation scene, because that's what it takes to be successful and do good work even when it's not putting food on the table and keeping the lights on. Those people are your Tomatos, your Gideon Zhis, your TheMajinZenkis – the ones with the grit and skill to push through to the end, whatever it takes. Then, on the other hand, you have some people that only get anywhere because they're too dumb to realize they should quit. Those, I can safely tell you, are your Suppers. I'd love to be able to relate here the memorable and compelling story of how I came to be involved with Yumimi Mix here. It would probably involve a lifelong passion for Izumi Takemoto's eye-catching artwork and one-of-a-kind worldview, blending naturally with my interest in Game Arts' technically accomplished and highly compelling games, and the discovery that both had been brought together in one astoundingly well-realized package. But of course that would all be a lie, because what really happened was that I was browsing a list of Mega-CD games for something to play, picked this one out because of the weird title, and played it for a few minutes before giving up because I had no idea what was going on. That was October 29th, 2016, at least if my computer's datestamps can be believed. By Halloween, I'd apparently moved on to Cosmic Fantasy Stories (though I'm pretty sure I played that for maybe a couple of minutes tops), and for a while, that was that. But in late 2017, when I was trying to break into the translation scene, something apparently sparked me to work on the game again – honestly, I think my main motivation was just the fact that no one else was doing Mega-CD translations and it was an opportunity to stand out, which I guess mattered to me back then. I took apart almost the entire scripting system (mostly just by commenting a disassembly, as MCD debugging tools were and probably still are crap) and wrote tools to de- and re-construct all the resource files. I knew almost no Japanese at the time and had a great deal of naivete about how much effort was involved in translating such a game, so I hoped that if I did the basic hacking and posted some screenshots of my work, someone might take pity and offer to help out. I did so on January 18th, 2018. And while that strategy did work out for another project and led to many further translations (thank you, Sailor Moon and filler, I owe you a lot), Yumimi Mix had no such luck and lay around abandoned as the years slowly passed, eventually becoming the sole inhabitant of the "Limbo" section of my web site. Over the years, a couple of different people approached me about the possibility of translating the game, but things just never worked out. Honestly, it's probably for the best; early on, I had no understanding of how to carry out a project of this type and scale, so I doubt things would have turned out well anyway. But I'm grateful for the offers, and trust me, I now have a very thorough appreciation of the fact that if you're not getting paid, you pretty much have to love the game (and be too dumb to quit) to successfully make it through transcribing and translating two hours of low-quality audio clips. So if you're one of those people who offered, don't feel bad, because I get it. But those occasional offers did push me to keep working on the project, including a major rewrite a couple of years ago that updated the codebase from my original messy ad-hoc solutions to the (infinitesimally) higher standards of my modern projects. That gave me a much cleaner basis for subsequent work. So, we reach this year. Having discovered that, contrary to my expectations based on its title and platform, Hataraku Shoujo: Tekipaki Working Love for the PC-Engine was *not* an office romance game, but in fact another wonderful Izumi Takemoto project with more great artwork and a funny opening song, I found myself thinking of Yumimi Mix again. Having now studied Japanese for years, and having just come off of a mostly-solo translation of Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 2 that involved a considerable amount of audio transcription, I replayed the game and started to think, "You know, maybe…" And a few months, a change of target platform, insufferable amounts of coding, and a whole lot of "what the hell is this voice actress screaming" later, here we are, with what is basically a fansub for a two-hour anime movie except it runs on the Sega Saturn. Was it worth it? …Well, I'd say yes. Though I suppose I might be a little biased. Switching from the Mega-CD to the Saturn was an early decision and a no-brainer. The Mega-CD struggles to keep up with the game's demanding graphical throughput as it is, and trying to put subtitles on top of that would only exacerbate the issue. The Saturn version not only runs smoother but adds minor improvements here and there. Targeting the MCD version would have taken ten times as much work just to create a worse translation for an almost strictly inferior version of the game, and I really should never have bothered with it in the first place. Once the decision to switch platforms was made, I had to rework the project a bit, though not as much as you might expect. The game runs on a virtual machine, and all ports of the game basically just reimplement the machine with minimal further changes: all game data like scripts and graphics are 95% identical between versions, with the only real change being the audio format (matching the hardware specs, the Saturn version uses 16-bit rather than 8-bit PCM, and also encrypts it for whatever reason). As a result, I was able to reuse the script assembly tools I'd