MOTHER 2 Menu Patch Beta

*throws party*

Excellent work once again Mato!

Here’s something mildly amusing, I opened the two name lists and Google Chrome gave the option to translate the Japanese. I did so, and there’s a pretty goofy contrast between Mato’s translations and Chrome’s trasnlations. Some examples: “Me of butterfly Nenju – TRILSPROUT” “Daiyamondodoggu – DIAM. DOG” “Unconscious Dog Temperature – RUNAWAYDOG”

And, interestingly enough: “Porky – POKEY” 😀

Is the Stonehenge music supposed to be playing in nighttime Onett at the start or is my memory going?

Hmm, during Buzz Buzz’s last speech, both yes and no seem to lead to the same dialog. I’m stuck.

He asks two questions, one being “do u unterstan?” and the other being “need me to repeat?”

Ah, My apologies. It’s been to long since I played. :facepalm:

Mato, I love you, just saying. EB on my GBA FTW!

NESS PAUL JEFF AND POO
4 men off into an adventure to save the world

sadsa, that made me laugh really hard.

But WAIT,
PAUL has a secret.
HE’S NOT A MAN

On my copy of Mother 1+2 I named Paula “Paul” too!

The “PAUL” thing is actually because I’m using a save I found somewhere, her default name in my patch is PALA.

Being completely honest, the Crimpillar is a pretty awesome name in its own right.

Why not instead of Lucky Sand, just Sandwich? It fits, and there are no other sandwiches in the game to confuse it with, I believe.

But yeah just stupid stuff I think of.

There’s the skip sandwich and DX skip sandwich as well.

Ah, yeah, right…

I knew I was forgetting something.

All good so far, now to learn japanese.

Thanks, I’m sure this will make people happy. Personally can’t wait for the good translation of MOTHER 1 though!

Mato, one quick thing. It’s not “Cherub’s Bracelet”, it’s “Cherub’s Band”, unless the site I went to has incorrect information.

Also Mato, one of your items is too long. The “SHYNESSBOOK” is 11 letters, when it should only be 10 letters. My suggestions are:
SHYNSSBOOK
SHYNESS BK

Is there any way to increse the text speed? You know how you can choose Slow Medium and Fast? Could you possibly modify that so slow makes its fast, medium faster, and fast very fast?

The reason I’m asking, is it might be tedious to sit there and keep going through a lonnngggg japanese speech you don’t understand. The main script is quite lengthy at some parts.

@Zunar: Perhaps SHYBOOK? Just giving a few more suggestions.

@Floridian: Yeah, I was thinking that kinda thing too. If he was to use “SHYBOOK”, I would recommend putting a space in to make it look better, like “SHY BOOK”.

Thank you for your hard work tom!!

One more thing. When you’re selecting an item, it says “Which?” in Earthbound, not “What?”. I recommend changing it to “WHC?” or “WCH?”.

@TheZunar123

What is better.

Hey Mato, CUP NOODLES is too long as well.

And here’s a couple of suggestions for enemy names and items:
B. ANTOID -> BLK ANTOID
R. ANTOID -> RED ANTOID
R. SHROOM -> RAMBLNSHRM
S. SHROOM -> STRUTNSHRM
CON.MENACE-> ELECMENACE
CON.SPIRIT-> ELECSPIRIT
EVIL ELEM.-> EVILMENTAL
XTRACRANKY-> XCRNKYLADY
THRSTYSNAK-> TH. SNAKE
V. ROACH -> VIOL.ROACH
F. ROACH -> FILTHROACH
SM. SPHERE-> SMLNSPHERE
UN. SPHERE-> NOCTRLSPHR
TERR. OAK -> TERRIT.OAK
DMND DOG -> DIAMONDDOG
MECOCTOBOT-> MECHOCTBOT
C.F. BOMB -> NOCAREBOMB
F.S. MAN -> FSHTTRDMAN
BEAUT. UFO-> BEAUTFLUFO
P. PSYCHO -> PSI PSYCHO
M.P.PSYCHO-> MAJRPSICHO
D. PETUNIA-> DMNPETUNIA
B. MONKEY -> BUBLMONKEY
SQUATTER -> SQUATDEMON
CHERUBBRAC-> CHERUBAND
MRBBLLCAP -> MR BB CAP
COINSLMBR -> COINSLEEP
COINSILNC -> COINMUTE
CUP NOODLES> NOODLES
LUCKY SAND-> LUCKYWICH
EXITMOUSE -> EXIT MOUSE
TROUTYOGRT-> FISHYOGURT
LIFENOODLE-> LFENOODLES
SUDDENGUTS-> GUTS PILL
E. ERASER -> DOLLERASER (Not erasers in M2, dolls)
P. ERASER -> OCTOERASER (Not pencils in M2, octopus statues)
SLIME GEN -> SLIMEGENTR
PIG NOSE -> PIGGY NOSE
SHYNESSBOOK> SHYNSSBOOK
REFRSHHERB-> REFRESHERB
B-LG.BAT -> BIGLG.BAT

