Dragonball Z: Hyper Dimension
English Patch
Version 1.00
Initial Release: Jul. 29, 2010
by Twilight Translations
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1. Introduction
2. Development: Programmer Notes (RedComet)
3. Development: Translator Reflection (DarknessSavior)
4. Notes
5. Patch History
6. Credits
7. Acknowledgements

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1. Introduction

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Dragonball Z: Hyper Dimension (referred to as HD from here on) was released in Japan on
March 29, 1996 for the Super Famicom. Besides being the last DBZ entry on the SNES, HD is
also easily the best DBZ fighter released that platform and arguably one of the best DBZ
games released period.

The game features a cast of 10 characters from the DBZ manga/anime along with the play modes
one would expect to find in a fighting game. What makes HD stand out is it's Story Mode,
which is rather text heavy especially compared to other fighting games of the time (and most
modern fighters.)

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2. Development: Programmer Notes (RedComet)

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I blame my friend for this game. Back in high school, we were just two losers who spent our
Saturday nights (until he went off and got a girlfriend, the bastard!) playing video games. 
We were also both DBZ fans and emulation savvy, so naturally we stumbled upon HD and began
playing it and its painful excuse for a translation way more than we probably should have.
We spent literally hours running the same matches over and over via zBattle. Sometimes I'd win,
sometimes he'd win, but the important thing was that it was just FUN!

Like I said, we used the old English patch, which for its time was okay, I guess. Later on once
I started learning about romhacking I took a look at the game, but my skills at the time weren't
up to the task of hacking the game. The problem that hindered the previous effort is that nearly
all of the graphics that needed to be translated were compressed. The font, the character names
in battle and out, everything. Compressed. So yeah, I turned my attention to other projects that
I had on my plate and just sort of forgot about HD altogether for a while.

Fast forward to late June 2008 when I had basically finished hacking Bare Knuckle 3 and was only
waiting for the script to be edited and such. After BK3 and Live-A-Live, I wasn't exactly
interested in jumping head first into my other projects due to the amount of work they would all
need. I was burned out yet still wanted to work on *something*. I'm not even sure how I ended up
deciding on HD. I think it started off with being bored and wondering if I could crack the
compression, although I swear I had looked at it before.

So I tinkered with the game over the next few months and eventually got a VWF up and running in
the story mode text. Now, I hadn't examined any of the other text in the game, but I had assumed
that the menus would be as easy as the story mode text to add a VWF to. I was wrong. Of course,
I didn't realize this before I announced a planned Halloween release. Once I began tackling the
menus, I realized I was in hell. My "vacation" project turned into one of my most challenging to
date. Not because anything was particulary difficult to hack, but because I had never dealt with
variable text and making it work with a VWF before.

The next year or so until about late 2009 were plagued by bugs and lack of time to work and
(often times) motivation to work on HD. I was also drunk a lot. Then things gradually got better
and I started making more progress. Then things in my real life took a nose dive into the pavement
and depression kept me from working. Eventually I managed to suck it up and start working on the
game again and finish up the hacking.

All told, this has been a very interesting project for me personally. I've really grown as a
person due to the events that occurred in my life since this project's inception. That's largely
irrelevant to the patch, but I feel like making note of that for anyone who cares.

In the end, what you're left with is easily the best English patch that is conceivable for
Hyper Dimension. Everyone involved has poured countless hours into this patch's development, and
I hope that it shows through. At the very least, I hope you find this more enjoyable than the
previous ALL-CAPS English patch.

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3. Development: Translator Reflection (DarknessSavior)

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I've always been a DBZ fan. Moreso when I was a kid, but even as I've grown older and realized
the ridiculous things about it (drawn-out fights, heroes always having that last power-up to do
to win the fight, etc), I still love the source material. Hell, I'm still waiting for Dragon
Ball Kai episodes to come out, because it takes out many of the things I disliked about the
original show.

