Tane o Maku Tori: The Bird Who Sowed Seeds

WS WonderSwanPatch v1.0Released 13 Oct 2026
Download v1.0

Tane o Maku Tori (たねをまく鳥) is a small game by T. Suzuki that came out of Bandai's D's Garage 21 game contest and was released on cartridge in 1999 for the original (monochrome) WonderSwan, only in Japan. You hold the console upright. It opens with a hand-lettered picture book: a crow who was always alone makes a friend from the south, the friend leaves at the end of summer promising to come back when the land is full of flowers, and the crow takes a seed in its beak and flies off. Then you play the crow.

Please read: this translation was made with AI (Claude), as a hobby project. A person (me) made every judgement call before release, but nobody on the project is a professional translator. I'm sharing it as it is for anyone who wants to play. Please don't upload it to romhacking sites (romhacking.net and the like). It may not be up to the standard of a real fan translation and it doesn't belong there.

Why we use AI

Screens

  • Title screen, in EnglishTitle screen, original Japanese
    Title screen
  • The crow was always alone, in EnglishThe crow was always alone, original Japanese
    The crow was always alone
  • A friend from the south, in EnglishA friend from the south, original Japanese
    A friend from the south
  • Every day was fun, in EnglishEvery day was fun, original Japanese
    Every day was fun
  • The end of summer, in EnglishThe end of summer, original Japanese
    The end of summer
  • "I wanted to talk so much more...", in English"I wanted to talk so much more...", original Japanese
    "I wanted to talk so much more..."
  • The friend's promise, in EnglishThe friend's promise, original Japanese
    The friend's promise
  • Alone once again, in EnglishAlone once again, original Japanese
    Alone once again

What’s translated

There’s no text font in this game: every word is a picture. All of these were redrawn:

  • Every page of the picture-book story, hand-lettered in English in the game’s shades.
  • The title logo, now “Tane o Maku Tori / The Bird Who Sowed Seeds”.
  • The menu, the stage cards and in-game words (STAGE, Game Start, Clear, Game Over, Pause, PTS), the results screens (Score Tally, Time Left, Accuracy), and the National Best and Personal Best score screens.
  • The WonderGate phone screen’s labels.
  • Left in Japanese, on purpose: the WonderGate status messages. They only appear with the long-dead WonderGate mobile adapter.

The story is written as simple picture-book English, to match the original’s gentle tone.

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

  • Claude transcribed the vertical hand lettering, translated it, and set the English in a handwriting font in the game’s three shades, then rebuilt each page’s tiles and recompressed them.
  • A separate Claude review went through the whole patch against the Japanese and found the results screens still in Japanese; they were translated before release.
  • Every story page and screen was checked in an emulator from power-on.
  • The judgement calls were listed with the Japanese, a literal reading and the options, and I decided each one by hand: the lettering style, the English title, two candidate tones for the story, and the logo.

Changelog

  • v1.0: first release.

Sources consulted

  • Japanese text: the pictures in the ROM itself.
  • Font: Kalam Bold (Indian Type Foundry, SIL Open Font License).

How to patch

Apply tane-o-maku-tori-en-1.0.bps to the Japanese ROM “D’s Garage 21 Koubo Game - Tane o Maku Tori (Japan)” (CRC32 B1CAEC06) with Floating IPS, beat or ROM Patcher JS. The result should be CRC32 40EC6A1D.

The ROM keeps its size (1 MB). 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: tane-o-maku-tori-en-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, cut text or a crash, please tell me where it happened.
  • The WonderGate status messages stay Japanese (see above).

Technical notes (for the curious)

  • Every screen is stored rotated 90° and run-length compressed. The patch composes each page upright, replaces the lettering, re-tiles it and compresses it again into free space in the ROM.
  • The English text appears top to bottom with the page, instead of the original’s right-to-left wipe that followed the vertical Japanese columns.