Recent Posts

51

Turbo/PCE Game/Tool Development / Re: Translating Necros Fortress

« Last post by washbear on August 26, 2025, 01:23:50 PM »

This one should be relatively easy to translate, since it just uses hiragana and katakana, with no kanji.

Yeah, the hardest part is keeping the jokes while keeping the ROM size within acceptable limits. This game is very silly.

52

Turbo/PCE Game/Tool Development / Re: Translating Necros Fortress

« Last post by Naniyue on August 26, 2025, 12:25:05 AM »

This one should be relatively easy to translate, since it just uses hiragana and katakana, with no kanji.

53

Turbo/PCE Game/Tool Development / Re: Translating Necros Fortress

« Last post by washbear on August 25, 2025, 04:42:03 AM »

Oh neat, are you Pennywise? Saw this on another forum. This is one of many games I have an interest in. There's three things I'm really hoping for though, that I hope will be tweaked. The flashing in the original game seems out of control and needs to be toned down somehow, that's the main thing. But it seems like the battles need to be sped up a bit in general, and the encounter rate looks unusually high. Are these things that you have done or are planning to do?

I'm not Pennywise, would you mind dropping a link in a PM?

For the gameplay changes, I haven't dug that deeply into code yet except for patching in English text. I'm aware of the problem with the flashing though, disabling it could maybe be added as an option. I'd be cautious modifying the encounter rate since such things can effect game balance and level progression - maybe a separate romhack could be produced (or again, as an option).

My notes and some basic tools for working with this game can be found on my GitHub: https://github.com/alarixnia/necros-fortress-en

54

Console Chat / Re: Smelling my own farts? aka Turbo games playlists

« Last post by Mathius on August 24, 2025, 06:41:45 PM »

Played through Last Alert and Final Zone II
Last Alert is flawed but a fun romp, i'd definitely revisit it in a few years
Final Zone II has much snappier gameplay but it feels too short. Some of the stages don't even have a real boss 

I've actually never played Final Zone II. At least not more than a few minutes. With most of the same "amazing" voice actors from Last Alert, you'd think I would be all over this. hahah.

Do you have a copy of Final Zone II? I have a US copy that I'd let you borrow for a while if you're interested.

55

Turbo/PCE Game/Tool Development / Re: Translating Necros Fortress

« Last post by Mathius on August 24, 2025, 06:38:23 PM »

I've surprisingly never heard of this one before. Looking forward to it.

56

Turbo/PCE Game/Tool Development / Re: Translating Necros Fortress

« Last post by Paranoia Dragon on August 24, 2025, 03:35:23 AM »

Necros Fortress is a 1990 turn-based RPG on HuCard. It's based on a line of candy toys, but it's actually a quite competent game designed by the studio that'd later do the Far East of Eden and Sakura Wars series. Probably the most notable feature for the time is that it has very fancy battle animations. There's seven chapters and a lot of playable characters: the Mercenary, Knight, Amazon, Magician, Elf, Samurai, Beserker, Dwarf, and Marine.

I've got a CoreGrafx, but no CD system for it. I'm a shmup-head, but also a RPG-head, and wanted a turn-based RPG on HuCard. I've got quite a lot of experience reverse engineering PC games, but never did a romhack before. The first step was figuring out the character set, which seems to be a one-byte encoding with uppercase latin, digits, hiragana, and katakana, with a combining character for dakuten marks. Eventually lowercase Latin characters should replace the Japanese ones, and the rendering width should be reduced a bit.  I uh... don't speak Japanese. But a lot of game translators in the 90s didn't speak English. Maybe it's more authentic that way.

Here's a few screenshots of what I have so far:

Oh neat, are you Pennywise? Saw this on another forum. This is one of many games I have an interest in. There's three things I'm really hoping for though, that I hope will be tweaked. The flashing in the original game seems out of control and needs to be toned down somehow, that's the main thing. But it seems like the battles need to be sped up a bit in general, and the encounter rate looks unusually high. Are these things that you have done or are planning to do?

57

Turbo/PCE Game/Tool Development / Re: Translating Necros Fortress

« Last post by Necromancer on August 22, 2025, 07:48:46 PM »

Ah, neato.  I love me some translated RPG goodies.  I'm not very familiar with this one (the language barrier probably scares me off) but I'm looking forward to giving it a go.

Thanks for the effort and for posting about your project.  Keep us updated!

58

TG/PCE Repair/Mod Discussion / Re: Famicom to PCE Controller Adapter?

« Last post by Necromancer on August 22, 2025, 07:45:21 PM »

Didn't someone make such an adapter for (or modded) a hori nes pad for pce use?  I'm old and forgetting shit, and search is coming up empty...

59

Turbo/PCE Game/Tool Development / Translating Necros Fortress

« Last post by washbear on August 22, 2025, 06:26:36 AM »

Necros Fortress is a 1990 turn-based RPG on HuCard. It's based on a line of candy toys, but it's actually a quite competent game designed by the studio that'd later do the Far East of Eden and Sakura Wars series. Probably the most notable feature for the time is that it has very fancy battle animations. There's seven chapters and a lot of playable characters: the Mercenary, Knight, Amazon, Magician, Elf, Samurai, Beserker, Dwarf, and Marine.

I've got a CoreGrafx, but no CD system for it. I'm a shmup-head, but also a RPG-head, and wanted a turn-based RPG on HuCard. I've got quite a lot of experience reverse engineering PC games, but never did a romhack before. The first step was figuring out the character set, which seems to be a one-byte encoding with uppercase latin, digits, hiragana, and katakana, with a combining character for dakuten marks. Eventually lowercase Latin characters should replace the Japanese ones, and the rendering width should be reduced a bit.  I uh... don't speak Japanese. But a lot of game translators in the 90s didn't speak English. Maybe it's more authentic that way.

Here's a few screenshots of what I have so far:

60

TG/PCE Repair/Mod Discussion / Famicom to PCE Controller Adapter?

« Last post by rasterradio on August 22, 2025, 05:30:49 AM »

I've got an awesome ASCII Famicom stick that I'd like to use with the PCE. I understand the two systems handle input signals differently, but has anyone tried/know of a converter to use a controller on both systems?