Robo Racing an Empty Jetbike? (V.Net Dash Paper ROM Magazine Scans)

[ZeaLitY]

Great as always. I'll get this in the encyclopedia. That's awesome about Slash and Flea. Between that and their appearance in Chrono Cross, plus the "outside arts" thing in the Japanese version of Chrono Trigger regarding Slash, I feel like they're really mysterious and interesting characters.

Didn't spot any other differences than what you found. I wonder if the Ayla, Marle, and Lucca sketch was truly drawn by Toriyama, since it basically only appears here?

Edit: I should ask, too—would DeepL be interested, or be able to comment on the going rate for requisitioning fan translations? I'm literally ready to earmark money. There are a million things I'm not satisfied with on the Chrono front (the perpetual, prophesied lack of free time to ever do another ROM hack being chief among them), but Material Requiring Translation is something that can absolutely be done, even while I'm away. I was thinking of just earmarking my own money to start paying for it, commission-style.

[Reld]

Great as always. I'll get this in the encyclopedia. That's awesome about Slash and Flea. Between that and their appearance in Chrono Cross, plus the "outside arts" thing in the Japanese version of Chrono Trigger regarding Slash, I feel like they're really mysterious and interesting characters.

I don't know what you're referring to here with the "outside arts" thing, but I'm intrigued. Is this a dialogue translation difference? I know there's a big script comparison document that I haven't really read through. I agree about them being mysterious and interesting.

Didn't spot any other differences than what you found. I wonder if the Ayla, Marle, and Lucca sketch was truly drawn by Toriyama, since it basically only appears here?

I've been wondering that for a while myself about V-Jump exclusive "official" art in general, like the March '95 cover art. It's definitely done in a style that's meant to look like Toriyama's, but that cover art in particular is way "cleaner" than the other official CT art that we know for sure was done by Toriyama. It doesn't have the ink and watercolor physical media grunge to it (although this Ayla, Marle, and Lucca art kinda does). I'm not looking at it right now, but I think the March cover illustration is credited to Banana Grove Studio, which I don't really know anything about. I kind of suspect that the demand for "Toriyama-style" art for V-Jump around that time was higher than the man himself could be reasonably asked to handle, and that there were multiple artists filling that role at times. I'm really just speculating though.

Edit: I should ask, too—would DeepL be interested, or be able to comment on the going rate for requisitioning fan translations? I'm literally ready to earmark money. There are a million things I'm not satisfied with on the Chrono front (the perpetual, prophesied lack of free time to ever do another ROM hack being chief among them), but Material Requiring Translation is something that can absolutely be done, even while I'm away. I was thinking of just earmarking my own money to start paying for it, commission-style.

I'm not entirely sure if I'm misunderstanding a clever turn of phrase on your part, or if I've accidentally given the impression that "DeepL" is some friend of mine who translates things for me sometimes. DeepL is just a machine translator like Google Translate, but it does a much better job most of the time. https://www.deepl.com/en/translator I've been considering attempting some more "scanlation" style edits of some of the material requiring translation, but I'm always a little hesitant because 1. I rely heavily on machine translation, and 2. it's a lot of work just transcribing it all to be translated. I also don't know if anyone even enjoys translations in that format versus a plain text transcript. I do, but others might just find it inconvenient.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

I also don't know if anyone even enjoys translations in that format versus a plain text transcript. I do, but others might just find it inconvenient.

Not that it amounts to much, but I do!

[Kodokami]

Something else that occurred to me while putting these scans together is that I think the name of the Blackbird is a pun. There are a few sections in these scans that are labeled "KuroTori Check" (クロトリチェック). "KuroTori" is just short for Chrono Trigger (Kuro[no] Tori[gaa]). These sort of shortened portmanteau titles are pretty common in Japanese media, but I didn't get it at first so I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out what "kurotori" meant. While I was trying to figure it out it occurred to me that "kuro" in Japanese means black, and "tori" means bird. So I went and looked up the Japanese name for the Blackbird. It's 黒鳥号 or "kurotorigou". I guess the "gou" on the end makes it "the Black Swan" rather than just the black bird? Regardless, I doubt it's a coincidence that the game "KuroTori" features a vehicle called "kurotorigou". I think it's a sort of meta pun on the game's title.

I love little word plays like this. Wish English had a more elegant way to translate such things.

[Reld]

So... I was wrong about Melchior's Hut not being in the Prerelease/Sample ROM. To be honest I've never really played with it much because this site has covered it so thoroughly, but today I finally tried messing with some of the "Explore The Prerelease" cheat codes on here and headed over to Medina. Melchior's Hut is there. It's just where the Medina Inn is supposed to be.

More interestingly, the Ozzie XIII/Weiner/Ketchappa scene in the mayor's manor is also intact, not just the dialogue.

Code: [Select]

Cheat codes to activate Ozzie XIII/Weiner/Ketchappa events:
F7211DA5
F7211E9F

[Vehek]

Yeah, almost all the dialogue in Medina, except for Melchior/Bosch IIRC, is misaligned in the prototype ROM. I once made a patch to adjust all the stringbanks for the area based on what was the "correct" string index for obvious lines like the innkeeper. That's where the attributions in the  translated pre-release script come from.

[Reld]

To be clear, I didn't do anything but repoint the event data. I didn't do anything with string indexes. There are cheat codes on this site to do the same for the other Medina locations, but not this one, so I made my own.

[Vehek]

Those codes for the elder's house are listed there, just under "Misc events".

[Reld]

That's weird... why misc. events? I see it down there now, but the way it's written how would anybody even know where to go to activate it?

[ZeaLitY]

The Slash note comes from the released Japanese version:

Soy Sauce is literally termed 'outside method sword fighter'. Two dictionary entries might apply to 外法: one is a Buddhist term for heresy, the other is a sort of demonic arts linked to tengu or using skulls.

~

I see, gotcha. Well, good to have DeepL in our pocket. I'll keep thinking about how best to attract a guest translator for the heavier lifts.