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PostPosted: May 12th, 2015, 12:51 pm 
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Recently, i started playing some visual novels on PC-88 (also PC-98), and i noticed two things:
1) Most of those games offer an option (once you boot it up), which the first one is to simply start the game from the beginning, and the other one is "to pick up where you saved"..even if it's the first time that you're playing.
Image
What is this?
Now, my japanese isn't great, but from what i could understand, it's basically a start or resume screen. (maybe im wrong?)
But that's not the first game that got that kind of stuff.
I've also played YU-NO on PC98, and it got the same kind of screen: you can either start (with the prologue and stuff), or just go straight after the prolugue (and it gives you a lot of stuff in your inventory that you're not supposed to have at the beginning of the game). (i dont have a screenshot right now, sadly)
Why this happens? It's not a bad thing, since it drops you in the middle of the game, making you skip intros that you may already seen, but why it's like a resume button if you didn't even made a save before?

2) The font.
This only applies to PC-88 games. (only kanji)
This is an example:
Image
Take a look at the 4) option: what is that?
Im using the google translate "write on screen" thing to recognise kanji that i dont know, and basically i have no idea on what to draw there.
What im supposed to draw (or to interpret) when there are those big white spaces?
There is anyway to change the font to something more noob-friendly?
(There is any translation for JESUS on the PC-88/MSX? I tried the famicom translation but it's not really that good)

Thanks!


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PostPosted: May 12th, 2015, 3:09 pm 
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The first screen, as you have guessed, offers you two options. The first one is to start from the very beginning, and the second one is to start from the last savestate. Now, why does it work if you haven't played this game yet? Well, the reason is that the image file you got was from a "used game", and so it still has the save files from the previous owner.

The fourth option of the second screen has the word 倉庫, which means storehouse or warehouse. Low-resolution fonts are troublesome unless you already know the words, so maybe you should try other games to get better at japanese before playing this one. I don't know if you can override those fonts, but maybe the game has a port in a machine with better resolution. Is the screenshot from "the 4th Unit", perhaps? I really want to play those series.


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PostPosted: May 12th, 2015, 4:42 pm 
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DrJones wrote:
The first screen, as you have guessed, offers you two options. The first one is to start from the very beginning, and the second one is to start from the last savestate. Now, why does it work if you haven't played this game yet? Well, the reason is that the image file you got was from a "used game", and so it still has the save files from the previous owner.

The fourth option of the second screen has the word 倉庫, which means storehouse or warehouse. Low-resolution fonts are troublesome unless you already know the words, so maybe you should try other games to get better at japanese before playing this one. I don't know if you can override those fonts, but maybe the game has a port in a machine with better resolution. Is the screenshot from "the 4th Unit", perhaps? I really want to play those series.


That's exactly what came up in my mind after thinking about it, but i didn't knew that saves were saved directly on the floppy rather than the computer itself (i used a very few floppys before, but i never used a very old computer, so im still kinda new to this).
Thanks you for the answer and the translation by the way!
I could never identify those kanji, but sadly there are more of them, but i will try to to interpet those white spaces as blocks and see what i can do.
It got ported to MSX, FM-7 and SHARP, but the font it's all the same.
The screenshots are from the game "JESUS" by Enix, you can take a better look at it in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ9tS0ka2hk
It's awesome, i would love to play and understand what's going on, but with the language barrier it's a little difficult for now


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PostPosted: May 12th, 2015, 5:27 pm 
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If it helps, here's the script http://park8.wakwak.com/~teiou_tuushin/rpg/jesus.html

Lily0 wrote:
I tried the famicom translation but it's not really that good

I liked it :(


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PostPosted: May 12th, 2015, 5:55 pm 
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Trickless wrote:
If it helps, here's the script http://park8.wakwak.com/~teiou_tuushin/rpg/jesus.html

Lily0 wrote:
I tried the famicom translation but it's not really that good

I liked it :(


OMG thanks you!
That is really helpful, so i dont have to spend 30 minutes trying to figure out what kind of kanji im looking at, and i can use it to improve my japanese.
About the famicom version..it's a personal taste i guess, the artwork looks better IMO in the PC-88 version, but then again, i really didn't finished it, so i can't judge :mrgreen:


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PostPosted: May 12th, 2015, 7:40 pm 
You know, some of the PC88 games also have a PC98 version.
With a few exceptions, the content is basically the same, only the font is actually readable.
In case you have a hard time trying to decipher what the hell is written, it may be a good idea to check them out!
If you are looking for the sequel, Jesus 2 falls into this case.

And just to throw my two cents on trying to figure out those kanjis in the PC88 games, I think you should focus on their radicals.
If you know a few (ok, not quite a few), it may be easier to figure them out while search for them.
It may be too troublesome at first, but as a studying method it may work :)

(By the way, after months just sucking your content without saying thanks for it, I hope to be of some use here, folks.)

Cheers!


Last edited by kaze hakase on May 16th, 2015, 7:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: May 14th, 2015, 1:13 pm 
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2) The font

If you enable the scanline option, you should be able to read the kanjis more easily.

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