Ganso Jajamaru-kun

What’s translated

• Title logo: GANSO in a tilted black badge (as 元祖 is), JAJAMARU in the original’s bubble lettering, and a small KUN.
• Chapter scrolls on the map: HILL VILLAGE, GRAVEYARD, CASTLE TOWN, GIANT SHIP, ANCIENT TOMB.
• Enemy introductions before every stage (20) and boss introductions (5): the name and 登場 become, for example, “OYUKI / APPEARS!”, set sideways to read top to bottom in the original’s vertical columns.
• Continue screen: CONTINUE / YES / NO.
• The ending’s 完: THE END.
• Already in English in the original and left alone: PUSH START, the copyright, the HUD (SCORE, TIME, PAUSE), BONUS, SCENE n START and GAME OVER. The opening and the cutscenes have no words.

Names: the series’ characters use their official English spellings from Ninja JaJaMaru: The Great Yokai Battle +Hell (2023): Oyuki, Kurobee, Kakutan, Onigiri, Karakassa, Hedobon and Pinbo, with JaJaMaru, Princess Sakura, Gama Pakkun and Namazu Dayu. The WonderSwan-only yokai are romanized as English yokai books do: Yakubyogami, Noppera, Chochin, Nekomata, Higuruma, Kappa, Maomei, Unibozu, Daruma, Yukinko, Nuppeppo and Dotchin, and 謎の八面体 is the Mysterious Octahedron. The bosses keep their puns: Grooming (毛づくろい, a huge furry beast), Orb Dangler (タマダラシ, a bunch of dangling spirit orbs), Pestmaru (おじゃ丸, from ojama, “a nuisance”, plus the -maru of JaJaMaru), Fireball Daruma (火ダルマ, a daruma in flames) and Namazu Dayu.

The Stage Select edition

The developers left a stage select in the game that nothing in the original can reach. The Stage Select edition (jajamaru-en-special-1.0.bps) puts it on the title screen:

• Opening it: the title shows START and STAGE SELECT in place of PUSH START. Left/Right (or Up/Down) move the arrow; START opens the game or the stage select.
• Using it: STAGE 01-25 picks the scene and PLAYER 01-99 the lives (Up/Down choose the line, Left/Right change the number); START goes to that scene’s map.
• Limits: starting there skips the opening. Choosing a boss scene (05, 10, 15, 20, 25) goes straight to the princess scene and the boss; starting in the middle of a chapter, the boss still needs the petals of all four of its stages, so the map sends you back to the stages you skipped. Everything else is the standard patch.

How it was made: AI translation, independent checks, human decisions

• Claude found and redrew every Japanese picture from the ROM and did all the hacking: new title tiles, per-chapter scroll titles loaded when the map starts, sprite text that keeps the original’s sprite counts, recompressed boss pictures.
• A separate, independent Claude reviewer checked every name, word and screen against the Japanese; its findings were verified and fixed.
• On screen: every screen with words was captured on the original and the English ROM side by side; the whole game (all 25 scenes, the five bosses and the ending) was replayed on both ROMs from every stage, and no Japanese text reached the screen’s memory in the English build; the title’s demo loop was left alone for four cycles on both; every text was measured for centring and clearance against the original; I also played the first stage in the emulator through lost lives, the continue screen and a stage clear.
• The judgement calls were listed with the Japanese, a literal reading and the options, and I decided all 17 by hand over two rounds: the logo, the sideways captions and their centring, every name, the chapter titles, THE END, and the Stage Select edition.

Changelog

• v1.0: first release.

Sources consulted

• Japanese text: the WonderSwan ROM itself (all of it is in pictures).
• Official English names: Ninja JaJaMaru: The Great Yokai Battle +Hell (Steam achievements; Giant Bomb’s character list; reviews), the Wii Virtual Console listing of Ninja JaJaMaru-kun, Ninja JaJaMaru: Retro Collection.
• Lettering: a bold pixel alphabet drawn for this patch.

How to patch

Apply one of the BPS files to the Japanese ROM “Ganso Jajamaru-kun (Japan)” (CRC32 A193458C) with Floating IPS, beat or ROM Patcher JS:

• Standard: jajamaru-en-1.0.bps, the result should be CRC32 5B68EAFE.
• Stage Select edition (START / STAGE SELECT on the title): jajamaru-en-special-1.0.bps, the result should be CRC32 3A10EC60.

The ROM keeps its size (512 KB). It’s a WonderSwan (mono) game, so keep the .ws extension.

You must provide your own copy of the original Japanese game to apply it.

Download: jajamaru-en-1.0.bps, jajamaru-en-special-1.0.bps on the release page.

Known issues

• It hasn’t been played start to finish by a person. If you find leftover Japanese or anything broken, please tell me where it happened.
• Two decorations in the stage scenery are kept as they are: a circled crest on shop curtains (chapter 3) and marks on hanging sacks (scenes 2-3).
• The scene-17 enemy’s name is written マオメイ or マナメイ (the picture can be read either way); it’s MAOMEI here.

Technical notes (for the curious)

• Every Japanese word was tiles in a background map or sprites built from metasprite records. The map screen already uses 118 of the WonderSwan’s 128 sprites, so the chapter scroll is rebuilt with exactly the original’s sprite pieces, and each chapter’s title tiles are copied in when the map starts.
• The enemy introductions already use all 128 sprites; the names reuse the original’s pieces, moved to centre the English.
• The boss introductions first show only the name through a screen window; the window’s edge now follows each English name. The boss pictures are LZSS-compressed and were recompressed in place.
• The Stage Select menu keeps its state in the title screen’s own map (which cell holds the arrow), so it claims no memory.