Drift King 97 Localization by Thomas "Malenko" Carnill
A hobby localization effort to bring Genki's first true 3D Shutokou racing game to the English speaking
community. I am a big fan of the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series and spent a lot of time playing them on
my PS2 and XBOX360 (Import Tuner Challenge).
Tokyo Highway Battle is Western release of this game on the original Sony Playstation , released by Jaelco. In the PSX version almost all of the videos were removed and it doesn't even star the Drift King or Bando; but they do show up in the ending. It was never released on the Saturn in the west so the only way to play it on Saturn prior to this patch was to play it in Japanese.
This is a surprisingly great racing game with a tough language barrier to overcome. So it is my hope that having this game in English will get more people playing it and maybe even trying out the later Genki games.
resources used:
Nanash1's custom LZ toolset GitHub - nanash1/dk_tools: Tools to translate Drift King '97
derek's ByteSearch GitHub - DerekPascarella/ByteSearch: A utility to recursively scan a folder of files for a known byte string.
wxMEdit Hex editor wxMEdit - A Cross-platform Text/Hex Editor
Crystal Tile 2 Crystal Tile 2
Knight0fDragon's SPP Sega Saturn Patcher
Cafe-Alpha's Save Data Manager PPCenter :: Pseudo Saturn Kai
Sonicbot's save game included with Save manager
CRAM2PAL URL needed
Notepad++ Notepad++
ePSXe emulator Welcome to the official ePSXe website
Yaba San Shiro Saturn emulator uoYabause
Matt's Shift-JIS table https://mattsmessyroom.com/uploads/sjis.tbl
Genki Rival Project Shutokō Battle Rival Database Wiki
Thanks to everyone in the Shiro and Sega Xtreme Discords.
Extra special thank yous:
Nanish1 for making the LZ tool just for this game.
Laquerware for translating the spoken dialog in the CPK videos.
Shadowmask for baking in the subtitles to the CPK files.
Yokou Oh-No for translating the genki rival page/driver dialog.
Files changed:
DATA\Pickup.BCH (font tiles)
DATA\PIC.CHR (compressed tiles and textures)
Select.BIN (texture location table and in game text)
Localization notes:
2 fluent Japanese speakers helped with the translations. I took what was given to me and had to make adjustments to make everything fit in the space allotted in the game data files. The adjustments and other changes listed below are why this is a localization and not a translation.
There are grammatical inconsistencies in punctuation. I used punctuation when I could but had to omit it in certain places for the aformentioned space issue. You probably wouldn't have noticed it if I didn't mention it here but now you too can have your OCD triggered like I have. Apostrophes never had a chance.
Dorikin is another way to say Drift King, for simplicity's sake I used Drift King in the localization instead of the term Dorikin. This was done to avoid people asking me what a Dorikin is.
I altered Ray/Rey's text a little to remove the S&M references. Slave became servant and things of that ilk. The sexual inneundo was also toned down. There is a fine line between flirty and creepy.
I altered Brian's text to make it more understandable. Japanese horse racing terms are strange.
I removed Masa and replaced him with Craig Stadler, and all of Craig lines are paraphrased from the Pebble Beach Golf game. Think you get yours inside mine?
In the notes below "refined English" just means using 2 English letters on a single tile. It doesn't mean fancy speakin` with British accents.
Some of the driver dialog was repeated multiple times, I over wrote all the data strings just to make sure I got the right data string.
Lastly, if there is something you reallllllly hate about this localization, you can post in the thread and if its something agree with changing I might do it. That being said, all the hard work has been done and all the tools are readily available for you to make your own translation/localization. My expectation is on YOU to make the changes you want not criticize this patch in an effort to get me to do it.
I will not remove Craig Stadler to make this more of a "vanilla patch". I do understand why people would prefer Masa to be restored but it is work I am not willing to do. I did put Masa's dialog in the project thread so people can see what they are "missing". I did not add Craig just to inject a meme into the game to make a friend laugh. I put him in there because he is the unofficial mascot of Saturn and as a "Thank you" to Pandamonium for the amazing Saturn videos he has made. Craig being in the game has no bearing on the "story" and does not detract from enjoying the game. I do wish I could have put him in the game as a hidden character like I did for NBA Jam, but that just wasn't an option this time.
A hobby localization effort to bring Genki's first true 3D Shutokou racing game to the English speaking
community. I am a big fan of the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series and spent a lot of time playing them on
my PS2 and XBOX360 (Import Tuner Challenge).
