FPJ
Student
I finally acquired an Alien Challenge board so I can play on real hardware instead of the Pandora Box. I think the version I have is the World version, though it is hard to tell. The story crawl, warning screen and menus are in English. However, the important stuff, the character names and victory quotes, are still in Chinese. It ultimately doesn't affect much, but I want to play with all the amazing names like Dougster and Stevareno! That's a big part of the experience for me.
I checked the manual for the dip switch settings and none of them are language settings.
I found the MAME romsets for both the Chinese and World versions and went through every ROM doing a binary comparison to try and figure out which one might be different and maybe have the English names on it. They all tested identical. I opened up the Pandora Box and copied the ROM from it because the names are in English on there, but those tested identical too. Even if I did figure it out, I'm not sure I'd be able to swap one of the ROMs because most of them are custom.
I did find something on MAME Testers mentioning that running the World ROM in MAME gives Chinese names, but running it on a different emulator gives English.
https://mametesters.org/view.php?id=8885
I also looked at the notes on the MAME files on github (under the Lord of Gun set) and saw this:
"- aliencha: original videos at
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRHb3WTGuvk
,
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RaCpHwyS78
.
The latter shows English text and a 1995 copyright (instead of 1994) in a different font.
- aliencha: routine at A34 - english/chinese text, A38 - english/chinese names, A3C - Alien Challenge/Round House Rumble title"
But I don't quite understand what that means.
All this makes me think that both languages are on there and there must be some way to get it to display the English names instead. I accessed the expanded test menu, which you do by holding buttons 1-3 while it boots into the test mode, but it just gives you access to more diagnostic tests. No settings to change on there.
I know it's highly improbable because no one else cares about this game, but does anyone know anything about this? Or have some ideas? Or can tell me what "routine at A38 - english/chinese names" is referring to?
Thanks for any help.
I checked the manual for the dip switch settings and none of them are language settings.
I found the MAME romsets for both the Chinese and World versions and went through every ROM doing a binary comparison to try and figure out which one might be different and maybe have the English names on it. They all tested identical. I opened up the Pandora Box and copied the ROM from it because the names are in English on there, but those tested identical too. Even if I did figure it out, I'm not sure I'd be able to swap one of the ROMs because most of them are custom.
I did find something on MAME Testers mentioning that running the World ROM in MAME gives Chinese names, but running it on a different emulator gives English.
https://mametesters.org/view.php?id=8885
I also looked at the notes on the MAME files on github (under the Lord of Gun set) and saw this:
"- aliencha: original videos at
,
.
The latter shows English text and a 1995 copyright (instead of 1994) in a different font.
- aliencha: routine at A34 - english/chinese text, A38 - english/chinese names, A3C - Alien Challenge/Round House Rumble title"
But I don't quite understand what that means.
All this makes me think that both languages are on there and there must be some way to get it to display the English names instead. I accessed the expanded test menu, which you do by holding buttons 1-3 while it boots into the test mode, but it just gives you access to more diagnostic tests. No settings to change on there.
I know it's highly improbable because no one else cares about this game, but does anyone know anything about this? Or have some ideas? Or can tell me what "routine at A38 - english/chinese names" is referring to?
Thanks for any help.