Whether you love or hate Mega Man X6, I think the majority will agree its English localization was a hot mess (except this. That was pure gold.) It's truly unfortunate because there's actually a good story underneath all that hogwash. That's why a one DuoDynamo has set out to re-translate the game from the ground up.
Using both the original Japanese and English localization as sources, DuoDynamo has been hard at work re-translating Mega Man X6. His work-in-progress script, which can be found in a publicly available Google Drive directory, hopes to provide fans with more lively and believable dialogue while still remaining faithful to the source material. The work completed so far has been dived up between "Events" (cutscenes) and "Stages" (Alia tips and boss dialogue).
Here's an example of the original localization vs. DuoDynamo's script:
ORIGINAL
Isoc: Attention all Reploids on Earth! As you all know, these are chaotic, disturbing times. The "Nightmare" is upon us. It shows Reploids a kind of "dream" for human beings... no. It's a "Nightmare". The Nightmare makes Reploids confused. In the worst case, they may malfunction or delete themselves. Due to the Colony incident, there are few Reploids or humans are left on the Earth... We won't accept sacrifice anymore! This would bring us to the Earth Crisis. Taking the matter seriously, we have sent investigators to the 8 suspected areas to uncover the mystery of this Nightmare phenomena. It's said that the Nightmare phenomena are cause by... a ghost of Zero... known as an ace Maverick Hunter...
RE-TRANSLATION
Isoc: To all Reploids remaining on Earth, a minute of your attention! As you all know, a bizarre event has been taking place all around the globe. It is a phenomenon we have decided to dub the “Nightmare”. It causes Reploids to see disturbing visions, akin to actual nightmares. These visions often cause Reploids to lose self control and act violently. There have even been accounts of fatalities due to these brutal behaviors. Ever since the Space Colony Eurasia incident, the population count for humans and Reploids has been at an all-time low. Therefore, we cannot afford any more losses! The lack of able bodied Reploids has put us on the brink of a global crisis! To prevent that, in order to assess the true nature of the Nightmare phenomenon,we have sent investigators to eight areas of interest around the globe. However, even now, we do have one major lead: the late Maverick Hunter Zero.We suspect that leftovers of his data are the source of this phenomenon…. like a ghost haunting the living.
Ultimately, DuoDynamo intends for his script to be used for a patch. He admits he has no idea how to create a patch so help would very much be appreciated on that front. Drop him a comment below if you're interested.
Best of luck to DuoDynamo! Please be sure to check out his progress every now and then!
So bad that I don't know anything about this kind of rom modification, but it looks so promising, I hope someone with the proper knowledge can help, good luck, Duo.
ReplyDeleteX7 is in dire need of a new translation, too. Tonion's still a goofball, but all of the rest of the dialogue is completely different if you listen to the Japanese dub. Sigma's "speech" to X at the end is only a couple of lines in English, but it's like 5 minutes long in Japanese.
ReplyDeleteCool. Is he going to make an effort to fix the gameplay too? If so, I might actually play it.
ReplyDeleteI would if I could.
DeleteOne thing I'd like to do (though I have no idea if it's possible at all) is remove all Nightmare environmental effects altogether (as well as allowing X and Zero to break the wall at Blizzard Wolfang's stage to make up for it), since they're mostly useless in terms of level design and only exist to frustrate the player.
That, and making it possible to traverse Gate's 1st stage without Zero or the Shadow Armor.
Gameplay? Aside from overly difficult map design it seemed fine, I actually enjoyed the challenge after X5.
DeleteDisabling nightmare effects should be doable with just a gameshark.
DeleteActually, it's possible to traverse Gate's 1st stage with Blade Armor too. The only problem by doing so is you have to equip the Part that extends the time you are invulnerable after being hit, and be hit by the wolves at each climbing haha.
DeleteThis is my favorite line from the game:
ReplyDelete"You can to do it Zero!"
http://i.imgur.com/Opl4CsH.jpg
Holy crap, I literally JUST went over this one and it totally passed me by.
DeleteMan, this script never ceases to amaze me.
Hey Man, I Am Interested in working together as i am Making an English Redub For Mega Man X6 and i would like translations too, we could work together if you want to.
DeleteAwful game, good characters, so a pretty worthy cause.
ReplyDeleteI'd like for someone to do X2, too, since that is maybe the worst translation out of the good X games...
Glad you asked. It has been done, in fact.
Deletehttps://hondoori.wordpress.com/scripts-and-localizations/rockman-x-series/rockman-x2/
In fact, this script is what gave me the idea to retranslate X6 in the first place. Granted, I don't think there's a patched rom out there yet, but the script's there. It does make a lot more sense than the original too.
