@mitu Discovered my problem. There were actually two theme.xml files that needed editing, the first in the root of the designated theme and a second copy in the retropie subfolder.

Sure enough, modifying both theme.xml files got the font working!

@Lord-Vek OK, Thanks.

@quicksilver I love this game! I was kinda bummed that they didn't include this on the TurboGrafix Mini, especially since I don't believe it was even ported to another console. When I first got into RetroPie, one of the first things I did was beat the Quest mode. It took like three or four months! I'm planning on streaming the Quest mode on my Twitch stream, FYI. I want to find a better way to stream it first but it will definitely happen!

@moltavia

Just a point of interest, Streets of Rage / Bare Knuckle isn't actually 2 ROMs but a single ROM that changes based on the language / country setting. It will even do this dynamically in some emulators and on real hardware if you have a country switch mod.

Load SOR and wait until the title sequence / back story start to play and once the story starts scrolling up, enter the GUI and change the language to Japanese and then exit the GUI. The story will continue to scroll and then change to Japanese after a few seconds.

Hey guys, update, I think the issue was a bad rip.

I came across a different ISO and it works correctly now.

I will be keeping this in mind for the future.

Thanks all!

My version of scph5500.bin has the correct MD5 checksum of 8dd7d5296a650fac7319bce665a6a53c and the CRC32 checksom of ff3eeb8c

I think it might be a filename issue. I'll experiment with added a dash in it like scph-5500.bin

Edit:
I've tried many filename cases but non seam to work when trying to play Japanese games but I did find out that it really doesn't matter what case the BIOS files are to play the US games and also worked with just about every BIOS version (US games playing with any J, E and U BIOS files 10x, 100x, 300x, 350x, 500x, 550x, 700x and 750x). Some US games will even play without a BIOS file but it gives a quick message stating "no BIOS found, expect bugs!"

I'm testing with 2 Japanese games: Captian Commando and Nekketsu Oyako. Maybe neither one of these work with the emulator.

Does anyone out there have any Japanese games working and which one(s) did you get working?