This is a place to develop fan translations for Dragon Quest Monsters 2: Cobi and Tara's Marvelous Mysterious Key for several different languages. You can either contribute to this project or install the latest version on your 3DS right now.
Introduction
Hi, after I spent some time figuring out how the binJ file format storing messages in this game works, I created BinJ Editor 3DS, an editor for .binJ and .e files with custom decoding tables. This is the main tool required for translating the game. This thread and the linked repository is the place where everyone (including YOU) can help to translate this game, not only to english, but german, spanish, french, italian, etc. I would love to see a fully translated version in a few months or years - we did it!!
Project Backstory
After the team completed work on Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 back in 2016, we took a well rested break!
It wasn't too long afterwards that Joker 3 Pro was released, and we were back to work. In the middle of working on J3Pro, Z6n4 thought to themself, "Why work on a small story extension? We have a whole other game out there that hasn't been completed yet!"
At this point, the team decided to shift their focus towards working on Dragon Quest Monsters 2.
Starting work on this in 2017, the game's underlying framework required little hacking working beyond what the team initially accomplished with Terry's Wonderland 3D, and in no time, they had full scripts of the game ready for translation.
Gerb, a well known translator on the scene who most recently completed work on Slime Mori Mori 3, offered to help. Within no time, Gerb had ripped through majority of the script, translating both Cobi & Tara's unique dialogue scripts!
Z6n4, however, ran into a major hurdle around this time. Completely stuck with a limitation built into the game by its original developers, the team could not show more than 50 or so characters on screen during any dialog sequence.
While this might have been fine for japanese language, this would not work for a full blown, detailed, english script. Slowly, Z6n4 looked into this problem, but found no success. The project, to many, seemed like it was destined to never be completed...
Meanwhile, in 2020, a talented developer known as Ich_73 surfaced in our translation scene. They built a remarkable translation tool suite, and offered everything up to the public via github, in the hopes of crowd sourcing and encouraging work on multi-languages for both DQM TW3D and DQM2 3DS.
They weren't satisfied stopping there, however. Ich_73 decided to tackle the DQM 2 translation all by themselves. They ended up running into THE SAME roadblock that Z6n4 was stumped by.
Fortunately, another extremely bright individual going by the name of Colmines92 would also surface. Colmines92 contacted both of us, and in seemly no time, broke right through this barrier that had stumped us both for quite some time.
From this point forward, the 4 of us united and decided that, albeit being a small team... We could finally get this done! Pooling together everything we had all completed to date, we set out in the last quarter of 2020 to finish this thing once and for all.
Several months later, we released the translation on 4/1/2021!
From the bottom of our hearts, we'd like to thank everyone who kept us motivated, stayed excited, will play our fan-translation & keep the scene alive.
- Z6n4
Faqs
- How do I use this!? Please consult the linked github wiki's above. You will need to educate yourself on how to apply a translation/patch to a 3DS game using either a modded 3ds or the emulator citra.
- Where do I get the game!? We listed some links below. Purchase a physical copy of the game, and then you can follow our tutorial on how to extract it, and modify your files.
- How do I get the v1.1 update!? 3DS are region locked. You will need a japanese 3DS or way to communicate with the japanese eShop from your 3DS. If you are using a USA region 3DS, when prompted to update, the update WILL NOT WORK (it won't even download). You can extract the update using a japanese 3DS (to a CIA file). Consult our wiki for further questions.
- Do I need version 1.0 or 1.1? The base game, of any 3ds game is v1.0. At the moment, this game has 1 official update (v1.1) that is required to go online with it. The version number of our patch has NOTHING to do with which version of the game you are using. HOWEVER, make sure you are using the right patch for the game version you are playing.
- Can I play online with this patch?Yep! As long as you have an official 3DS, you should have no problems, with it running on the latest firmware.
- Can I use my existing saves?Yes. But all monster names and character names will still be whatever you set them to be, in japanese when you originally played.
- What's the MD5 Hash for the v1.1 update?760B11D9BEFDAE746AE1C076A01BA75C