How to Edit Text in Nintendo Games - NES Hacking: Part 4 

I made him say. "I have crippling depression!"

Very cool!! Way better than my method where I just scream at the game to change.

My son and I love watching your reviews and now we've gone back and started watching these hack videos. I was definitely caught off guard by your comment at 9:36.

Riggs I'm really liking these videos! Thanks for sharing man

Thanks alot for the vid. It helped me edit a Sega Genesis Rom I've been wanting to edit for like 15-20 years.

Perfect, simple. I literally learned how to hack games in 15 minutes because of your videos.

No wonder you love making games, it looks fun!

An in-depth translation tutorial that also covers pointers, table making, etc.

you can add 'space' and the special characters to your tbl file as well for easier editing :)

I think you can change the text to something longer, but it's important to end the message with the proper code. In your Zelda example you just needed to end your long message with hex value EC, I think. You overwrote the original 'end code' which is why it ended up showing the next bit of dialogue (minus what you had overwritten) concatenated to the new message you entered. Also, you can edit the text to show graphics, though it didn't work in your example. In Super Mario Bros. when you get a lot of lives (usually accomplished with turtle tap method), you'll see weird ice-cube-looking blocks where numerals should be. I think the F9 you entered caused the problem, and the 25 was just fine. Perhaps the 25 didn't show due to being same color-- black on black?

The reason your text got sloppy at the end is that one of the things you removed is called a pointer, or line break. In Zelda those are sometimes "special" letters because zeldas weird like that, but its usually just a hex code to indicate the next line.

I know this is an older video, but I've enjoyed your later videos immensely. And this video just explained in plain language a concept I've struggled with for almost 2 years while working on Final Fantasy Reconstructed... Just could not wrap my head around the idea of hex editing text since I had primarily used the ffhackster utility. Thank you for these tutorials!!!!

If you were to translate a game from Japanese to English, would you use this same method? Or is that a more complicated process?

'Have a bag of dicks' Hilarious, definitely subscribing!

AMAZING MAN! Keep them coming!

Spaces are 24 - 27 (it's the palette colors) and if you move to the next line add $80 to the value of the last letter (does not work on spaces or some special characters)

How do you edit text in SNES roms?

l love these NES hacking videos Riggs. Been having a lot of fun with messing around with NES games. Keep up the good work!

I loved changing the text in punch out between rounds and surprise my friends while playing.

if you wanna end a sentence in zelda anytime just use the code ec in hex after a sentence, doesnt even matter if you use more than the allocated space just put ec after it

In Zelda, a 1 at the start of the binary number means newline

8:42 SPAY ME FOR THE DOREET SPALONEBABAGUSCOOTIES

Hello! I just found your channel and I can't wait to start changing sprites in rom hacks. I just want to know how you put your games onto actual cartridges.

thank you so much for this. Mario has now been renamed to my name

Amazing tutorial, but how does one SAVE it to the rom?

Thanks for the tutorial! Inspired by recent events, I'm working on a very text heavy hack.

Awesome vid! Nearly spit out my drink @9:39 lol

Another great video! Thanks for the lucid explanations!

How do you change the level design?

Wrath of the Black Manta rules even though to this day I have no idea what a manta is.

you need to make a part five on editing levels :)

Why don't my text changes save? Sometimes it wont let me change them at all other times I can, then it resets next time i load it up.

These videos helped me learn how to hack in 15 mins! Thank you for making these videos.

I would like to make my own language translation carts for game systems; kinda like the Game Genie, Game Shark etc except that you would use such carts to translate foreign language games into your own language!

Thanks a lot for this. I've been hoping to tweak a little of the Ninja Gaiden II text so I can stream it for a friend--we'll drink every time I die! :D

John could you do the tutorial for editing japanesse text n change it to english?

