Old Computer Appreciation Thread

[Zering]

@adambegood I'd never even heard of VS. Castlevania. I can't say that I relish the prospect of playing an arcade version of the hardest Castlevania game ^^

Let me know what you think of Mystic Square, it's fantastic.

[AdamBeGood]

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@adambegood I'd never even heard of VS. Castlevania. I can't say that I relish the prospect of playing an arcade version of the hardest Castlevania game ^^

Let me know what you think of Mystic Square, it's fantastic.

I really like it! Need to play the rest of the Touhou games also, and maybe translate them but I'm not sure if that is needed.

I'm on level 3 of Night Slave, level 2 Rusty. Just tried Baruusa No Fukushuu on X68000, it's so hard it seems like it can't be correct.

Edit: does your sound come and go a bit on Cho Ren She? Just a limitation of the emulator for x68000, I guess..

[Zering]

@adambegood What do you mean the sound comes and goes? Can you give a specific example?

[AdamBeGood]

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@adambegood What do you mean the sound comes and goes? Can you give a specific example?

I'll have to play it again, the music and sound effects drop out a bit. I guess you don't have the issue..

[Zering]

@adambegood Do they drop out completely or is it just a few sound effects here and there?

[Folly]

Here is an update on the translation part.

The OSD overlay only works if "retropie" is started in a Desktop enviroment, like I do.
So this is not an option with the standard "Retropie OS".

But there is a nice feature in the "translate shell" programm. You can output the text over audio. So the computer will speak it out to you.

Did some tests with lr-bluemsx. I have to use a shader to get better recognition. First I did tests with oilswell just in English.
Then I used the Japanese SD-snatcher. First the "translate shell" wasn't doing the job (did nothing at all, then strange charachters). But when I installed it from source. The recognition is seemed pretty good. :).

It uses "google translation". I hope there is not a limit, on how much you can translate. Will see how this goes.

This was the output :

pi@raspberrypi:~/translate-shell $ /usr/local/bin/trans -brief "信類は異常な危村に下面していた。" -t en -p
The faith was under the abnormal dangerous village.
pi@raspberrypi:~/translate-shell $ /usr/local/bin/trans -brief "謎の生語体、パイオロイドの出現である。" -t en -p
Did you mean: 謎の生語体、バイオロイドの出現である。
The emergence of a mysterious raw language, Pioroid.
pi@raspberrypi:~/translate-shell $ /usr/local/bin/trans -brief "国輸、目的、正体不明。 某国の新兵器 か" -t en -p
National transportation, purpose, unidentified. Is it a new weapon in a certain country?
pi@raspberrypi:~/translate-shell $ 国輸、目的、正体不明。 某国の新兵器か

Onto the next level .

Have a nice evening.

[Zering]

@folly from your test, was the game playable?

[Folly]

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly from your test, was the game playable?

Yes, I can play oilswell. Sd snather worket too. but at that moment the translator didn't work.

Have to try this later. when I have improved some things.

[Zering]

@folly What I meant was could you get the jist of the translation?

[Folly]

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly What I meant was could you get the jist of the translation?

jist ?

Don't actually know if the translation is actually correct if that what you mean. Have to check with the english one.

In oilswell it was correct.

edit : I learned a new word !

[Zering]

@folly no, jist; it's an English word for essential, most, or such.
I guess I was asking how good you felt the translation was.

[AdamBeGood]

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly no, jist; it's an English word for essential, most, or such.
I guess I was asking how good you felt the translation was.

I'd say from looking at the text, probably not that good. I did wonder if this will fall over because auto-translate is not up to the task yet. It will improve as time goes on though I'm sure, the translation systems I mean.

Fascinating stuff, @Folly

@Zering - missed your post about saving in Night Slave earlier, it does save between levels. I'm not sure how good it is yet, but I have enjoyed it.

Also, I turned the CPU speed up on Cho Ren Sha and it does seem better. I think the music just gets a bit quieter when there is loads going on. I'll try tomorrow when I'm not worried about waking the toddler up.

Further Edit on Gist/Jist:

Origin
Early 18th century: from Old French, third person singular present tense of gesir ‘to lie’, from Latin jacere . The Anglo-French legal phrase cest action gist ‘this action lies’ denoted that there were sufficient grounds to proceed; gist was adopted into English denoting the grounds themselves.

I just thought the above was interesting. What Zering means is that we are not expecting this translation to give us every nuance of the original Japanese text, but does it give the central essence of the meaning? Is there enough to follow the story with?

[Zering]

@adambegood That sound thing on Cho Ren Sha is odd. Could you post a clip of the game from your phone or something in the morning? In my experience, it's one of the better sounding games on the system. I play it very often, and I've never had an issue with the sound. It's crisp, loud, consistent.