Hey, I’m in Peaceful Rest valley right now.
Noticed some odd stuff:
In the equip menu, DEF and OFF are swapped!
When opening the PSI menu in battle, there is a graphical glitch.(Easier to notice during Boss Battles) Is this new? Or was it already there?
You can’t tell what status ailment you have.
And FRNKSTEIN2 is a mouthfull.

Cool, thanks, I’ll look into that stuff now. If you could, could you take pics of stuff when you come across them too? That’d help a lot I think.

PALA? Maybe POLA is better?

Also, I see you named Gyiyg Giygas in the enemy list, does that mean you’re going to name him Giygas in the Mother 1 part too?

I would think so, SpecLab, but… what about the M2 title screen, Mato?

And I think Pala is good. Pronounce it like “Pah-lah”, and not “Pal-ah”, and it’ll sound right.

My Name Here: What do you mean by “you can’t tell what status ailment you have”?

As for the Mother 1 naming, I haven’t decided yet, though it’d make most sense to use Giygas now I guess.

Oh, sorry, I was being picky about how the graphic for NESS having a cold is a japanese symobol that probobly means “cold”. I don’t know if this applies to any other status ailments or not, because I just beat carpainter. Maybe you cold change the text in the status menu if changing the graphic is hard. Oh and hey, good work with this! I could never do anything like this. Even if I knew how.

This is awesome, Just the fact that you hacked this crazily programed game is impressive. Thanks Mato, looking forward to the MOTHER 1 translation!

I noticed another bug like the PSI menu one, but with JEFF’s SHOT action. I have a pic, but how can I post it/show it to you?

Would it be possible to change the text for the phone too? The menu that says,
Dad
Mom
Escargo Express
Etc.

After just beating EB for the first time, I noticed that the sound quality in M1+2 is a LOT fuzzier, and some sound effects are different.
Why are the character names only four letters long? No Paula?
Some of the shortened names just bug me. I realize that they can only be so many letters long, but, I dunno… They don’t seem right somehow. i’m probably just being picky, though.

No dialoung will be patched only menus?

@Lucastello

Yes, Mato says this ROM looks like heck to hack, and he doesn’t have the time. So no dialogue will be translated. Get a japanese to english dictionary or bug jeffman 😉

Could the text be changed please, i do not know why but it looks to big, i like the old way of mother 2 text, but if you could do that and have it updated it would be alot better.

I don’t really understand what “old way of mother 2 text” means 😐 The reason the letters are so large is because that’s how large ALL the letters are in Mother 2. To give the text a variable width font like EarthBound would take a TON of work and is why I’m not fully translating the game in the first place.

My Name Here: Oh yeah, thanks, I totally forgot about the phone menus!

Oh that’s what i meant Earthbound, the original, i liked that one alot better. But i truly understand how much of an undertaking that would take.

I dunno but DMND DOG just sounds wrong.

Frank, I think you’re talking about the font. Earthbound has a specific font for Roman letters, while M2 only has a weird uppercase-only font to go with the Japanese.
I agree with PK Mt. Fuji. Some names are a bit off, but others are pretty good. Mato’s gut will be more than enough to revise just a few names that aren’t “right.”
…But I thought “Skipwich” was funny.

ive beaten them both in japenese and english and its pretty easy good work though!

oh and is there anyway to add a dashing ability to mother 2?