Hey man, thanks a lot for the spotlight! It's really a lot more than I expected to come out of this, especially at such an early stage! :)
ReplyDeleteI'd just like to point out that my name is DuoDynaMO. :p
First of all, thanks for taking on this task, any kind of improvement over these games is very appreciated by the fans.
DeleteI wanted to suggest you to take your project to romhacking.net's message board. You may have luck finding a partner to insert your script into the game, or at least some guidence if you ever decide to try to do it yourself. Right now, there's a project going on to make improvements on Mega Man X5 by the user DarkSamus993. You should definitely try to contact him. Of the hackers currently active, he's probably the one with the most experience hacking the PS1 Mega Man X games.
Wow....that's great! I'll have to replay the game when he finishes it!
ReplyDeleteI believe this is something that was supposed to have been done in the X Collection, but as usual with Capcom development, time was short. I love the idea and I'd actually like to assist with the project. I think it'd be fun to perfect the script as much as possible to really let the story shine through. Alas, I don't have any idea on how to actually apply the patch. It might be easier with the PC version, or maybe patching a PS1 ISO with Lunar IPS or something.
ReplyDeleteI thought this as well. If memory serves, it was because they didn't want to derail Irregular Hunter X on the PSP. Which didn't take off anyway. I even heard they had done all the new content, but chose NOT to include it due to IHX.
DeleteThanks, Capcom...
I thought that holding off on new content for the X Collection was actually Inafune's idea? His reasoning was because he wanted to save the new content for Maverick Hunter X and its upcoming sequels.
DeleteWell, all I know is that was a stupid idea holding off on the new content and releasing Maverick Hunter X on the PSP instead of the PS2 and Gamecube was an even stupider idea. In the end, the gamers lose out.
Please, please, PLEASE tell me he also plans on remapping the command for Zero's Sentsuizan attack while he's at it? Just change it to Up+Triangle instead of Up+Square. It can't be that hard to reprogram, right? I've played this game so much as a kid that the intense difficulty and bad level design doesn't bother me any more but even I had to make a point of NEVER beating Ground Scaravich on Zero-based save files despite needing to raid the Central Museum multiple times anyway if I wanted Speedster. :(
ReplyDeleteBut Zello was my favorite character...
ReplyDeleteReminds me of Zoro and Zolo.
DeleteI personally think Zolo sounds cooler and is more original, but everyone hates it.
Zello sounds like a sick name too. Sounds like a god.
Thanks for the information. Much appreciated! An accurate translation is better. I never understand why Capcom of USA might have a mess it up. The same is said for MegaMan and Bass GBA version. Sighing.
ReplyDeleteInteresting.. A fan didn't include Japanese text script in his Google drive. Only English translation script. Why don't translator include Japanese text script ?
ReplyDeleteHere's the japanese script I'm using. It's a little confusing to navigate, but it has absolutely everything.
Deletehttp://3rd.geocities.jp/wonth_dp/rock/sp-x6n3.html
This is awesome! I'm reading the scripts right now! This makes me want to play the game from the beginning!
ReplyDeleteI hope he gets the programmer that he needs to patch the game. Sadly tho it won't be me I program but don't know how to hack game text.
ReplyDeleteFinally somebody is doing it! This is an important step for western fans, just like Boco the Chokobo Rockman X2 translation back in the day.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe it... Someone still remembers the work we did back in the day? I'm glad to hear it!
DeleteTDOMMX here, credited in Boco's scripts as the guy who "forced" her to translate Rockman X and Rockman X2 into English. I'm also the guy who hacked a modified version of her script into the Megaman X ROM, releasing it under the name "Megaman X Complete". You probably won't find our release if you Google it since we weren't satisfied with the finished product and decided to close up shop before it was mirrored on translation sites (we wanted hone our localization skills before even thinking of continuing onto X2). Now that I'm a professional localization specialist, I'd love to revisit the project that started me down this road. When my free time permits, of course (I moonlight as a localizer while I work a day job to keep the bills paid -- it's a rough workload, but totally worth it).
Holy crap, so it was you guys who were behind the X2 retranslation? (Which I'm assuming it's this one: https://hondoori.wordpress.com/scripts-and-localizations/rockman-x-series/rockman-x2/)
DeleteI did mention in another post here that it was that translation that gave me the idea to retranslate X6 in the first place, so you're in part responsible for this existing at all. :)
I used to think that X6 was fine, but then when I played it recently (granted, on Hard mode), I find that it's actually pretty lousy. Not X7 bad, but definitely not good.
ReplyDeleteThat so-called translation for X6 was insufferably embarrassing to sit through. It's like Capcom USA thought people must be too stupid to care or read text in a Mega Man X game, so they just ran the whole thing through Babelfish. I was hoping it would all be coherent for the X Collection, but that didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteIt almost was along with retranslating, redubbing, and adding new features for x4-6 but capcom of Japan didn't want it interfering with maverick hunter x and made capcom USA take everything out at the last minute. And we know how mhx went.
