ROMHacking and translations
Translation and modification projects for classic video games: The World Ends With You, Chrono Trigger DS and more.
How it started
When I got into programming and started wondering what was inside video games, I tried to “open them up” to see how they were made. I started by modifying Pokémon games to add more trainers, customize my experience or catch all Pokémon in a single cartridge. Yes, I began this journey doing “pokehacking”.
The biggest project I achieved in this field was the complete localization of the Nintendo DS game The World Ends With You. We opened the game, translated the text and images, and even dubbed the videos into Spanish. If you want to know more, I wrote a Twitter thread explaining it.
Translation projects
The World Ends With You
The complete translation included:
- Translation of all in-game text
- Localization of images and graphics
- Full Spanish dubbing of all videos
- Extensive testing to ensure quality
More info: romhacking.net/translations/1662
Chrono Trigger DS
I worked alongside the ChronoSpTeam to translate this classic RPG into Spanish. A collaborative project requiring coordination between multiple translators and programmers.
More info: romhacking.net/translations/2251
Ragnarok DS
I started working on this project by reverse-engineering the game, but abandoned it because I knew no Japanese. Even though I managed to access the game files, without language knowledge there was no point continuing. It was eventually fully translated by Artema Translations.
Suikoden Tierkreis
Here I didn’t do a full translation — I replaced the game’s font. The original typeface had letters that were easily confused with each other, making reading difficult. The new font significantly improved legibility. You can find the font fix patch on GBATemp.
Resources
If you’re interested in ROMHacking, here are some useful links:
- ROMHacking.net: The largest ROMHacking community in English.
- Tradusquare: Spanish video game translation community with active projects and resources.
Note: All these projects were made for educational and cultural preservation purposes, to make games accessible that never received an official Spanish translation.