Neon Genesis Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel Special Edition English Translation 1.0

Yippee! It's finally done! Thank fuck! Visual novel translating is a real drag. Anyway, for those who may not know, the Special Edition of Girlfriend of Steel features new scenes, a new ending, the ability to customise the games running resolution up to 1080p, and much much more. The latter being something that the original 97 release never had so that's a feature to come back and read the story again for. Hee hee.

Translated the setup screen so you can customize it before launching

Now, that said, what I did over the past months was retranslate the game line by line and fix everything up. However, that's not to say lines from the original weren't accurate for the most part, just the wording of things so there will be some similarities between my TL and the original seeing how it was spot on for the most part. Furthermore, I did cover some mistranslations the original team did in my progress reports so check them out for more info on that.

Game gave errors when I had commas and such so had to remove them

Moving on. Now, I'll leave clear instructions on how to patch the game files to get the translation running. It's the same procedure as GOS2 for the most part, but there's also a few other things that I want to run by you guys first before that. First, make sure you have Japanese language codec installed and the app locale stuff. That's basic stuff for running JP games. Second, Microsoft released an update the windows this year which turned off a specific driver that was used to run some old games and GOSSE is one of those that was affected. However, check out this thread on fuwanovel on how to get the driver back online and working.

That said, patch instruction time. Sweat baby sweat baby sex is a Texas drought, me and you do the kind of stuff that only Prince would sing about, so put your hands down my pants and I'll bet you'll feel nuts, yes I'm Siskel, yes I'm Ebert and you're getting two thumbs up. Oh, sorry.

1. Dump all the files in the "Files to dump" folder into the games directory and overwrite
2. Open the "Files to patch" folder and patch each file like below
• Use the included xdeltaUI program to apply the graphics patch:
• Launch program
• Select patch file (example: event.xdelta)
• Select file to be patched (example: event.lb5, the original in game directory)
• Select where to output the file and make sure to name it for example "event.lb5"
• Select the patched file and replace the original games with it in the games directory
3. Do that for all 3 files that need to be patched
• event.lb5
• eve1024.lb5
• eve2048.lb5
4. Do it like they do it on the discovery channel
5. Play the game.

Now, I hope all of you can follow those instructions and enjoy the story. I put a lot of effort, time and pain into translating, playtesting and oh god don't get me started on bug fixing or the many problems that I encountered so it better pay off. All in all, enjoy this Christmas present from me and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Dr Jones signing off!

Download
Bug Fix

TL Notes

Youtube Playlist

Credits
Pearse Hillock                   - Translator/Proofreader/Production/Playtesting & Bugfixing
MarcoL from Team GOS  - For help with GOSSE Tools
Fansubs of Steel                - Original Translation Team

Note
I translated what in-game text and images that I could find in the games files and script but some of it I couldn't find anywhere and others were locked in different file types than the tools I had could decompress. A pity, but what JP you see in the menu's unfortunately stays. Also, I didn't bother to translate the credits this time round again. When you get to the end of translating a big project like this you feel relieved but when you see another huge wall of text to TL it honestly puts you off from translating it.

Update - 20th December - Updated DL Link
Since the graphics side of the patch unfortunately didn't work, I just decided to upload the translation with the edited files. Meaning, you just have to dump the files and that's that. Have fun!

Update - 12th January 2016
Thanks to a friendly email, a bug was reported but I got on that about a week later since I completely forgot. My bad. Anyway, it's just a two small files that had to be edited so you can find the link with the rest above. Just dump them in the games directory and replace.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel Special Edition (PC)

Just to be make this post clear, no, this is not the translation, but the game itself so you guys can download it ahead of my English TL release. Anyway, I would just like to mention that the only source I found on the net for this was on the Russian Evangelion community so naturally they made a custom installer which is in Russian and there is no disc image, sadly. Now, do not worry, installing the game is simple enough. Just click through the screens and select where you want to install the game and that's that. I'll drop the download link below. Enjoy.

Download

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel Special Edition Progress Update - 29th November 2015

Meh. It has been a while since I last did a progress update for GOSSE so I might as well get off my ass and do one. Now, I'll try not to bore on forever so I'll do my best to keep this short. That said, you'll be happy to hear that I finished translating the games main script not long ago, and also near finished bug fixing and play testing most of the game as well. Neat stuff, because there's not much left to do other than to translate the 2/3 of the new scenes and new ending that's left to do and the rest of the fixing and play testing. Yippee! At my current rate, I should have it out by Christmas.

At any rate, there's also a few TL things that I'd like to mention. First, the previous TL team translated "child soldier" as "junior member" for some reason even though the JP says child soldier. What went wrong there? Anyway, I'll leave the line below so you can see the difference. Original above and mine below.

I'm a junior member of the military assigned to observe the daily life of Shinji Ikari, the pilot of Eva Unit 01.
I'm a child soldier of the military assigned to observe the everyday life of Ikari Shinji, the pilot of Eva Unit-01.

Lastly, they TL'd Cozy Corner as Koji Corner. But, I guess they listened to the dialogue and couldn't understand what Asuka was really saying. It was in English and the Japanese aren't very good at speaking it so that's understandable. Also, FYI, Cozy Corner is a pastry shop in Japan so that scene was kinda a reference of sorts to it, and them getting it wrong kinda took away from that. Just sayin'. Now, there hasn't been much stuff they got wrong for the most part since it's more of a play on words and the like. And that's more or less all I want to say for now. See ya!