I can’t believe I JUST noticed this, but when items are equipped, the equip menu will display what is left of “(NOTHING)”. Basically, if I let Paula wear a “RIBBON,” it shows “RIBBONeG)”. If she had an “ZYX,” it would show something like “ZYXeHING)”.

Oh man that sounds like a horrible bug. I wonder if I change it to say (EMPTY) or (NONE) or something short if that’ll fix it.

(NONE) will fix it for everything except YO-YO.
Why DOES it do that, though?

Wait, no, (NONE) fixes everything!

New graphical glitch I found…
When you select and action, and then proceed to choose which enemy/item to do it on, the action’s letter get kinda wonky. Jeff’s “SHOT” got messed up and turned into ” AUTO.”

I want the mother 1+2 patch so I can activate turbo for mother 1 on visual boy for grinding D:

Mato is working at it, be patient. Your waiting will be more than rewarded.

“Three bats keep Ninten waiting for 20 minutes”
“Three bats attack!”
“SMAAAAASH”
“Ninten dies.”

Question, Mato. What happens if an item is 10 letters, and you equip it? I know the “e” appears, but… what results of that?

I don’t remember, all I recall is that it didn’t look right.

Oh, ok. I was just curious. By the way, like in above comments, I found a couple of items that are too long.
SHYNESSBOOK
CUP NOODLES
CHERUBBRAC

My suggestions are:
SHYNSSBOOK
NOODLES
CHERUBAND

I wonder what they look like in the game being that they are too long?

Just loaded up the patch today, and right off the bat, there is one thing I notice: In the equipment menu, when I select a part to equip, the selected part changes into hiragana (katakana in the case of “BDY”) atop purple blocks. For example, select “WPN” and when the weapon list comes up, “WPN” changes to “[bu][ki]N”, and “ETC” becomes “[so][no][ta]”. Nothing game-breaking, really, since once you’ve selected it, you know what it is, but I thought it might help from an aesthetic standpoint.

I’ll keep my eye out for anything else. Thanks for all the hard work, in any case.

Lulz impressive.But my laptop with the rom broke.

I thought that non-equippable items could be eleven letters? Why is everyone reporting these non-equippable eleven-letter items as having too long names?

Hey Mato, I have a question. How hard would it be to extend the character limit one more letter? I would think it would be kinda hard, but being as you did it in M3, I’m a little curious.

Though, extending it one more character would mess up a ton of stuff (most importantly the status icons), so unless you can expand the status windows to allow for one more character, then that option’s outta here, unless you can think of some way to change the icons to something, say a particular color to the background of it?

I’m just wondering, because it would be a nice addition. The way I get around the character limit when I play this is to name Paula “Ana” (and I usually result in naming Jeff “Loid” for whatever reason), but being able to extend the character limit one more spot would be great. That’s probably somethign we should bug Jeffman about 😉

But anyway, nice work on this. I haven’t actually been able to play the patch, but I will hopefully be able to soon so I can find any bugs or anything. I have a few questions real quick-like if you’d please answer them.

1. IMO, “CHEK” looks really weird. What made you chose that particular abbreviation?
2. Are you PSI names going to have a space in them, or not? What I mean is, are they going to be like “PKROCKIN” or “PK ROCKIN”?
3. Are you going to translate a little bit of the battle dialogue (like GBAZone did), or just the menus and stuff?

Wow, this is a long post.

@rotschleim: No, it’s 10 letters. The “SHYNESSBOOK” and “CUP NOODLES” have 11 letters, and are too long. I wonder how they actually look in the game… could someone find that out, please?

As for Paula, you could go with “POLA” like in the Nintendo Official Guidebook. But PALA works too, I guess.

Zunar: I know the menu patch stuff isn’t 100% ideal, but I’m already struggling to find time to work on this project as it is, so I don’t really intend to do any serious hacking with the M2 side of things – even just extending item names just on more letter would cause a me huge ton of extra work.

I prefer CHEK over CHCK because it’s more obvious to me what it does at first glance.

I don’t plan to translate the battle text or any other text, just the menus and other simple stuff. I can’t add a space between PK and the favorite thing due to screen space limits.

LordQuadros: Thanks, I just noticed that too. It’s a real pain how I gotta manually find and repoint all the menu text twice. At first I was just gonna leave it as it is, but I might fix it if it turns out to be an easy fix.