Tokyo Highway Battle is Western release of this game on the original Sony Playstation , released by Jaelco. In the PSX version almost all of the videos were removed and it doesn't even star the Drift King or Bando; but they do show up in the ending. It was never released on the Saturn in the west so the only way to play it on Saturn prior to this patch was to play it in Japanese.
This is a surprisingly great racing game with a tough language barrier to overcome. So it is my hope that having this game in English will get more people playing it and maybe even trying out the later Genki games.
Localizing Syutokou_97 / SYUTOKO BATTLE 97 Drift King
Been chipping away at this for a while mostly sorting out the documentation of the data and translating all the text. I don't know why I keep picking games that are so text heavy (something I didn't expect in the racing genre) but I am a HUGE fan of the Genki games, and you can tell they build...
segaxtreme.net
resources used:
Nanash1's custom LZ toolset GitHub - nanash1/dk_tools: Tools to translate Drift King '97
derek's ByteSearch GitHub - DerekPascarella/ByteSearch: A utility to recursively scan a folder of files for a known byte string.
wxMEdit Hex editor wxMEdit - A Cross-platform Text/Hex Editor
Crystal Tile 2 Crystal Tile 2
Knight0fDragon's SPP Sega Saturn Patcher
Cafe-Alpha's Save Data Manager PPCenter :: Pseudo Saturn Kai
Sonicbot's save game included with Save manager
CRAM2PAL URL needed
Notepad++ Notepad++
ePSXe emulator Welcome to the official ePSXe website
Yaba San Shiro Saturn emulator uoYabause
Matt's Shift-JIS table https://mattsmessyroom.com/uploads/sjis.tbl
Genki Rival Project Shutokō Battle Rival Database Wiki
Thanks to everyone in the Shiro and Sega Xtreme Discords.
Extra special thank yous:
Nanish1 for making the LZ tool just for this game.
Laquerware for translating the spoken dialog in the CPK videos.
Shadowmask for baking in the subtitles to the CPK files.
Yokou Oh-No for translating the genki rival page/driver dialog.
Files changed:
DATA\Pickup.BCH (font tiles)
DATA\PIC.CHR (compressed tiles and textures)
Select.BIN (texture location table and in game text)
Localization notes:
2 fluent Japanese speakers helped with the translations. I took what was given to me and had to make adjustments to make everything fit in the space allotted in the game data files. The adjustments and other changes listed below are why this is a localization and not a translation.
There are grammatical inconsistencies in punctuation. I used punctuation when I could but had to omit it in certain places for the aformentioned space issue. You probably wouldn't have noticed it if I didn't mention it here but now you too can have your OCD triggered like I have. Apostrophes never had a chance.
Dorikin is another way to say Drift King, for simplicity's sake I used Drift King in the localization instead of the term Dorikin. This was done to avoid people asking me what a Dorikin is.
I altered Ray/Rey's text a little to remove the S&M references. Slave became servant and things of that ilk. The sexual inneundo was also toned down. There is a fine line between flirty and creepy.
I altered Brian's text to make it more understandable. Japanese horse racing terms are strange.
I removed Masa and replaced him with Craig Stadler, and all of Craig lines are paraphrased from the Pebble Beach Golf game. Think you get yours inside mine?
In the notes below "refined English" just means using 2 English letters on a single tile. It doesn't mean fancy speakin` with British accents.
Some of the driver dialog was repeated multiple times, I over wrote all the data strings just to make sure I got the right data string.
Lastly, if there is something you reallllllly hate about this localization, you can post in the thread and if its something agree with changing I might do it. That being said, all the hard work has been done and all the tools are readily available for you to make your own translation/localization. My expectation is on YOU to make the changes you want not criticize this patch in an effort to get me to do it.
I will not remove Craig Stadler to make this more of a "vanilla patch". I do understand why people would prefer Masa to be restored but it is work I am not willing to do. I did put Masa's dialog in the project thread so people can see what they are "missing". I did not add Craig just to inject a meme into the game to make a friend laugh. I put him in there because he is the unofficial mascot of Saturn and as a "Thank you" to Pandamonium for the amazing Saturn videos he has made. Craig being in the game has no bearing on the "story" and does not detract from enjoying the game. I do wish I could have put him in the game as a hidden character like I did for NBA Jam, but that just wasn't an option this time.