DeleteThey were even going to fix that zero move button combo in x6
I know, which is why I said, "I was hoping it would all be coherent for the X Collection, but that didn't happen." Cursed Capcom, always taking the fun out of Mega Man at every turn.
DeleteWow, that new translation actually makes sense. Glad to see this is happening.
ReplyDeleteDuoDynamo should fix Megaman X5 and take out those stupid Guns N' Roses-themed names.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, Duff McWhalen... Why?
DeleteX5 is in dire need of a rewrite and recode. Getting rid of Alia with her incessant prompts would be sweet, too. She contributes nothing and shouldn't really have been introduced so late into the series, despite X6.
DeleteAlso that intro stage theme for X sucked, and so did his armor system.
I did consider that, but no promises so far.
DeleteTo be fair, the Japanese names for the Maverick bosses throughout the entire X series are equally stupid-sounding. If they're going to stick to consistency, they need to make it follow the localization for the SNES games, such as calling him Tidal Whale, for example (certainly not Tidal Makoeen, as that just sounds absurd).
DeleteAwesome! I honestly love how hard X6 is. The only thing that bothered me was Zero's kamikaze attack which will get you killed very easily which is a shame because it's a really powerful attack. A bit off-topic, but the people at Irregular Hunter Productions need editors and someone that can check the translation for Beast+.
ReplyDeleteIt's less hard and more just cheap level design and enemy placement. Also nightmare phenomenons. Though I'll take it over X7...
DeleteI think it is hard tho, what you call cheap level design I call hard. What you probably call great level design(? don't know the opposite of cheap in this context) I would probably call easy.
DeleteLike people complain about MMZ being hard, I have to literally handicap myself just for those games to give me a challenge (and I usually don't like playing like that, since I like to 100% games and use the tools in game that come from that), anything less than MMZ difficulty and I might as well play Kirby.
Zero's Kamikaze attack??? What?
Deletelol, I'm obviously referring to Zero's Sentsuizan(holding up in the air + square).
DeleteI hope this project goes as far as correcting the references in its naming scheme. "Isoc" is supposed to be "Isaac", as in Isaac Asimov (the author of the Rules of Robotics cited in Dr. Light's warning in the original Megaman X), and "High Max" should be "Himax" (Himax Technologies is a semiconductor manufacturer founded a few months before X6's release that Capcom appears to have been doing business with at the time).
ReplyDeleteAs a localization specialist, it's a bit disheartening to see deliberate references lost in translation. See: "Curly" in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow instead of "Kali", "Miss Joan" in Megaman Zero instead of "Miss Jaune" (every Resistance member has a French name, so how did they miss the parallel between her and Miss Rouge, also named after a French color?), "Serges" in Megaman X2 instead of "Sagesse" (the X-Hunters are all named after French words for one of Zero's noteworthy characteristics: "Violent" (violent/fierce, pronounced "VEE-oh-LAHN" in French), "Sagesse" (wise, "sah-JESS"), and "Agile" (agile/quick, "ah-JEEL"). Sorry if it seems like I'm splitting hairs, but noticing this stuff is my literal job. Plus, I've been bilingual in English and French since I was 5, so missed French references and typos really stick out to me.
Isoc was meant to be Isaac? Do you have any sources for that? Not that I doubt you, but his japanese name is read as 'Aizokku', instead of Newton's 'Aizakku'. It might be a deliberate change, even if the reference is still there.
DeleteThat aside, I did change High Max to Hi-Max. I also considered changing 'Zero Nightmare' to 'Nightmare Zero', seeing as it is a single entity as opposed to a widespread phenomenon like the rest of the Nightmare, but I'm still not sure about this change.
Isoc and High Max are cooler names, at least is not that different to their Japanese translations.
DeleteDude that has to be my screenshot you've got there (the one with Zero and Dynamo) I'm so happy~
ReplyDeleteHi, DuoDynaMO (is the name right? rs).
ReplyDeleteI'm working on insert your re-translation in the game (or what is possible at least, cause most of the text is bigger than the space the game offers to it), but it's not possible (for now) doing it as it is due to limited space for the characters, so I had to do some little changes but I'm trying to approach what you did. As long as I finish, I'll send to you some result. Call me at romhacking.net: phmt6.
Thank you for the good work!
I would love to help you with these translations! In fact, I started a petition at one point to get Capcom to rerelease X6 on American PSN.
ReplyDeleteTo think, Capcom went and redid X5's translation (including replacing the Guns 'N Roses Maverick names with properly-translated versions of their Japan names), but X6 is still its same badly-translated self.
ReplyDelete