Mugen Senshi Valis II English Translation Patch History ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 091011 Initial release *** Content Warning *** ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This game contains partial nudity, gore, language, and suggestive themes, all fairly mild, however. This game would definitely merit at least a Teen rating in our modern, industry-standard rating system. Overview ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a translation patch for the X68000 version of Mugen Senshi Valis II (AKA Fantasm Soldier Valis II or simply Valis 2). It was a collaborative effort involving Renovation, Wolf Team, Laser Soft, and Telenet. The second volume of the Valis series, it was never released outside of Japan, except in the form of a TurboGrafx CD-ROM remake and a highly abridged SD-style reinvention entitled "Syd of Valis" for the Genesis. 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 disk image. Valis II is a five-disk game. Fortunately, it was possible to fit all the data for this translation onto the boot disk using compression, so you only need to patch Disk A. The disk image must be in a headerless format, meaning that the file size will be precisely 1.20 MB (1,261,568 bytes.) Although such files come in many different file extensions, XDF is the most common. DIM files in particular won't work unless the 256 byte header is removed. Playing the Game ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once you've patched the boot disk (Disk A), simply load it up in your favorite X68000 emulator or write it to a floppy disk to use on a real X68000 system. The game will prompt you for other disks as required. Hold down the return key to skip the intro. Hold down F5 during the intro to access the sound test. Press X to attack. Press Z to use the power of an equipped item. Press F1 or down and Z to check your equipment. Press the escape key to pause the game. The space bar and return key can also be used, as well as a joystick. Diff(erential?) temporarily freezes monsters. Integral grants temporary invincibility. Evade reduces the number of enemies you encounter for a while. Crash damages on-screen enemies. Q & A ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: This patch doesn't work! What do I do? A: Make sure you applied the patch to Disk A and make sure the disk image is in XDF format (check the file name extension for ".xdf") or the size is exactly 1,261,568 bytes. Q: Why is there graphical corruption sometimes? A: The XM6 emulator has issues with layering/transparency. Kludges to fix the worst cases were added, but some corruption remains. Some emulators may have random glitches that are artifacts of the display process and are often associated with image stretching. Try adjusting the rendering settings. XM6 seems better in this regard. Q: Why are some events cut off prematurely? Why are some things too fast? A: This game is sensitive to processor speed and even uses the bad practice of busy-wait loops for timing purposes. Therefore it is highly recommended to use a standard 10 MHz machine if possible. Also, you should disable "fast floppy" emulation (or enable "FDD Real Speed") as disk loading is used in place of delays in some circumstances, most noticeably in the intro. Q: Why is some stuff still in Japanese? A: Neither the music titles nor the credit names were translated. Such things should preferably be left in their original form. Q: Why is the possessive punctuation inconsistent? (Rogles' vs. Megas's) A: It isn't; it is pronunciation-based. Q: Why don't the voices match the mouth animation sometimes? A: This occurs in the original. Q: How do I advance in Act 2? I can't jump high enough! A: Make sure to get the special item at the beginning of the stage. Q: What's an occiput? A: A medical term for the back of the head or skull. See also 'occipital'. List of Changes (not exhaustive) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Opening/Ending translated and English subtitles added Cut scenes hacked and translated (two different printing methods) Credit titles translated (names intentionally left untranslated) Compression code used to free up space to fit everything on the first disk Long-defunct scroll text translated, with improved scrolling Fixed disk check code for when no disk is inserted Scripts reprogrammed to improve the animation and speed things up In-game status area textual graphics edited In-game overlay messages cleaned up Equipment screen modified Other undocumented or forgotten changes Translation Notes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This game overlays Engrish messages over the action at certain points, such as the start of each level. It was "translated" in the sense that the grammar and spelling were cleaned up, but the droll wording remains -- such things are part of the charm of Japanese games. "Cast off your perplexity!" The voice acting was difficult for me to comprehend at times, and there were no Japanese subtitles to work with. Fortunately (at least for our purposes) the MSX version of the game was not as advanced, relying on text alone to tell the story. Dumping the MSX script and meticulously comparing it to the X68000 audio revealed that the content of the two was nearly identical, allowing the spoken parts to be translated more reliably. The honorific 'sama' was usually translated as 'lord' or 'lady', but was occasionally edited out. As an example, Yuuko always refers to Valia with 'sama' even if it was omitted from the translation, so don't read anything into it when it seems to be missing -- Yuuko is unfailingly polite. I experimented with using a single 'u' with a macron in place of the double vowel in 'Yuuko', but ultimately decided against it. For consistency, 'yuko' (sic) in the status area of the screen was changed to 'yuuko' (sic). (The lowercase 'y' was kept for stylistic reasons.) About the name of the game: The full Japanese title is Mugen Senshi VALIS II, which is often abbreviated as just Valis 2 (or II). Some translations of the title treat the first part as a subtitle (e.g. Valis II: The Fantasm Soldier) but it is more like a "supertitle", a concept for which I cannot recall any parallels in English. A more accurate translation would be The Fantasm Soldier Valis (followed by the game's Roman numeral for sequels), although this is a bit cumbersome in English so it is understandable why the components often get reversed. The definite article also seems to clash with modern English sensibilities. So the most English-friendly renderings would be Valis the Fantasm Soldier II or Fantasm Soldier Valis II. I prefer the latter as it matches the word order of the Japanese title, but the former preserves the definite article in this particular game's own translation of Mugen Senshi on the title screen. It is worth noting that various Valis games have translated Mugen Senshi differently (or not at all) so it is somewhat dubious to claim that there is an official standard based on what we see in the games alone. But they all seem to be consistent in their usage of the somewhat nonstandard 'fantasm' spelling. This has been a brief overview of many of the more common ways to render the title of this and other Valis games. If in doubt, Mugen Senshi Valis (or simply Valis) is probably the safest choice. Hacking Notes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The hacking for this was a fairly involved - but also fun - as lots of script reprogramming and optimization were required to get things the way I wanted. Perhaps no one is capable of appreciating the improved animation and program logic that went into the first two acts, alas. It may not look like much, but this is one of my finest works. The game uses two completely different methods for the game's cut scenes for no practical reason. We can therefore surmise that the scenes were developed by different groups of people. Two different printing methods, and a pair of unique scripting languages, meant double the hacking, which was further compounded by the scroll text at the end using a third method of printing, not to mention the opening and ending which used no printing at all (voice acting only) -- adding synchronized text printing for those scenes was quite involved. One of the challenges of this translation was making sure that everything could be placed on the boot disk. Multiplying the number of patch files multiplies the number of problems and is more annoying for the end user so extra effort was made avoid such a situation. There was plenty of unused RAM, so the only issue was disk space. Unfortunately, Disk A was nearly full, so compression had to be used, which was complicated by the minimal OS support provided by this particular game. While I often fix original bugs in games, this is probably the first time I've bothered to work around emulator deficiencies. XM6 doesn't do masking properly under certain circumstances, which can be very jarring in a few cases and sometimes makes the text difficult to read. This was fixed in the most critical parts of the game by using opaque layers to hide the unwanted images or simply clearing the VRAM when the offending data was no longer needed. Numerous examples of this bug still remain; however, it should be tolerable now. As can happen with disk-based games, the various hacks are spread all over the place with lots of different techniques used, and at least one new tool was developed for this production.