Ys IV has been fully dubbed - first of its kind translation project
TheSonicRetard
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This series has really taken off in recent years, so I figured people would be interested in this news. Ys IV: Dawn of Ys is the last Ys game for the PC Engine Duo - the system which pretty much popularized the series. It's officially non-canon, as future Ys games used the SNES game - Ys IV: Mask of the Sun - as the official fourth entry. Despite a similar scenario, Ys IV: Mask of the Sun is a completely different game and it's generally believed that Ys IV: Dawn of Ys is not only the better game, but also one of the very best games in the series. It was made by the same group which made the original Ys games on the PC Engine, and it's much more in line with Ys book I & II than anything else (especially the PC Engine Duo versions).
People have been dying to play this game for decades now. Years and years ago, a translation guide appeared online, letting you follow the game with a thick manual. That's how I first experienced the game, and while serviceable, it was far from optimal. Flash forward several years, and a text translation patch was released after years of work. This automated patch would take your PC Engine Duo CD, rip it, patch it, and then burn a new copy for you to play (the PC Engine Duo had no copy protection). It was awesome, a very professional translation about on par with the official translations for Ys I & II (which were the gold standard for many, many years). The only problem is that Ys IV is very heavy on spoken dialog, of which there are no subtitles. That means that playing the game, even with the translation patch, would require a guide by your side to keep up with what's being spoken.
That brings us up to today (well, technically a few weeks ago at the end of september). After 8 years of solid work, the translation group has finally released the final patch. This patch is pretty unique among video game translations because not only does it replace all the text with english, but it also redubs the game into english. Using amateurs from around the net, the entire voice work for the game has been reworked into english. Aside from occasional cringe-worthy delivery, this is fantastic. The full game is finally, FINALLY available in english. A trailer for the dub project was placed online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aQxusqqY5Kw
I'm not sure Penny-arcade's policy on linking to this sort of thing (it's a patch, not an iso, so it should be legal, especially since you need to own the real game, but PA has weird rules at times) so instead I'll just say that the pc engine FX forums has more information if wanted. I can't wait to try this dub out, as this'll be my 3rd time playing the game. Definitely worth a heads up.
People have been dying to play this game for decades now. Years and years ago, a translation guide appeared online, letting you follow the game with a thick manual. That's how I first experienced the game, and while serviceable, it was far from optimal. Flash forward several years, and a text translation patch was released after years of work. This automated patch would take your PC Engine Duo CD, rip it, patch it, and then burn a new copy for you to play (the PC Engine Duo had no copy protection). It was awesome, a very professional translation about on par with the official translations for Ys I & II (which were the gold standard for many, many years). The only problem is that Ys IV is very heavy on spoken dialog, of which there are no subtitles. That means that playing the game, even with the translation patch, would require a guide by your side to keep up with what's being spoken.
That brings us up to today (well, technically a few weeks ago at the end of september). After 8 years of solid work, the translation group has finally released the final patch. This patch is pretty unique among video game translations because not only does it replace all the text with english, but it also redubs the game into english. Using amateurs from around the net, the entire voice work for the game has been reworked into english. Aside from occasional cringe-worthy delivery, this is fantastic. The full game is finally, FINALLY available in english. A trailer for the dub project was placed online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aQxusqqY5Kw
I'm not sure Penny-arcade's policy on linking to this sort of thing (it's a patch, not an iso, so it should be legal, especially since you need to own the real game, but PA has weird rules at times) so instead I'll just say that the pc engine FX forums has more information if wanted. I can't wait to try this dub out, as this'll be my 3rd time playing the game. Definitely worth a heads up.
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You have to love the Ys fandom; they're just so tenacious about bringing as much of this gem of a series to peoples' attention. Nice to see all of that hard work paying off in dividends right now.
Man, I dunno. Celceta is a different game from Dawn of Ys, just like how Dawn of Ys is a different game from Mask of the Sun. Celceta doesn't really follow either Ys IV. Also, while I certainly like the newer Ys games a whole bunch, I doubt I'll like Celceta as much as Dawn of Ys. I've played every Ys game there is except Celceta (for the obvious reasons) and Dawn of Ys remains my 2nd favorite in the series, with only Ys I & II Eternal topping is. The new Ys is certainly a great action-RPG series, but the older, "bump into enemies to kill them" games are just better IMO.