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel Special Edition Graphics Rip (PC)

Okay, I have had this ripped for over a month now, but I kinda forgot to upload it like all those Eva games I keep forgetting to. Anyhow, you'll find most (some were compressed differently) of the assets in the download in the varying resolutions that the game supports. I really like how they included 1080p support as all the graphics are in (or near) that resolution, and that's a real good thing seeing how the original was released like back in 97 or 98. Also, there was a few sketches hidden in the game files which I posted on Evageeks and the sketches from the hidden in the regular 97/98 games files some time ago so you might be interested in those. Other than that, you can find the DL below so have a nice day and I hope you enjoy the rip. See ya!

Download

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel Special Edition Progress Update - 15th October 2015

Gack! Time has flown by and man o man has it been over two weeks already since I last worked on GOSSE. Phew. Well, I did have the first chapter of Kyochuu Rettou to do and then 140 of Terra Formars came up so there have been more important things which needed by attention. Anyhow, when I did stop around two weeks ago I had about half of the game completely translated so a great deal of progress has been done. However, I'm gonna put GOSSE off for a while and work on it on the side after I get the first chapter of Terra Formars Rain Hard out since, you know, that's more important to me and to you. That said, back when I was working on GOSSE I was testing out a few things like higher resolutions and such so I have another video uploaded if any of you are interested. I'll link it below. See ya! 

P.S. - On the translating side, I noticed that the previous TL among other things had gotten Misato's rank wrong. It's Major, not Captain. How did that happen? Sheesh.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel Special Edition English Translation Announcement

The greatest love story ever told

Heh heh. Yes, now I have my eyes set on the special edition of the very first Girlfriend of Steel. And while I know that there are only a few new scenes added and that everything else was translated back in 2003, I'm still gonna go ahead and check over the entire game's script to fix things up to become more literal and accurate to the Japanese script, fix those literacy errors, and make it more my own overall. In other words, it's a retranslation for the most part. However, that's not to say that you won't see some similar things seeing how aspects of the previous TL was pretty spot on for the most part, but only for the most part. Here's a few examples. The original TL is the above and my new retranslation is the below.

Don't go inside, you'll get scolded by the policeman.
If you go inside, you'll get scolded by a policeman.

With such a clear physical evidence, they still call it "a mysterious moving object."
Despite such clear physical evidence, they still call it "a mysterious moving object."

I don't want to be late so I'll go ahead.
Since we are late, I'll go ahead. 

Hey you, honor student! Where are you going!?
Hey, honor student! Where are you going!?

You're... Ikari-kun?
Ikari-kun... right?

It's pretty.
Beautiful, isn't it?

Now, while I know that more literal doesn't exactly mean better, I still think that it should be preferred rather than rewriting/rewording lines, and wording here and there. Here's a few more examples. Note how the previous TL is not totally off, but off by a bit. Furthermore, there is a complete lack of "ne" at the end of a shitton of sentences and that's a major glaring issue, as well as adding in questions despite the sentences being used don't have a "ka" or any related particle. Though the TL is from 2003 so I shouldn't be as harsh. Still, the comparisons are below, and note how Asuka is suspecting the new transfer student and not calling her strange. How did that happen? It's totally off.

Must be a strange person.
I'm quite curious, aren't you?

A new classmate is transferring in today.
A new classmate has come to change schools today.

Let's make friends with her.
Try to get along, okay?

I guess I'll have to give her a greeting.
Well then, guess I'll have to give my greetings.

If you don't mind, could you tell me your first name, Ikari-kun?
If you don't mind, tell me your first name, Ikari-kun.

In addition, note how they mention that the transfer student is a girl despite not actually knowing that. Kinda weird, huh? Well, that's because they don't say "her" since Japanese a lot of the time is like that and it's left up to interpretation in a translation. Anyhow, enough of me picking on the original TL. Mine won't exactly be God-Tier, but it'll be an improvement for the most part, or at least I hope. Now, I uploaded a short video to Youtube the other day as a test, but please take note that I will be making changes since I was working off a script and didn't exactly have visuals or context while I was translating.

The misc JP lies elsewhere and not in the exe, FYI.

Moving on. I also translated the setup utility so you too can also fiddle around with the settings beforehand. I hope people appreciate that. Anyway, what excites me about the special edition is that the game can go up to 1920x1080 and it actually looks pretty good, aside from the subtitle cut off that is. However, I fiddled around and found the best option for a widescreen monitor supporting 1920x1080 and the like is the 1680x1050 option. There is room for the subtitles if you use that setting. However, please take note that any or most lower resolution settings in windowed mode shouldn't have that problem. Furthermore, a recent Microsoft security updates disabled an old driver from Windows Server 2003 that allowed the game and many others to not run, and that is a major problem. However, I posted on fuwanovel and got an email from somebody not from that site who noticed my post and ran into the same problem not long after I posted informing me about the solution and what caused it since I had no clue why the game stopped running. Anyhow, that's just for reference since I know more people will run into that problem. Lastly, have a Mana, and I hope you are excited to replay the game with an updated translation, new scenes, and the game in general in higher resolution. See ya! Bye!