Secret of Mana: VWF - Relocalized

Timbo · January 3, 2019

Secret of Mana is a great game with a poor translation by a terrific translator. I'm not here to talk about how Ted Woolsey didn't really have enough time to do it justice or how great of a job he did considering what he was up against. I'm here to talk about what I did about it and why.

This project started out as me being annoyed the there was a weapon called the "Herald's Sword" that could've been called the "Kusanagi". I thought, I can fix that, it's not that big of a deal. Next thing I know, I'm relocalizing and uncensoring items, weapons, armor, monsters, spells, status messages, things in the script, I'm extracting and relocating the intro, and balancing equipment (in another hack).

Early on, I decided that the only real way to do this project would be to start by getting in touch with FuSoYa and getting his permission to modify his VWF hack. Not only would I need the VWF code, but his text expansion, while a little cringy in places, is still widely considered to be a part of the best version of the game available in English.

While his hack focuses on entirely on the Dialogue assets, my hack expands that to include everything else (and parts of the dialogue as well). Not only does it DE-CAPITALIZE everything, it renames things too. All of the religious references have been restored. "Palaces" and "Stages" are "Shrines" and "Altars". It fixes bugs and typos present in the original game "Weapon Skil" I'm looking at you. I've also made some aesthetic changes as well such as adding spacing between the Weapons and Mana Spirit's and their Levels. Goodbye "6:98DRAGON BUSTER".

You can download the patch here. It is an addendum patch, meaning it needs to be applied on top of FuSoYa's VWF patch which you can find here. Both patches require a headered rom. There is a full list of changes in the zip folder. It is fully compatible with Zhade's Secret of Mana Gameplay Improvement Project, the Item 9 hack, my own Equipment Overhaul hack, and the next version will fully incorporate Kethinov's unreleased fanfares hack.

I've played through it a couple times now At this point I think I've gotten rid of most of the typos. I'm going to give it a few weeks before I properly release it to just in case anyone finds any bugs or typos I may have missed. I really would love some feedback because this is kind of the starter hack for a much bigger Secret of Mana hack I'll be starting on very soon.

Credits:

Spoiler

I want to thank the following individuals:

- FuSoYa for giving me permission to modify his hack (and for making it in the first place).
- Kiyoshi Aman who's Seiken Densetsu 2 Changes page inspired me to expand this project bigger and bigger.
- Justin 3009 for code that realigns the text to add a space between the weapon/elemental's level and name in the Weapon/Magic Skills Screen and for code that removes hardcoded text in the Status Screen allowing Stats to be renamed.
- Hiei- for the Lua Script that allowed me to change the intro.
- Moppu for helping my fix a compatibility issue between this hack and Zhade's awesome Gameplay Improvement Project.
- Most importantly, thanks to my partner in crime, Mziab for the script insertion tools, the tech support, and hot fixes not only for his own stuff but Hiei-'s as well.