Hey Mato, I’ve always wondered, why is stuff like “SMAAASSSSHHHHH” and “Welcome to Mother 3 World” in English when the rest of the game from Japan isnt?

English is required learning in Japanese schools for a few years, so most everyone knows the basics. Using English words also add a sense of flair, so it’s very common to see English everywhere, especially in their entertainment.

I’m loving this. Thanks for taking this step, Mato.

@Mato: I understand. But are you going to do that for the other PSI powers, like PK Fire?

Basically, if I can fit the space after PK, I do. I think Starstorm is the one thing I can’t include a PK with.

Ok. My suggestion for that is like PKSSTORM or just PK STORM.

I don’t remember where you put this, but didn’t you say jeffman was going to do the earthbound part and then combine eventualy?

I’ve been able to play the patch, and I have a few things I’d like to mention.

1. Like mentioned above, the “DEF.” and “OFF.” are switched from what they should be.
2. When you select PSI in the battle menu, it disappears. Not a big deal, just something I noticed.
3. Are you going to translate the info box which tells what the PsI powers do?
4. “MRBBLLCAP” looks bad IMO. Could you change it to something like “MR BB CAP”? “MR BB CAP” just looks better, IMO.
5. I noticed the equip menu problem above mentioned by LordQuadros.
6. Would it be possible to put a space between the letters if there are multiple enemies? Example: ATTACKSLUGA, ATTACKSLUGB. Would it be possible to do ATTACKSLUG A, ATTACKSLUG B? I don’t think it would be, but I’m just curious.

J: Not exactly, from what I can gather it sounds like he’d like to work on it but can’t due to the same reasons I can’t. But I tried to set everything up so that it’d be easy to combine my M1 work with someone else’s work if they work on M2 down the road.

I’m so glad you asked that question, Mrstaplez. I’ve been dying to know that as well. Of course, thanks to Mato for clearing it up 🙂

Found another little graphical bug today. Decided to take a picture this time rather than go with an overly complicated explanation:
http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/1861/mother12gfxbug.png

LordQuadros: that was already mentioned and caught, it has to do with the equipped item having fewer characters than the default (nothing)

Thanks for explaing that Mato!

Thank you Mato for your hard work. It’s really appreciate. BTW, I think that you should’n put to much efford on Mother 2 part. We have the snes rom to begin with… I looking forward your translation of mother 1. I has play earthbound zero and i’d like to see the difference…

THANKS !!

@Anthony

But this makes it more complete, and, gives us Earthbound on our Gameboys to those with flash cards or internal memory!

^ Exactly!

Hey Mato, I’ve noticed tat the character limit for PSI power names is 9, and “PKROCKIN” is 8 characters long, but yet you say that adding a space is not possible even though there is one more space available. Any reason for this? And are you going to put PK Starstorm as “STARSTORM” or “PK STORM” or something like that?

WHT?

Hey Mato, would it be possible to just get rid of the “e” when you equip something?

I’d rather not, it’s added work and it’s important to let the player know at first glance what items are equipped and which aren’t.

As for the PK Rockin/Starstorm stuff, I’ll see what I can do, but it’s probably due to already existing technical limits.

I understand, but would it be possible to do something else, say change the font color, just to free up one more space?

Also Mato, one other thing. The healer’s options are not translated. You know, the healers at the hospitals that you can get $50 and get cured when you’re “mashroomized”?

Two more things.
1. On the status screen, the name of the status ailment you have (if you have one) is not translated.
2. The ATM options are not translated. Not a big deal, just wanted to point it out. My suggestions:
If you can extend the character limit:
WTHDRAW DEPOSIT

If you can’t extend the character limit:
WITH DEPO

Wow, I’ve posted a lot of stuff today. Sorry, but I keep finding some stuff I want to point out.
1. “PK FREEZE” has a space in it, but “PKROCKIN” doesn’t, and Rockin and Freeze have the same number of characters. Just pointing that out.
2. For PSI powers that hit all enemies, you have it listed as “ALL ENEM.”. My suggestion is “ALL FOES” or “ALL ENMYS”.
3. Could you please change “PSISHIELD” to something like “PK SHIELD”? And could you do the same for “PSIMAGNET”?
4. “GARD” looks really weird. Could you change it to something like “DEF” or “DFND”?
5. For “PKTHUNDER”, it looks ok, but would changing it to something like “PK THUNDR” or “PK THNDER” make it look better?