With regards to the patch, this translation is actually a pretty big deal in the translation community because of how it's done. The speech in this game isn't redbook audio (which would have had it's own set of problems to be solved due to the way redbook audio is stored on a PC Engine game) but rather streaming PCM stored within the game's binary. That makes replacing audio much, much more difficult, as the team had to essentially surgically remove the old audio from the binary and replace it with newly recorded audio, in the correct format, that was exactly the same length and file size as the original audio, down the byte. Needless to say this is all extremely impressive. This isn't technically the first time this has been done - a translation of Dracula X: Rondo of Blood surfaced not too long ago which did this same process using audio from the PSP translation. EDIT: Actually I've been informed that Rondo's speech is actually redbook audio and not streaming PCM, so this actually is the first of its kind for a video game translation project. But, given that Ys IV contains so much more text and audio, and that, unlike Dracula X, Ys IV is pretty much unplayable without a guide otherwise, this is a much more impressive job.
This same group, BTW, is also translating and dubbing Legend of Xanadu 2, another one of the best games on the PC Engine Duo that never came over. They also did Xak III, although the voice work in that game remains untranslated. The PC Engine has a wealth of action RPG games that are absolutely ace, most of which never came over to the US. These translation projects are breathing new life into the system because it lacks copy protection.
EDIT: That said, if the PS2 remake of Ys III - the side scrolling one, not the overhead PC remake - ever got translated, I'd shit my pants. Ys III was one of the very best Zelda 2 clones I've ever played, but the actual original game is very poorly made, especially the Turbo Grafx CD version and it's faked parallax scrolling. The PS2 remake is awesome, but fully in japanese.
Correct. Falcom was developing the Sega Genesis version, but it got canceled. Hudson, who developed the PC Engine versions of Ys I & II and Ys III, did Dawn of Ys. Tonkin House did the SNES version, called Mask of the Sun.
Falcom has finally come out and developed their own, canon Ys IV, though, called Foliage Ocean in Celceta, for the Playstation Vita. It replaces Mask of the Sun as the canon version of Ys IV.
While I can't speak about Celceta's quality (I'm sure it's awesome), almost everyone agrees that Dawn of Ys is not only the better version of Ys IV, but also one of the very best games in the series. Dawn of Ys fancies itself as a direct sequel to Ys I & II, the only story-sequel in the series besides Ys II itself (remember, all the other games are technically spin-offs not related to the actual Ys story). You revisit lots of locations and people from Ys I & II in Dawn of Ys, like Darm tower. It's a great game, even more so if you loved Ys I & II.
This does look like YS one and two though from the various youtube videos I've been watching this afternoon.
This is my view on Mask of the Sun as well. I don't think it's a bad game at all, but compared to the alternative, it falls very short. It's a lot like comparing the SNES version of Dracula X to the PC Engine Duo version, IMO.
That's all fantastic. The game is entirely 100% translated now, including all the promo material. I actually own the real-deal JPN copy of Ys IV, and I'm building myself a translated copy using all this stuff. I love when fans turn up their game to 11. As a big retro gamer who happens to love both the Ys series and the PC Engine Duo, this is pretty much the best thing to happen within the community in years. Hopefully the Legend of Xanadu translation goes well.
Apparently some people are also trying to translate the PC Engine version of snatcher. That seems a bit redundant to me, though, as the Sega CD version is A) more complete (Most of Act 3 is Sega CD exclusive, the PC Engine version is very, very short) and
These sorts of fan translations are becoming more and more high profile and larger. I have a Metal Gear 2 translation cart for my MSX2, for example. Metal Gear 2 was translated back in 1994 by a bunch of french modders, but their version required you to play the game through floppies (where the original used a cartridge). The translation cart actually requires the real MG2 cart to be present, and can act as a save cart as well. It was produced by a buddy of mine in spain a few years ago. To the hardcore retro gamer, it's a thrill to play Metal Gear 2, on the real cart, in english, as opposed to just pirating some game image onto a couple of floppies.
we've come a lot way since we had teams of people hacking up SNES roms to bring over square games. CD systems are especially exciting because it's far easier to mod your system and burn a patched copy of the game rather than building a custom made cartridge. They are also considerably larger projects, and in that regard, much more impressive. Policenauts is probably the highest profile CD game to be translated, and the amount of work that went into it is staggering. Ys IV is one of the best CD translations, but probably my favorite is the Shining Force III translations. Obtaining a modded Sega Saturn is a bit harder to come across than, say, a Sony Playstation, but playing those games in english is a mind blowing experience. Like the Ys IV translation, the shining force games also come with an awesome automatic patching utility that forces you to pop in real versions of the game, that'll spit out a translated burned copy without any work from the end user. The Shining Force III project even went through and retranslated and patched the NTSC US copy of SF3 to undo the changes Sega made to the story to wrap up loose ends due to the other scenarios not arriving, and translated the super rare premium disk as well.
It's crazy how even modern systems have translation projects. Fatal Frame 4 on the Wii, for example, can be fully patched to work with the final copy of the game, with the patch sitting on an SD card. All you need is a modded wii.
The biggest translation project I've been keeping my eye on for a while is the Segagaga translation project. IIRC Sixfortyfive of our very own forums is working on that project, and it's been going for several years now already.