So, I'm curious, it text in old games like this basically created as either background tiles or sprites with some code that says how to display each tile/sprite to form words, and that's basically how it's done? So, either way, I have to create the tile/sprite set for all the letters/numbers/characters I want to use in the game and I'm good to go in terms of the assets? Lastly, how do the letters appear once at a time to create the words/sentences/paragraphs, which was very common in games, especially RPGs and the like?

do you think you could show us how to edit music in nes games? after that the collection of nes hacking tools will be complete will be complete

Hey John, is there a way to do this for SNES games or are they too much more complicated for this? I'd love to edit Civilization and introduce new countries into it and stuff and of course that is a SNES game, since I don't think I could edit a DOS version any easier. There is just something special about the first Civ, I have IV and like it but I still enjoy the first one! Cheers from Spokane. (Your the only one I bother to end my comments like this on so far, lol)

This is a bit of a tall order,but could you do an episode on changing level design? and maybe an episode on altering sound? I understand if this is a bit of a tall order.

Hi. Your video is illuminating. Just a question. If you look at the intro you'll notice that the text has different colors. How do you change the color of the text and make it all white? Thanks

This will help me learn to make games cuz imma work at Nintendo in the future

It doesn't seem to work for Mario Bros (NOT *SUPER* Mario Bros, just Mario Bros) - I'm trying to edit all instances of words that say MARIO

This is great for nintendo games because they were lazy to put the right year when it was released in an specefic country,for instance supermariobros 3 eventrough it was indeed originally made in 1988 for japan but in europe it was released in 1991, so why the euro version did not say 1991 in the title screen? the american version of it should,ve to say 1990 instead,with this software you can finaly rectifie that.

9:35 lmfao

I'm trying to get a dialog transcript from Ultima Quest of the Avatar. Using the method in the video I can see the text when talking to people in RAM but in ROM I only see a few dungeon names and no dialog. I'm guessing it is compressed in ROM? Do you know how to get to it?

what if the game you're trying to edit has characters that are more than one block tall?

Awesome John! Washingtonians Rule!

is there a way to add in content that was not in the game to begin with for example a new enemy or item?

Does this work with punchout? im trying to make a romhack but when i do this it will not work.

Hey how can you save the edited in-game text using this emulator’s hex editor without having to redo it all over again? I keep having to redo the in-game title text to a Mickey Mousecapade rom hack I’m working on. Can you please help me? Plus I couldn’t find the title screen text to Mickey Mousecapade in the Rom memory of my FCEUX’s hex editor but found it in the PPU memory and to no avail couldn’t save the edited text in it!

Sorry for the noob question, but I'm trying to do a name edit in Dragon Warrior IV and I can't seem to make much progress with it despite following your video to the letter. Is there an extra step I'm missing for an rpg that big, or is it just coded oddly?

Hey John, do you think this method is used to translate games from Japanese into English? Or is there something else that is used? Thanks... :)

I know this is an older video but I’ve been using these tutorials to make my dad his own version of super Mario Bros as he grew up playing it. Something I wanted to do was not just edit some existing text. But even add new text or spoken moments like when toad talks to you at the end of worlds. I’m not asking for a full on tutorial but do you have anywhere I could find this info as google isn’t helping much

what's a good table program for Mac? I have a Mac but not a windows

Its cool but I couldn't find any text rather than "NES" inside SMB. How to do that?

Hi guys, I have seen how to change nes game color video and how to change game stripes video. I'm making a game right now. I want to change the Bomberman title screen using Tile Layer Pro, but it's too hard, please help me

I have a question about a game. Tecmo Bowl and/or Super Tecmo Bowl I want to add the new teams which I don't see being a problem or the names I haven't done much with it yet so there may be more to it than I think, but the thing I need help with most is the stats. Can you show me how to change stats because I don't want a great player today in a old players stats that wasn't that great, kinda defeats the purpose. Any help or direction on this please?

Mesen's hex editor doesn't work like this. I try to type text and it just gives me spaces.

I wonder how the game knows when to stop... how does it know how much text is allotted to the dialogue. I thought it'd keep going until it reached a stop character.