previously developed with almost no changes. On the other hand, the subtitling system was redone entirely from scratch. The original concept was to operate through extensions to the existing script system, but that proved to be far too limiting and an incredible pain to try to time subtitles against. So instead, subtitles are now externally overlaid through direct hacks to the game engine and timed via VSync, allowing for far more powerful and precise display. As an aside, the subtitle code for this game is largely a SuperH port of what I previously wrote for the Community Pom ending – did anyone actually play it that far? I'm doubtful – with many extensions and improvements to allow for multiple simultaneous subtitle streams, more than one line of text per display slot, etc. As a very straightforward port of a Mega-CD game, this was obviously a relative softball as far as Saturn hacking goes, so I suppose it won't earn me much credit with that scene. A giant portion of the main RAM was just sitting around completely unused, and all the extra resources needed for the translation easily fit in uncompressed. There was ample free VRAM to just shove in a whole font and a dozen kilobytes' worth of display commands for it, and even to "double-buffer" everything to avoid rendering complications. But hey, don't think it didn't take any work: while it obviously can't compare to any of the big Saturn projects, 6000 lines of assembly don't write themselves. And after determining that none of the existing assemblers had the featureset I wanted, I even had to spend a weekend hastily hacking SH-2 support into armips (the result naturally being "armipsh", though somehow I don't think Kingcom will be adopting it anytime soon). Who knows, maybe all that will even work on real hardware! Ah ha ha... And then, of course, there was the translation. While this is a game that's relatively well suited to my skill level – typical school setting, lots of straightforward "anime conversations", not in any way serious, really not even all that long – everything was complicated horribly by the complete lack of a written script. Before I studied the language, I had the strange misapprehension that at some point you just "learned Japanese" and could translate whatever, including spoken dialogue, with no problem. Shockingly, it turns out it's a bit more complicated than that, and that even professional translators would rarely if ever work without a text script. But you know, too dumb to know when to quit and all. I could carry on, but I think this is too many words already. If you really want more of the story, go find this project's Git repo and read the source code. It's probably more exciting anyway – I'm sure you can find a bout of profanity or three in comments written on a particularly frustrating night. So, five-odd years on, here's a translation of Yumimi Mix, done, for lack of any better options, by myself (with testing assistance from the ever-faithful cccmar). I could try to sell it to you as the logical outcome of drive, ambition, patience, determination, and vision – but I think I've well established that really, it was just about being too dumb to quit. But now I finally will quit – talking, that is, and let the game speak for itself, because it has far more interesting things to say anyway. I hope you enjoy it, because there's really nothing else like it. Except the quasi-sequel, and boy, don't ask me about that just yet. But you know, seriously, how much of Perry Rhodan COULD anyone read in a lifetime? I just don't get it at all. **************************************** * VII. Special Thanks * **************************************** Thanks goes first and foremost to 司書, who created a Japanese fanpage for Yumimi Mix with incredibly detailed information about the game and explanations of almost all of its bizarre pop culture references. It even includes the full contents of the Yumimi Quiz minigame from the FM-Towns version of the game, which was an excellent source of unintended aid for transcribing some of the crazier lines (never in a million years would I have figured out Sakurako screaming 板垣死すとも自由は死なず at the top of her lungs, with no further context, on my own). It was an absolute godsend, and this translation would have taken longer and been much worse without it. You have my eternal gratitude! Check the site out: http://zattalib.yu-nagi.com/game/YumimiMix/YMMain.html Thanks to contributors at MobyGames for translating the game's credits, saving me most of the tedious legwork of trying to cross-reference the raw names against known Game Arts employees in order to figure out the name readings…though unfortunately, they only translated the Mega-CD version, which has slightly different credits from the Saturn version, so I had to do some of the research myself anyway. It's still hours of my time saved, though, so I'm not complaining. I have to thank all the other members of LIPEMCO! Translations for putting up with me and offering support, even when I keep putting my solo career ahead of the band, so to speak. I don't think they're at the point of kicking me out…yet… Additional thanks goes to SadNES cITy Translations for the Delta Patcher program, which is bundled with this patch as a convenience. Finally, thank you to the various people who've offered to translate the game over the years. Even though things didn't work out, it pushed me to keep working on the project, and I doubt this would have happened without you. **************************************** * VIII. Version History * **************************************** v1.0 (06 Apr 2022): Initial release.