I dont think he has plans to do any extensive hacking to tweek everything, maybe just minor things like the phone menu contacts, its intended as just a brief menu patch for the Mother 2 side which makes it slightly easier to navigate so i wont complain about specifics.

I’m becoming increasingly surprised at how many times Mato has to tell people the same thing: this is just a very basic menu hack, nothing fancy, nothing major, etc etc.

Hey Mato, I just had an idea! What would happen if you took just the Mother 2 side (nothing else of the ROM) of M1+2 and applied a regular Earthbound patch (not modified or anything) to it? Could you (or someone else) try that out and see what happens?

It doesn’t work that way, the code is completely different (especially due to being on different systems with different CPUs), and the data is all stored in different locations.

Oh, ok. I was just curious.

Would it be difficult to translate player inputs like “Buy/Sell” or “Yes/No” or even “Dad/Mom/Storage/Pizza”?

lol, doing much posting TheZunar? 😉

Yeah, I did post a lot. I’d post a comment, and a few min later I’d go “Oh crap, I forgot something”, and post another comment. By the way Mato, any new progress?

Nope, spent the weekend on that article. Also, I don’t really like it when people bug me asking for update reports (actually most ROM hackers don’t I’ve noticed), I usually post new info in the comments or if there’s enough new stuff I’ll make a whole new post about it.

Ok, I was just curious.

Here’s a couple of suggestions for inputs and such. I posted some above, but I’ll group them all together, and add some new ones. Stuff in parenthesis is just a bit of info on the suggestion, not something to be put in.

If cannot increase text limits:
SPEED?
3 (Fast)
2 (Medium)
1 (Slow)

FLAVOR?
1 (Plain)/NONE
2 (Mint)/MNT
3 (Strawberry)/BERRY
4 (Banana)/BAN
5 (Peanut)/NUT

ENGLISH
DEFAULT (Don’t Care)
BAK (Backspace)
OK

NAME PLEASE.
NAME HER TOO
BOY’S NAME?
AND HIS NAME?
PETS NAME?
FAV FOOD IS?
COOLEST THING?
FAV FOOD:
COOL THING:
IS THIS OK?

CON
CPY
DE
OPTS

If can increase text limits:
SPEED?
FST
MED
SLO

FLAVOR?
PLAIN
MINT
BERRY
BANANA
PEANUT

DON’T CARE
BACK
OK

PLEASE NAME HIM
NAME HER TOO
NAME THIS BOY
NAME HIM TOO
NAME YOUR PET
FAVORITE FOOD?
COOLEST THING?
FAVORITE FOOD:
COOLEST THING:
IS THIS OK?

LOAD
COPY
DEL
SETUP

I also have a question. Could you translate the item info? For example:
ATM CARD -> INFO
A CARD USED TO
WITHDRAW CASH

I realize that would be a bit of work, but it’ll help us players out a bit. If you need me to, I could probably give you some suggestions.

Also, a great thing to do (if you want to play this game until Mato finishes his translation) is to combine all three patches of Mother 1+2. You get the RPGOne M1 side, the GBAZone font and dialogue translations, and Mato’s enemy and item translations. However, there is a glitch that occurs if you do this.

When you go into your items, any empty slots will be marked as “‘S”, instead of an empty space. I combined GBAZone and RPGOne, and that glitch didn’t occur, so it has something to do with Mato’s Translation. Maybe you could look into that, Mato?

But, to get this to work right, you have to combine them in a certain order.
GBAZone -> RPGOne -> Mato’s Patch

One other thing I think is worth mentioning.

I combined RPGOne + GBAZone, and I got something weird to happen. i had a bottle rocket in my inventory, and it was noted as “BOTTLE ROCK”, which is 11 letters. I scrolled over to the “HARD HATe” that was beside it, and the K disappeared. Scrolled back to BOTTLE ROC, and the K was still gone. But, when I selected it, the K came back (you could actually select any item and the K would come back). That tells me that setting the character limit for items to 11 and equippable items to 10 doesn’t sound that bad of an idea. It gives us one more character, and that can make all the difference.

