Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. How to apply the patch
  3. Credits 
  4. Patch Credits
  5. Special Notes
  6. Copyright

1. Introduction

Hello and welcome to the Castlevania: Rondo of Blood English Translation Patch (PSP to TurboGrafx-CD).
After many years of leaving this project abandoned I can happily say that this patch has reached it's much needed 100% status! However the credits have not made it into this release of the patch (if ever) so in order to compensate for this inconvenience we have included the translation for the credits in this readme. 

To make clear, this patch will translate the TurboGrafx-CD version of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood into English. Everything will be translated; even the voiced dialogue will be replaced with the official Konami English dub from Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (PSP). However miscellaneous grunts will retain their original Japanese. 

It also replaces the old German narrator with the new narration that was in the PSP and VC release of the game. If you, for whatever reason, do not like this you can easily swap back the original narration (Track03) after it is done patching.        

2. How to apply the patch

Place Your ISO/WAV/CUE archive, that you preferably ripped from TurboRip, (Included with this path) and place the files in the root of the “Patch” folder.
Start the “Patcher.bat” to start patching the game. A backup of the original Japanese tracks will be placed in a new folder called “backup”.  

For users with BIN/CUE rips there is a folder included with this patch labeled "For users with BIN-CUE rips". Inside are instructions made out for you.  

3. Credits 

Here is the Credits for the officail Rondo of Blood team at Konami.

CAST

Richter Belmont
David Earnest

Maria Renard
Michelle Ruff

Annette
Sally Cahill

Tera
Karen Strassman

Iris
Karen Strassman

Dracula
Patrick Seitz

Shaft
Tony Oliver

Death
Travis Willingham

Narrator
Klaus-Dieter Klebsch

STAFF

PRODUCER
Y.YAMADA

CHARACTER DESIGN
T.FURUKAWA
R.B
K.YAMADA
KURO!
PROGRAM
T.HAGIHARA
GAGENSAI
SHINGO.T

SOUND-STAFF
Akiropito
Jigokuguruma Nakamura
Sanoppi
METAL YUHKI

VOICE-STAFF
Ryuichi
AKT
NOR
Sausirau
Babitto-K
Sanoppi
OPA

GUITAR-SOLO
Motoaki Furukawa

VISUAL-STAFF
Akiropito
Sanoppi
ImohoreImai

SPECIAL-THANKS
Office OSAWA Co.,Ltd
AC CREATE Co.,Ltd.
Studio Oto no Meruhen-ya
CoCo Studio

PACKAGE DESIGN
Inumari
M.YOSHIHASHI

DIRECTOR
T.HAGIHARA

SPECIAL THANKS
ASUTY.S
AXELAY UEDA
ELF TATEISHI
FURURU
H.KYOMAS
IGA
JEF MIURA
KAWA
M.SUZUKI
NORI.B SATO
POKOPEN ITOH
PONCE YAMAMOTO
POP THE TOP WADA
S.HAYASHI
TO
UNICO SATOH
YADA BON
YAMAZAKI
Z.A.P
R.GOTOH
T.HAYASAKA

(fade to black)
THE END

(c) 1986 1993 KONAMI

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

5. Patch Credits  

Listed here are the brave men that help make this patch a reality!

Andrew (cubanraul)
Was the Director of the project back in 2004 - 2006 and worked on all text/audio hacking that was done during that point. Also worked on making the new Patcher.

Michael G. (Burnt Lasagna)
(The guy who wrote this readme) I started this project back up in early 2011 and directed the project from 2011 onward. I worked on engineering the PSP dub into the voiced cutscenes in the TurboGrafx-CD version along with hacking in new English title cards for the stage names. Also made some minor changes to the Patcher, such as the OGG conversion.    

Andy (pemdawg)
Worked on some early translation and text hacking in 2004 – 2005; currently at the time of writing he’s trying to translate the games packaging.       

Tom (tomaitheous)
Worked on hacking in the new title screen, hacked in the new English “Castlevania: Oops, Wrong Game!!!” title screen, added a new print routine for the opening subtitle system, hacked in the text in signs and added  a new text routine for the ferry man. It's very important to note that this finished version of the patch would not have been possible without Tom. He was the saving grace when all of our team members hit the wall, so please everyone give a big round of applause to Tom!    

Fragmare
Made the graphic for the new title screen and made the logo that you see at the top of this readme.

Vanya
Made the “Castlevania: Oops, Wrong Game!!!” title screen.

DarknessSavior
Did the translation for the ferryman, signs, and the error message billboard in StageX.

Reyvgm
Made the new English graphics for the signs.  

Special Thanks

David Shadoff
Made the TurboGrafx-16 ADPCM Codec that was used when inserting the English ADPCM.

Nicolas Livaditis (NightWolve)
Made the FileBySize.exe that helped stabilize the patcher. Also made the included TurboRip program, please see the readme that's alongside TurboRip for more information.

