Dragon Ball Z: The Legend English Translation version 1.0 — a patch two years in the making — dropped on SegaXtreme this morning. You can download the patch here!
This patch was completed by a single fan, wonder-inc, who credits nine other members of the community for their help in making this translation patch a reality.
Wonder-inc shared in the SHIRO! Discord that Pitito — the developer behind a Spanish language patch for Dragon Ball Z: The Legend in 2021 — generously shared their work to aid this translation effort. Petito’s files provided wonder-inc an invaluable “frame of reference” whenever a roadblock presented itself. Wonder-inc said that it was through Pitito’s work that they learned how to create headers for custom VDP1 textures that could be read by the game’s code and where VDP2 background were located in the Japanese files.
“That’s why I thank him a lot, because he taught me a lot that I would have otherwise gotten stuck and dropped the project possibly were it not for his help.” – wonder-inc
Wonder-inc did encounter some issues that they were not able to overcome for this patch, namely “the title card rendering in Story Mode” — an issue that they had sought help for in February of this year. They ultimately chose to instead work with the space provided and might return to the issue in future iterations of the patch. That said, this should not impact a full playthrough of the story.
The patch’s English script was translated primarily from the French version, titled Dragon Ball Z: La grande légende des boules de cristal, although wonder-inc did use the Japanese script “if the French text seemed incorrect/off.”
According wonder-inc’s readme, this patch “translates all the non-English assets” but does not touch the voice samples, which are in Japanese.
It is important to note that while this effort looked to recreate the canceled North American version of Dragon Ball Z: The Legend, the game image that is altered by the patch is that of the European release, not the Japanese original. Do not worry, NTSC Saturn owners, wonder-inc released both a 50 Hz version and a 60 Hz version of the patch.
“Patching the Japanese ISO with the North American patch will cause Sega Saturn Patcher to crash during the image creation process. Patching the Japanese ISO with the European patch will generate an ISO, but the game will crash as soon as you’re past the SEGA logo in the boot up screen.” – wonder-inc
While you are waiting for the patch to download, why not check out SHIRO!’s Peter Malek’s #BestOfSaturn piece on Dragon Ball Z: The Legend?
Dragon Ball Z: The Legend is a fighting game that was originally released in May 1996 as Dragon Ball Z: Idainaru Dragon Ball Densetsu in Japan for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The Saturn version of the game would come to select European markets — France, Portugal, and Spain — in December 1996. A North American release for the title was rumored but never materialized.
This story originally appeared on Sega Saturn SHIRO!