But, then again, some glitches may occur doing this. One in particular, the equip screen. It will go to 10, but I’m not sure about 11. I’m sure some kind of glitch would occur, but I’m not completely sure. Mato, could you please do that, and post a screenshot, just so we know what it would look like?

Sorry I’ve been posting a lot of comments today, but I noticed something to do with the “BOTTLE ROCK” glitch.

I scrolled to JEFF’s inventory (he had the BOTTLE ROCK), and then to NESS’s. The K stayed there until I selected NESS’s inventory. The same thing occurred with PALA’s inventory. Extending the character limit might not be as good of an idea as I thought, unless you overlook that glitch.

Another comment?! Jeez, an edit button would really help right about now.

Anyways, lemme get to the point of this comment. Or rather, points.

I noticed that it would probably be possible to extend the character limit for enemies to 12. Any special reason you stuck with 10, Mato?

For Jeff, you have his “Spy” command as “CHEK”. Any reason?

Combining all three patches, the “WHT?” becomes “WHTT”, because in GBAZone it’s “WHAT” with no question mark. Also, in Mato’s Translation, , the PP usage is noted as “USE PP:”, but with all three, it’s noted as “USE SE”. This is because in GBAZone, the two are swapped to “PP USE:”.

One last thing.

Like when you select “SHOT”, “CHEK” also gets messed up. It turns into “UTOK”, with only the “UTO” being highlighted (I assume it is part of “AUTO”). This can probably be fixed similar to the “SHOT” glitch.

Also Mato, question. Poo’s ability is “Mirror”, but the limit is four characters. What did you put? “MIRR”, maybe? Or something like “COPY”?

I pretty much have the M2 stuff set in stone now – I made some changes a while ago from what’s in this early patch (like CHEK to SPY) but I don’t have the time or energy to do any more. When I release the tools you’ll be free to edit the stuff how you want, so no worries there.

It’s very important to realize that it’s not smart to mix and match patches. The moment you do, bugs WILL happen, as you’ve seen.

You’re gonna release tools to let us edit the game the way we want?! 😀

You’re my hero!!!

I know the translation of the MOTHER 2 part of the game is really hard, but I’ve seen the preview video of the Mother 3 translation page, and it seem’s JeffMan has done some mayor work there: he already inserted a VWF in the game, and put some SNES Earthbound text into the game. So, can’t he just take the script out of Earthbound and insert it into Mother 1+2? As I said, I’m pretty dumb for these hacking stuff, but maybe it can be done. A retranslated Mother 2 can come later.
It would be really cool to have the whole Mother series the way Itoi intended them on the GBA.

Good point, Rock.

I don’t really care which way the game is translated, as long as it’s in English, and I can play all the way through it as if it were EarthBound.

Though, thinking up the suggestions for the item and enemy names was fun. It’s great that Mato’s gonna release tools to let us edit the game we want; that pleases everyone, since they can change it to what they feel looks/seems best.

And, just to make sure, the patch is almost complete, so you don’t need more suggestions, right? Because, IMO, it’s fun helping you with the patch by giving suggestions.

Another question. Are you going to translate the PSI power description boxes, or will you include that capability in the tools you are making? Example:
PK ROCKIN
ALL ENEM.
USE PP:##
@NESS’S ATTK PK POWER
@A WAVE OF PK ENERGY
THAT
DOES ABOUT ### HP DMG

(I thought up that on my own, and it doesn’t go beyond the japanese characters already there. I have more, for like PK FLASH, PK FIRE, PK FREEZE, etc., but I won’t waste comment space if you don’t need them)
And what about the item descriptions?

Rock: Jeff managed to get a VWF sort of working, but the amount of work to fully hack the game would probably be as much, if not more, than the amount of work it took to release the Mother 3 patch. EB’s script format is absolutely insane to work with, so it’s not a matter of simply copying the data over – if it were that easy it would’ve already been done in the 8 years since the game was released 😛

Zunar: I basically only translated names, terms, lists, that sort of stuff. I didn’t translate any meaty text, for the most part it’s unnecessary in a patch like this and it’s also a lot more work than one might think.

