Showing posts with label konami files. Show all posts
Showing posts with label konami files. Show all posts

Friday, January 6, 2012

Konami files 4 – Metal Gear – and an explanation

As promised, another day, another file drop, and the reason for the files being leaked. If I don't see this spread across at least 5 gaming news sites, then I've obviously not generated enough hype for this stuff. I mean, it's Metal Gear!
(hilarious heading photo taken from a NeoGAF thread)

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Ever wanted to read the entire script for Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel on the GBC, in either Japanese or English prior to editing and insertion in the game? Now you can!

*LINKS DELETED*

By this point most people will know who our mystery interview is – I won’t say the name since at least it gives the forums something to talk about. But I will print an excerpt from the big interview feature, which explains why the files were released. As our generous benefactor put it:
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For over a decade, I did right by *****, Konami and other ***** clients despite not having signed an NDA. I continue to maintain non-disclosure for the last group, though any secrecy in those Word and Excel files expired as soon as the titles hit the shelf. The obligation I chose to feel towards Konami and ***** ended after the former demanded I expunge mentions of my own work from my own website, and the latter ferried that message.
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That’s right, Konami attempted to censor one of its freelance employees, which is just the tip of the iceberg of all the political wranglings we discussed. The interview itself is in the hands of site founder Kurt, currently at MAGfest I believe. But it will be formatted and designed for publication within the next few weeks, to coincide with our new CMS launch.

The interview will be the first for said benefactor, and as promised reveals fascinating anecdotes from every corner of the industry. Besides Konami there’s also discussion about Kenji Eno’s company WARP and something for Namco fans to enjoy too. Alongside will be the final file drop, even bigger than the Ghost Babel files, and the real one to anticipate. What it is, most can probably correctly guess by now.


Points of interest in the Ghost Babel files:
* There are two large files titled MG English Final and MG English full. What are these? They contain a bunch of what appears to be hexadecimal coding alongside the ASCII dialogue. Is it some kind of partial source code? Discussion at RHDN implied no, but then I never supplied them with the file itself. If someone finds an interesting use for it, please let us know.

* There’s a file called “E-Changes post 9.1” – does this pertain to changes made after 9/11? I have no idea, since there’s not much dialogue in said files.

EDIT 7/1/11: As pointed out, Ghost Babel was obviously released in 2000, so the post 9.1 must mean something else. Apologies for this mistake, I knew this, but at the same time MGS2 was released in 2001 and it was on my mind and, given that it's our next release alongside the interview, it was on my mind when typing. Freudian slip as they say! Again, apologies for the quite obvious mistake.
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I could ask out benefactor for clarification, but I think it’s more fun this way. Get cracking, chaps!

There’s also a ton of other stuff, like the entire Radio Play dialogue, files noting other changes, pretty much the entire script. Theoretically you could do a text dump of the ROM, but this is much cooler.

Stay tuned for the big interview and final file drop.

(Images borrowed from GameFAQs, because I really can’t be bothered cropping the ones I took)

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Konami files - part 3


Halfway through our collection of downloads, and this is where things start to get really interesting.


I'm following a few internet threads on this, and I'm not entirely sure how speculation ended up on the Metal Gear files pertaining to MG projects which were scrapped. If a game is scrapped why would they have someone officially localise it? Think more along the lines of released games, but early drafts prior to changes being made.
In fact the Shadow of Destiny / Memories release should give you a taste of what to expect.

This goes alongside our rather excellent feature on the games, by Derboo.

I was tempted to give the clues yesterday that it's by Konami, begins with the letter S and has a supernatural theme to it, but I didn't want to upset the Silent Hill fans (have you read my other interview, with SH bits?).

Anyway, if you've not played the time travelling, Groundhog's Day style adventure by Konami, you totally should. It's great.

The files in particular are interesting since they show how the script changed and, given the complexity of the story, you can now rifle through each of the timeline arcs and multiple endings with ease. Plus there is the Japanese should you wish to compare it. As a fan of the game I think it's great.

NOTE:
The files are presented as I received them. There might be some duplicates, but I didn't want to change anything in case something interesting was inadvertently lost. You can open them with Notepad++, or for files with Japanese script, MS Word can open them and convert all the script into Japanese characters. Play around with them, or use Windows search tool to find specific pieces of text in each of the files.

Enjoy! A Feral Beer batch of files will drop tomorrow or possibly Monday, depending on how lazy I am, and the interview with final and best file drop will come out in a few weeks once we have the CMS worked out. Possibly. It all depends.