Hi JohnRiggs! I can't hack the Mighty Final Fight Text because appears in gibberish! So make a video called "Editing Mighty Final Fight NES Text" and all games tutorial! This is should be a good idea.

Is there a way to change the text in Mighty Final Fight?

i'm listening to your steps while trying to change the text in friday the 13th but i got confused alot, can you help?

so for some weird reason my computer does not like fceux and crashes every time I open it

Let me question you something. I'm in a Brazilian team of The Legend of Dragoon translation. And I wanted to be useful for the team to find text data and helping translating. However, the game data is a little complex because some of data (additions attack) is based in ASCII code, but the rest of data is not base in it. I don't know what to do and I see you use this setting to put letters A to Z and input in the game room. Will it works this method in a PS1 iso game? Is there any method that can easily help me to find this text? Thank you.

String Still Not Found.... I Cannot Replace Any .TBL Files From The Game I'm Trying To Edit.

Tutorial on how to change sounds if you haven't already?

if i wanted to do this with a different alphabet, like hebrew would that be possible?

Is this also possible with a windows computer?

John what program do you use to Code on a MAC? OS X

Hi..i was wondering if you had time could you do a tutorial for using smb3 workshop? I literally cant find anything on this

I'M TRYING TO HACK TOM AND JERRY NES GAMES BUT I CAN'T CHANGE, I TRIED WITH TBLATER AND NOTHING, NOT WORKS FOR ME

Sorry friend The truth the tablet does not work for the game "Super mario Bros. 2" I have tried the steps of your tutorial but apparently not me gives them texts of the game. I hope you can help me

Anyone else bored during quarantine and wanted something to do so you do the piracy on a school computer for roms.

Hey JohnRiggs, I'm trying to make a hack for Super Mario Bros called Super Zoroark Bros, and I'm trying to change the name "Mario" to "Zoroark". I can't because when I run the game, the game gets stuck, it crashes because it will only let me put 5 letters in the place where Mario's name is instead of 7. Can you help?

So you can change the code? What about on project 64?

can you do it for ps1 games ?

I wanna learn how to change music and sound effects

What do you do if you're trying to improve on a translation that already exists? I'm trying to improve the Sweet Home translation and I can't get any of the text to show up using any of these methods. I appreciate the help as I'd like to do my best to get this thing up.

What Hex Editor you used for this video??? Thanks

Hello, I have a question. I just made a Tetris rom hack with custom text and color pallets using your technique, but when I closed the emulator and opened the rom again later, nothing was saved, is there a save button that I don't notice?

I want to modify a text questions of Double Dare of NES and I can't no show the text.

you should do one about the level design

Does this works with Super Mario Bros too?

Is it still safe to download TBLater?

TBLater download link (not rom hacking.com because i try to register but it wont allow me to get registered.)

How do you hack the title and change the name?

So I've got a question. If I run out of room to write something what can I do? (I'm trying to make the text "MARIO" turn into "ISABELLE")

Is it the same as snes?

How can you change the speed?

Can you make a video on how to edit text in the ROM for Super Mario Bros.?

I'm testing it with Super Mario Bros. But when i open the hex editor i can't find the text. Can you help me out?

Here's a question for you with text editing. Have you figured out when the ROM file does not have a certain text string, or HEX values, but the PPU Memory does? I am looking at a game where the normal in game text is fine and shows up in the Hex editor on the right side. But there are certain spots when it goes to a different screen that the ROM file doesn't have any of the text or corresponding HEX values in the entire ROM file. However, it shows up perfectly when I view PPU Memory, it just doesn't show up in the ROM file. Any clue?

doesn't work on SMB >_

When I close the game it returns to normal? I want to translate Fire Emblem

Can You Make a Tutorial on How to edit Supermariobros levels?

is not working for me

Hey I was trying this for SMB3 and neither method worked

could you make a sega genesis one of these?

fantastic tutorial.