Well, could you create that capability in your tools? I’d like to do that.

Oh, ok then. I knew I was missing something when I asked that. If it harder than Mother 3, it’s definitely not worth it, people have already played the game in the SNES. Even though it would be awesome to have it on a GBA, it not worth the effort.

*whisper* Even though someone could port the SNES Earthbound ROM to the GBA….*whisper*

Oops, I did it again. Nevermind…..

It would be possible to port EarthBound to the GBA?! Could someone please do that? That would be awesome!

Well, ITS possible, I just don’t know how hard it is. Many SNES games were ported to the GBA, such as Rockman & Forte, Donkey Kong Country, and many other. Obviously, Mother 2 was also ported (somewhat poorly, though), that’s what we got in Mother 1+2.
There’s an SNES emulator for GBA, but it kind of sucks.
It’s an amazing accomplishment, though. Many people believed it would never happen. But, that emulator will never have sound. You cannot fully see the screen. It slowdowns at many points. The battles against bosses have garbled backgrounds.
So, basically, you can play Earthbound on the GBA, but I can’t fully enjoy it that way.
I’m sticking with Mato’s patch for Mother 1+2, even though the script will probably never get translated.

Yeah, too bad. Maybe Nintendo will someday port EarthBound to the GBA, so it’ll be good. Maybe even make an EarthBound 0+1, perhaps, I dunno.

We can dream, can’t we? 😉

For the GBA? I don’t think so. Maaaaybe they will release Earthbound on the VC someday. Although they could release a translated version of Mother 1+2 through the DSware system. But we’re talking about Nintendo here, they probably forgot the series even existed. Well, maybe not, but they’re not releasing any new MOTHER games, and even if they did, they are not coming out of Japan. It’s up to cool Rambo-type guys like Mato to do the dirty job. And sometimes, the job is just too hard to do, and it isn’t even worth the effort.

True. But I hope Mato will make his tools so that we could do some stuff that he doesn’t necessarily want to, like translating the PSI power descriptions. I would like to do that if Mato doesn’t. And the item descriptions. The latter will take a lot longer, but I still want to do it.

The tools I release will only translate the stuff I translate – if you want to translate stuff I haven’t then you’ll have to find the addresses of the text in the ROM – which isn’t hard, it’s mostly basic ROM hacking 101 type stuff.

Basically, my tools won’t translate all the M2 text, but I made it so it’ll be easy for people to edit new stuff easily, they just gotta locate the text themselves.

OK. Is there any website we can go to that’ll teach us about ROM hacking like that?

About the tools… you’re saying it’s basically going to be like an EarthBound text editor, and you have to find which text is what? That seems a little difficult, being that it is in Japanese.

@TheZunar123: Not exactly. Mato said that we have to find the addresses in the ROM. In the SNES Earthbound Text Editor, the addresses are already found, that’s why we can edit the text easily.
Think about it this way.
The Earthbound Text Editor knows were to search in the Earthbound ROM in order to find the text you will edit.
Mato’s MOTHER 1+2 Tool doesn’t know were to find the whole script. Mato’s MOTHER 1+2 Tool only knows were the Items and Menu text is. By finding the addresses, and inputting them in the editor, you’ll be “teaching” the editor were to find the text, so, once the tool knows were the text is, it will allow you to edit it.
Was that very explanation-like? I’m sorry if it was.
I wasn’t even sure until I did some Google research, so maybe I’m wrong with something.

@Mato: I have a doubt. Your tool can edit every kind of text there is in the ROM? Because I heard that, all the game text is compressed in different ways (If I recall correctly, there’s even text compressed in the same way as map data). So, If I found the addresses for every single line in the script, will your tool be able to edit it all?

So… how would you find the addresses in the ROM? Search through it manually? And would it be possible to “name” the addresses so you’ll know what they are, or give them some kind of special markings?

I think you can find them using a Hex editor and browsing through the ROM until you find something that looks like text.
That brings to my mind…. as an extra, Mato could give us a little tutorial on how to find addresses by ourselves. That’d be nice.

Yes, that would be great. What do you say, Mato?

Also, one more thing. If someone was to have enough time and patience, they could translate the whole game using your editor, right Mato?