About Night Slave, I have to ask - do you play hentai shooters while watching the toddler? ^^

I'm at the end of SD Snatcher. All I have to do is pick up an item and shoot the final boss a few times. I would have finished it tonight but this is a Kojima game so naturally there is an hour long unskippable cutscene right before the final stretch. That's after the game pulls a Final Fantasy III and throws you into three consecutive dungeons, one of them a maze with mirrors for walls (!), packed full of enemies, with no chance whatsoever to restock on meds or ammo. Thankfully it's nowhere near as punishingly difficult as Final Fantasy III. The story is excellent, particularly for an 8-bit game, although my impression from Sega CD Snatcher that the villain's main motivation is pretty contrived still stands.
Not sure what I'll play once I finish it. I'm keen to go through Metal Gear 2, but not so keen on playing two Kojima games back to back ; particularly after Metal Gear 1 pissed me off. So it might end up being a toss up between Wibarm and Farland Story (Which I just discovered has an improved port on the PC-FX, with a translation!).

Edit : Then again there's also Illusion City, which looks awesome. So many games.

Edit 2 : Seems like Farland Story FX is out of the story, the patch requires an .iso file that I do not have. Sounds like I'll have to find a new excuse to play the PCFX T_T

[Folly]

@adambegood said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly no, jist; it's an English word for essential, most, or such.
I guess I was asking how good you felt the translation was.

I'd say from looking at the text, probably not that good. I did wonder if this will fall over because auto-translate is not up to the task yet. It will improve as time goes on though I'm sure, the translation systems I mean.

Fascinating stuff, @Folly

Thank you for making an opinion of the translated text. Indeed everything is in very early stages. So we can't expect too much. But it keeps looking promising.

(BTW : Philips CD-I you can't use my script anymore to get it working. Use this : https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/27387/cd-i-does-not-want-to-load-after-updating-retropie/20)

[AdamBeGood]

@folly said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

Thank you for making an opinion of the translated text. Indeed everything is in very early stages. So we can't expect too much. But it keeps looking promising.

(BTW : Philips CD-I you can't use my script anymore to get it working. Use this : https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/27387/cd-i-does-not-want-to-load-after-updating-retropie/20)

Not a problem, even if the translated text can work for some sentences, but not all, then this still might work. It is not going to be as good as a human translator at this point, but if it can make Japanese games more playable, I'm all for it.

I was just having a browse on the CD-I subject earlier. I am not sure if I am going to put it on my Pi or not, I think most of the games I have already elsewhere. The only thing I want to try is the Mario and Zelda games, but by all accounts they aren't very good. But thank you for the correct link nevertheless.

[AdamBeGood]

@zering Let me try Cho Ren Sha again this morning, it was only very briefly that I played it yesterday.

I don't play Night Slave when Camille is up, it is for nap times! The hentai bit is very weird, I can't work out how it ties in to the game. The cut scenes are so long as well, there is so much text. Tried to leave my Google Translate camera on to make sense of it yesterday but it was gibberish mostly...

SD Snatcher sounds good, I haven't done any of them so I can't comment on the bad guy's motivation. My intent is to play a bit of all of the games I have collated in this recent, X68000, PC88/98 spree and then move on to focus on SD Snatcher.

I haven't played any Final Fantasy! Apart from Final Fantasy Legend on Gameboy, when that was out about 30 years ago. Started FFVII on PS Classic but then Pi tinkering has taken over.

Games to finish currently are -

Monster World IV - Megadrive
Final Fantasy VII - PSX
God of War: Chains of Olympus - PSP
HalfLife - Ports

Those are the ones I've significantly started and now finished.

Intend to play through some shooters as well, I've finished Ikaruga and DeathSmiles recently, but need to run through loads more. I just get frustrated when I am dying constantly, but I won't get better unless I put time in and learn some patterns.

Edit: but how can you play Illusion City without it being completely translated? Isn't that super frustrating?

I've never heard of PC-FX! Seems like there isn't too much on it, 60 games or so. Was it easy to emulate?

[Zering]

@adambegood said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

I don't play Night Slave when Camille is up, it is for nap times! The hentai bit is very weird, I can't work out how it ties in to the game. The cut scenes are so long as well, there is so much text. Tried to leave my Google Translate camera on to make sense of it yesterday but it was gibberish mostly...

Whew, that threw me for a loop! ^^ Whoever named your toddler has good taste! ^^
There's no need for the hentai bits to tie in ; it's a PC98 game! ^^ You'll find there's often an erotic component to those games for seemingly no reason. I'm not sure which game it was ; I think it was Dragon Knight III ; you start out utterly naked and have to walk around town in your nakedness until you find clothes.

SD Snatcher sounds good, I haven't done any of them so I can't comment on the bad guy's motivation. My intent is to play a bit of all of the games I have collated in this recent, X68000, PC88/98 spree and then move on to focus on SD Snatcher.

If you haven't played a Snatcher game before, I would recommend you play through the Sega CD version before you play SD Snatcher. The story is somewhat cut down in SD, as expected, and it's worth experiencing fully before you dive into SD.

I haven't played any Final Fantasy! Apart from Final Fantasy Legend on Gameboy, when that was out about 30 years ago. Started FFVII on PS Classic but then Pi tinkering has taken over.