I've only ever played Ys I & II (the PC Engine archives version on my PSP) so I don't know if all of the action-RPG Ys games are like it, but Celceta is in my Vita right now and it FEELS like the bump system. Occasionally, you encounter a large, difficult enemy that takes more skill and planning to defeat, but in general, you are just murdering your way through the landscape. It feels so fast. Adol speeds around like a freakin' ninja. The soundtrack, as well, is just like the classic games. The whole game is about opening up the map. Before I went to the second town, I had unlocked 25% of it. That's how fun it was to just explore and kill.
PSN: astronautcowboy 3DS: 5343-8146-1833
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No that describes the modern Ys games pretty much. They don't feel all that different from the originals. I have no problem with the lack of an attack button or the addition of one, it all feels the same to me. I simply don't think they're as good as Ys I & II Eternal or Ys IV. I consider those two games to be the absolute best in the series. I think they are incredibly well constructed games that have withstood the test of time and remain classics even to this day. I put them up there with games like Link to the Past.
I feel those 2 games formed a much more epic story. I mean, the series is called Ys, and really only those two games deal with Ys itself. And Dark Fact is an awesome villain.
If it's the story that makes them great, I can't comment yet. I have a funny feeling that the whole game is a nod to Adol's previous journey(s) to Celceta though, and I'll tell you what I think when it's all over. I'm really, really enjoying it so far though. Played two nights in a row until I literally couldn't keep my eyes open anymore.
PSN: astronautcowboy 3DS: 5343-8146-1833
I have Sega, Nintendo and Xbox games and systems for sale. Please help me buy diapers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BAtC1SzWSXg
Because it bares repeating, the people who did the above got paid to do that. it's literally their job. This is the effort fans produced over the span of 8 years, for free and without compensation:
Professional translation companies being completely shamed by amateurs.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Chaos Wars isn't anywhere near the worst dub. Not even close.
Consider that they took japanese spoken dialog, which was already spoken by a competent japanese VA, and then had an average white man phonetically pronounce the japanese words. That's not even translation, that's going from good japanese to bad japanese. At least Chaos Wars is entirely in english.
The Ys voice clip wasn't as bad as I was expecting but it wasn't particularly good either. Sounded like something you would have heard in one of the Sega CD Lunar game (which was cool at the time but in retrospect is pretty weak compared to any decent modern dub).
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
PSN: astronautcowboy 3DS: 5343-8146-1833
I have Sega, Nintendo and Xbox games and systems for sale. Please help me buy diapers.
This is much better than Lunar and is more on par with Snatcher:
It also shames any modern, "decent" dubs by virtue of having one character per voice actor (a practice still rare in most professional dubs).
If the voice actor is talented and the different characters all sound reasonably different, I don't see the problem. Better to have one good voice actor do multiple roles than to have several bad voice actors do one each.
Maybe the full game is better but if the best they had to show off was the ultimate evil hamming it up, that doesn't bode well for the quality of the dub as a whole. I have no doubt this is a great technical achievement as far as hacking goes but some things are better left undone - unless you can pull off an amazing dub (which is generally difficult for RPGs given the typical dialogue they have to work with), you're better off just leaving everything text-only.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
So because the dub isn't up to some unstated, vague standards you have about modernity, this project was better off left undone? That's an awful attitude to have.
Especially when you consider that the "hammed up ultimate evil" is remarkably similar to the original japanese version:
Original:
dub:
The Sega CD dub for Eternal Blue is still better than some current works, and you certainly don't hear the same five-ten VAs every single US studio seems to use nowadays.
That said, this looks great, and the Wii VC/PCE version of Ys 1 & 2 is still my favorite. I was stunned at how good the VA was, and this project has a very similar tone.
Also, the site that got this rolling lead to me recruiting from the same site for my Shikigami project, and it's coming along great as a result.
PSN: astronautcowboy 3DS: 5343-8146-1833
I have Sega, Nintendo and Xbox games and systems for sale. Please help me buy diapers.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
He even plays Adol in the Ys Celceta drama CD. I was so pissed.
PSN: astronautcowboy 3DS: 5343-8146-1833
I have Sega, Nintendo and Xbox games and systems for sale. Please help me buy diapers.
Ooooor you could have learned japanese....
I actually took 4 years of Japanese at college and I've been to Japan since graduating, and can converse fairly well in japanese. When I want to, I can play a game in japanese.
I just, you know, prefer to play the game in my primary language, without a dictionary next to me to look up words I don't know.
I was thinking this too.
I prefer to play them in their language of origin, when possible.
PSN: astronautcowboy 3DS: 5343-8146-1833
I have Sega, Nintendo and Xbox games and systems for sale. Please help me buy diapers.