Technically it’d be possible to translate most of the text in the game with it, but it’d take a TON of time and technical prowess. EB’s text system is INSANE, and what’s worse is that it’s still insane in M1+2 but this time in a different format. But with enough drive, yeah, it’d probably be possible to translate the entire game script. It’d probably take you a few years and a steep learning curve though.

As for tutorials, there are a zillion of them out there for learning the basics of ROM hacking. A good starting point is here: http://www.romhacking.net/start/ and then check out many of the links there as well as documents in the documents section of the site.

I realize this might be a dumb question Mato, but how hard would it be to hack the Command box to allow for one more character? It’s probably insane, and I’m just wondering because ITEMS, EQUIP, and STATE look better (IMO) than ITEM, EQUP, and STAT.

But if it’s too much work, don’t worry about it. Maybe one of us can figure it out and do it.

It’d be a lot of very hard work, it doesn’t really make sense for me to spend that much time on something so unimportant :/

I totally understand. I was just curious. But how exactly would you do it?

One other question, Mato. With your hex editor, would it be possible to change the limits of stuff, like the enemy names? As far as I’m concerned, it’s possible to extend the limit of enemy names one (if not two) more letters.

Not really, to do that would require reprogramming. My tool isn’t really a hex editor either, it’s more like a “insert this byte or this text into this address” script.

Oh, ok. Dang, I wish we could do that. It would give us two more characters to work with. Oh well. Maybe if you’re bored one day, you could work on that? Or maybe as an update sorta thing?

Just to clarify Mato, with your script thingy we’ll be able to change stuff like item/enemy names and commands (basically all you translated) as long as they don’t exceed the limits?

Yeah.

Great! I’ll start thinking of some enemy/item names/commands that, IMO, look better to me.

How exactly will your script thing work?

You’ll edit some text files then run a program that’ll insert it into the ROM.

But the tool will only work with the Mother 2 part of the game, or it’ll also work with Mother 1? Because I would love to translate your Mother script in spanish…

It will work with both games, I made the tool nice and easy to use so people could translate M1 into other languages in the first place 😀

So… wait. If you wanted, you could edit the text in Mother 1 with your editor?! Awesome! 😀

And your editor seems very simple, and I like simple. 🙂

One question, Mato. Did you translate the names of the towns in the teleport menu? If not, what’s the limit, and what towns are in EarthBound/Mother 2? I can give you some suggestions.

Yeah, I translated the teleport names, no worries there.

Mato, I tought you were awesome when you released the Mother 3 Fan Translation, now that you’re releasing the Mother 1 retranslation for GBA and you’re letting us edit it….. I don’t know what to say…. your awesomeness can not be measured by human standards. Really.

^ True dat!

i found something small, one the equip screen, you have offence and defense reversed, i went to equip the craked bat, and it said DEF 9 -> 14, where it also said
OFF 4 -> 4 but on the STAT menu it was correct, just thought id point that out

*initiate self correction protocall*
sorry, i mean it said DEF 9 -> 13, not 14
*error corrected*

crap, i spelled *offense* wrong as well

That has already been reported, and fixed.

Mato, one quick thing. I noticed in the beta that Pokey’s name was 90% of the time noted in Japanese, and not English (Example: When he joins you). The same goes for Picky. Did you get around to fixing this?

Those are part of the main script, so no. Like I said, only menus and stuff relating to menus are translated.

Thanks for everything, Mato.

If you didn’t translate those, then any special reason that they’re translated in the Starman Jr fight?

Since they participate in battles, they have their own entries in the enemies/battle participants name list. Look at the names around 0A0-E of this file: http://media.earthboundcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/m2_enemies.txt.gzip

Oh, ok. Interesting.

Also, I just realized that, if you were to extend the character limit of enemies, you could only extend it one more character because you have to have room for the letters at the end that signify which enemy it is.

Unless you moved the enemy name over as far as possible over toward the “TO:”. which would allow for a lot more characters, but I was assume that’s too much work for you. Would it be possible though?

Like I already said a few times, I’ve finished all the work I’m going to do on the M2 part.

Yes, I understand. But would that be possible if someone else wanted to do it?

Anything is possible, it just depends on how much experience you have and how much time you have.

True dat

Miss you Mato