AstroBlue 
Made the ASCII Logo that you see in the Patcher.

6. Special Notes


Special notes from team members are listed here about their history in the project. 

Andrew
(cubanraul)

I'll have to check when the work first started but I think it was mid 2004.  I was only planning on translating the intro.  I picked Dracula X because the intro is in German.  That way I wouldn't have to track down a translator.  I started with just a hex editor but soon each edit became a chore.  I then started to use a patcher I had used for writing PC game cracks.  Not in the least the right tool for the job but it was certainly familiar. 

Around this time pemdawg joined the project.  He helped find the rest of the SJIS text and did all the translating of the Japanese.  We also found the custom font in the game and figured out how it worked.  Manually typing out the edits in the patcher began to get annoying so I went on to write a program to do all the text conversions.  It handled ASCII to SJIS and ASCII to the custom font.  Everything was still really rinky dink but it fit our needs for the small amount of text we were dealing with.

I got into contact with Nightwolve (man behind the amazing Ys 1&2 and Xak III projects).  He let me know about a tool Dave Shadoff had written for their Ys IV project.  This tool could dump and reinsert the audio from PC Engine games.  He sent it to me and I went to work with Magic Engine save states and a hex editor.  I eventually found most of the audio and had it dumped (for some reason I used a raw ISO for this work which caused Burnt Lasagna quite a few headaches when I sent it off to him years later, sorries).  pemdawg was working on the level title graphics at this time.

I eventually lost contact with pemdawg but decided to continue on with the audio work.  I posted on a few Castlevania related forums about getting some voice actors together since the audio dumping/inserting was working perfectly.  There was zero interest.  I tried again after a few months with the same results.  I gave up at that point (2006 or so?).  Knowing what I know now I was asking in the wrong places but I'm glad everything played out in the way it did.

The patch on the site was from before we discovered the second font so it was missing 1/3 of the work we had done for all those years.  Every few months someone would ask for all the files I had left from the project.  I'd send the files off and usually never hear back from them.  Luckily one of the people I heard back from was Burnt Lasagna.  I added a new patcher at that point.  After we got the new font (half the space as the original SJIS) I was able to insert the original intro translation I did back in 2004 before I realized space was extremely limited. 

Michael G. (Burnt Lasagna)

The way I started working on this project is sort of a weird story. I was originally intending on doing a fandub for Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys before I decided to do this instead. The reason I decided to pick Rondo of Blood first was because I quickly realized that Ys IV was probably not the best project to pick up when you have little experience with audio hacking.

I figured Rondo of Blood would be an easier starting point and saw that cubanraul had mentioned on his website that he had finished all the ADPCM extraction and insertion. The next moment I sent cubanraul an Email asking if he could send me his tools from way back then. Within three days he replied back nonchalantly giving me his entire stack of ROM hacking material!   

Now at this point I have everything I need… I think.  I guess the only thing I need to do now is talk in front of a microphone with a group of people and then the project gets done…right? I mean I’m only doing this to get a vague idea on how to work this kind of project for Ys IV…Right!? Well to put it bluntly…I WAS WRONG!!!

In the end I spent 5 months trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the project. The conundrum ended when I randomly found a YouTube video showing the original game running on the PSP in English! Apparently in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (2007) you could unlock the original Rondo of Blood and it was fully dubbed into English! I was shocked that this even existed and I quickly decided at that very second to use that dub for the TurboGrafx-CD version.

At first I just ripped the audio from those YouTube videos for the audio in the patch, but luckily this latest patch uses a direct rip from the PSP. When I was syncing in all the English tracks back into the game I came across a problem. A majority of the pointers that cubanraul had given to me where screwed up! I later found out that this was because cubanraul found all the pointers using a raw ISO of the game, not an ISO/WAV archive. I fixed this eventually after ironing out all the addresses to sync properly with a straight up MODE2/2352 rip of track02 ripped via Turbo Rip.   

After fully inserting the dub into the TurboGrafx-CD version I sent it off to cubanraul in which we then worked back and forth on making a new patcher that could take into consideration the new dub. Shortly afterwards the new version of the patch was released on November 09, 2011, which at that point had not been updated in roughly 8 years. Then on New Year’s Eve of 2011 we released a new version of the patch that had all the level title cards translated.   

Now with the help of tomaitheous we’ve finally released the final version of the Castlevania: Rondo of Blood English Translation Patch! (YEAAAHHH!!!!) I hope you, yes you, the person reading this readme, love’s this translation patch like a 90’s kid likes snorting graphics!

Thank you and I hope you enjoy this patch. 

- Michael G. (Burnt Lasagna) 

6. Copyright 

The Caslevainia series along with this dub is Copyright of ©KONAMI CORPORATION.
http://www.konami.com/

This patch is for free and for personal use only! Unauthorized pressing/selling of this patch will not be tolerated and is strictly forbidden by law and by all creators of this patch!