Originally, I was called upon to be an editor for the project, since I was familiar with the
source material enough to make the script sound like it came from the show. However, as I found
myself reading the script, I also started checking out the Japanese original as well. Eventually,
I started retranslating the lines from scratch, and was added as a translator for the project
as well. Tom (of Persona 2: Innocent Sin fame, amongst others) had originally translated the
script, but he did so very quickly, and the script I was editing (which even Tom himself admitted
was full of errors) was only a first draft. However, Tom was hard to get in contact with, so I
had been translating the script for months long before RC managed to track him down. After it
was told to me that the script I was working with was a first draft, it made much more sense,
and Tom happily handed the torch over to me.

The script itself is pretty heavy for a fighting game. And considering it was my first full
translation, it gave me some trouble here and there. It took me quite a few months to translate
it, and then repeatedly edit the script to make sense in English. Thankfully, translator friends
I made in the community were always willing to explain weird grammar whenever I encountered it.
For example, Goku speaks like a country bumpkin. I kid you not. I often found myself stumped at
some of his lines. The end result was eventually that he speaks in a way that might sound a bit
awkward if a normal person were to say it, but it fits Goku's character just right (Example:
"I never thought it possible for Majin Buu to be this friggin' strong"). Out of all of the
lines, I have to say that Vegeta and Cell's lines were the most fun to translate. Their
characters have so much intensity in them. Gotenks was fun too, simply because his lines are
usually pretty nonsensical and rediculous (one line has him proclaiming that he is the
"Reaper of Justice". I about died when I read that).

Probably the least fun part of this project was getting everything to fit on screen. As part
of my editing job, I had to make sure each line did not take up more space than it had. RC wrote
a program to help, and he edited it a few times to make it better suit some of the things I
wanted it to do, but it was still a giant pain in the ass. Once I got used to it, it took less
time, but it's a tedious process. There were some especially terrible strings where the
animations take place during the script (like when Goku becomes a Super Saiyan before fighting
Freeza). My translations would be five or six lines long, and I had to cut them down to four
lines so it would fit on the screen.

Eventually, once all this was done, RC and I would nitpick about anything we didn't like. This
would eventually turn randomly hilarious, as he would come up with something rediculous, throw
it in a screenshot and send it to me. That's where a lot of the blooper screenshots came from.

The game itself is really fun. I remember playing this when I was a teenager, back when the
only translation that was available used a 16x16 all-caps font. It's still just as fun as it
was then, but the translation and hacking work is far improved. And you know you've played a
game too much when you know the AI patterns a little -too- well, or when you playtest the game
and find a bug in the original game code.

Anyway, I put a lot of work into this. I'm quite proud to have finished my first full game
translation, and I hope you enjoy reading the script as much as I enjoyed writing it (and
re-writing it, and re-writing it). :D

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4. Notes

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While testing, DarknessSavior stumbled upon a very interesting bug in the game. During the
special battle with Gotenks in Story Mode, if you allow him to perform his desperation attack,
Gotenks will stop moving. Upon further inspection, we determined that this is a bug in the game
and NOT the patch. I repeat, this occurs in the unaltered Japanese game as well. So, kill Gotenks
quickly and you should be golden.

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5. Patch History

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-Version 1.00

 All the text in the game has been translated. The story mode, versus mode, tournament, etc.
 are complete and in English. There are also VWFs up the wahzoo, so everything should look
 great.

 Included files:

 *dbzhd_100.ips - The English translation.

 There are currently no known bugs in the patch. Please see the notes section above for more
 information on the one known bug in the original game.
 
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6. Credits

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Dragonball Z: Hyper Dimension
Translation Team:

RedComet - Programmer (me)
DarknessSavior- Translator & Editor
Tom - Translator*

Testing and QA Team:

Gideon Zhi
danke

Special Thanks:
Deuce
Throughim
BRPXQZME


*Note: Tom's work does not appear in the patch, but is credited nonetheless. He translated
 the script within a period of 3 days, but there were a few problems with it and a communication
 breakdown facilitated a retranslation of the script. See Translator Reflection above for more.

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7. Acknowledgements

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Ordinarily there would be a list of a handful of special people who have supported the project in
some fashion or another, but I think we covered everyone in the Credits section this time. We
probably didn't. At any rate, all of you both named and unnamed who have helped or supported this
project in some way: Thank you very much.