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Tutorial: How To Patch Japanese Roms for Fan-Made English Translations

We’ve had tons of articles reviewing some amazing romhacks here on videogamedj.com and yet we’ve only scratched the surface of some of the awesome modifications to your classic favorite games that are out there. The tutorial below can help you not only create the altered playable version of any of the games we’ve reviewed from the original ROM, but it can also open up a huge world of fan-translated Japanese games that you can now play in English.

As any gamer knows, classic console gaming was far bigger in Japan than it ever was in North America. This fact and the lag between getting games translated and new consoles taking over the market lead to a number of incredibly polished, classic gaming masterpieces never getting translated and/or never being released to the North America market.

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This is especially true of the SNES/Genesis era when roleplaying games in particular started to become epic works of art with beautiful soundtracks. It’s an interesting period to revisit. You can see the origins many game ideas that are now common – branching plots, real-time RPG battles and character development that impacts the ending – they all got their start in some of these lost gems.

While some of these games have been translated and released officially on other platforms, some have not. Some of the official translations are inferior versions of the originals that don’t quite play the same. Thanks to fan translations that patch the original rom with english text, you can enjoy these games in their original format without learning Japanese first.

While some of the patched English ROMs are available for direct download, many are not. The patches and Japanese ROMs are easier to get, so its up to you to do the patching. Here’s a quick run through on how to do it.

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RobotLovesKitty Kickstarter For a Multi-Platform Gameboy Like Emulator Using Raspberry Pi


An Indie gaming company, RobotLovesKitty had the amazing idea to combine the Raspberry Pi’s RetroPie emulation project with a 3d printer to create a gameboy-like handheld that will play NES, SNES, Sega, Playstation 1, Nintendo 64, , x86 PC, Amiga, Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafix 16 and about 20 other formats. The Kickstarter still has a few weeks to go but has already reached its goal and the lower tiers are selling out fast! Get yours while you still can!

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“The Chip Age” – A Review of Joshua Morse’s “Waveform 4”

 

“Hey buddy, you got chip in my jazz.  Actually, y'know what?  Just leave it there.  It's rad.”
“Hey buddy, you got chip in my jazz. Actually, y’know what? Just leave it there. It’s rad.”

Joshua Morse‘s newest jazz-fusion short release, Waveform 4, has to be the most charming thing I’ve heard in a good while. Jazz has always been my favorite style of music I know nothing about, and any time I come across an “X-jazz” genre tag I get all tingly. And if you’re a little more familiar with jazz and the word “fusion” terrifies you, I say, “Worry not, citizen!” This release keeps it reigned in, being creative and enjoyable without getting avant-garde or just plain weird. As per his own mission statement, Mr. Morse does indeed prove that not all jazz is elevator music.

Now, I do have to admit, it took me a little while to actually accept that this album is jazz-inspired, but that has everything to do with my skewed perceptions. I lay the blame squarely on my college’s radio station, which plays some really pretentious, fringe nonsense when it comes to jazz. I swear, next time I hear a DJ say “post-bop” on the air, I’m gonna call in and give someone a knuckle sandwich over the phone.

But, I digress. Every track on this short album (or EP, or “chipdisk” as Morse himself puts it, or what have you) is a choice cut. The opening track, “Turtle Dance 3,” brings it old school, straddling the line between honest jazz and arcade soundtrack that the retro gamers are incredibly familiar with. It won’t make you think of a specific title so much as like, all of Sega at once. “Fusion Factory” achieves the impossible by throwing a bunch of genres into a blender and creating a coherent product. There’s funk, there’s disco, there’s jazz, there’s chip, I could go on. Use your imagination, and “You Got Me” is the back-beat to an R&B jam 20 years out from now. I really expected Robotic Barry White to roll out at some point, no joke. “Galactic EQ Bands” sounds like something out of an 80s action movie soundtrack, and I mean that as high praise. The way it opens will put you right back into a Beverly Hills Cop shootout. The closer “It’s Like Flying” not only lives up to its title, but brings a truckload of passion to bear as well. You can put your own love-song lyrics to the synth and piano melodies in certain parts; that’s how much raw emotion this track has.

Naturally I’m gonna gripe about the length of this release, because it’s a knockout and I’d love more of it. At the same time, however, I’m rather thankful that it’s only five tracks long. Each track stands high and solitary, being entirely unique with regard to the other four. This is something I can’t really see as being possible in a full album’s worth of material, or at least I would consider it a feat only pulled off on incredibly rare occasions. Yet it works as an album as well because of the common jazz thread woven through each cut. I believe that balance, that “one out of many” quality is what makes this release truly special.

Danwich has begun work on an amateur American Gothic novel.  You can read its beginnings here.  He would love your votes.

The Best Sonic The Hedgehog Games You’ve Never Played

It's Sonic like you've never seen..Sonic the Hedgehog is perhaps one of the most memorable and exciting games in console gaming history. As we’ve looked at the  best Megaman Hacks before, I thought why not take a look at some of the amazing Sonic the Hedgehog hacks that are out there. These are just a few of the many great hacks out there for Genesis and other classic consoles. There’s even a 8-bit NES Sonic in the list!

You can grab a Sega emulator and get any of these games up and running without messing with patches or anything like that. I won’t go into Emulators too much here, but I do recommend Gens/GS if you don’t know where to start.

In the 2000’s there were a number of Sonic hacking/remake contests. Most of these games are winners or runners up from that awesome contest. You can find lots of info on these and other hacks over at sonicretro.org.

 

 

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