SUDDEN DESU

disassemblies・digital archaeology・data preservation

Update to the Chrono Trigger unpointed text recovery

posted 2015-08-11 by Ryou

Almost two years after its release, we have an update to the Chrono Trigger unpointed text document!

If you're not aware of this, the Chrono Trigger review prototype has a bunch of unused text which is partially unreadable due to the text using older, undefined versions of the game-specific character encoding. In particular, the kanji are incorrect. By using context clues and knowledge of Japanese language to guess what the missing words are, we've been able to get some interesting translations that point to some different story scenarios.

But for as much as I was able to translate, there was still plenty of text that was too vague to fill in the kanji blanks.

Then, @felineki surprised me on twitter a few weeks back with an announcement that he/she had some new entries for Table B! I plugged in the new kanji and the everything looks good. This patches up many sentences in the early Millennial Fair scene so that they are now readable. Some examples:

(ルッカ)「 キライじゃないわよ、
  わたしも、お祭りは。
Lucca 'It's not that I hate fairs.
  でも、もっと いろんな[発][明][品]とか
  出てると うれしいんだけどな。
I'd just be happier if there were some exhibits on new inventions.
男「 若いうちから [酒]なんか[飲]んでると、
ろくな人間に なりゃせんぞ!
うひょひょひょ……、ヒヤック!
Man 'I've been drinking since I was young,
I just can't be a decent person!
Uhohoho... *hick!*
少女「 あら、(クロノ)。
また (ルッカ)の ヘンな[発][明]の
じっけんだいに されたんですって?
あなたも たいへんねー。
Girl 'Hey, Crono.
Is it true that Lucca's down in her
weird invention lab again?
You're in trouble.

Judging from their twitter, @felineki is either a native Japanese speaker, or at least much more familiar with it than me, so I trust the work they've done. Unfortunately, there are no amazing discoveries beyond what we already had, but it's still nice to have a more complete translation.

The new version can be found on its page or directly here.

SUDDEN DESU Mk.5