Lode Runner for WonderSwan

What’s translated

• Everything on screen: the menus and prompts, the map editor, Data I/O, Option (viewing and deleting save data), the chapter tally, the phone-number keypad, and the WonderGate download screens with all 21 error messages. The game has no text font: every Japanese word is a picture, and the English is lettered into the same places.
• Story: all five chapters and the ending, for both heroes. The male hero (俺) is blunt and the female hero (わたし) softer. Which hero you get follows the owner’s gender set in the WonderSwan’s own settings, as in the original.
• Title logo: the katakana ロードランナー is replaced by an English LODE RUNNER, drawn in the style of the original lettering over the original rock art.
• Left as it is: the game’s own English: the mode plates (STORY MODE, SELECT MODE, MAP EDIT, DATA I/O, DOWN LOAD, OPTION), STAGE CLEAR!, the HUD and the staff credits.

Names and terms

Chapter 2, 「ロマン」, is “Wonder”: the loan word means adventure and awe here, not romance. The phone keypad’s three keys are “Clr”, “Done” and “Init”, because each key is only 22 pixels wide. “DOWN LOAD” stays two words, as the game spells it on its own plate.

Swan Revival Edition (optional)

A second English patch adds stage sharing through the game’s own WonderGate menu, for Swan Revival (swanrevival.com), the community’s WonderGate revival:

• Upload a Stage: send a map from MAP 1 or MAP 2 with a title and, if you like, your name. The cartridge remembers the name. Stages are reviewed before they appear in the list.
• Download a Stage: a list of up to 40 player-made stages with their titles, authors and dates. The stage you pick opens in the map editor, as in the original.
• The title screen and an info screen say that this is an unofficial edition by Swan Revival, not made or endorsed by Banpresto or Bandai.

Gameplay, the map editor, Data I/O and the save format are unchanged: maps still trade over the link cable as before, and saves work in every version.

There is also a Japanese-text build of the edition: the original Japanese game with the same stage sharing, its new screens written in Japanese in the game’s own lettering. It’s for players who want the original game and only the new feature.

Note: Upload and the new Download list need Swan Revival’s stage-sharing service. Until it is live, they show the game’s own “could not connect” errors. Everything else works offline.

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

• Claude found and rendered every picture in the ROM: 87 screen maps in 10 tile sets, plus the story script. It wrote the English, then lettered it into new tiles that the game loads alongside each screen.
• A separate, independent Claude reviewer read the whole game against the Japanese. Its 13 findings were checked and fixed. The Swan Revival Edition’s screens had their own review (16 findings, fixed), and its Japanese text was reviewed by another separate agent (no meaning errors; its wording fixes were applied).
• On screen:
  • all 87 edited maps were drawn by the game’s own code and matched the expected pictures;
  • 15 scripted tours (menus, story for both heroes, both endings, editor, Data I/O, DOWN LOAD, keypad, Option) and long random walks found no Japanese left on the English build;
  • 10 minutes of the attract mode were captured with no input;
  • the text alignment was measured on every screen.
• Link cable: the English cartridge traded maps with an original Japanese cartridge in both directions.
• Online: the WonderGate sessions were played for real against private copies of Swan Revival’s server, on the original and patched ROMs. That covers the download, every upload result, the stage list, and the connection and server errors. The live server was not used for testing.
• The judgement calls (the logo, names, terms, the keypad labels, and for the edition its name, wording and protocol) were listed with the options, and I decided all of them by hand: 13 for the translation and 12 for the edition.

Changelog

• v1.0: first release, with the Swan Revival Edition (English and Japanese-text) 1.0.

Sources consulted

• Japanese text: the WonderSwan ROM itself.
• WonderGate behaviour: the game’s code and Swan Revival’s notes on this game.
• Lettering: Shinonome 12-dot (public domain) for the English text; the title logo is hand-drawn; the Japanese-text edition’s new screens use the game’s own lettering.

How to patch

Apply one of the BPS files to the Japanese ROM “Lode Runner for WonderSwan (Japan)” (CRC32 E407CABF) in your browser with the Swan Revival patcher, or with Floating IPS, beat or ROM Patcher JS:

• Standard: lode-runner-en-1.0.bps, the result should be CRC32 A88BABE0.
• Swan Revival Edition: lode-runner-se-en-1.0.bps, the result should be CRC32 2EEB7D2A.
• Swan Revival Edition (Japanese text): lode-runner-se-ja-1.0.bps, the result should be CRC32 1425CEDE.

The patched ROM is 512 KB, the same size as the original. 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: lode-runner-en-1.0.bps, lode-runner-se-en-1.0.bps and lode-runner-se-ja-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.
• Bandai’s download server closed long ago and its stages are lost. With the standard patch, DOWN LOAD reaches Swan Revival today but finds no stage list there (error 603).
• A few screens were checked only in a test viewer, not in a real session: “Receiving” and some adapter and phone errors.
• The Swan Revival Edition’s sharing was tested against a private copy of the planned service, not the live one.
• The Japanese-text edition’s new Japanese was written by AI and checked by an AI reviewer, not by a native speaker.

Technical notes (for the curious)

• All of the game’s Japanese is compressed pictures: tile sets plus screen maps, with no font or text strings. The patch hooks the game’s map copy routine, so each translated screen loads its own English tiles next to the original ones.
• The Swan Revival Edition adds about 4.4 KB of code. It reuses the game’s own WonderGate routines (connect, send, receive, hang-up, error screens) for a new upload request and a richer stage list. The player’s name is kept in EEPROM words the game never uses.
• The Japanese-text edition’s new screens use 85 characters cut from the game’s own lettering, so they match the original screens.