That surprises me somewhat! Did you get (or get back) into gaming late, or were you a Sega/Nintendo player back then?
Final Fantasy is essential, VII and IX are some of the best games on the PS1.
Having said that, Final Fantasy Legend actually has nothing to do with Final Fantasy ; it's the first SaGa game, marketed as FF for the american market.

Games to finish currently are -

Monster World IV - Megadrive
Final Fantasy VII - PSX
God of War: Chains of Olympus - PSP
HalfLife - Ports

You are going to have a blast with Final Fantasy VII. I wish I could be in your shoes, discovering that game for the first time.

Intend to play through some shooters as well, I've finished Ikaruga and DeathSmiles recently, but need to run through loads more. I just get frustrated when I am dying constantly, but I won't get better unless I put time in and learn some patterns.

DeathSmiles plays on the Pi 4?

Edit: but how can you play Illusion City without it being completely translated? Isn't that super frustrating?

6 out of eight disks have been translated, and that's seemingly all we're going to get.

I've never heard of PC-FX! Seems like there isn't too much on it, 60 games or so. Was it easy to emulate?

Yes and no. It's a console so it's just a matter of popping BIOS and ROMS onto the Pi, but in my experience it requires an overclock to run smoothly.
I'm not sure it's worth emulating unless you want everything running on the Pi, there's only a handful of games that are worth playing (God Fighter Zeroigar, Zenki Vajra Fight...). There are a bunch of RPGs I'd love to play, but they're untranslated and it seems the PCFX community has chosen to translate dating sims like Pia Carrot instead. I don't understand it, but I'm curious enough to try it.

[AdamBeGood]

@zering Thank you very much, yep Camille Delta Bud. As much my work as anyone’s! :p

Are the Dragon Knights playable without being translated? Or have you got translations for those? I couldn’t see a translation from an initial Google.

Thanks for the advice on Snatcher - I’ll do the Sega CD version first then! That is good to know. That version is officially translated also, which probably helps with getting the total “gist”!

I was a Nintendo (and PC until I went to Uni and couldn’t afford a good enough PC) man back in the day - even up to GameCube, I wish I hadn’t been such a zealot. I missed out on a lot, when I also had the time to play. I didn’t have FF IX on my Classic, I’ll get that now. I do need to play FF VII. Not a fan of XIII? I hear it gets mixed reviews.

DeathSmiles works on mame2016 if you underclock the emulator. It’s not perfect but it is playable. Other later Cave games are also.

I just couldn’t start Illusion City knowing I cannot finish it. I think I’ll hold off PC-FX also, I don’t like having consoles with a couple of games on my Pi (thought they look nice enough). Also, my OCD means that I have to mess a lot with the theme to add a new system - so I have to really want it!

[Zering]

@adambegood There was an official localization of Dragon Knight III on DOS, released as 'Knights of Xentar'. It works well on the Pi. I'm sure I've got a patch for Dragon Knight IV, but I can't find a track of it on the web so maybe I've made that up in my head.

Hey Nintendo's great! The Gamecube was a superb system, even against the PlayStation 2. You've probably played a ton of stuff I regret not playing back then. I completely missed out on Zelda, for example, and only played through Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past for the first time this year.

I've just finished SD Snatcher. Konami did it again. The game is tough at times but pretty fair, and overall fairly easy. Then comes the final boss. It's utterly ridiculous. He takes little to no damage, dishes out attacks that deal up to 190 points of damage (out of a maximum of 255), attacks every turn and almost never misses... It's tedious as all hell. But the game was excellent, I'm very happy I played through it. I think it's ahead of its time in many ways. For starters, it's HUGE. I'm pretty sure it took me +35 hours to play through, when most RPGS of the time can be played through in 20. The combat system is addictive, it kind of prefigures Hybrid Heaven in the way you can target different body parts on enemies and 'disassemble' them piece by piece. It's pretty brilliant.

And man, the music.

When a game has tedium, I generally leave it feeling a bit annoyed. But in spite of the tedium I'm quite satisfied with the experience. I suppose it helped that I didn't use save states for once, they tend to color the experience negatively. But I think it balanced the usual 8-bit RPG tedium with enough addictive gameplay and stunning presentation that it works out fine in the end. I will say the final dungeon of the game is insanely long (took me 6-7 hours), too long ; a chance to resupply halfway through would have made it a lot less tedious but I suppose it would have taken away from the urgency of the narrative.

Anyway, I recommend it. The narrative is the same as Snatcher overall but the story beats differ a fair bit, to accomodate for the radically different gameplay, which is great. It's an excellent compliment to the original game.

[Folly]

Hi guy's

Made a repository for the translation script.

Here you can see the progress, if there is any :
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/retropie-translator

(beware : it can have mistakes)

If you want to try, you can give it a shot, if you know what your doing.

For now I'm not going to work further on it.
While testing I detected that google has a limit (was expected).
So that's not really helpfull.

But it is nice to have the basics in a repository.

EDIT:
10/11/2020 updated with bing script with separate text to speech synthesizer